What Does Isaiah 45:16 Mean in the King James?
They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them: they shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols.
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 repeats the root of disgrace as both what the idol makers become and where they end up.
THE MEANING
When a crafted image is treated as divine, its makers do not stand outside its power: they enter disgrace together. The verse names this as a shared destination, not merely a private feeling.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A thing made by human hands can become a trustworthy god.
THE ROOT
נִכְלְמוּ
nikhləmu
GROWS FROM
כלם
To be shamed or disgraced.
The verse uses this root first for the makers who are confounded, then again in כְּלִמָּה for the disgrace they go into. Hebrew binds their humiliation to its destination; English renders the two forms as “confounded” and “confusion.”
ALSO GROWS
kelimmāh: Disgrace, shame.
כְּלִמָּה
This noun appears later in the verse, naming the destination with the same root as “confounded.”
hikhlim: To shame or put to shame.
הִכְלִים
This causative form shows the root’s active side: disgrace can be brought upon someone.
בּוֹשׁוּ
bōshū
GROWS FROM
בוש
To be ashamed or disappointed in what one relied on.
“ashamed” in this verse is bōshū. This root names the makers’ shame before the verse describes their shared disgrace. Its recurrence in Psalm 97:7 connects the shame of idol makers with the shame of those who serve images.
ALSO GROWS
yāvōsh: He will be ashamed.
יָבֹשׁ
This verb form carries the same root into a future state of shame.
hōvīsh: To put to shame.
הוֹבִישׁ
This causative form makes explicit that the root can describe one being brought into shame.
THE PATTERN
What human hands fashion as divine authority cannot sustain devotion and exposes the limits of what was made.
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.Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols: worship him, all ye gods.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
Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols: worship him, all ye gods.Psalm 97:7 uses בּוֹשׁוּ (bōshū), the same root בוש as Isaiah’s “ashamed.” The shared verb links those who make images with those who serve them: both enter the shame attached to the image.
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