What Does Isaiah 5:20 Mean?
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who set darkness for light, and light for darkness, who set bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
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 call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!THE KEY
The corruption begins when discernment is reset, so harm can be named good and bitterness made to seem sweet.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks whenever a voice calls what harms good and what is good harmful. It traces that reversal beyond moral language into sight and taste: darkness stands as light, and bitterness as sweetness. The scale of judgment has shifted until the opposite can seem natural.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that calling something good makes it good, or that what feels sweet must be good. The names and sensations of right and wrong can be reversed while the reality beneath them remains.
THE ROOT
שָׂמִים
śāmîm
GROWS FROM
שׂים
śîm
To put, set, place, or assign.
“set” in this verse is śāmîm. The verse repeats this verb for darkness in place of light and bitterness in place of sweetness. Its language depicts an active substitution: one thing is assigned the place and value of another.
ALSO GROWS
śûm: To put or set.
שׂוּם
This verb form shares the root behind the verse’s repeated act of placing one quality in the other’s position.
vesamtem: And you shall place or set.
וְשַׂמְתֶּם
This form shows the root can describe setting something in a particular position, echoing Isaiah’s picture of values being assigned to the wrong place.
רַע
raʿ
GROWS FROM
רעע
rāʿaʿ
To be bad or to act harmfully.
“evil” in this verse is raʿ. This word’s range includes both moral badness and harm. The reversal therefore reaches beyond a disagreement over labels: what injures can be given the name of what is good.
ALSO GROWS
rāʿaʿ: To act wickedly or do harm.
רָעַע
The verb makes the harmful dimension of the word’s family visible beneath Isaiah’s moral contrast.
rōaʿ: Badness, evil, or harm.
רֹעַ
This noun shares the root and keeps moral wrongness connected to the harm it brings.
מַר
mar
GROWS FROM
מרר
To be bitter or make bitter.
“bitter” in this verse is mar. Isaiah carries the reversal into taste, where bitterness and sweetness are felt rather than merely named. The sensory contrast shows how the inversion can reach what seems desirable or unpleasant.
ALSO GROWS
mar: Bitter.
מַר
This is the word Isaiah places against sweet, making the reversal tangible to the senses.
merorim: Bitter herbs.
מְרֹרִים
This related form preserves bitterness as a concrete taste, underscoring the passage’s sensory image.
THE PATTERN
When discernment is inverted, harm is endorsed as good and what is right is condemned.
He who aligns the wicked, and he who convicts the aligned one, both are loathed by the LORD.You have worn out the LORD with your words. Yet you say, "How have we worn him out?" When you say, "Everyone who does evil is good in the eyes of the LORD, and he delights in them," or, "Where is the God of judgment?"who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and bowed down and served the creation beside the one who created, who is praised for the ages. Amen.THE THREAD
And God saw the light, that it was good, and God parted the light from the darkness.Genesis uses the same Hebrew word אוֹר (ʾôr, light) that Isaiah names in the exchange; there, light is recognized as good and distinguished from darkness. Isaiah’s warning reverses that ordering: the same categories remain, but their placement and value are switched.
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