What Does Ezekiel 14:6 Mean?
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD, Turn, and turn yourselves from your idols, and turn your faces away from all your recoiling things.
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
Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your abominations.THE KEY
One Hebrew root drives all three commands, joining return with turning from idols and redirecting the face.
THE MEANING
This word meets you where your attention is fixed on what has become an idol. The turn reaches your direction, your attachments, and what you are willing to face. You turn from the idols and turn your face away from what has become abhorrent.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that turning is only inward remorse; it includes what you turn away from and where your face goes.
THE ROOT
שׁוּבוּ
shuvu
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
To turn back, return.
The KJV separates this root into “Repent,” “turn yourselves,” and “turn away”; the Hebrew repeats שׁוּב (shuv, turn back) in שׁוּבוּ (shuvu, return) and הָשִׁיבוּ (hashivu, turn back) twice. The repetition joins return with turning from idols and redirecting the face: turning is a change in what the whole person faces.
ALSO GROWS
shav: He returned.
שָׁב
This simple form shows the return at the seed of all three commands.
heshiv: He brought back, restored, or turned something back.
הֵשִׁיב
This causative form echoes the verse’s command to turn the face, showing the same root at work in redirecting what is faced.
THE PATTERN
Turning in scripture redirects the whole person away from what has become an object of devotion and toward relationship.
Turn back, Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled in your crookedness.Tear your heart and not your garments, and turn to the LORD your God, for he is of favor, compassionate, slow to flare, great in faithful love, and he relents of the harm.And he rose and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, and his inward parts were moved, and he ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him.THE THREAD
Turn back, Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled in your crookedness.Hosea begins with שׁוּב (shuv, return), the same root repeated through Ezekiel’s commands. The connection opens the turn from idols as a return toward the LORD.
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