What Does Isaiah 65:7 Mean?
Your crookednesses and the crookednesses of your fathers together, says the LORD, who make the smoke rise upon the mountains and taunt me upon the hills. I will measure out their first deeds into their bosom.
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
Your iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together, saith the LORD, which have burned incense upon the mountains, and blasphemed me upon the hills: therefore will I measure their former work into their bosom.THE KEY
The Hebrew noun for “work” can also mean wages, so the verse holds the deed and its return inside one word.
THE MEANING
Your crookedness stands beside the crookedness carried from your fathers, and both are held in view at once. The LORD measures the former work into the bosom of those who enacted it: what they send outward returns against the place they hold closest.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that inherited wrongdoing vanishes into the past, or that what a person does can remain outside the self.
THE ROOT
פְּעֻלָּתָם
peʿullātām
GROWS FROM
פעל
Do, act, work.
The noun פְּעֻלָּה (peʿullāh) can mean work, deed, or wages for work. English gives only “work,” while the verse’s ending supplies the return: the deed’s measure comes back into the doer’s own bosom.
ALSO GROWS
pāʿal: To do, act, or work.
פָּעַל
The verb names the action whose result is measured back in this verse.
peʿullāh: Work, deed, or wages for work.
פְּעֻלָּה
This noun holds both the labor and its recompense in the same word family, echoing the verse’s return of former work.
קִטְּרוּ
qiṭṭerū
GROWS FROM
קטר
Make smoke rise; burn incense.
“make the smoke rise upon the mountains” in this verse is qiṭṭerū. The verb for burning incense and the noun for incense share the same consonants: the offering is named through the act that makes its smoke rise. Hebrew lets the action echo in the offering itself.
ALSO GROWS
qəṭōret: Incense.
קְטֹרֶת
The incense noun shares the root of the act performed on the mountains.
qiṭṭēr: To burn incense, make smoke rise.
קִטֵּר
This verb names the act expressed in the verse’s “burned incense.”
THE PATTERN
What is done into the world returns as a corresponding measure to the one who does it.
Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.For they sow breath, and they will reap the whirlwind. It has no stalk. The sprout will yield no meal. If it yields, strangers will swallow it up.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
Give them according to their deeds, and according to the breaking of their doings. Give them according to the work of their hands; turn back upon them their due.The word translated “work” in Isaiah and “deeds” in this psalm belongs to פעל (pāʿal), the same root family that includes פְּעֻלָּה (peʿullāh), “work” or “wages.” The psalm makes explicit the return Isaiah compresses: a person’s doing is rendered back to them.
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