What Does Isaiah 57:5 Mean in the King James?
Enflaming yourselves with idols under every green tree, slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks?
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 verse shows sacred intensity turning monstrous when children become the price of worship.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now against worship that channels human heat into a rite that kills children. It places birth and slaughter in one line: what is brought forth is made the offering. The valleys and rock-clefts give the violence a hidden setting, but do not make it less visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a sacred setting or divine name makes an act life-giving; here children are slaughtered beneath it.
THE ROOT
הַנֵּחָמִים
hanneḥāmîm
GROWS FROM
חמם
To become hot or heat; bodily heat and intensity.
“Enflaming” in this verse is hanneḥāmîm. The root keeps the image in the body: this is heat, not a detached idea about worship. Set beside the slaughter that follows, the verse shows what happens when intensity becomes consuming.
ALSO GROWS
ḥom: Heat
חֹם
The noun makes the physical sense of the root plain: the verse’s “enflaming” carries the image of becoming hot.
hithḥammēm: To warm oneself or become hot
הִתְחַמֵּם
This reflexive form echoes the verse’s image of people heating themselves, giving its opening a bodily force.
שֹׁחֲטֵי
shoḥatei
GROWS FROM
שחט
To slaughter, especially an animal for sacrifice.
“Slaying” in this verse is shoḥatei. The Hebrew uses the language of slaughter, a word also used for killing sacrificial animals. That shared word holds the violence in the open: children are being treated as offerings.
ALSO GROWS
shāḥaṭ: To slaughter
שָׁחַט
Leviticus 1:5 uses this verb for slaughtering an offering, exposing the sacrificial force of Isaiah’s wording.
shōḥēṭ: One who slaughters
שֹׁחֵט
This participle names the doer by the act, as the plural form does in Isaiah’s line.
הַיְלָדִים
hayeladim
GROWS FROM
ילד
To bear, beget, or bring forth.
The word for children belongs to the root for bearing and bringing forth. Isaiah places those brought into life directly beside the act that cuts their lives short.
ALSO GROWS
yālad: To bear or beget
יָלַד
The root’s verb for bringing forth makes the violence against the children especially stark.
mōledet: Birth, lineage, or origin
מוֹלֶדֶת
This branch carries the sense of where life comes from and what is carried forward through a family.
THE PATTERN
Ritual is exposed as violence when the vulnerable are offered to secure devotion.
And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.THE THREAD
That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?Ezekiel uses the same Hebrew root for “slain” and names the children as God’s own. The shared word makes the violence in Isaiah unmistakable: this is slaughter, not vague ritual.
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