What Does Isaiah 51:8 Mean?
For the moth will eat them like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool. But my alignment will be for the ages, and my deliverance from generation to generation.
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
For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation.THE KEY
The moth eats what can be worn away, but God’s alignment and deliverance endure across generations.
THE MEANING
The verse holds you inside a contrast: what seems lasting can be eaten away, while God’s alignment remains and God’s deliverance continues from one generation to the next. The garment decays; that decay does not erase what God sets right and brings out.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that decay means all is lost or forsaken. It locates endurance in God’s alignment and deliverance, not in what can be worn away.
THE ROOT
צִדְקָתִי
tsidqati
GROWS FROM
צדק
ṣ-d-q
Rightness, justice, alignment.
The word points to more than a moral score: it names what is rightly ordered. The garment can be consumed, but the alignment God establishes is not measured by the durability of its covering.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness, alignment.
צֶדֶק
This noun from the same root reveals the enduring rightness named in the verse.
tsaddiq: A just or aligned person.
צַדִּיק
The root also describes someone who embodies this alignment, linking what God is to the life shaped by it.
יְשׁוּעָתִי
yeshuati
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
Deliver, bring out of danger or constriction into spaciousness.
The verse names deliverance as God’s continuing work, reaching from one generation to the next. The same root carries both the act of bringing out and the deliverance that results, joining movement with its outcome.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: To deliver or bring out.
יָשַׁע
This verb reveals the active movement carried by the verse’s promise of deliverance.
yeshuah: Deliverance.
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun names the result of that movement, the deliverance that continues across generations.
THE PATTERN
Visible forms wear away, while what God establishes as alignment and deliverance endures.
The grass dries, the flower withers, but the word of our God stands for the ages.They perish, but you stand. All of them wear thin like a garment; as a robe you exchange them, and they are exchanged.But the word of the Lord remains for the ages. And this is the word that was brought to you as good news.THE THREAD
Lift your eyes to the heavens, and look to the earth below. For the heavens will melt away like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who dwell in it will die the same way. But my deliverance will be for the ages, and my alignment will not be cut off.Isaiah 51:6 sets the garment image beside the same paired promise: God’s deliverance remains, and God’s righteousness is not abolished. Verse 8 sharpens the image, the garment is eaten by moth and worm, while both realities reach across generations.
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