What Does Ezekiel 14:15 Mean?
If I cause beasts of harm to pass through the land, and they make it childless, so that it becomes a wasteland, and none cross through from the face of the beasts.
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
If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts:THE KEY
The desolation is not lifelessness: animal life persists, while human passage ends.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s judgment takes the form of harmful beasts moving through the land and bereaving it until no one can pass. The desolation is a place where animal life remains, but human passage ends.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that a desolate place must be lifeless: here, life remains, but the land becomes impassable to people.
THE ROOT
וְשִׁכְּלָתְהוּ
ve-shikkəlāṯəhû
GROWS FROM
שׁכל
To bereave, especially by depriving someone of children or offspring.
“they make it childless” in this verse is ve-shikkəlāṯəhû. The verb translated “spoil” carries the force of bereaving, not merely damaging. The land is pictured as stripped of human presence, with no one left to pass through it.
ALSO GROWS
shākōl: Bereaved; deprived of children.
שָׁכוֹל
This branch makes the loss inside “spoil” more specific: the damage is figured as bereavement.
shekhol: Bereavement; loss of children.
שְׁכוֹל
The noun names the grief carried by the verb, sharpening the verse’s picture of the land’s devastation.
חַיָּה
ḥayyāh
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, be alive; life.
“beasts of harm” in this verse is ḥayyāh. The word for “beasts” grows from the root for living and life. The verse holds a stark reversal: life persists in the land, but human passage disappears.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Living; alive.
חַי
The shared root shows that the beasts are named as living beings, even as their presence makes the land unpassable for people.
ḥayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
This branch exposes the verse’s contrast: life remains, but the land no longer supports human movement.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures devastation as animal violence that bereaves people and makes their land or roads desolate.
I will also send the wild beasts among you, which shall strip you of your children, and cut off your cattle, and make you few in number; and your paths shall be emptied.So I will send upon you hunger and a beast of harm, and they shall make you childless; and pestilence and blood shall pass through you, and I will bring the sword upon you. I, the LORD, have spoken it.I will appoint over them four families, says the LORD; the sword to slay, the dogs to tear, the birds of the heavens, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and to ruin.THE THREAD
I will also send the wild beasts among you, which shall strip you of your children, and cut off your cattle, and make you few in number; and your paths shall be emptied.Leviticus uses the same שׁכל root for beasts that “rob you of your children”; Ezekiel’s “spoil” carries that same bereaving force. The shared root makes the desolation more than damage: people are lost, and the roads fall silent.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us