What Does Isaiah 46:6 Mean in the King James?
They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith; and he maketh it a god: they fall down, yea, they worship.
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 hands that give the metal its shape yield their own bodies to the thing they have made.
THE MEANING
The verse shows people measure the silver, hire the craft, and form an object, then bow before it. The maker gives the object its shape; the object has no life or authority of its own. Yet the makers place their bodies beneath it, and the reversal is visible in the posture.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A costly, carefully made object has authority over the people who formed it.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁתַּחֲווּ
yishtachavu
GROWS FROM
שחה
To bow low or prostrate oneself.
English can make worship sound like an inward belief; this Hebrew verb names a bodily bow. It follows another verb for prostrating, so the verse doubles the physical motion: the makers bend before their own work.
ALSO GROWS
wayyishtachu: And he bowed himself.
וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ
The same root names a visible bodily gesture, making the physical sense of worship clear.
tishtachaveh: You bow down.
תִּשְׁתַּחֲוֶה
The same verb describes bowing before images, linking this posture directly with the objects people make.
צֹרֵף
tsoreph
GROWS FROM
צרף
To smelt, refine, or test.
“goldsmith” in this verse is tsoreph. The artisan’s title comes from the word for refining metal. Scripture also uses this refining word for people tested like silver; here, that craft is put to work making an object that its makers then treat as divine.
ALSO GROWS
tsaraph: To refine or smelt.
צָרַף
This is the work contained in the goldsmith’s title: the metal is processed before it is made into an image.
tseraphtanu: You refined or tested us.
צְרַפְתָּנוּ
The same root describes people being tested like silver, carrying the metalworker’s process into human life.
יִשְׁקֹלוּ
yishqolu
GROWS FROM
שקל
To weigh or measure by weight.
“weigh” in this verse is yishqolu. Before the image receives devotion, its material is carefully weighed. The root links weighing to the shekel, a unit of weight and money, showing how measurable value becomes the material basis for an object that is treated as more than material.
ALSO GROWS
sheqel: A unit of weight and money.
שֶׁקֶל
The same root connects the measured silver with its monetary value.
mishqal: Weight or measure.
מִשְׁקָל
This noun from the same root keeps the passage’s attention on the material’s measurable weight.
THE PATTERN
People can transfer reverence from the source of life to things formed by human hands.
Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is profitable for nothing?Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.THE THREAD
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;Isaiah’s יִשְׁתַּחֲווּ (yishtachavu, “they bow down”) and Exodus’s תִּשְׁתַּחֲוֶה (tishtachaveh, “you bow down”) share the root שחה (shachah, “to bow low”). Both verses make the posture itself visible, linking the body’s bow to the object receiving devotion.
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