What Does Isaiah 1:28 Mean in the King James?
And the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the LORD shall be consumed.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew behind “consumed” shares its root with the word for creation being “finished,” so forsaking the LORD is given the language of an ending.
THE MEANING
Rebellion and missing remain distinct, yet the verse places them together under destruction. It says that those who forsake the LORD reach an end. Here, forsaking is not a neutral distance but a path that ends in ruin.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that forsaking the LORD is harmless independence, with no consequence, is undone by the verse’s stated outcome.
THE ROOT
יִכְלוּ
yiklu
GROWS FROM
כלה
To come to completion or an end; to be finished or consumed.
The Hebrew verb carries the sense of reaching an end as well as being consumed. The same root describes creation being “finished” in Genesis 2:1; here, that word family names a severe ending for those who forsake the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
kalah: Be finished, come to an end.
כָּלָה
This is the root’s basic movement toward an endpoint, which illuminates the force of “consumed” here.
vayekhullu: Were finished; reached completion.
וַיְכֻלּוּ
Genesis 2:1 uses this form for the heavens and earth, showing the same root at work in the word “finished.”
פֹּשְׁעִים
poshe‘im
GROWS FROM
פשע
To rebel, revolt, or break away.
“Transgressors” carries the shade of rebellion and breaking away. The verse places this kind of rupture beside those who miss, then says their destruction is together.
ALSO GROWS
pasha‘: To rebel or revolt.
פָּשַׁע
The verb makes the active break in “transgressors” visible.
pesha‘: Rebellion; breaking away.
פֶּשַׁע
This noun names the rupture carried by the people described here.
חַטָּאִים
chatta’im
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss or go wrong; a missing.
“sinners” in this verse is chatta’im. The verse sets rebellion alongside missing, holding two different descriptions together without flattening them into one. Both are named within the same stark outcome.
ALSO GROWS
chata: To miss, fail, or go wrong.
חָטָא
The verb shows the basic sense carried by “sinners.”
chet: A missing; a failure or wrong.
חֵטְא
This noun keeps the word’s sense of missing visible beneath the English rendering.
THE PATTERN
Scripture repeatedly presents departure from the LORD as a way whose end is ruin.
For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.THE THREAD
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.Isaiah’s יִכְלוּ (yiklu, “will come to an end”) and Genesis’s וַיְכֻלּוּ (vayekhullu, “were finished”) share the root כלה (kalah). Genesis uses it for creation reaching completion; Isaiah uses the same root family for the ending of those who forsake the LORD.
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