What Does Isaiah 31:7 Mean?
For in that day every man will throw away his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which your own hands made for you as missing the mark.
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
For in that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which your own hands have made unto you for a sin.THE KEY
What your hands make for security can become the very thing that makes you miss, and seeing it is already the beginning of release.
THE MEANING
Your own hands can make something that begins to claim your allegiance; those same hands can release it when its emptiness comes into view. The verse names the harm as missing: what is fashioned to serve becomes what draws its maker off course.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that whatever you make can secure you. This verse shows that what you make can become the very thing that marks your missing.
THE ROOT
ימאסון
yimasun
GROWS FROM
מאס
ma'as
reject, refuse, or despise
“throw away” in this verse is yimasun. The verb translated “cast away” carries the sense of rejecting or spurning. The movement is more than dropping an object: its claim over you is refused.
ALSO GROWS
ma'as: to reject or despise
מָאַס
This is the root verb behind the verse’s act of casting away.
ma'us: rejected or loathsome
מָאוּס
This branch shows the object’s status changing: what once held value is now refused.
חטא
chet
GROWS FROM
חטא
chata
to miss or go astray
“as missing the mark” in this verse is chet. The word rendered “sin” carries the sense of missing. The verse locates the failure in the relationship: what is made to serve takes allegiance and draws its maker away from the mark.
ALSO GROWS
chata: to miss or err
חָטָא
The verb gives the word “sin” its image of going off course.
chatat: sin; an offering for missing
חַטָּאת
This related form keeps the language of sin connected to the underlying idea of missing.
עשו
asu
GROWS FROM
עשה
asah
do or make
The idols are the result of human doing, named in the same sentence as the hands that made them. The verse holds making and releasing within the same human sphere: what is fashioned by hands does not have to keep their allegiance.
ALSO GROWS
asah: to do or make
עָשָׂה
This is the verb behind the hands’ act of making.
ma'aseh: deed, work, or thing made
מַעֲשֶׂה
This branch names the product or result of doing, like the handmade idols in the verse.
THE PATTERN
What human hands make cannot carry the life and authority later assigned to it, and its claim can be relinquished.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.Since then we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think the divine is like gold, or silver, or stone, carved by craft and by human imagining.For they themselves report concerning us what sort of entry we had to you, and how you turned around to God from the idols, to serve the living and true God.THE THREAD
In that day a man shall throw away his nothings of silver and nothings of gold, which they made for themselves to bow down before, to the moles and to the bats;Isaiah 2:20 uses the same Hebrew word for the silver and gold idols and repeats the frame “in that day.” It adds the image of those objects cast among moles and bats: what hands elevate loses even the place it once held.
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