What Does Isaiah 1:4 Mean in the King James?
Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.
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
Forsaking the source does not leave an empty space: crookedness becomes weight, reproduces itself, and turns a people backward.
THE MEANING
This verse names a condition in the present: a people forsake the LORD, carry crookedness as weight, reproduce harm, and turn backward. Their departure provokes the Holy One of Israel to anger; the verse holds that rupture without softening it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that turning away from the LORD is consequence-free dissolves here: forsaking becomes weight, reproduced harm, and backward motion, and it provokes the Holy One of Israel to anger.
THE ROOT
כֶּבֶד
keved
GROWS FROM
כבד
Be heavy, weighty; carry weight.
“laden” in this verse is keved. The verse calls the people כֶּבֶד (keved, “heavy”) with crookedness, making moral disorder a felt weight. From כבד (kāvēd, “be heavy, weighty”) comes כָּבוֹד (kāvōd, “weight, honor”), so this root can name both a burden and what has substance or worth.
ALSO GROWS
kāvēd: Heavy, weighty; also honored.
כָּבֵד
This same word family gives the verse its picture of a people carrying something substantial.
kāvōd: Weight, honor, splendor.
כָּבוֹד
Its sense of honor as weight shows the root’s movement between physical burden and what is substantial or esteemed.
עָזְבוּ
ʿāzəvû
GROWS FROM
עזב
Leave, abandon.
עָזְבוּ (ʿāzəvû, “they have abandoned”) names a performed departure, not simply distance. The same root’s adjective עֲזוּבָה (ʿazuvah, “forsaken”) names the condition left behind, connecting leaving with the abandoned state it produces.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāzav: To leave, abandon.
עָזַב
This is the verb in its base form; Isaiah’s עָזְבוּ describes the people enacting that departure.
ʿazuvah: Forsaken, abandoned; feminine form.
עֲזוּבָה
Isaiah 62:4 uses this form for the state of being forsaken, showing that the root can name what remains after the act of leaving.
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
Seed; sow.
The same consonants name the seed and the act of sowing: זֶרַע (zeraʿ, “seed, offspring”) and זָרַע (zāraʿ, “to sow”). Isaiah holds source and continuation together, picturing the harm as something that reproduces.
ALSO GROWS
zāraʿ: To sow, scatter seed.
זָרַע
The verb shows the action behind the seed image: something is planted and carried forward.
zeraʿ: Seed, offspring, descendants.
זֶרַע
The noun links what is sown with what grows from it, giving the phrase “seed of evildoers” its sense of a pattern continuing.
THE PATTERN
When the source is forsaken, distortion grows heavy, reproduces harm, and turns a people away from wholeness.
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.THE THREAD
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.Isaiah uses עָזְבוּ (ʿāzəvû, “they have forsaken”), and Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew root when the people forsake the fountain of living waters. The shared root makes the departure concrete: Isaiah shows the weight and harm that grow from leaving the source.
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