What Does Isaiah 61:8 Mean?
For I the LORD love judgment, I hate snatching in the ascending offering; and I will set their work in truth, and cut a covenant of the ages with them.
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
For I the LORD love judgment, I hate robbery for burnt offering; and I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.THE KEY
A burnt offering cannot turn robbery into justice: the verse binds the LORD’s love of judgment to work set in truth and covenant across the ages.
THE MEANING
The verse shows the LORD’s character in the present: justice is loved, and taking from another remains robbery even when brought as an offering. Work is handled in truth, and covenant reaches across the ages. Your worship, work, and relationships sit within that one measure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a religious offering can make unjust gain acceptable. The offering does not erase what was taken.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁפָּט
mishpat
GROWS FROM
שפט
to judge, decide, or render a verdict
מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, judgment or justice) belongs to a word family about judging and ordering a case. The verse sets the LORD’s love of judgment against robbery presented with an offering, showing that justice reaches into what people take and what is due.
ALSO GROWS
shaphat: to judge or decide
שָׁפַט
The verb shows judgment as an act of deciding what is right, not merely a verdict spoken in the abstract.
shofet: judge
שֹׁפֵט
The person who judges belongs to the same root family as mishpat, linking justice to how claims between people are decided.
גָּזֵל
gazel
GROWS FROM
גזל
to seize, rob, or deprive another
“snatching” in this verse is gazel. Robbery here names taking from another, not merely an inward attitude. Paired with a burnt offering, it exposes the attempt to place sacred value beside wealth obtained by deprivation; the offering does not change what was seized.
ALSO GROWS
gazal: to rob, seize, or take by force
גָּזַל
The verb makes the taking itself visible beneath the noun robbery.
gezelah: robbery or something seized
גְּזֵלָה
This noun keeps the focus on both the act of taking and what has been taken.
וְנָתַתִּי
wenatatti
GROWS FROM
נתן
to give, set, or place
The verb translated “direct” is וְנָתַתִּי (wenatatti, I will give or set), which can carry the concrete sense of placing or giving. Paired with פְּעֻלָּתָם (pe’ullatam, their work, deed, or recompense), the phrase holds both work and what is due for it within truth.
ALSO GROWS
natan: to give, set, or place
נָתַן
This is the root verb behind “direct,” adding the sense of giving or placing their work in truth.
mattanah: gift or present
מַתָּנָה
This related noun shows the root’s sense of something given or placed into another’s hands.
THE PATTERN
Worship and prosperity cannot conceal deprivation; the LORD’s justice reaches into what is taken, withheld, and done.
Learn to do good. Seek justice, straighten the crushed, judge the fatherless, contend for the widow.But let judgment roll down like waters, and alignment like a stream that never runs dry.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
Learn to do good. Seek justice, straighten the crushed, judge the fatherless, contend for the widow.Both passages use מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, judgment or justice): here the LORD loves it; there it appears alongside the oppressed, fatherless, and widow. The shared word opens judgment as a lived ordering of relationships, especially where someone can be denied what is due.
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