Isaiah 6:5
New English Translation
5 I said, “Woe to me! I am destroyed,[a] for my lips are contaminated by sin,[b] and I live among people whose lips are contaminated by sin.[c] My eyes have seen the king, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.”[d]
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- Isaiah 6:5 tn Isaiah uses the suffixed (perfect) form of the verb for rhetorical purposes. In this way his destruction is described as occurring or as already completed. Rather than understanding the verb as derived from דָּמַה (damah, “be destroyed”), some take it from a proposed homonymic root דמה, which would mean “be silent.” In this case, one might translate, “I must be silent.”
- Isaiah 6:5 tn Heb “a man unclean of lips am I.” Isaiah is not qualified to praise the king. His lips (the instruments of praise) are “unclean” because he has been contaminated by sin.
- Isaiah 6:5 tn Heb “and among a nation unclean of lips I live.”
- Isaiah 6:5 tn Perhaps in this context, the title has a less militaristic connotation and pictures the Lord as the ruler of the heavenly assembly. See the note at 1:9.
Isaiah 6:5
King James Version
5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
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Isaiah 6:5
New King James Version
5 So I said:
“Woe is me, for I am [a]undone!
Because I am a man of (A)unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”
Footnotes
- Isaiah 6:5 destroyed, cut off
Isaiah 6:5
English Standard Version
5 And I said: “Woe is me! (A)For I am lost; (B)for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the (C)King, the Lord of hosts!”
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Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025.

