Bible Strands
Isaiah 47:6
I was angry with My people; I profaned My heritage, and I placed them under your control. You showed them no mercy; even on the elderly you laid a most heavy yoke.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Yahweh addresses the Daughter of the Chaldeans immediately after declaring she will no longer be called queen of kingdoms. He explains that His temporary wrath against Israel resulted in handing them over to Babylonian control.
The words — The Hebrew קָצַפְתִּי (kaṣaftî) renders literally as "I was angry," and חִלַּלְתִּי (chillaltî) means "I profaned" or treated as common. These verbs establish that the transfer of Israel into Babylon's hands was a direct, wrathful divine act.
The thread — This dynamic of God using a foreign power to judge His people, only to later confront that power for its excesses, runs through Zechariah 1:15. It also parallels the Deuteronomy 28:50 portrait of a merciless army that lays a heavy yoke on the elderly without pity.
Why it lands — The passage requires the reader to acknowledge that instrumental judgment does not absolve human cruelty of its own guilt. It forces a direct confrontation with the reality that power exercised without mercy remains subject to divine accounting.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
I was wroth with my people, I have polluted mine inheritance, and given them into thine hand: thou didst shew them no mercy; upon the ancient hast thou very heavily laid thy yoke.
Cross-references
- 2 Chronicles 28:9 But a prophet of the LORD named Oded was there, and he went out to meet the army that returned to Samaria. “Look,” he said to them, “because of His wrath against Judah, the LORD, the God of your fathers, has delivered them into your hand. But you have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches up to heaven.
- Zechariah 1:15 but I am fiercely angry with the nations that are at ease. For I was a little angry, but they have added to the calamity.’
- Deuteronomy 28:50 a ruthless nation with no respect for the old and no pity for the young.
- Obadiah 1:10 Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame and cut off forever.
- James 2:13 For judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
- Psalms 69:26 For they persecute the one You struck and recount the pain of those You wounded.
- Isaiah 10:6 I will send him against a godless nation; I will dispatch him against a people destined for My rage, to take spoils and seize plunder, and to trample them down like clay in the streets.
- Isaiah 14:17 who turned the world into a desert and destroyed its cities, who refused to let the captives return to their homes?”
- Isaiah 42:24 Who gave Jacob up for spoil, and Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the LORD, against whom we have sinned? They were unwilling to walk in His ways, and they would not obey His law.
- Obadiah 1:16 For as you drank on My holy mountain, so all the nations will drink continually. They will drink and gulp it down; they will be as if they had never existed.