Text

,‫ֻּכלָּנּו ַּכצ ֹּאן תָּ עִ ינּו‬

;‫ִאיׁש לְ דַּ ְרכֹו פָּנִ ינּו‬
,‫וַּיהוָּה הִ פְ גִ י ַּע ּבֹו‬
‫אֵ ת עֲוֹּ ן ֻּכלָּנּו‬
All of us like sheep went astray,
each one of us turned to his own way;
and the-LORD harmed him;
it was a transgression of all of us.
(KJV: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the
LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.)

(Translation from the Greek: All we like sheep have gone astray; a man has strayed in his own
way, and the-LORD gave him over to our sinful deeds.)

Style
GENERAL

Verse 6 is very complicated and requires that one understand the reason for the selecting of
words was not to make a message clearly understood as much as being chosen for the style of the
song.

This is important to remember because, like many songs, it not only has words with the same
sounds, vivid imagery, and parallelisms, it also has a cadence. And it is the combination of these
attributes which directed the song-writer to select some words and avoid others.

So let's look at the composition of verse 6.

CADENCE
In a manner akin to the Shakespeare sonnets, this verse, like the others of the body of this
chapter, consist of quatrains. And each segment of this quatrain has a particular cadence, or
syllables.

We see that "all of us" (kulanu) is the first and the last word of this quatrain.

Three of the four segments end with a three syllable word that ends with "nu". This could mean
that either the 3rd segment originally ended with a “nu” sound (the DSS doesn’t support this), or
the 3rd verse was designed to stand out from the rest for emphasis.

Segment 1 and 3 begin with a 3 syllable word and segment 2 and 4 begin with a one syllable
word.

The second word, katzon, rhymes with the second to the last worn, avon, both words are
connected to the same word, “kulanu” (all of us).

Segments 2 and 3 have the same cadence count. The first segment is 1 beat longer and segment 4
is one beat shorter. The last segment is the shortest and is grammatically defective. It is either a
stylistic choice, or there was originally a 1-2 syllable word included that has been lost.

8 Kulanu k'tzaon ta'inu ּ‫ֻּכלָּנּו ַּכצ ֹּאן תָּ עִ ינּו‬

7 Ish l'darko paninu ‫ִאיׁש לְ דַּ ְרכֹו פָּנִ ינּו‬
7 V'yahweh hiphgia bo ‫וַּיהוָּה הִ פְ גִ י ַּע ּבֹו‬
6 Et avon kulanu ‫אֵ ת עֲוֹּ ן ֻּכלָּנּו‬

Meanings
All of us – The Hebrew word “‫ ”כלנו‬begins and ends this verse. The sound of it (coo-lanu)
sounds similar to the last word of the previous verse to which it connects (‫ – לנו‬lanu) as part of
the repeating structure of this song. As already noted, “nu” is a repeating sound in this verse.

The interpretation of who “all of us” is referring to will vary, depending on one’s view of the
verse. “All” does seem to imply “without exception”.

Strong’s #H3605 recommendations (“all”) are acceptable. Keep in mind that the suffix “nu” adds
“us” to the meaning.

like a sheep – Prefixing a word with the letter “‫”כ‬, means “akin to”, “like”, “similar”. When
prefixing a noun, it is often an indicator of being symbolic, not literal. It is referred to in the
singular form, likely for cadence reasons. A sheep running away from its shepherd appears to be
referring to the Jewish people. The Traditional Jewish interpretation gives a different view, that it
refers to those who would deny that they have a shepherd. Both views have merit.

Strong’s #H6629 recommendations are acceptable.

went astray – From the verb “‫”תעה‬, meaning to wander aimlessly, to get lost, and when used
symbolically it can mean to deviate from the path, usually a moral one. The traditional; “astray”
is perfectly fine here, especially with the symbolic use of “sheep”. “Have gone astray” isn’t bad,
but I preferred the English “went astray” for as an equivalent of the Hebrew simple past-tense
verb form.

Strong’s #H8582 recommendations (“astray”) are acceptable.

each one – The noun “eesh”, literally means “man” or “a man”. It refers to an individual
person, and was perhaps chosen for the cadence or the “ee” sound in this word connecting to that
same sound in the previous word.

Just as “sheep” was in the singular form, so too “man” is also in the singular form as part of the
style when referring to the group. Rather than using “the people went…” I decided to echo the
singular form used in the Hebrew by using “each one”, which reflects the expression of everyone
in the group nicely.

Strong’s #H376 recommendations (“man”) are acceptable.

of us turned – Literally, the Hebrew word “‫ ”פנינו‬means “we turned”. This is the qal or simple
form of the verb “‫”פנה‬, past tense with “we” appended to it (giving the “nu” sound), as in “we
did turn”. Because it is qal, it does not mean that “we turned each of them”, but rather “each one
of us turned ourselves”.

This “we turned” is also used as an expression of going away, which is a parallelism to the “we
went astray” verb previously used. It is reminiscent of verse 2, where a metaphor of a plant is
followed by the same idea, but with a person. Here we have a metaphor of a sheep, followed by
the same idea, but with a person, or people. The Greek version uses “astray” rather than
“turned”, which is also a good way of expressing this. I was tempted to add “away” since going
astray is a turning away from His path. There’s nothing wrong with including that. I omitted it
for simplicity.

Finally, I changed the order of the English word rather than keeping to the order as it appears in
the Hebrew text, since it sounds better.
Many of Strong’s #H6437 recommendations for “turned” are acceptable.

to his own way – The Hebrew word literally means “to his way”. A derech is not simply a
literal road or a pathway, but is also one’s way of life, a “path” that one stays upon. Straying off
that path is a common expression in Hebrew, meaning, those who are no longer are religious, as
in “He’s off the derech!”

By “his way”, we are talking about the eesh, each individual. So to eliminate any confusion as to
“his” I am using the common “his own” to make it clear that it is not “His way” (God’s way).
The person is following the lifestyle that he or she has personally chosen and prefers. And
combination that provides a similar view is also acceptable here.

The “he” here is referring to the “eesh” (man) that began this segment, so each and every one of
them turned away from His ways and behaved in ways that each one preferred.

Strong’s #H1870 recommendations for “way” and “path” are acceptable.

And the-LORD – There is a common theme within this entire chapter, which is a group
admitting that they were doing it, but then saying that the-LORD was responsible. This could be
viewed as either they were denying responsibility, or that they felt that they were doing the work
of the-LORD.

As with many of the segments, it is sometimes difficult to determine who the speaker is. Is the
speaker still “us”, or is it the prophet, correcting their view? And were they tools being used by
the-LORD to accomplish what He intended, or were they doing what they wanted and it served
the-LORD to permit it to go on?

Strong’s #H3068 recommendations are acceptable.

harmed him; – There are a lot of different Hebrew verbs in this chapter that can all be
translated as “afflicted”, and this is one of them. This word in the hifil causative verb form,
where “the-LORD” is the cause, “him” is the affected one and “our wicked actions” is the
affliction indicates that this expression of physical violence requires a bit of explanation.

The root “‫ ”פגע‬indicates a forced interaction between two subjects. If it is an emotional

interaction, it is a begging, pleading, or intercession by one on behalf of himself or another. If it
is a physical interaction, it is to attack and cause pain or even death. A knife attack by a terrorist,
for example, is called a pagua (‫)פגוע‬. Based on the sentence structure, this is apparently an attack,
with the-LORD as either the enabler or the one doing the harming. But as we shall see in the next
segment, it’s the former.

If you don’t like “harmed”, use any other term that refers to one who is experiencing violence,
has been physically attacked, caused to suffer pain through abuse, and so forth.

As for using “him” rather than “in him” or “with him”, remember that the most verbs have some
sort of specialized connector to an object, and the prefixing connector is not always translated.
So “Don’t use it” (al tishtamesh bo) is not “Don’t use in it”. The prefixing “‫ ”ב‬is simply a
connector indicator and may or may not need to be translated to make up a good sounding
English sentence.

Finally, I chose to terminate this segment with a semi-colon instead of the traditional comma
because of the next segment that follows seems to demand it.

Strong’s #H6293 recommendations are acceptable.

it was – The Hebrew word “‫ ”את‬really has no translation, but is an object identifier. In this case,
it precedes the word for “wicked action”. If literally translated “And the-LORD harmed him […]
iniquity of all of us”.

This defective sentence structure, which was probably chosen because of its cadence and rhyme,
requires a word in order to have a proper English structure. Read through the literal translation
and try using “as”, “by”, “for”, “with”, and “it was”. There are other connecting words, of
course, and each one results in a slightly different reading.

“It was” doesn’t change the meaning and only repeats that this was in the past tense and still is. It
gives enough freedom for those who want a specific reading to still do so, such as the wicked
action of the people being associated with the-LORD harming the subject. That is perfectly in
line with the Greek translation of the text.

Strong’s #H853 recommendations are acceptable.

a transgression – The Hebrew word ‫( עון‬or ‫ )עוון‬refers to a criminal act, and can be translated as
“transgression”, “iniquity”, “evil doing”, and connects nicely with the prior verb, ‫הפגיע‬
(“harmed”). So much so, that the Greek translation connects the two.

The writer chose to use the singular form, which seems to be very much the style of this verse.
Some translators choose to make it a plural form, which isn’t really a problem. For example, the
Greek word, ἁμαρτίαις, means a sinful deed, and is in the plural form. Using “sins” carries with it
too much baggage which is why I added “deeds” to the Greek-to-English translation.
It is interesting to note that the last two words, “avon coo-lanu” is the mirror-image rhyming of
the first two words of the verse, “coo-lanu katson”.

Strong’s #H5771 recommendations (perversity, mischief, etc.) are all fine.

of all of us – The Hebrew word “‫ ”כלנו‬begins and ends this verse. The sound of it (coo-lanu)
sounds similar to the last word of the previous verse to which it connects (‫ – לנו‬lanu) as part of
the repeating structure of this song. As already noted, “nu” is a repeating sound in this verse.

The interpretation of who “all of us” is referring to will vary, depending on one’s view of the
verse. “All” does seem to imply “without exception”.

Strong’s #H3605 recommendations (“all”) are acceptable. Keep in mind that the suffix “nu” adds
“us” to the meaning.