What Does Isaiah 36:14 Mean?
Thus says the king, Do not let Hezekiah lead you astray; for he will not be able to snatch you.
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
Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you.THE KEY
The speaker attacks trust and the possibility of rescue together, turning uncertainty about a rescuer into certainty that no escape exists.
THE MEANING
A threat can make the person you trust look like a deceiver and your rescue look impossible. The verse exposes that double move: it discredits a rescuer while declaring the outcome settled. The speaker’s confidence is still a claim, not proof that no one can bring you out.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A threat’s certainty does not prove that rescue is impossible.
THE ROOT
לְהַצִּיל
lehaṣṣîl
GROWS FROM
נצל
n-ṣ-l
To snatch away, rescue, or extract someone from danger or another’s grasp.
“snatch you” in this verse is lehaṣṣîl. English “deliver” names the result; נצל also pictures the extraction that makes it happen. The king tries to make that extraction seem impossible. The root returns in Isaiah 37:11 as a question about being rescued, keeping the possibility open.
ALSO GROWS
nāṣal: To snatch away, rescue, or take away.
נָצַל
The root’s sense of taking someone out makes deliverance an extraction from the threat.
tinnāṣēl: You will be delivered; you will escape.
תִּנָּצֵל
This form appears in Isaiah 37:11, where the claim about rescue becomes a question.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats deliverance as extraction from real danger, even while that danger is declared unbeatable.
Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. And shall you be delivered?The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.Who brought us out of so great a death, and brings us out; in whom we hope that he will yet bring us out.THE THREAD
Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. And shall you be delivered?Isaiah 37:11 repeats נצל (natsal, “snatch out; rescue”), turning the claim that Hezekiah cannot deliver the people into a question: will they be delivered? The shared root makes the issue concrete: whether anyone can extract them from the threat.
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