What Does Isaiah 42:24 Mean in the King James?
Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the LORD, he against whom we have sinned? for they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law.
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 traces ruin to a people refusing to hear the instruction that gives their walking its direction.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now with a devastating claim: the LORD gives Jacob over to plunder, and Israel’s missing is expressed in refusing his ways and his instruction. It holds divine agency and human refusal in the same account without dissolving either.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the reading that the robbers alone account for the ruin: the verse names the LORD as the one who gives Jacob over and names the people’s refusal alongside it.
THE ROOT
שָׁמְעוּ
shāmeʿû
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear, listen; in responsive use, hear and heed.
Under “obedient unto his law,” the Hebrew wording says they did not hear within his Torah. Hearing and response belong together here: refusal to obey is described as refusal to receive the instruction.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
It brings the verse’s failure into focus as a refusal of responsive hearing.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings, something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch keeps hearing connected to what is received, rather than reducing it to a bare sound.
חָטָאנוּ
ḥāṭāʾnû
GROWS FROM
חטא
Miss, fail to reach the mark.
The verse names the ruin alongside חטא, the missing, then shows that missing in the people’s refusal to walk and hear. “Sinned” here is not a free-floating label; it is a lived departure from the ways and instruction named in the verse.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēṭʾ: A missing, offense.
חֵטְא
It makes visible the root sense carried by “sinned” in this verse.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing or sin; in sacrificial use, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
It shows how the same root can name both the rupture and a response directed toward it.
הָלוֹךְ
halokh
GROWS FROM
הלך
Go, move, walk.
The Hebrew keeps the failure in motion: they refuse to walk in his ways. Set beside their not-hearing, the verse describes refusal both as closed reception and as a course of life they will not take.
ALSO GROWS
halakh: To go or walk.
הָלַךְ
It preserves the bodily movement inside the verse’s picture of following a way.
halikhah: Walking, a course or manner of life.
הֲלִיכָה
It shows how walking can name the whole direction of a life, not only a single step.
THE PATTERN
Refusing instruction leaves a people exposed to the consequences of a path they will not hear.
But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:THE THREAD
But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels.“Would not hearken” uses the same Hebrew root שמע as Isaiah’s “were they not obedient”, literally, they did not hear. Psalm 81 then echoes Isaiah’s full pattern: Israel refuses to hear, is given over, and walks another course.
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