What Does Isaiah 43:27 Mean?
Your first father has missed the mark, and your spokesmen have broken away against me.
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
Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against me.THE KEY
The verse places two different breaks side by side: a first father misses the mark, while the teachers break away.
THE MEANING
The line names a fracture in both inheritance and instruction: your first father misses the mark, and your teachers break away from God. Failure can travel from a point of origin into the very voices meant to guide you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a revered origin or trusted teacher must be aligned with God dissolves here: the verse names failure in both.
THE ROOT
פָּשְׁעוּ
pāšəʿū
GROWS FROM
פשע
p-š-ʿ
Revolt; break away.
“broken away” in this verse is pāšəʿū. This verb carries the force of revolt and broken allegiance. The teachers’ failure is framed as a rupture in their relation to God, not merely a mistake.
ALSO GROWS
pešaʿ: Rebellion; breach.
פֶּשַׁע
The noun names the kind of break the teachers enact.
pōšēaʿ: A rebel; one who breaks away.
פֹּשֵׁעַ
The root names both rebellion and the person who embodies it.
חָטָא
ḥāṭāʾ
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
Miss; go wrong; fail.
“has missed the mark” in this verse is ḥāṭāʾ. The first father’s act is named with the language of missing or going wrong. Beside פשע (p-š-ʿ), “revolt” or “breaking away,” it gives the verse a sharper shape: an origin can miss, while its teachers can break away.
ALSO GROWS
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing; in offering contexts, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The noun keeps the idea of missing concrete and names a way of addressing it.
ḥōṭēʾ: One who misses or sins.
חוֹטֵא
The root describes both the failure and the person whose way has gone wrong.
THE PATTERN
A community’s inherited story and its appointed guides can both carry a breach into its present life.
The priests did not say, Where is the LORD? And those who grasp the instruction did not know me; the shepherds have broken away from me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after what cannot profit.Her priests have done violence to my instruction, and have made my set-apart things common. They have not split the set-apart from the common, nor have they shown the split between the unclean and the clean. They have shut their eyes to my sabbaths, and I am made common among them.Therefore you who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who cry out not to steal, do you steal?THE THREAD
And the breaking of the rebels and of those who miss the mark shall be together, and those who let go of the LORD shall run out.The Hebrew roots פשע (p-š-ʿ), “rebel” or “break away,” and חטא (ḥ-ṭ-ʾ), “miss” or “go wrong,” appear together here as “transgressors” and “sinners.” Isaiah keeps the two roots distinct, opening this verse’s difference between a first father’s missing and the teachers’ rebellion.
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