What Does Isaiah 10:15 Mean in the King James?
Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood.
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 axe’s power is borrowed motion: the hand it resists is the source of every swing.
THE MEANING
The axe and saw move only because another hand moves them; their force does not make them self-originating. The same distinction holds whenever a person or power mistakes being an instrument for being the source. The verse exposes the limits of borrowed agency now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that visible power proves independence: what moves through borrowed strength is not the source of its own motion.
THE ROOT
הָרִים
hārîm
GROWS FROM
רום
rûm
Rise, raise, or exalt.
“lift up” in this verse is hārîm. The root appears in both the people who lift the rod and the staff’s imagined attempt to lift itself: the sentence turns on who supplies the raising. English repeats “lift,” while the shared Hebrew root binds the human action and the staff’s self-exaltation into one contradiction.
ALSO GROWS
merimav: Those who raise it.
מְרִימָיו
This form names the people lifting the rod, making the source of its motion explicit.
yārîm: He raises or lifts up.
יָרִים
The same root describes the LORD raising the poor in 1 Samuel 2:8, connecting exaltation to the one who supplies it.
הִתְפָּאֵר
hitpa’er
GROWS FROM
פאר
pʾr
Adorn, beautify, or glorify.
“boast itself” in this verse is hitpa’er. The axe’s “boast” carries the sense of making itself glorious or adorning itself. The word gives the tool a claim to splendor of its own, which the rest of the verse exposes as borrowed from the hand that wields it.
ALSO GROWS
pa’er: Adorn or glorify.
פָּאֵר
The root’s sense of adornment sharpens the image of a tool treating its usefulness as self-made glory.
tif’eret: Beauty, splendor, or glory.
תִּפְאֶרֶת
This related form shows how the root connects boasting with splendor, the very quality the axe cannot supply for itself.
THE PATTERN
What acts or rises through another cannot claim to be its own source.
He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and he hath set the world upon them.I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?THE THREAD
He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and he hath set the world upon them.“Lift up” in both verses comes from רום (rûm), “to raise or exalt.” Isaiah makes self-raised power absurd; here the same root places the raising in the hands of the one who lifts.
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