What Does Isaiah 3:15 Mean in the King James?
What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
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 verse moves from crushing a people to grinding their faces, exposing oppression as the reduction of persons to material under someone else’s power.
THE MEANING
The question exposes violence that crushes a people and presses the faces of the poor beneath those with power. The Lord GOD of hosts names this harm directly, making the vulnerable visible and the powerful answerable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that powerful people can grind down the poor without being seen or held to account.
THE ROOT
תְּדַכְּאוּ
tedakke'u
GROWS FROM
דכא
To crush or break down.
“beat to pieces” in this verse is tedakke'u. The same root names both the act of crushing and the condition of someone left crushed: Isaiah 57:15 uses it for the “contrite” person. Psalm 72:4 uses the root for a ruler breaking the oppressor, showing that the force of crushing can fall on those who crush others.
ALSO GROWS
dakka': Crushed; contrite.
דַּכָּא
Isaiah 57:15 uses this form for a person whose spirit is crushed, revealing the human condition beneath the violence named here.
yedakke': He crushes; he breaks in pieces.
יְדַכֵּא
Psalm 72:4 uses this form for breaking the oppressor, turning the force of the same root against the one who grinds the poor.
תִּטְחָנוּ
titḥanu
GROWS FROM
טחן
To grind or mill.
“grind” in this verse is titḥanu. This is the language of grain being worked under a millstone: the harm is repeated pressure, not a single blow. The image places the faces of the poor where grain would be, showing how thoroughly oppression can treat people as material.
ALSO GROWS
haṭṭoḥanot: The grinders.
הַטֹּחֲנוֹת
Ecclesiastes 12:3 uses this word for the grinders that cease, carrying the same root from the act of grinding to those who do it.
teḥinah: Grinding; milling.
טְחִינָה
This noun preserves the action of the root, making clear that the verse’s image is sustained pressure that reduces what is put under it.
THE PATTERN
Power that presses the vulnerable down becomes evidence against those who wield it.
To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.The verb for crushing in Isaiah comes from דכא, the same root used here for breaking the oppressor. The poor are no longer the ones under the pressure; the force turns against the one who imposed it.
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