What Does Isaiah 65:20 Mean?
No more from there will there be a nursling of days, nor an old man who does not fill his days, for the youth will die at a hundred years, and the one who misses the mark, at a hundred years, will be cursed.
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
There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.THE KEY
A hundred years can still be called childhood, so age alone cannot measure a life’s fullness.
THE MEANING
The verse places a hundred-year-old child beside a hundred-year-old sinner: age alone does not declare a life complete or clear. Death and curse remain in view even where life stretches far beyond its ordinary span.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that reaching a great age automatically makes a life complete or clears its missing.
THE ROOT
הַחוֹטֵא
haḥōṭēʾ
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥṭʾ
To miss, miss the mark, or go wrong.
“the one who misses the mark” in this verse is haḥōṭēʾ. English can make sinner sound like a fixed identity; the Hebrew word grows from the root for missing. The same root names both the one who misses and the missing itself, so a century of life does not make the missing disappear.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēṭʾ: A miss or wrongdoing; the missing itself.
חֵטְא
The shared root ties the person called a sinner to the act or condition of missing.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing or sin; in ritual contexts, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The root can name both the missing and an offering for it; here, long life does not erase the missing.
יְקֻלָּל
yəqulal
GROWS FROM
קלל
q-l-l
To be light or slight; in some forms, to curse.
“will be cursed” in this verse is yəqulal. The root ranges from light or slight to the act of cursing. That range sharpens the contrast: a hundred years of life does not guarantee favor, since the one missing at that age remains under a curse.
ALSO GROWS
qal: Light or slight.
קַל
This branch preserves the root’s sense of being treated as of little weight alongside its cursing sense.
qelalah: A curse.
קְלָלָה
This noun shares the root of the verse’s word for being accursed.
THE PATTERN
Scripture distinguishes the length of a life from its fullness.
They still bear fruit in gray hair; they are fat and green.The thief comes only to steal, and to slaughter, and to make perish. I came that they might have life, and have it overflowing.THE THREAD
They will not build and another settle; they will not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree are the days of my people, and my chosen will wear out the work of their hands.The same Hebrew noun יוֹמִים (yamim, days) appears in both verses: here a hundred years can still be a child’s years, while there a tree’s days image the life of the people. The shared word widens the scale of living time while leaving this verse’s death and curse in view.
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