What Does Isaiah 46:5 Mean in the King James?
To whom will ye liken me, and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be like?
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 three verbs of comparison do not furnish an image of God; they expose the smallness of every measure brought to him.
THE MEANING
The question is alive wherever you reach for a familiar thing to contain God: it can be named, pictured, or measured, but it cannot become God’s equal. The verse stacks three verbs of comparison and ends by asking whether the two can truly be alike. It leaves you facing the distance between an image and the One it tries to hold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a picture or comparison can fully contain God. Naming a resemblance does not make the created thing his equal.
THE ROOT
תַמְשִׁלֻנִי
tamshiluni
GROWS FROM
משל
To compare, liken, or set one thing beside another.
The verb תַמְשִׁלֻנִי (tamshiluni) comes from משל (m-sh-l), “to compare, liken, set beside.” Its noun branch מָשָׁל (mashal) is a parable, carrying meaning through comparison; Psalm 28:1 uses וְנִמְשַׁלְתִּי (wənimshalti), “I become like,” making likeness a shared condition. Here the verse presses the limit: what can be set beside God as an equal?
ALSO GROWS
mashal: A parable or proverb.
מָשָׁל
A parable carries meaning by setting one thing beside another; this branch makes comparison a teaching form, while the verse asks whether any such likeness can equal God.
wənimshalti: I become like.
וְנִמְשַׁלְתִּי
Psalm 28:1 uses this form for becoming like those who go down to the pit, where likeness means sharing a condition; here, the question is whether any created being can share God’s measure.
THE PATTERN
When people measure God through created likenesses, the comparison reveals the limit of the image rather than God’s limit.
To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?For who in the heaven can be compared unto the LORD? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD?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
A Psalm of David. Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.Psalm 28:1 uses the same Hebrew root משל for “I become like,” where likeness means sharing the condition of those going down to the pit. That root gives Isaiah’s question its force: what can be set beside God as a true equal?
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