What Does Isaiah 42:8 Mean?
I am the LORD, and this is my name. My weight I will not give to another, nor my praise to hewn images.
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
I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.THE KEY
The LORD’s name is his nature, and his glory is that nature’s weight, a weight no carved image can inherit.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s name is the nature present here, and its weight remains with the LORD; it does not pass to another. Praise does not finally belong to what human hands carve or shape. The verse speaks now wherever an image or object seems able to hold the place of the living source: the shape is not the source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A thing I can shape can contain God’s nature or claim the weight that belongs to God.
THE ROOT
כְּבוֹדִי
kəvōdī
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; to confer weight or honor.
The word carries the sense of weight, worth, and honor. The LORD’s kavod is the weight of the divine nature, and the verse says it is not transferred to a carved rival.
ALSO GROWS
kāvēd: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
This form makes the weight within “glory” tangible: what belongs to the LORD carries weight that cannot be handed to another.
kibbēd: Honor, treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
To honor is to assign weight; the verse reserves that weight for the LORD rather than a rival image.
לַפְּסִילִים
lapəsīlīm
GROWS FROM
פסל
p-s-l
To carve or hew.
“hewn images” in this verse is lapəsīlīm. The word names forms produced by carving, keeping the human act of shaping them inside the noun. The verse distinguishes the LORD’s nature from a figure whose form is made by another.
ALSO GROWS
pesel: A carved image.
פֶּסֶל
This singular form carries the same carved quality as the plural images in the verse.
pasal: To carve, hew.
פָּסַל
The verb keeps the maker’s act visible in the image that results from it.
תְּהִלָּתִי
təhillātī
GROWS FROM
הלל
h-l-l
To praise or celebrate.
The verse’s “praise” belongs to a word family that names praise directly. Its closing phrase sets that praise apart from carved forms, keeping it with the living LORD.
ALSO GROWS
tehillah: Praise, song of praise.
תְּהִלָּה
This is the noun form behind “my praise,” making the act of praise itself part of the verse’s distinction.
hallelu-Yah: Praise Yah; Hallelujah.
הַלְלוּיָהּ
This familiar praise-word names its recipient within the word itself: praise is directed to Yah.
THE PATTERN
The living source cannot be contained in forms made by human hands, and praise belongs to the source rather than its image.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.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.And they exchanged the weight of the imperishable God for an image shaped like perishable humankind, and of winged ones, four-footed ones, and crawling things.THE THREAD
And he said, Please, show me your weight.The same root כבד (k-b-d) names the glory Moses asks to see; the next verse unfolds that glory through God’s goodness passing before him and the proclamation of the LORD’s name. The weight in Isaiah is the living presence of God’s nature, not a form that can be carved and possessed.
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