What Does Isaiah 59:6 Mean?
Their webs will not become garments, and they will not cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of crookedness, and violence is in their palms.
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
Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.THE KEY
The work meant to cover them fails because the violence remains in the hands that made it.
THE MEANING
When harm is woven into what a person does, the resulting work cannot cover that person; it carries the mark of its making. Violence remains in the hands that enact it, even when the work is meant to serve as a covering. The verse names concealment as something the work itself cannot accomplish.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that outward work can conceal the harm behind it: the product cannot erase the hands and actions that formed it.
THE ROOT
יִתְכַּסּוּ
yitkassu
GROWS FROM
כסה
כסה (kasah): to cover or conceal.
The verse’s verb יִתְכַּסּוּ (yitkassu, cover themselves) comes from כסה (kasah, cover). The same root forms words for a covering, so the image turns on a covering they make for themselves that cannot do its work. Their own deeds are too bound to violence to hide what their hands are doing.
ALSO GROWS
mekhasseh: one who covers; covering
מְכַסֶּה
This form from כסה names the act of covering itself, the failed purpose of their works.
mikhseh: covering
מִכְסֶה
This noun from כסה makes the verse’s failed garment part of a wider image of coverings that can be made but cannot conceal the truth of the work.
מַעֲשֵׂיהֶם
ma'aseihem
GROWS FROM
עשה
עשה (asah): to do or make.
The verse repeats מַעֲשֵׂיהֶם (ma’aseihem, their works), a form of מעשה (ma’aseh, deed or work), from עשה (asah, do or make). Doing and what is done stay joined: the work exposes the action that produced it, rather than covering it. The Hebrew calls their work אָוֶן (aven, crookedness), so the thing made carries the shape of the making.
ALSO GROWS
ma'aseh: deed, work, or thing made
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun from עשה keeps the action and its result together, sharpening why the works cannot conceal their source.
oseh: one who does or makes
עֹשֶׂה
This form from עשה names the doer, linking the visible work back to the person whose hands produce it.
פֹּעַל
po'al
GROWS FROM
פעל
פעל (pa’al): to act or work.
The verse names a פֹּעַל (po’al, act or work) of חָמָס (hamas, violence) and places it in their hands. The root פעל (pa’al, act or work) keeps the violence concrete: it is an action being carried out, not an abstraction detached from the hands doing it.
ALSO GROWS
pa'al: to act or work
פָּעַל
This verb from פעל makes the violent act an ongoing doing, not a disguise that can be separated from its maker.
po'el: worker; one who acts
פֹּעֵל
This form from פעל links the work to the agent who performs it, echoing the verse’s image of violence in their hands.
THE PATTERN
What is produced by harm cannot serve as a covering for the one who produces it.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they perceived that they were bare, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made for themselves waistcloths.I will lay judgment to the measuring line, and alignment to the weighted line. Hail shall sweep away the shelter of lies, and waters shall sweep over the hiding place.For there is nothing covered that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not be known.THE THREAD
Whoever covers his rebellions shall not prosper, but whoever speaks them into the open and lets them go shall be shown compassion.Isaiah’s יִתְכַּסּוּ (yitkassu, cover themselves) and Proverbs’ מְכַסֶּה (mekhasseh, covering) share the root כסה (kasah, cover). Isaiah says work shaped by violence cannot cover its maker; Proverbs says the act of covering wrongdoing does not prosper, then opens a different movement through speaking and leaving.
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