What Does Isaiah 5:18 Mean?
Woe to those who drag crookedness with empty cords, and falling short as with the rope of a cart!
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
Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope:THE KEY
What looks like abstract iniquity is pictured as crookedness actively hauled along on cords woven from emptiness.
THE MEANING
The verse names a present pattern: crookedness (עָוֹן, ʿāwōn, crookedness) is actively drawn along by cords of emptiness or falsehood (שָׁוְא, shav, emptiness or falsehood), while missing the way gains the traction of a cart rope. “Woe” holds the danger plainly: what stays tethered gathers force and weight as it is hauled.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that harm only arrives from nowhere or in a single sudden break: here falsehood serves as the cord that keeps crookedness in motion.
THE ROOT
מֹשְׁכֵי
mōšəḵê
GROWS FROM
משך
māšaḵ
Draw, pull, or drag; in some uses, extend or prolong.
“drag” in this verse is mōšəḵê. The word pictures people actively pulling crookedness along, rather than merely finding it at their feet. The same verb can describe something being drawn out or prolonged, so this image carries both a pull and a continuation.
ALSO GROWS
māšaḵ: To draw, pull, or drag.
מָשַׁךְ
This is the verb’s direct sense in the verse: the people give the iniquity motion by drawing it along.
māšaḵ: To extend or prolong, as in Isaiah 13:22, “neither shall her days be prolonged.”
מָשַׁךְ
The same root can describe continuation; here the cords make the pull ongoing rather than momentary.
חַבְלֵי
ḥaḇlê
GROWS FROM
חבל
Cord or rope; the word family also carries binding and constricting senses.
The cords are part of the mechanism, not decoration: they fasten the pull to what is being hauled. Elsewhere the same word family depicts cords surrounding a person, making the tether an image of constriction as well as traction.
ALSO GROWS
ḥével: A cord, rope, or tether.
חֶבֶל
This is the concrete branch that makes the verse’s repeated pulling image visible.
ḥeḇlê-māweṯ: Cords of death; Psalm 18:4 uses this phrase, which the KJV renders “the sorrows of death.”
חֶבְלֵי־מוֹת
The same cord word can picture a force closing around someone; here the rope pulls sin forward.
חַטָּאָה
ḥaṭṭāʾāh
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥāṭāʾ
Miss, fail, or go wrong.
The word translated “sin” carries the root sense of missing or going wrong. The cart-rope image gives that missing direction and momentum: it is being hauled along rather than left as an isolated mistake.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, fail, or go wrong.
חָטָא
The verb keeps the root’s concrete sense of missing underneath the noun translated “sin.”
ḥaṭṭāʾṯ: Sin; in sacrificial contexts, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
This related noun shows the root extending from the act of missing to the language used for addressing it; Isaiah focuses on the missing being pulled along.
THE PATTERN
What is tethered through falsehood gains momentum, pulling a person toward crookedness.
His own crookednesses catch the wicked, and he is held by the cords of his falling short.But each one is tested by his own craving, dragged out and lured. Then craving, when it has conceived, gives birth to falling short; and falling short, when it is full-grown, bears death.THE THREAD
I drew them with cords of humankind, with bands of love. I was to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.Isaiah and Hosea use the same root, משך (māšaḵ, to draw or pull), but pair the pull with different cords. Isaiah’s cords haul crookedness through falsehood; Hosea’s draw with love, alongside the removal of a yoke and the giving of food.
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