What Does Isaiah 42:22 Mean in the King James?
But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore.
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 root behind “deliver” can also name plundering, so the difference is whether someone is snatched out of a grip or stripped by it.
THE MEANING
You can be stripped of what is yours, trapped, and hidden away, while no one comes to pull you free or says, “Return what was taken.” The verse names the abandonment as part of the injury: not only the loss, but the silence around rescue and restitution.
THE ROOT
הָשַׁב
hashav
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
To turn or return; in this form, to cause something to return, to restore it.
“Restore” in this verse is hashav. The spoken demand is not vague comfort: הָשַׁב means to cause something to return. The absence is a voice declining to name the stolen thing as returnable, even as the people remain trapped.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return, turning back
תְּשׁוּבָה
The same root names a turning back; here, the missing word is a demand for the taking to be reversed.
yeshovev: He restores, brings back (Psalm 23:3)
יְשׁוֹבֵב
Psalm 23:3 uses this root for restoring a living soul, giving Isaiah’s call to return a personal dimension.
מַצִּיל
matzil
GROWS FROM
נצל
To snatch away or rescue from a grip; in an intensive form, to strip or plunder.
“Delivereth” in this verse is matzil. The word for a rescuer is built on a verb of snatching away. In Exodus 3:22 a form of the same root describes plundering, placing rescue and dispossession along one axis: who is being taken from whose grasp.
ALSO GROWS
hitsilani: He delivered me (Psalm 34:4)
הִצִּילַנִי
This form uses the root for pulling someone out of danger, the rescue absent from Isaiah’s scene.
venitzaltem: You shall plunder (Exodus 3:22)
וְנִצַּלְתֶּם
This form uses the same root for taking goods, echoing the verse’s world of people left exposed to being stripped.
THE PATTERN
Restoration makes the return of what was taken concrete, whether it means recovering the scattered or repaying the dispossessed.
If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.And Zacchæus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.THE THREAD
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.The Hebrew יְשׁוֹבֵב (yeshovev, “he restores, brings back”) grows from שׁוּב (shuv, “return”), the same root as Isaiah’s “Restore.” Isaiah names the missing voice calling for what was taken to return; Psalm 23:3 uses that return-root for the restoring of the living soul.
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