What Does Isaiah 60:21 Mean?
And your people shall all be aligned; they shall take hold of the land for the ages, the shoot of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be adorned.
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
Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified.THE KEY
God’s people are portrayed as God’s own planting, aligned to what is right and made into God’s adornment.
THE MEANING
You are named within a people whose life is aligned, whose inheritance stretches across the ages, and whose roots are in God’s planting. The work of God’s hands becomes a living display of God’s beauty.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Your place among God’s people is something you must manufacture and earn by yourself.
THE ROOT
צַדִּיקִים
tsaddiqim
GROWS FROM
צדק
ts-d-q
Rightness, justice, alignment.
“aligned” in this verse is tsaddiqim. The word names alignment with what is right, and its root also gives the word for justice. The verse describes this as the shared identity of a people, then places that identity in inherited land, divine planting, and God’s handiwork.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness.
צֶדֶק
This sibling word shows that the people’s alignment is bound up with justice.
tzedakah: Righteousness, justice.
צְדָקָה
The same root links the people’s identity to the shape of life together.
מַטָּעַי
mattaʿay
GROWS FROM
נטע
n-ṭ-ʿ
To plant, set into the soil.
The phrase calls the people God’s own planting: their source belongs to the one who plants them. The root pictures life set into soil, so the people are living growth anchored in God’s work.
ALSO GROWS
nataʿ: To plant.
נָטַע
The verb names God’s act behind the people being called a planting.
netiʿah: Planting, a planted growth.
נְטִיעָה
This noun keeps the image of people as life rooted by God’s hand.
לְהִתְפָּאֵר
lehitpaʾer
GROWS FROM
פאר
p-ʾ-r
To adorn, beautify, or glorify.
The word carries the sense of adorning or being adorned: God’s handiwork becomes God’s adornment. The root’s language of beauty gives the planted people a living form through which God’s splendor appears.
ALSO GROWS
tifʾeret: Beauty, splendor, adornment.
תִּפְאֶרֶת
This branch names the beauty associated with God’s work in the people.
peʾer: Ornament, headdress.
פְּאֵר
This branch makes the root’s image of adornment concrete.
THE PATTERN
The people God plants and forms become living evidence of the planter’s beauty.
Those planted in the house of the LORD bloom in the courts of our God.To set for those who mourn in Zion, to give them a headdress in place of ash, the oil of leaping for mourning, the garment of praise in place of a dimmed breath; that they might be called oaks of alignment, the planting of the LORD, that he might be adorned.For we are his making, created in the Anointed One, Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that in them we might walk.THE THREAD
To set for those who mourn in Zion, to give them a headdress in place of ash, the oil of leaping for mourning, the garment of praise in place of a dimmed breath; that they might be called oaks of alignment, the planting of the LORD, that he might be adorned.Isaiah 61:3 repeats the same root for “righteousness” (צדק, ts-d-q) and the same planting-and-glory pattern. The image expands into trees of alignment: God’s planted people become the living adornment of their planter.
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