What Does Isaiah 6:5 Mean?
Then I said, Woe is me! I am cut off, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I settle in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
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
Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.THE KEY
The lips are where a private voice enters a people, and Isaiah names their uncleanness in both himself and the community.
THE MEANING
When the King becomes visible to you, your words and the words of the people around you stand exposed together. “I am undone” is the collapse of self-assurance into the recognition that your speech is not separate from the world you inhabit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the uncleanness you hear in your own speech is yours alone: the verse names the same condition in you and in the people among whom you live.
THE ROOT
שְׂפָתַיִם
səfatayim
GROWS FROM
שׂפה
Lip or edge; the word also names language.
The same Hebrew word can name lips, language, or a shore’s edge. Lips are the boundary where speech passes into shared life, so Isaiah’s words link his own condition with that of the people around him.
ALSO GROWS
safah: Lip; language.
שָׂפָה
The same word names both the physical lip and speech, joining the mouth’s edge with what it releases.
sefat hayam: The lip or shore of the sea.
שְׂפַת הַיָּם
The word also names an edge between domains; the lips are where a person’s words cross into the world around them.
טָמֵא
tame
GROWS FROM
טמא
To be or become unclean.
The verse repeats this word for Isaiah and for the people among whom he lives. Hebrew also has a verb from this root for making something unclean, holding the condition and its spread within one word family.
ALSO GROWS
tum'ah: Uncleanness or impurity.
טֻמְאָה
This noun names the condition Isaiah sees in his lips and in the people’s.
timme: To defile or make unclean.
טִמֵּא
The verb gives the condition an active form, drawing attention to how uncleanness can be carried into what it touches.
מֶלֶךְ
melekh
GROWS FROM
מלך
To reign or exercise kingship.
The King Isaiah sees is named by a word rooted in reigning. His encounter places the speaker’s exposed condition before the one whose rule encompasses the hosts.
ALSO GROWS
malakh: To reign or become king.
מָלַךְ
The verb makes the root’s action plain: kingship is rule in operation.
malkhut: Kingship or royal rule.
מַלְכוּת
This noun names the realm of authority carried by the King Isaiah sees.
THE PATTERN
Speech carries a person’s inner condition into the shared life of a people.
Let the words of my mouth be received, and the murmur of my heart before your face. O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.And the tongue is fire, a world of crookedness. It is set among our limbs, staining the whole body and setting the wheel of becoming ablaze, and it is lit by Gehenna.THE THREAD
And he touched it to my mouth, and said, Look, this has touched your lips, and your crookedness turns aside, and your falling short is covered.The same Hebrew word for lips, שׂפה, returns when the coal touches Isaiah’s lips. The next verse follows the exposed mouth into a changed condition: what was named unclean is touched, and the burden is taken away.
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