What Does Isaiah 58:7 Mean?
Is it not to break your bread for the hungry, and to bring the wandering poor into your house? When you see the naked, cover him, and do not hide yourself from your own flesh.
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
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?THE KEY
The Hebrew word behind “deal” pictures bread being divided into portions, so care begins when provision is opened to another’s hunger.
THE MEANING
The verse makes care visible: bread is portioned for hunger, the cast-out are brought inside, and nakedness is covered. It calls the vulnerable person “your own flesh,” binding their need to the reader’s own embodied life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that compassion can remain an inward feeling while the hungry, cast-out, or exposed remain outside the door.
THE ROOT
פָרֹס
paros
GROWS FROM
פרס
To split, divide, or portion.
“break” in this verse is paros. The Hebrew verb pictures bread being split or portioned. The same consonants appear in the Torah’s language for a divided hoof, making the sharing here concrete: provision is opened into portions for another’s hunger.
ALSO GROWS
mafereset: Parting or splitting the hoof.
מַפְרֶסֶת
Leviticus 11:3 uses this form from פרס for an animal that parts its hoof, echoing the division in the verse’s act of sharing bread.
parsah: Hoof.
פַּרְסָה
Appearing alongside מַפְרֶסֶת in Leviticus 11:3, this word belongs to the same פרס consonantal family and keeps the idea of splitting visible.
בְּשָׂרְךָ
besarkha
GROWS FROM
בשר
Flesh, bodily kin; the same consonants also form a verb meaning to announce good news.
The verse closes by calling the vulnerable person “your flesh,” making their need a matter of shared embodiment. The same consonants also form the verb for announcing good news; that echo places proclamation beside fleshly life without replacing the verse’s concrete acts of feeding, welcoming, and covering.
ALSO GROWS
basar: Flesh, bodily life, or kin.
בָּשָׂר
This is the noun in “thine own flesh”; it names the vulnerable person as belonging to the reader’s embodied kinship.
bisser: Announce good news.
בִּשֵּׂר
This verb shares the consonants בשר, creating a consonantal echo between flesh and announcement while the verse shows care through tangible provision.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes care visible as opening one’s provision, shelter, and covering to another’s need.
But you shall open your hand wide to him, and you shall surely lend him enough for what he lacks.The one with a good eye is blessed, for he does give of his bread to the emptied.Naked, and you clothed me; I was weak, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.THE THREAD
Whatever splits the hoof and is cleft through, and brings up the cud among the beasts, that you may eat.The Hebrew word translated “deal” in Isaiah 58:7 comes from פרס, the same root used here for parting the hoof. That shared root gives the act of sharing bread its specific shape: dividing provision into portions.
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