What Does Isaiah 45:20 Mean in the King James?
Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save.
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 human hands set up as a god cannot do the one thing that matters: bring anyone out.
THE MEANING
The verse gathers you with those who have escaped the nations and draws you near together. It exposes the contradiction: human hands set up wood as a god, then voices call to it for deliverance, but it cannot bring anyone out.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that something becomes a source of deliverance simply because human hands shape it and human voices call to it.
THE ROOT
יוֹשִׁיעַ
yōšîaʿ
GROWS FROM
י־שׁ־ע
Deliver; bring someone out of distress into spaciousness.
“save” in this verse is yōšîaʿ. The verse names the wood’s failure precisely: it cannot deliver or bring anyone out. The same root appears in the word for deliverance and the word for a deliverer, making the contrast about the power to open a way, not merely about what something is called.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
The same root names the outcome the carved image cannot provide: being brought out.
moshia: deliverer
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This branch names the one who brings someone out, the capacity the verse finds absent in the wood.
THE PATTERN
What human hands fashion and carry cannot carry its makers through distress.
They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him, and set him in his place, and he standeth; from his place shall he not remove: yea, one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his trouble.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
Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.The same root that names what the wooden god cannot do becomes the invitation here: be delivered. The passage moves from a made object unable to bring anyone out to a living voice calling the ends of the earth into deliverance.
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