What Does Isaiah 42:7 Mean?
To open blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the prison, and those who settle in darkness out of the prison house.
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 open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.THE KEY
The eyes are opened and the prisoner is brought out by one work of deliverance: perception and freedom arrive together.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now wherever sight is blocked and a person is confined, naming an opening for blind eyes and an exit for captives. The movement is both perceptual and concrete: those sitting in darkness are brought out of the prison house. Their confinement is named without being treated as their final place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the place where you are confined is the place where you must remain: the verse names an exit from the prison house.
THE ROOT
לִפְקֹחַ
lifqoach
GROWS FROM
פקח
To open, especially eyes or ears.
“open” in this verse is lifqoach. The root names perception being opened, not a new faculty being added. Scripture uses it for both eyes and ears, showing that the opening reaches the capacity to perceive.
ALSO GROWS
vatippāqaḥnāh: “Were opened,” as the eyes are in Genesis 3:7.
וַתִּפָּקַחְנָה
The same root describes eyes opening to perception; it names the opening itself, not whether what is seen feels comforting.
pāqōaḥ ʾoznayim: “Opening the ears” in Isaiah 42:20.
פָּקוֹחַ אָזְנַיִם
The root reaches hearing as well as sight, widening this verse’s image of opened perception.
הוֹצִיא
hotsi
GROWS FROM
יצא
To go out, come forth.
“bring the prisoners out” in this verse is hotsi. The Hebrew form means to cause someone to go out. It holds the captive’s own exit and the act of bringing them outward together, making deliverance a movement from inside the enclosure to outside it.
ALSO GROWS
yāṣāʾ: To go out or come forth.
יָצָא
The underlying verb centers the person’s movement out of confinement.
mōṣāʾ: A going out, an exit, or an issue from a source.
מוֹצָא
This branch carries the sense of an outward way or point of departure within the same root family.
כֶּלֶא
kele
GROWS FROM
כלא
To restrain, confine, or hold back.
The prison house carries the root of restraint, while the verse says those held inside are brought out. Its language places confinement and exit side by side, with the outward movement breaking the hold of the enclosed place.
ALSO GROWS
kālāʾ: To restrain, confine, or withhold.
כָּלָא
The verb names the force embodied by the prison: holding someone in.
kālûʾ: Confined or held captive.
כָּלוּא
The same root names both restraint and the person held by it, whom this verse describes being brought out.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance opens what is shut and brings the confined person out into freedom.
Who makes judgment for the pressed, who gives bread to the hungry. The LORD loosens the bound.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.So if the Son sets you free, you will be truly free.THE THREAD
The LORD opens the eyes of the blind; the LORD straightens the bent; the LORD loves the aligned.Isaiah’s לִפְקֹחַ (lifqoach, “to open”) and the psalm’s “openeth” share the Hebrew root פקח (paqach), applied in both verses to blind eyes. In the psalm, that opening stands beside raising those bowed down, placing restored perception within a larger movement of release.
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