What Does Isaiah 42:24 Mean?
Who gave Jacob for spoil, and Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the LORD, against whom we have missed the mark? For they would not walk in his ways, and they would not hear and respond to his instruction.
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 gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the LORD, he against whom we have sinned? for they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law.THE KEY
The verse traces ruin to a people refusing to hear the instruction that gives their walking its direction.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now with a devastating claim: the LORD gives Jacob over to plunder, and Israel’s missing is expressed in refusing his ways and his instruction. It holds divine agency and human refusal in the same account without dissolving either.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the reading that the robbers alone account for the ruin: the verse names the LORD as the one who gives Jacob over and names the people’s refusal alongside it.
THE ROOT
שָׁמְעוּ
shāmeʿû
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear, listen; in responsive use, hear and heed.
“hear and respond to his instruction” in this verse is shāmeʿû. Under “obedient unto his law,” the Hebrew wording says they did not hear within his Torah. Hearing and response belong together here: refusal to obey is described as refusal to receive the instruction.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
It brings the verse’s failure into focus as a refusal of responsive hearing.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings, something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch keeps hearing connected to what is received, rather than reducing it to a bare sound.
חָטָאנוּ
ḥāṭāʾnû
GROWS FROM
חטא
Miss, fail to reach the mark.
“missed the mark” in this verse is ḥāṭāʾnû. The verse names the ruin alongside חטא, the missing, then shows that missing in the people’s refusal to walk and hear. “Sinned” here is not a free-floating label; it is a lived departure from the ways and instruction named in the verse.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēṭʾ: A missing, offense.
חֵטְא
It makes visible the root sense carried by “sinned” in this verse.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing or sin; in sacrificial use, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
It shows how the same root can name both the rupture and a response directed toward it.
הָלוֹךְ
halokh
GROWS FROM
הלך
Go, move, walk.
The Hebrew keeps the failure in motion: they refuse to walk in his ways. Set beside their not-hearing, the verse describes refusal both as closed reception and as a course of life they will not take.
ALSO GROWS
halakh: To go or walk.
הָלַךְ
It preserves the bodily movement inside the verse’s picture of following a way.
halikhah: Walking, a course or manner of life.
הֲלִיכָה
It shows how walking can name the whole direction of a life, not only a single step.
THE PATTERN
Refusing instruction leaves a people exposed to the consequences of a path they will not hear.
But it shall be, if you do not hear and respond to the voice of the LORD your God, to guard and to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command you this day, that all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not respond will be likened to a foolish man who built his house on the sand.THE THREAD
But my people would not hear and respond to my voice, and Israel would not have me. So I sent them away in the stiffness of their heart, and they walked in their own plans.“Would not hearken” uses the same Hebrew root שמע as Isaiah’s “were they not obedient”, literally, they did not hear. Psalm 81 then echoes Isaiah’s full pattern: Israel refuses to hear, is given over, and walks another course.
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