What Does Isaiah 31:2 Mean?
Yet he also is wise, and he will bring evil, and he will not turn his words aside. He will rise against the house of the evildoers, and against the help of those who work crookedness.
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
Yet he also is wise, and will bring evil, and will not call back his words: but will arise against the house of the evildoers, and against the help of them that work iniquity.THE KEY
Here, divine wisdom may arrive as calamity, and its opposition reaches the support behind wrongdoing.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you of a wisdom that can bring harm or calamity and does not withdraw its words. Its opposition reaches both the house of wrongdoers and the aid backing those who do harm; even that support stands within its judgment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that divine wisdom always feels like rescue: here wisdom is bound to calamity and judgment.
THE ROOT
רָע
raʿ
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
Be bad, do evil, or cause harm.
The Hebrew word can name both evil and harm or calamity. Its root also appears in the verse’s word for “evildoers,” holding the harm brought and the wrongdoing it confronts within one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
mĕrēʿîm: Evildoers; those doing wrong.
מְרֵעִים
This form of the same root appears later in the verse, describing those against whom God rises.
rāʿaʿ: To do evil, act badly, or cause harm.
רָעַע
The verb shows how the root moves between describing harm and naming the action that does harm.
דְּבָרָיו
devarav
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
Speak, declare; word or matter.
The Hebrew word for “words” belongs to a word-family that can also name a matter or thing. What God does not withdraw is therefore more than sound: the declaration remains bound to what unfolds.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: Word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
This noun shows how speech and the matter spoken of can share one Hebrew word.
dibbēr: Spoke or declared.
דִּבֵּר
This verb shares the root and makes the declaration in the verse an active speaking.
עֶזְרַת
ʿezrat
GROWS FROM
עזר
ʿ-z-r
Help, assist, or support.
The verse names the help of wrongdoers as a target alongside the wrongdoers themselves. The root brings the support behind their work into view: opposition reaches what enables the harm, too.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēzer: Help or aid.
עֵזֶר
This noun is the base form behind the word for help in the verse.
ʿāzar: To help or support.
עָזַר
The verb shows help as an active act of sustaining or assisting.
THE PATTERN
God’s spoken word remains in force and reaches its fulfillment, even when its effect is severe.
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should relent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not make it stand?Heaven and earth pass by, but my words do not pass by.THE THREAD
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.Both verses use the Hebrew word-family dabar (דבר; d-b-r), meaning word or matter, for God’s spoken word. Isaiah 55:11 opens the image further: the word that is not withdrawn goes out and accomplishes what it is sent to do.
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