What Does Isaiah 36:20 Mean?
Who are they among all the gods of these lands, who have snatched their land out of my hand, that the LORD should snatch Jerusalem out of my hand?
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
Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?THE KEY
The same Hebrew root for “delivered” names both the gods’ supposed rescues and the LORD’s questioned rescue, so the taunt turns on whether any grip can be broken.
THE MEANING
The voice here measures every god by whether it can wrest a land from his grasp, then treats Jerusalem as though possession settles the matter. It assumes that the hand holding the city defines the limits of deliverance. The verse leaves that assumption hanging as a taunting question.
THE ROOT
הִצִּילוּ
hitzilu
GROWS FROM
נצל
n-ṣ-l
To rescue, deliver, or snatch someone away from danger or control.
“snatched their land out of my hand” in this verse is hitzilu. English repeats “delivered,” but Hebrew repeats the same root in two forms: first, “they rescued,” then, “he will rescue.” The speaker’s challenge puts the claimed rescues of other gods beside the LORD’s disputed deliverance, making the possibility of rescue audible inside the taunt.
ALSO GROWS
hitzilu: They delivered or rescued.
הִצִּילוּ
This is the form used for the other gods’ claimed rescues; the speaker presents it as a precedent that Jerusalem’s rescue must match.
yatsil: He will deliver or rescue.
יַצִּיל
This is the form used of the LORD. The shared root links the speaker’s assertion about other gods directly to his question about the LORD.
lehatsilo: To deliver or rescue him/them.
לְהַצִּילוֹ
The same root appears with “out of the hand” in Exodus 3:8, where rescue means being brought out from under a captor’s control.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
Whole, complete, intact; the root behind shalom, wholeness.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim carries the sound and sense of shalom, wholeness. The speaker names the city as territory in his hand, while its name holds a condition his grip cannot define; the tension is between claimed possession and wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
This familiar branch brings the sense carried in Jerusalem’s name into the verse’s question about whether the city can be delivered.
shalem: Whole, complete, intact.
שָׁלֵם
This branch sharpens the contrast between the city treated as captured land and the wholeness held in its name.
THE PATTERN
A ruler’s claim that no one can deliver from his grip becomes a test of whether power is final.
Now if you are ready, so that at whatever time you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, you fall down and bow down to the image which I have made. Good. But if you do not bow down, you shall be thrown that same hour into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire. And who is that God who shall deliver you out of my hands?He snatches me from my strong enemy and from my haters, for they are too firm for me.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
And I have come down to snatch them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and wide land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.Both verses place the same root, נצל (n-ṣ-l), meaning “rescue, deliver,” beside the phrase “out of the hand.” Isaiah’s speaker calls a ruler’s grip unbreakable; Exodus uses that same root for being brought out from under a captor’s control and into a spacious land.
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