What Does Isaiah 59:5 Mean?
They hatch the adder's eggs and weave the spider's web. Whoever eats of their eggs dies, and what is crushed bursts out as a viper.
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
They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.THE KEY
The same Hebrew verb governs both “hatch” and “breaketh out”: what they open is what comes forth.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now about what harmful making releases: what is taken in ends in death, and what is broken open yields a viper. The spider’s web stands beside the brood as another product whose intricate making does not make it safe.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that careful craft or a harmless-looking beginning guarantees a harmless result; what matters here is what the work releases.
THE ROOT
בִּקֵּעוּ
biqqeʿu
GROWS FROM
בקע
b-q-ʿ
Split, cleave, break open.
Hebrew repeats בקע: they “hatch” the eggs, and what is opened “breaks out” into a viper. The same opening that exposes the egg also unleashes what it contains, so the harm is what this work brings forth.
ALSO GROWS
bāqaʿ: To cleave or open apart; used of dividing the sea in Exodus 14:16.
בָּקַע
The same opening verb can describe either the release of a viper here or the opening of a passage through the sea.
biqʿāh: A split or cleft in the land.
בִּקְעָה
The verb’s image of opening also names the cleft that remains in the earth.
THE PATTERN
Whatever a person cultivates eventually gives form to its own nature.
Behold, he writhes with crookedness, conceives toil, and gives birth to falsehood.You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped crookedness, you have eaten the fruit of lies, because you leaned your full weight upon your way, in the multitude of your strong men.You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.THE THREAD
And you, lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea, and split it, and let the children of Israel come on dry ground in the midst of the sea.The Hebrew root בקע (b-q-ʿ, split open) appears in Isaiah’s hatching and breaking out, and in the command to divide the sea. Here an opening releases a viper; there, a divided barrier exposes dry ground.
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