What Does Isaiah 53:6 Mean?
All of us like sheep have wandered; each has turned to his own way, and the LORD has caused the crookedness of us all to fall upon him.
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
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.THE KEY
The verse joins everyone’s wandering to one person on whom the crookedness shared by all is made to converge.
THE MEANING
You are included in the pattern the verse names: wandering and turning toward your own way. The crookedness shared by all converges on him, so the burden is borne at the scale of the shared condition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that your straying makes you uniquely lost: all have wandered, and the crookedness of all is laid on him.
THE ROOT
תָּעִינוּ
taʿinu
GROWS FROM
תעה
תעה (tāʿāh): to wander, err, or lose one’s way.
“wandered” in this verse is taʿinu. The Hebrew verb names wandering, while the next phrase turns each person toward a way of their own. Together they show straying as movement away from a shared way and into separate paths.
ALSO GROWS
tāʿāh: Wandered or went astray.
תָּעָה
This verb form makes the verse’s “gone astray” an act of losing the way, rather than a fixed identity.
tōʿeh: One who wanders or strays.
תֹּעֶה
This form names the one in the act of wandering, echoing the verse’s image of people who have gone astray.
דַּרְכּוֹ
darko
GROWS FROM
דרך
דרך (dārakh): to tread or travel a course.
The word for “way” grows from a root meaning to tread. A way is a course made by steps, so turning toward one’s own way is movement along a personally trodden path.
ALSO GROWS
dārakh: To tread or step.
דָּרַךְ
The verb makes the physical action inside “way” visible: a path is something feet tread.
dōrēkh: One who treads.
דֹּרֵךְ
This form keeps the person and the path connected: the course is shaped by the one walking it.
הִפְגִּיעַ
hifgíaʿ
GROWS FROM
פגע
פגע (pāgaʿ): to meet, encounter, or strike; in a causative form, to bring about an encounter.
“caused to fall upon him” in this verse is hifgíaʿ. The verb translated “laid on” comes from a root that can describe meeting or encounter. The verse pictures the crookedness of all meeting him, made to converge upon one person.
ALSO GROWS
pāgaʿ: To meet, encounter, or strike.
פָּגַע
The basic verb gives the image of something coming into contact with him, beneath the English phrasing “laid on.”
maphgíaʿ: Intercessor; one who pleads or intervenes.
מַפְגִּיעַ
This related form appears in Isaiah 59:16, showing another branch of the same root in which encounter becomes intercession.
THE PATTERN
The lost are named as sheep, sought out, and gathered through one who bears their burden.
I wander like a sheep that loses the way; seek your servant, for I do not forget your commands.What man among you, holding a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after the one that has lost its way until he finds it?Who himself carried our shortcomings in his own body on the tree, that we, dead to shortcomings, might live to alignment; and by his bruises you were healed. For you were as sheep wandering; but now you have turned back toward the Shepherd and Watcher of your living souls.THE THREAD
I wander like a sheep that loses the way; seek your servant, for I do not forget your commands.Isaiah 53:6 and this psalm use the same Hebrew root for “gone astray.” Here the speaker is the lost sheep themself, asking to be sought, a personal voice inside Isaiah’s picture of everyone’s wandering.
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