What Does Isaiah 51:8 Mean in the King James?
For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation.
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 moth eats what can be worn away, but God’s alignment and deliverance endure across generations.
THE MEANING
The verse holds you inside a contrast: what seems lasting can be eaten away, while God’s alignment remains and God’s deliverance continues from one generation to the next. The garment decays; that decay does not erase what God sets right and brings out.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that decay means all is lost or forsaken. It locates endurance in God’s alignment and deliverance, not in what can be worn away.
THE ROOT
צִדְקָתִי
tsidqati
GROWS FROM
צדק
ṣ-d-q
Rightness, justice, alignment.
“righteousness” in this verse is tsidqati. The word points to more than a moral score: it names what is rightly ordered. The garment can be consumed, but the alignment God establishes is not measured by the durability of its covering.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness, alignment.
צֶדֶק
This noun from the same root reveals the enduring rightness named in the verse.
tsaddiq: A just or aligned person.
צַדִּיק
The root also describes someone who embodies this alignment, linking what God is to the life shaped by it.
יְשׁוּעָתִי
yeshuati
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
Deliver, bring out of danger or constriction into spaciousness.
“salvation” in this verse is yeshuati. The verse names deliverance as God’s continuing work, reaching from one generation to the next. The same root carries both the act of bringing out and the deliverance that results, joining movement with its outcome.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: To deliver or bring out.
יָשַׁע
This verb reveals the active movement carried by the verse’s promise of deliverance.
yeshuah: Deliverance.
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun names the result of that movement, the deliverance that continues across generations.
THE PATTERN
Visible forms wear away, while what God establishes as alignment and deliverance endures.
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.THE THREAD
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.Isaiah 51:6 sets the garment image beside the same paired promise: God’s deliverance remains, and God’s righteousness is not abolished. Verse 8 sharpens the image, the garment is eaten by moth and worm, while both realities reach across generations.
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