What Does Isaiah 55:2 Mean?
Why do you weigh out silver for what is not bread, and your toil for what does not fill? Hear and respond, hear and respond to me, and eat the good, and let your living soul delight itself in fatness.
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
Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.THE KEY
What you labor to buy cannot feed the living self; the verse sets weighed-out silver against nourishment that is received and truly enjoyed.
THE MEANING
You can spend and labor for what leaves you unsatisfied. The invitation reaches you now: hear and respond, eat what is good, and let your living soul delight in abundance. The verse places fruitless striving beside a meal that actually nourishes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that more spending or harder striving can satisfy a hunger that the thing being pursued cannot feed.
THE ROOT
נַפְשְׁכֶם
nafsh'khem
GROWS FROM
נפש
n-p-sh
The living self: life as an embodied person with appetite and desire.
“living soul” in this verse is nafsh'khem. English “soul” can make the eater sound like a separate, inward part; nefesh names the living self, including the appetite that receives food and pleasure. Here the same nefesh that eats is the one that delights in richness, so the nourishment reaches the whole living person.
ALSO GROWS
nefesh chayyah: Living being
נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה
This phrase uses nefesh for a living creature, keeping the verse’s soul embodied.
naphash: Be refreshed or rest
נָפַשׁ
This related verb links nefesh with life renewed after toil; here delight follows labor that could not satisfy.
שִׁמְעוּ שָׁמוֹעַ
shimʿu shamoaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
To hear, listen, and respond.
“Hear and respond, hear and respond to me” in this verse is shimʿu shamoaʿ. The root appears twice in an emphatic form: “hear, hearing.” Listening is the doorway to the verse’s meal; the movement from hearing to eating makes reception part of how nourishment arrives.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear and respond
שְׁמַע
This familiar form carries the responsive sense of the verse’s call to listen.
shemuʿah: Report or news heard
שְׁמוּעָה
The same root can name what is heard; here the message directs the listener toward what is good.
תִּשְׁקְלוּ
tishqelu
GROWS FROM
שקל
sh-q-l
To weigh out.
“weigh out silver” in this verse is tishqelu. The verb pictures silver being weighed out, so “spend” carries the image of a measured exchange. The question sharpens: weight is handed over for what cannot become bread or satisfaction.
ALSO GROWS
sheqel: Weight; a monetary unit
שֶׁקֶל
The unit of payment preserves the root’s image of weighed value.
mishqal: Weight or measure
מִשְׁקָל
This branch makes the weighing explicit: what is measured and paid does not necessarily nourish.
THE PATTERN
What effort cannot make satisfying stands against nourishment received as a gift.
And he bent you low, and made you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you had never perceived, nor had your fathers, so that he might make you perceive that humankind does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes out from the mouth of the LORD does humankind live.O taste and see that the LORD is good. Flourishing is the strong one who takes shelter in him.Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that remains unto the life of the ages, which the Son of Man will give to you, for God the Father has sealed him.THE THREAD
Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters, and whoever has no silver, come, break open and eat. Yes, come, break open wine and milk, without silver and without price.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew verb for “eat” in both verses: verse 1 offers eating without money, and verse 2 asks why you spend for what is not bread. The shared אכל root ties the offered meal to the contrast with costly substitutes that leave you unsatisfied.
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