What Does Isaiah 8:15 Mean?
And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be caught.
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 many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.THE KEY
The first stumble already carries the possibility of a trap: the verse moves from lost footing to fracture and capture.
THE MEANING
The verse traces a constricting sequence: stumbling becomes falling, then breaking, entrapment, and capture. A moment of lost footing can deepen until the person is no longer merely unsteady but caught.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that every stumble is brief and isolated; the sequence shows how unsteadiness can deepen into captivity.
THE ROOT
וְכָשְׁלוּ
wəḵāšəlū
GROWS FROM
כשל
k-sh-l
To stumble, totter, or become unsteady.
This root names both the stumble and the obstacle that causes it. The first word carries a collision within it: a person loses footing at the point of encounter.
ALSO GROWS
mikshol: Stumbling block, obstacle.
מִכְשׁוֹל
The same root names the obstacle and the loss of footing, joining what is encountered to the stumble it produces.
hikhshil: To cause someone to stumble.
הִכְשִׁיל
This form makes the root active: the stumble can arise through an encounter that throws someone off balance.
וְנִשְׁבָּרוּ
wənišbārū
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, shatter, or fracture.
“broken” in this verse is wənišbārū. The sequence has moved beyond losing balance: the fall becomes fracture. The root holds both the act of breaking and the brokenness that follows.
ALSO GROWS
shever: A break, fracture, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
The noun form names the damage as a resulting state within the verse’s unfolding sequence.
shibber: To break or shatter.
שִׁבֵּר
This verb form makes the breaking an event, the next deepening after the stumble and fall.
וְנִלְכָּדוּ
wənilkādū
GROWS FROM
לכד
l-k-d
To catch, seize, or capture.
“caught” in this verse is wənilkādū. The root of the final word also gives a name for a trap. Capture is not a detached ending: the root joins the act of catching to the snare that catches.
ALSO GROWS
lakad: To catch, seize, or capture.
לָכַד
This is the action at the end of the verse’s chain: the person is caught.
malkodet: A trap or snare.
מַלְכֹּדֶת
The related noun names the structure of capture, linking the final state back to entrapment.
THE PATTERN
When a point of encounter becomes a stumbling block, the consequences can deepen from lost footing into fracture and entrapment.
As it is written, "Look, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of the snare, and whoever leans their full weight on him will not be put to shame."Let their table become a snare before them, and their wholeness a trap.Everyone who falls on that stone will be shattered, and on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like chaff.THE THREAD
But the word of the LORD will be to them, command upon command, command upon command; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; so that they go, and fall backward, and are broken, and snared, and taken.Isaiah repeats the same Hebrew roots for broken, snared, and taken, with stumbling and falling leading into the same final sequence. The echo links these words as stages of one collapse rather than unrelated outcomes.
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