What Does Isaiah 59:2 Mean?
But your crookedness has cut between you and your God, and your shortcomings have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
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 your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.THE KEY
Here, silence is the far end of a separation formed by crookedness and missing.
THE MEANING
Your crookedness stands between you and God; your missing hides his face from you, so he does not hear. The verse names a real rupture in the relationship, one that reaches all the way to hearing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wrongdoing leaves closeness with God unaffected: here, crookedness separates, and missing hides the face and closes hearing.
THE ROOT
מַבְדִּילִים
mavdilim
GROWS FROM
בדל
בָּדַל (badal): to separate, divide, set apart.
“cut between” in this verse is mavdilim. The word for separation belongs to the same root as the act of dividing or setting something apart. The verse presents the distance between you and God as a rupture taking shape, not a vague absence.
ALSO GROWS
hivdil: to separate, divide, distinguish
הִבְדִּיל
It shares the root consonants ב־ד־ל and makes clear that the separation in the verse is an active dividing.
nivdal: separated, set apart
נִבְדָּל
It shares the same root and names the state that results when something has been divided from what it was joined to.
חַטֹּאותֵיכֶם
ḥaṭṭōtêḵem
GROWS FROM
חטא
חָטָא (ḥāṭāʾ): to miss, fail to hit the mark.
“shortcomings” in this verse is ḥaṭṭōtêḵem. The word translated “sins” carries the concrete sense of missing. That shade joins the verse’s claim of separation to a direction gone wrong: what misses its mark also disrupts closeness and hearing.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: to miss, sin
חָטָא
This verb shares the root consonants ח־ט־א and makes the action behind the verse’s “sins” visible.
maḥṭîʾ: causing someone to miss or sin
מַחְטִיא
It shares the same consonants and shows the root can describe not only a miss but what leads into one.
הִסְתִּירוּ
histiru
GROWS FROM
סתר
סָתַר (sāṯar): to hide, conceal.
“hid” in this verse is histiru. The word for hiding shares its root with words for what is concealed or hidden. Here, the hidden face and the unheard voice belong to the same movement: concealment reaches into the relationship’s communication.
ALSO GROWS
sēter: a hiding place, concealment
סֵתֶר
It shares the root consonants ס־ת־ר and shows that the root holds both the act of hiding and what is hidden.
nistar: hidden, concealed
נִסְתָּר
It shares the same root and names the condition created by the concealment described in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Crookedness and wrongdoing create a relational barrier that reaches into what can be heard and received.
If I see crookedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear and respond.Your crookedness has bent these things away, and your shortcomings have held back good things from you.For the eyes of the LORD are upon the aligned, and his ears are open to their pleading; but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.THE THREAD
Behold, the LORD's hand is not cut short, that it cannot deliver; nor is his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.The verse before this names the LORD’s hand as able to save and his ear as able to hear. This verse then names what separates you from God, holding divine capacity beside the rupture described here.
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