What Does Isaiah 40:23 Mean?
He sets the princes into nothing; he makes the judges of the earth as emptiness.
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
That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.THE KEY
Earth’s judges can be reduced to tohu (תֹּהוּ, tōhū: formless emptiness), showing that their power cannot make itself permanent.
THE MEANING
Rulers and judges who seem to give the world its shape remain contingent. The One who gives them their place can reduce them to tohu (תֹּהוּ, tōhū: formless emptiness), the unformed state named at creation’s opening.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that rank or legal authority makes anyone untouchable, or that human judgment can secure its own permanence.
THE ROOT
הַנּוֹתֵן
hannōtēn
GROWS FROM
נתן
natan
To give, put, place, or set.
“sets the princes into nothing” in this verse is hannōtēn. The Hebrew opens with hannōtēn (הַנּוֹתֵן, hannōtēn: “the one giving or setting”) princes le’ayin (לְאָיִן, le’ayin: “to nothing”). The natan root (נתן, natan: give, place, set) makes the reversal feel like reassignment: the authority that is placed can be placed into emptiness.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, put, or set.
נָתַן
This verb is the seed of the participle used for the one who brings the princes to nothing.
mattanah: Gift.
מַתָּנָה
The same seed appears in a thing given, sharpening the verse’s picture of authority as something bestowed rather than self-made.
שֹׁפְטֵי
shoftei
GROWS FROM
שפט
shaphat
To judge, govern, or decide.
The word for judges and mishpat (מִשְׁפָּט, mishpat: judgment or justice) share the shaphat seed (שפט, shaphat: judge or govern). The people who administer judgment are not its source or guarantors; they, too, stand beneath the One who can judge.
ALSO GROWS
shofet: Judge.
שֹׁפֵט
This singular form names the person who exercises the judgment that Isaiah says can be rendered empty.
mishpat: Judgment or justice.
מִשְׁפָּט
The same root names both the person who judges and the judgment itself, linking earthly authority to the order it cannot secure for itself.
THE PATTERN
Authority on earth is assigned, and the One who assigns it can remove its standing.
And he changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who know understanding.He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.And God picked out the lowborn things of the world, and the things treated as nothing, the things that are not, so that he might make idle the things that are.THE THREAD
For God is the judge. This one he brings low, and this one he lifts.Isaiah’s shoftei (שֹׁפְטֵי, shoftei: judges) and the Psalm’s shofet (שֹׁפֵט, shofet: judge) share the root shaphat (שפט, shaphat: judge or govern). That shared seed turns the line back on earthly authority: those who judge the earth remain beneath the judgment that can lower or raise them.
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