What Does Isaiah 32:5 Mean?
The fool will no longer be called openhanded, nor the tightfisted said to be lavish.
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 vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.THE KEY
The verse strips away a flattering label: generosity is a nature of willing self-giving, not a title someone can hand out.
THE MEANING
Here, folly is not generosity, and withholding is not abundance. The verse speaks now wherever a reputation hides the character beneath it: a label cannot create the nature it names.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A respectable or generous reputation proves that a person is generous.
THE ROOT
נָדִיב
nādîḇ
GROWS FROM
נדב
To offer willingly, volunteer, or give freely.
“openhanded” in this verse is nādîḇ. The Hebrew word translated “liberal” carries the sense of willing, generous nobility. Its root connects generosity with freely offering oneself; the label names a disposition, not merely a public reputation.
ALSO GROWS
nəḏāḇāh: A freewill offering.
נְדָבָה
The offering is given willingly, revealing the voluntary quality inside the word for generosity.
hitnadēḇ: To volunteer or offer oneself willingly.
הִתְנַדֵּב
This verb makes the root’s willing self-giving explicit: generosity grows from a freely offered nature.
נָבָל
nāḇāl
GROWS FROM
נבל
To wither or droop; in related usage, to become foolish or disgraceful.
The word carries the image of something withered alongside its sense of a fool or ignoble person. Set beside nādîḇ, it makes the verse’s contrast more than a dispute over reputation: a withered character cannot be made generous by a noble-sounding name.
ALSO GROWS
nāḇēl: To wither or fade.
נָבֵל
This verbal form preserves the root’s image of decline beneath the description of the foolish person.
nəḇālāh: Folly or a disgraceful act.
נְבָלָה
The related noun shows how the root’s image extends into conduct that brings disgrace.
THE PATTERN
A label that contradicts a life cannot make its opposite true.
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who set darkness for light, and light for darkness, who set bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!He who aligns the wicked, and he who convicts the aligned one, both are loathed by the LORD.You will know them by their fruits. Do people gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?THE THREAD
But the openhanded plans openhanded things, and by openhanded things he will stand.The Hebrew nādîḇ (נָדִיב), “willingly generous,” appears here again in the same root family, describing both the person and what that person devises. Verse 5 strips away a false name; verse 8 shows the freely giving nature expressed in action.
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