What Does Isaiah 3:14 Mean?
The LORD will enter into judgment with the elders of his people, and with his princes. For you have burned the vineyard, and what was torn away from the bowed one is in your houses.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.THE KEY
The rulers’ private abundance is the poor’s stolen loss made visible: the spoil is already inside their houses.
THE MEANING
The verse names a present pattern: those entrusted with what sustains a people consume it, while the poor person’s loss rests in their homes. The LORD enters judgment with the elders and princes, making that stored spoil visible as evidence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A ruler’s gain can hide the poor person’s loss once the goods sit behind private doors. Here, the houses themselves expose the taking.
THE ROOT
בִּעַרְתֶּם
biʿartem
GROWS FROM
בער
Burn, consume.
“burned” in this verse is biʿartem. The root brings burning and consumption beneath the vineyard image. The leaders are not merely gathering its produce: their action burns through what should sustain the people.
ALSO GROWS
boʿer: Burning, aflame.
בֹּעֵר
This is the root used for the bush that burns without being consumed in Exodus 3:2, sharpening the contrast with a vineyard burned through by its keepers.
uviʿarta: You shall remove or clear away.
וּבִעַרְתָּ
In Deuteronomy 13:5 this root describes removing evil; here, the rulers’ consumption clears the vineyard’s yield away from those it should sustain.
גְּזֵלַת
gezeilat
GROWS FROM
גזל
Seize, rob.
“what was torn away” in this verse is gezeilat. The word carries the sense of robbery or plunder, and the poor are named as its source. The houses hold not neutral wealth, but the trace of a specific taking.
ALSO GROWS
gazal: To seize or rob.
גָּזַל
The verb names the taking behind the spoil: the vineyard’s loss is an act, not an accident.
gezelah: Robbery, plunder.
גְּזֵלָה
This noun names what the houses contain, joining the rulers’ private possessions to the poor person’s loss.
עָנִי
ʿani
GROWS FROM
ענה
Afflict, bow down.
“the bowed one” in this verse is ʿani. The word for the poor also carries the sense of the afflicted or bowed down. The line joins their condition to the rulers’ enrichment: what weighs them down is stored in the rulers’ homes.
ALSO GROWS
ʿani: Poor, afflicted.
עָנִי
The poor are named not only by what they lack, but by the pressure they bear as the vineyard is consumed.
ʿoni: Affliction, misery.
עֹנִי
This noun makes the condition of the poor visible as affliction, the human cost attached to the spoil in the houses.
THE PATTERN
When those entrusted with what sustains others consume it for themselves, their abundance becomes evidence of the vulnerable’s loss.
For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah the planting of his delight. He waited for judgment, but behold, spilled blood. He waited for alignment, but behold, a cry.They covet fields and tear them away, and houses, and carry them off. So they press a man and his house, even a man and his inheritance.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
And the messenger of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not eaten up.The Hebrew root בָּעַר (baʿar, burn or consume) appears in Isaiah’s “eaten up” and Exodus’s “burned.” The bush burns without being consumed; Isaiah’s rulers make the vineyard bear the cost of their consumption.
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