This passage comes from the wider catalog — a broader, more lightly curated list than the core set. Both readings are shown as peers; GEBible takes no side.
14therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the understanding of their prudent men will be hidden.”
13The Lord said, “Because this people draws near with their mouth and honors me with their lips, but they have removed their heart far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men which has been taught;14therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even a marvelous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the understanding of their prudent men will be hidden.”
The counter-reading
How this passage is read within its own context.
The critical reading holds that Isaiah 29:14 targets the political counselors of 8th-century Judah, whose supposedly wise strategy of foreign alliance God would overturn. In 1 Corinthians 1:19 Paul lifts this concrete geopolitical rebuke into a universal claim about the cross humbling all human wisdom. Critics see this as characteristic Pauline hermeneutics, transforming a specific Israelite oracle into a cosmic epistemological principle. On this view the move is theologically creative but not a recovery of Isaiah's original political referent.
The fulfillment reading
How this passage is read as pointing to the Messiah.
The fulfillment reading holds that Isaiah 29:14's declaration that God will confound the wisdom of the wise expresses a consistent divine pattern of overturning human wisdom through unexpected means, a pattern the apostolic church saw culminate in the cross. Paul's citation in 1 Corinthians 1:19 is read as an authoritative recognition that the oracle's principle operates at a cosmic rather than merely political level. Proponents argue the cross is the supreme instance of the 'wonderful work' by which God humbles the wise. On this view Paul draws out a scope latent in Isaiah's words rather than importing a foreign meaning.
How the New Testament uses this passage
Each entry names how the New Testament author draws on the passage — a direct quotation, an allusion, an echo, or a typological reading. An echo or an allusion is not the same as a prediction; the label says which is which.
