What Does Isaiah 40:18 Mean?
To whom then will you liken God? What likeness will you set in line beside him?
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
To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?THE KEY
The verb for comparing also means arranging in order, so the verse reveals every likeness as an attempt to place God within a created scale that cannot hold him.
THE MEANING
The question meets you at the edge of every image you use for God. Each likeness belongs to the world of made things, while God exceeds the scale by which those things are compared. No crafted image can contain the one being named.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The specific false belief is that a vivid image or category can fully represent God. The verse loosens that certainty: comparison can point toward God, but it cannot contain him.
THE ROOT
תַּעַרְכוּ
taʿarkhu
GROWS FROM
ערך
Arrange, set in order, lay out; by extension, compare or evaluate.
“set in line beside him” in this verse is taʿarkhu. The verse’s verb תַּעַרְכוּ (taʿarkhu, “you compare or set in order”) comes from ערך, the root of arranging, laying out, and valuing. The Hebrew makes comparison feel like placing things in an order or on a scale, an operation that cannot contain God.
ALSO GROWS
ʿārakh: Arrange, set in order.
עָרַךְ
This basic action shows the image of comparison as setting things beside one another.
ʿērekh: Value, worth.
עֵרֶךְ
This branch brings the idea of measuring or evaluating into the verse’s question about what can be placed alongside God.
maʿărākhāh: Array, formation, battle line.
מַעֲרָכָה
An array is an ordered arrangement; the verse asks what created formation could serve as a likeness for God.
THE PATTERN
No created image or measure can contain God’s identity.
Who is like you among the mighty ones, O LORD? Who is like you, majestic in being set apart, awe-inspiring in praises, doing wonders?For who in the skies can be set in line with the LORD? Who among the sons of the mighty can be matched to the LORD?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.THE THREAD
For who in the skies can be set in line with the LORD? Who among the sons of the mighty can be matched to the LORD?The psalm uses the same Hebrew root ערך (ʿ-r-kh, “arrange or set in order”) when asking who can be compared with the LORD. Isaiah’s question becomes part of a wider pattern: no arrangement of created things reaches equivalence with God.
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