What Does Isaiah 57:20 Mean?
But the wicked are like the driven sea, which cannot be still, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.
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
But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.THE KEY
The Hebrew uses the same root for the sea being “troubled” and its waters “cast[ing] up” mire: its unrest is a continual driving outward.
THE MEANING
This verse names a living condition: unrest that cannot quiet keeps bringing mire and dirt to the surface. What fills the depths becomes visible in what the waters cast up.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what keeps surfacing has no relation to the condition beneath it.
THE ROOT
נִגְרָשׁ
nigrash
GROWS FROM
גרש
garash
Drive out, thrust away; in this verse, be driven or churned.
The verse uses this root twice: the sea is נִגְרָשׁ, driven, and its waters וַיִּגְרְשׁוּ, drive up the mire. The unrest and its visible output are one continuous motion of expulsion.
ALSO GROWS
garash: Drive out, expel.
גָּרַשׁ
This is the root’s basic action: movement forced outward from a place.
yegaresh: He will drive out.
יְגָרֵשׁ
In Exodus 11:1, this form names forceful expulsion, making the root’s outward motion explicit.
הַשְׁקֵט
hashqet
GROWS FROM
שקט
shaqat
Be quiet, settle, be at rest.
“which cannot be still” in this verse is hashqet. The verse names quiet as what the sea cannot reach, setting stillness against the repeated force of גרש. Its waters do not merely pass over the surface; they keep driving up what the depths contain.
ALSO GROWS
shaqat: Be quiet, be at rest.
שָׁקַט
This is the state the sea in the verse cannot attain.
sheqet: Quietness, stillness.
שֶׁקֶט
This noun names the settled condition absent from the sea’s ceaseless churning.
THE PATTERN
What remains active within a source emerges through what it sends out.
As a well keeps its waters cold, so she keeps her harm cold. Violence and ravaging are heard in her; before my face continually are sickness and blows.A good human brings out good from the good treasure of the heart, and an evil human brings out evil from the evil treasure of the heart, for from the overflow of the heart his mouth speaks.Does the same spring gush from the same opening, the sweet and the bitter?THE THREAD
And the LORD said to Moses, One more stroke will I bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. After this he will let you go from here, and when he lets you go, he will surely drive you out from here altogether.The words for the sea being driven and its waters casting up mire share the root גרש, “drive out.” Exodus uses the same root for forced expulsion, revealing the outward force carried in the sea’s unrest.
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