What Does Ezekiel 1:19 Mean?
And when the living creatures walked, the wheels went beside them, and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.THE KEY
The wheels rise with the living creatures, so ascent belongs to their shared movement.
THE MEANING
The wheels go alongside the living creatures, and their ascent is shared. What belongs to living movement is carried upward with it.
THE ROOT
יִנָּשְׂאוּ
yinnase'u
GROWS FROM
נשׂא
nasaʾ
To lift, carry, or bear.
English makes “lifted up” sound like a change of height, while this root also holds the sense of carrying and bearing. The creatures and wheels rise together as one carried movement.
ALSO GROWS
massa: A burden or load that is carried.
מַשָּׂא
This noun shares the root’s sense of carrying: the wheels’ ascent is also their being carried along with the living creatures.
nasi: A leader or prince; the word is linked to being raised up.
נָשִׂיא
The shared root connects lifting with elevation; here, the creatures and wheels share the ascent.
THE PATTERN
What moves with living life remains joined to it when it is lifted.
And when the cherubim walked, the wheels went beside them; and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to rise from the earth, the same wheels also did not turn away from beside them.For in him we live and move and are; as some of your own makers have said, for we are also his offspring.But if the breath of him who raised Jesus from the dead makes its home in you, then he who raised the Anointed One from the dead will also make your death-bound bodies alive through his breath that makes its home in you.THE THREAD
Wherever the breath was to go, there they walked. There was their breath to go, and the wheels were lifted up beside them, for the breath of the living creature was in the wheels.The verb נשׂא (nasaʾ, lift or carry) recurs in verse 20 as the wheels rise alongside the creatures. The verse also locates the living creature’s breath (רוּחַ, ruach) in the wheels, showing the source of their joined movement.
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