What Does Ezekiel 14:19 Mean?
Or if I send plague into that land, and pour out my burning upon it in blood, to cut off man and beast from it.
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
Or if I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out my fury upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast:THE KEY
Here, “send” also carries the sense of letting go: what is released into the land is pestilence.
THE MEANING
This verse names a judgment that reaches living bodies: pestilence enters the land, fury is poured out in blood, and human and animal life are cut off. Its language is concrete and reaches the whole living field of the land.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that judgment here is only inward or symbolic: the verse speaks plainly of bodily death, including among animals.
THE ROOT
אֲשַׁלַּח
ashallach
GROWS FROM
שׁלח
sh-l-ḥ
Send out, dispatch, release, or let go.
The verb carries movement away from the sender: what is sent is let go to enter another place. Here, that outgoing force is pestilence, so “send” holds both the act of dispatch and what the land must now bear.
ALSO GROWS
shaliach: A person who is dispatched as a representative.
שָׁלִיחַ
The same root names the one who is sent, revealing the movement from the act of sending to what carries that sending onward.
shilluach: The act of sending away or releasing.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch makes the release within “send” audible: something is let go from its prior place.
Shiloach: A name associated with sent-forth waters.
שִׁלֹחַ
The same root can name waters sent forth; here it names a sending whose effect is destructive rather than restorative.
לְהַכְרִית
lehakrit
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
Cut, sever, or cut down.
“cut off” in this verse is lehakrit. The verb means more than removing a number from a list: it pictures severance. The same root appears in the phrase “cut a covenant,” so the language of cutting can bind as well as end; here it marks the severing of life from the land.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: The biblical Hebrew expression for making a covenant, literally “cut a covenant.”
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The root that marks life being cut off also names the cutting that establishes a binding relation.
sefer keritut: A document of divorce or dismissal, literally a writing of severance.
סֵפֶר כְּרִיתֻת
This branch preserves the root’s sense of a bond being cut, clarifying the force of “cut off” in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Pestilence is named as a concrete force that enters shared life and reaches bodies across categories.
I sent plague among you in the way of Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword, and carried off your horses. I made the stench of your camps rise into your nostrils. Yet you have not turned back to me, says the LORD.And I will strike those who settle in this city, both man and beast. They shall die of a great plague.And there will be great shakings of the earth in place after place, and hunger, and plague, and frightening sights, and great signs from heaven.THE THREAD
I sent plague among you in the way of Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword, and carried off your horses. I made the stench of your camps rise into your nostrils. Yet you have not turned back to me, says the LORD.Amos repeats the Hebrew pair שָׁלַח (shalach, send) and דֶּבֶר (dever, pestilence), linking the act of sending with the plague itself. That repeated pairing makes Ezekiel’s “send” concrete: its object is a destructive force arriving among the people.
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