What Does Isaiah 59:7 Mean?
Their feet run toward harm, and they hurry to pour out clean blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of crookedness; ruin and breaking are in their paths.
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 feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.THE KEY
The violence is already taking shape in the mind before it becomes a path beneath the feet.
THE MEANING
When a person is set on harm, the thought does not stay abstract: it hastens the body into action, and the route leaves plunder and fracture behind. The verse shows violence taking shape in what is planned inwardly before blood is shed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that harmful action is merely a sudden accident dissolves here: the verse traces it back to thoughts already devising harm.
THE ROOT
מַחְשְׁבוֹת
machshevot
GROWS FROM
חָשַׁב
to reckon, devise, or form a plan
The word translated “thoughts” carries the sense of formed designs, not passing mental flickers. The repetition, “thoughts are thoughts”, makes the harm sound planned, and the verse then shows that plan already moving in the feet.
ALSO GROWS
chashav: to reckon, account, devise
חָשַׁב
This verb reveals that the thoughts are taking shape as a design.
machashavah: a thought, plan, or design
מַחֲשָׁבָה
This noun shares the seed of the verse’s “thoughts,” linking inward formation with deliberate intent.
שֹׁד
shod
GROWS FROM
שָׁדַד
to devastate, plunder, or deal violently
“ruin” in this verse is shod. “Wasting” here carries the force of plunder and violent devastation, not just something being used up. The path is marked by what is violently taken or laid waste.
ALSO GROWS
shadad: to plunder or devastate
שָׁדַד
The verb makes clear that the harm on this path is active violence against what is another’s.
shoded: a plunderer or devastator
שֹׁדֵד
This related form names the one who carries out the ruin described along the path.
שֶׁבֶר
shever
GROWS FROM
שָׁבַר
to break, shatter, or fracture
“breaking” in this verse is shever. The closing word names breakage, giving the path a concrete end: people and places are left fractured. Paired with plunder, it shows both what is taken and what is broken.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: to break or shatter
שָׁבַר
The verb uncovers the physical force inside the word translated “destruction.”
nishbar: broken or shattered
נִשְׁבַּר
This related form describes the condition left behind by the breaking in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Violence takes shape inwardly before it becomes a bodily route, and its route leaves people and places broken.
He plans emptiness upon his bed; he plants himself upon a way that is not good; he does not spurn evil.For out of the heart come evil reckonings, murders, adulteries, unlawful unions, thefts, false witness, harmful speech.Then craving, when it has conceived, gives birth to falling short; and falling short, when it is full-grown, bears death.THE THREAD
And the LORD saw that the harm of humankind was great in the earth, and that every shaping of the thoughts of his heart was only harm all the day.Isaiah’s “thoughts” and Genesis’s “imagination” share חָשַׁב (chashav, to devise or form a plan). Together they show ruin reaching the feet only after it has been fashioned within the heart.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us