What Does Isaiah 7:15 Mean?
Curds and honey shall he eat, that he may perceive how to refuse the evil and choose the good.
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
Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.THE KEY
The verse joins nourishment to discernment, showing refusal of evil and choice of good as a capacity that grows within a fed life.
THE MEANING
Your capacity to recognize good and evil takes shape as you refuse evil and choose good. This is knowing enacted in choice, a capacity that ripens within a nourished life.
THE ROOT
לְדַעְתּוֹ
ledaʿto
GROWS FROM
יָדַע
yada
Know, perceive, recognize through encounter.
“perceive” in this verse is ledaʿto. English can make “know” sound like information stored in the mind. Here, knowing becomes discernment in action: recognizing what to refuse and what to choose.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: Knowledge, understanding
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root shows knowing as understanding; in the verse, that understanding takes practical form in discernment.
hodiʿa: Make known, declare
הוֹדִיעַ
This causative form moves from knowing to making something known, echoing the verse’s movement from perception to visible choice.
מָאוֹס
maʾos
GROWS FROM
מָאַס
maʾas
Reject, spurn, regard as unwanted.
The Hebrew verb gives “refuse” the force of repudiating something, not merely passing it by. The same root can describe rejecting what is valuable elsewhere, so the meaning of refusal depends on what is being rejected.
ALSO GROWS
maʾasu: They rejected
מָאֲסוּ
Psalm 118:22 uses this form for builders rejecting a stone, showing that the root describes an act of rejection whose object matters.
maʾus: Rejected, detestable
מָאוּס
This form describes something regarded as unwanted, adding the sense of judgment to the verse’s refusal.
וּבָחוֹר
uvachor
GROWS FROM
בָּחַר
bachar
Choose, select.
“choose” in this verse is uvachor. The root makes the second half an active selection: knowing good is completed by choosing it. The verse holds refusal and selection together as two movements of discernment.
ALSO GROWS
bachir: Chosen, selected
בָּחִיר
This form makes the act of choosing visible in what is selected, as the verse’s discernment becomes a choice.
mibchar: Choice, choicest
מִבְחָר
This related noun carries the sense of what has been selected or preferred, underscoring that choosing good is active selection.
THE PATTERN
Discernment matures when knowing good and evil becomes the practiced capacity to refuse one and choose the other.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.So give your servant a heart that hears and responds, to judge your people, so that I may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this heavy people of yours?But firm food is for the complete, for those who through practice have their senses exercised to sift good from evil.THE THREAD
The stone the builders push away becomes the head of the corner.Isaiah uses מָאַס (maʾas, reject or spurn) for refusing evil; Psalm 118:22 uses the same root for builders rejecting a stone. The shared root shows that refusal is an act of judgment, and what is being rejected matters.
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