What Does Ezekiel 14:2 Mean?
And the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
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 the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,THE KEY
What comes from the LORD is already both word and matter before it becomes a saying.
THE MEANING
The verse presents the LORD’s word as something that comes to a person and takes voice. Hebrew davar can mean both a word and a matter, so what arrives is more than detached sound: it carries substance into speech.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; as a noun, a word, matter, or affair.
Davar holds speech and substance together: a word can also be the matter itself. Here, what comes from the LORD is not just a message to hear but a matter that enters the scene.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke.
דִּבֵּר
The speaking verb shares the seed of the noun davar, linking the word with the act of giving it voice.
devar: Matter or affair; also the construct form of davar, “word of.”
דְּבַר
The same word can name the matter being addressed, revealing substance within the utterance.
לֵאמֹר
lemor
GROWS FROM
אמר
To say, speak, or declare.
The verse moves from davar, the word or matter that comes, to lemor, the saying that gives it voice. Its wording holds arrival and utterance together.
ALSO GROWS
amar: To say or speak.
אָמַר
This is the verb behind lemor, making the word’s arrival audible as speech.
imrah: Utterance or saying.
אִמְרָה
This noun from the same root echoes the verse’s movement from what comes to what is spoken.
THE PATTERN
The word of God appears as an active reality that arrives, speaks, creates, and lives among people.
By the word of the LORD the heavens are made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.For the word of God is living and working, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching through even to the dividing of living soul and breath, of joints and marrow, and it separates the inward movements and thoughts of the heart.THE THREAD
By the word of the LORD the heavens are made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.The Hebrew phrase “word of the LORD” uses the same davar as Ezekiel’s verse. Psalm 33:6 shows that this davar not only arrives to be spoken; it is also the means through which the heavens come to be.
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