What Does Ezekiel 14:3 Mean?
Son of man, these men have lifted up their idols upon their heart, and set the stumbling block of their crookedness before their face. Should I be sought at all by them?
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
Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumblingblock of their iniquity before their face: should I be enquired of at all by them?THE KEY
The stumbling block before the face is something the heart has already placed in its own path.
THE MEANING
A person can turn to God with a question while keeping an idol established in the heart. That inward object becomes a stumbling block before the face, shaping what is seen and how God is sought. The verse’s question still reaches anyone who asks while the heart has already fixed its allegiance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that asking God a question proves an undivided search for God; inquiry can begin with the heart already pledged elsewhere.
THE ROOT
מִכְשׁוֹל
mikšōl
GROWS FROM
כשל
To stumble, totter, or fail.
“stumbling block” in this verse is mikšōl. The word names a cause of stumbling, and the verse says it is placed before the face. The obstruction is both inwardly sourced and directly in the path of sight: what the heart installs becomes what the person trips over.
ALSO GROWS
kāšal: To stumble, totter, or fail.
כָּשַׁל
This verb carries the same consonantal seed; the noun names what causes or results in the stumbling.
mikšēlāh: A cause of stumbling or ruin.
מִכְשֵׁלָה
This related noun carries the same root into the obstacle and its consequences.
אִדָּרֵשׁ
ʾiddārēš
GROWS FROM
דרש
To seek, inquire, or consult.
“sought” in this verse is ʾiddārēš. The form rendered “be enquired of” comes from a verb that also means to seek or consult. The question is therefore not bare asking, but the direction from which the asking comes when another object already occupies the heart.
ALSO GROWS
dāraš: To seek, inquire, or consult.
דָּרַשׁ
This active form reveals the seeking contained in the verse’s question about being consulted.
midrāš: Inquiry, examination, or exposition.
מִדְרָשׁ
This related noun preserves the sense of searching out, illuminating the depth of inquiry in the verse.
THE PATTERN
What the heart trusts inwardly shapes what a person sees, seeks, and becomes.
Those who make them become like them, and so does everyone who leans his weight on them.For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.Because, having known God, they did not give him weight as God, nor did they give thanks; but they were made empty in their reckonings, and their unjoined heart was darkened.THE THREAD
And he shall be for a set-apart place; but for a stone of striking and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, for a trap and for a snare to those who settle in Jerusalem.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word, מִכְשׁוֹל (mikšōl, stumbling block), found in Ezekiel’s verse. The shared root reveals how what stands before a person can become either a place of shelter or the point where they stumble.
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