What Does Isaiah 44:9 Mean in the King James?
They that make a graven image are all of them vanity; and their delectable things shall not profit; and they are their own witnesses; they see not, nor know; that they may be ashamed.
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
What is held up as a witness to divine power testifies instead to its own inability to see or know.
THE MEANING
What is fashioned as an object of trust cannot see or know, and it cannot repay the desire placed in it. Its makers and their work stand exposed together: what they treasure as a witness to power reveals incapacity. The shame comes when that testimony can no longer be hidden.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that something becomes a source of sight, knowledge, or benefit simply because it is treasured, fashioned, or treated as sacred.
THE ROOT
עֵדֵיהֶם
edeihem
GROWS FROM
עוּד
To testify, attest, or affirm.
The Hebrew word translated “witnesses” is עֵד (ed, witness), from a root carrying the act of testifying. The witness cannot see or know, so its very incapacity becomes testimony to the limits of what the makers have fashioned.
ALSO GROWS
ed: A witness or one who testifies.
עֵד
This is the noun used in the verse: the image and its makers are bound to the testimony it bears.
edut: Testimony or evidence.
עֵדוּת
The related word makes explicit that a witness gives evidence; here the evidence is the object’s inability to perceive or know.
פֶּסֶל
pesel
GROWS FROM
פסל
To hew, carve, or cut.
“graven image” in this verse is pesel. The word for the image carries the physical act that made it: it is something hewn. The object therefore bears the mark of human shaping, even as it is treated as a source beyond human limits.
ALSO GROWS
pasal: To hew or carve.
פָּסַל
The verb names the maker’s action that produces the image.
pesol-lekha: Hew or carve for yourself.
פְּסָל־לְךָ
This form shows the same root as an act performed by human hands; the image remains traceable to its maker.
חֲמוּדֵיהֶם
chamudeihem
GROWS FROM
חמד
To desire, covet, or regard as precious.
“delectable things” in this verse is chamudeihem. The Hebrew points to what is desired or treasured. The verse sets that desirability beside the things’ inability to benefit: being precious in the eyes of the maker does not give an object power to give back.
ALSO GROWS
chamad: To desire or covet.
חָמַד
It reveals the wanting beneath the things called delectable.
machmad: Something desired or prized.
מַחְמָד
The same root can name the treasured object itself, joining the maker’s desire to what the maker has shaped.
THE PATTERN
What human hands fashion to stand for the divine reflects the limits of its maker rather than revealing a living source of knowledge.
They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.THE THREAD
They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand.The same roots for רָאָה (ra’ah, see) and יָדַע (yada, know) return here. Their pairing extends the verse’s failure of sight and knowing beyond the image itself, to the hearts and eyes of those who make it.
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