What Does Isaiah 7:13 Mean?
And he said, Now hear and respond, house of David. Is it a small thing for you to wear out men, that you would wear out my God also?
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
And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also?THE KEY
The Hebrew makes the charge causal: your way of being can make others weary, and the verse says its reach includes God.
THE MEANING
The verse puts your treatment of people beside your relation to God: a way of being that wears people down can also weary God. “Hear now” calls you to face that relational effect, because the conduct under scrutiny reaches beyond human beings. God is not depicted as untouched by what happens among people.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that tiring people is a small matter that ends with them; the verse asks whether you will weary God too.
THE ROOT
הַלְאוֹת
halʾōt
GROWS FROM
לאה
To grow weary; in the Hiphil, to cause weariness.
“wear out men” in this verse is halʾōt. The verb here is causative: it presents the house of David as making others weary, not merely feeling tired. The same root carries the charge from people to God, making the reach of that effect the verse’s shock.
ALSO GROWS
lāʾāh: To grow weary, to tire.
לָאָה
This base form names the exhausted state that the verse’s causative verb brings about in others.
nilʾāh: To be weary, to become exhausted.
נִלְאָה
This form retains all three root consonants and shows weariness as a state one enters.
שִׁמְעוּ
shimʿū
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, listen, heed, or respond.
“Now hear and respond” in this verse is shimʿū. The imperative asks for a response, not sound alone. Because the charge follows this call, hearing is framed as facing what the conduct is doing.
ALSO GROWS
shāmaʿ: To hear, listen, or heed.
שָׁמַע
This verb carries the sense of hearing that receives and responds, illuminating the force of “Hear now.”
shĕmūʿāh: A report or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This noun shows the same root moving from hearing to what is heard and conveyed.
הַמְעַט
hamʿaṭ
GROWS FROM
מעט
Little or few; to be small or diminish.
“a small thing” in this verse is hamʿaṭ. The question presses on how lightly the hearer measures the weariness: is it “a little thing”? The following clause exposes the gap between treating it as minor and its wider consequence.
ALSO GROWS
meʿaṭ: A little; few.
מְעַט
This form carries the smallness of amount that the question places under scrutiny.
meʿaṭ-meʿaṭ: Little by little.
מְעַט־מְעַט
The repeated form shows the same root describing small increments, sharpening the question of how cumulative effects are measured.
THE PATTERN
Biblical hearing is relational response: what is truly heard shows itself in what follows.
Hear and respond, O Israel. The LORD our God is one LORD.And Samuel said, Does the LORD delight in rising offerings and slaughtered offerings as much as in hearing and responding to the voice of the LORD? Behold, hearing and responding is better than a slaughtered offering; to prick the ear is better than the fat of rams.But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.THE THREAD
Hear and respond, O heavens, and bend your ear, O earth, for the LORD has spoken. I have raised children and lifted them high, and they have broken away from me.The opening “Hear” comes from the same Hebrew root, שמע (shāmaʿ), meaning to hear and heed. Here, as in Isaiah 7:13, the call to hear sits beside a charge about how the response to God is lived.
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