What Does Isaiah 65:20 Mean in the King James?
There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.
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
A hundred years can still be called childhood, so age alone cannot measure a life’s fullness.
THE MEANING
The verse places a hundred-year-old child beside a hundred-year-old sinner: age alone does not declare a life complete or clear. Death and curse remain in view even where life stretches far beyond its ordinary span.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that reaching a great age automatically makes a life complete or clears its missing.
THE ROOT
הַחוֹטֵא
haḥōṭēʾ
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥṭʾ
To miss, miss the mark, or go wrong.
English can make sinner sound like a fixed identity; the Hebrew word grows from the root for missing. The same root names both the one who misses and the missing itself, so a century of life does not make the missing disappear.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēṭʾ: A miss or wrongdoing; the missing itself.
חֵטְא
The shared root ties the person called a sinner to the act or condition of missing.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing or sin; in ritual contexts, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The root can name both the missing and an offering for it; here, long life does not erase the missing.
יְקֻלָּל
yəqulal
GROWS FROM
קלל
q-l-l
To be light or slight; in some forms, to curse.
“accursed” in this verse is yəqulal. The root ranges from light or slight to the act of cursing. That range sharpens the contrast: a hundred years of life does not guarantee favor, since the one missing at that age remains under a curse.
ALSO GROWS
qal: Light or slight.
קַל
This branch preserves the root’s sense of being treated as of little weight alongside its cursing sense.
qelalah: A curse.
קְלָלָה
This noun shares the root of the verse’s word for being accursed.
THE PATTERN
Scripture distinguishes the length of a life from its fullness.
They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing;The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.THE THREAD
They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.The same Hebrew noun יוֹמִים (yamim, days) appears in both verses: here a hundred years can still be a child’s years, while there a tree’s days image the life of the people. The shared word widens the scale of living time while leaving this verse’s death and curse in view.
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