What Does Isaiah 64:6 Mean?
But we have all become as one unclean, and all our alignments are like a soiled garment. We all wither like a leaf, and our crookednesses, like breath, carry us away.
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
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.THE KEY
The verse treats self-made righteousness as stained clothing: it cannot stop a life already withering and carried off by its crookedness.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you within the shared “we”: even our deeds of alignment cannot make a clean covering for an unclean condition. Like a leaf, life withers; crookedness moves like wind and carries the whole community away. The verse exposes what our own moral record cannot repair.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that enough good deeds can make the self clean or secure. Even “our righteousnesses” are pictured as soiled clothing that cannot hold back decay.
THE ROOT
צִדְקֹתֵינוּ
tsidqotenu
GROWS FROM
צדק
Justice, rightness, alignment.
The Hebrew keeps “our righteousnesses” connected to one seed of rightness and alignment. The startling image is that even these alignments become soiled clothing when they serve as our own covering.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness.
צֶדֶק
This form names the same underlying rightness that the verse pictures as unable to cover the condition beneath it.
tsaddiq: A just or righteous person.
צַדִּיק
The shared consonants connect a person called righteous to the same root of justice and alignment.
tsedaqah: Justice, righteousness, or charitable justice.
צְדָקָה
This branch shows that the root can describe right action, not only a quality claimed for oneself.
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
Wind, breath, moving air.
“like breath” in this verse is ruach. The Hebrew uses one word for the wind that carries the community away and the breath that gives life. English renders these as separate words, concealing their shared image of moving air.
ALSO GROWS
ruḥot: Winds.
רוּחוֹת
The plural keeps the root’s consonants and shows the verse’s wind belongs to the same Hebrew word family.
ruach: Breath.
רוּחַ
The same word can mean breath, so the wind that carries the community away and breath are not separate words in Hebrew.
וַנָּבֶל
wanavel
GROWS FROM
נבל
To wither, droop, or fail.
“wither like a leaf” in this verse is wanavel. The leaf image carries more than a moment of decline: this root also reaches toward collapse and death. The verse presents human life as something withering, not merely weakened.
ALSO GROWS
navel: Withered, faded, or feeble.
נָבֵל
This form makes explicit the fading already pictured in the leaf.
nevelah: A carcass or dead body.
נְבֵלָה
The shared consonants extend the image from withering toward what has fully perished.
THE PATTERN
Human-made coverings cannot cleanse a shared brokenness; the soiled covering must be removed.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they perceived that they were bare, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made for themselves waistcloths.And he answered and said to those standing before him, Lift the soiled garments off him. And to him he said, Look, I have caused your crookedness to cross over from you, and I will clothe you with a change of garments.For all have missed the mark, and fall short of the weight of God.THE THREAD
Zion shall be ransomed by justice, and her returners by alignment.Both verses use צֶדֶק (tsedeq, justice and alignment): Isaiah 64:6 pictures “our righteousnesses” as stained clothing, while Isaiah 1:27 joins Zion’s redemption to judgment and righteousness. The shared root holds alignment in view while the images distinguish self-covering from redemption.
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