What Does Isaiah 47:6 Mean?
I was angry with my people. I have pierced my inheritance and given them into your hand. You set no compassion upon them. Upon the elders you made your yoke very heavy.
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 was wroth with my people, I have polluted mine inheritance, and given them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke.THE KEY
Being handed power over the vulnerable never turns their suffering into permission to add weight.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now wherever one person holds another’s vulnerability in their hand: power does not remove responsibility. Here, the aged are met with no compassion and a yoke made heavier; the text names that added weight as cruelty.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being given power over someone means whatever I do to them is permitted.
THE ROOT
רַחֲמִים
rachamim
GROWS FROM
ר־ח־ם
r-ḥ-m
To show deep compassion; tender care associated with the womb.
Mercy is rachamim, from racham, and the same root names rechem, the womb. The root opens “no mercy” beyond a bare absence of punishment: it is compassion and shelter withheld from people already in a vulnerable position.
ALSO GROWS
rechem: Womb
רֶחֶם
This branch gives compassion a texture of tenderness and shelter for the vulnerable.
rachum: Compassionate
רַחוּם
This describes the quality absent from the hand that refuses mercy.
הִכְבַּדְתְּ
hikbadet
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to honor.
“made your yoke very heavy” in this verse is hikbadet. The verb is literally “you made heavy”; the same root gives kavod, meaning weight and honor. The shared seed makes the cruelty vivid: the hand that has power over the aged increases their burden instead of recognizing their worth.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty
כָּבֵד
This is the plain weight carried by the yoke in the verse.
kavod: Weight, honor
כָּבוֹד
This branch lets physical weight and the weight accorded to someone share one root.
THE PATTERN
The hand that holds power over a vulnerable person is exposed by whether it increases their burden or helps carry it.
And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in clay and in brick, and in all the labor of the field; every service they made them serve was with crushing.For they tie up heavy loads, hard to lift, and lay them on the shoulders of people, but they themselves will not move them, even with one of their fingers.Carry one another's weights, and so you fill up the instruction of the Anointed One.THE THREAD
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those in awe of him.Isaiah’s “mercy” is רַחֲמִים (rachamim, compassion), and the Psalm uses the same root רָחַם (racham, to show compassion) in “pitieth.” The aged are denied the tenderness the Psalm names in God’s care for the vulnerable.
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