What Does Isaiah 50:5 Mean?
The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I have not rebelled, nor have I drawn back.
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
The Lord GOD hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.THE KEY
The opened ear is answered by a life that does not resist or retreat.
THE MEANING
The Lord GOD opens your ear now, making hearing an access received rather than a capacity you manufacture. The open ear appears in a life that does not resist or draw back from what it hears.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that hearing is passive and consequence-free: the opened ear is visible in the refusal to resist or retreat.
THE ROOT
פָּתַח
pāṯaḥ
GROWS FROM
פתח
p-t-ḥ
To open or loosen; to make an opening.
The verse makes listening an opening: the ear is not simply told to work; what was closed is opened. The same root names a doorway, showing hearing as access made available.
ALSO GROWS
petaḥ: Doorway, entrance, opening.
פֶּתַח
The doorway shares the root of the opened ear: both make a passage where there was closure.
pātûaḥ: Open, opened.
פָּתוּחַ
This form carries the same state of openness into the verse’s image of hearing.
מָרִיתִי
mārîtî
GROWS FROM
מרה
m-r-h
To rebel, resist, or contend against.
“have not rebelled” in this verse is mārîtî. This root carries active resistance, not merely a failure to hear an instruction. The verse links the opened ear with a response that does not push back against what it receives.
ALSO GROWS
merî: Rebellion, resistance.
מְרִי
The noun names the resisting stance the speaker says is absent.
mamrîm: Rebellious, resisting.
מַמְרִים
This form describes active resistance, sharpening the contrast with the open ear.
THE PATTERN
An opened ear is fulfilled in a life that receives the voice without resisting or retreating.
You do not delight in slaughtered offering or gift. You bore through my ears. The rising offering and the offering for falling short you do not ask.My sheep hear and respond to my voice, and I perceive them, and they follow me.But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.THE THREAD
You do not delight in slaughtered offering or gift. You bore through my ears. The rising offering and the offering for falling short you do not ask.Both verses use the same Hebrew word for ear, placing hearing at the center of response. Psalm 40:6 pictures ears God has dug open, while Isaiah says the ear is opened: in both, hearing is access God clears before the speaker answers.
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