What Does Isaiah 63:15 Mean?
Look down from heaven, and see from your set-apart dwelling and your adornment. Where is your zeal and your strength? The stirring of your inward parts and your compassions toward me, are they held back?
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
Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they restrained?THE KEY
The verse names the apparent absence of compassion as possible restraint, not as proof that compassion has ended.
THE MEANING
You can speak the distance plainly: look down, see; where are your zeal, strength, inward stirring, and compassion? The question holds the troubling possibility that compassion is being held back without declaring that it has vanished. The cry lets perceived silence be voiced directly to God, with tenderness and strength both named.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a direct question about God’s apparent absence cannot belong inside an address to God.
THE ROOT
רַחֲמֶיךָ
raḥamekha
GROWS FROM
רחם
Womb; tender compassion.
“mercies” in this verse is raḥamekha. The root family ties compassion to the womb, giving mercy an inward, bodily texture. The verse pairs that tenderness with the sounding of the inward parts and asks whether it is restrained.
ALSO GROWS
reḥem: Womb.
רֶחֶם
This same root family gives compassion a womb-deep sense of tenderness.
riḥem: To show compassion.
רִחֵם
The verb makes this inward tenderness an active response, the very response the speaker asks about.
מֵעֶיךָ
me'ekha
GROWS FROM
מעה
Inward parts; entrails.
“bowels” in this verse is me'ekha. The word names the inward parts, and the phrase evokes their tumult or sound. Beside “mercies,” it makes compassion an inner stirring rather than an abstract quality.
ALSO GROWS
me'eh: An inward part; an intestine.
מֵעֶה
This singular form shows the physical image beneath the verse’s language of inward stirring.
me'im: Intestines; inner parts.
מֵעִים
This plural form carries the same bodily sense that the verse places beside compassion.
גְּבוּרֹתֶיךָ
gevurotekha
GROWS FROM
גבר
To be strong; to prevail.
Strength belongs to the family of being strong and prevailing, also seen in the word for a mighty one. The question pairs this capacity with inward compassion, asking where both have gone.
ALSO GROWS
gāvar: To be strong; to prevail.
גָּבַר
This verb shows the action at the root of the strength being asked about.
gibbōr: A mighty one; a hero.
גִּבּוֹר
This branch gives strength a personal form, echoing the plea for God’s might to be seen.
THE PATTERN
Divine compassion is portrayed as inward, relational tenderness that remains the ground of appeal even when it feels withheld.
Is Ephraim my weighty son? Is he a child to dandle? For whenever I speak against him, I surely remember him still. Therefore my innards moan for him, and I will surely have compassion on him, declares the LORD.As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those in awe of him.And he rose and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, and his inward parts were moved, and he ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him.THE THREAD
Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she would not have compassion on the son of her womb? Even they may forget, but I will not forget you.The word translated “compassion” belongs to the same רחם family as the word for “womb.” This makes the two Isaiah passages echo one another: what feels restrained here is named elsewhere as womb-deep compassion.
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