What Does Ezekiel 15:5 Mean?
Look, when it was whole, it was made into no work. How much less will it be made into work yet, when the fire has eaten it and it is burned?
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
Behold, when it was whole, it was meet for no work: how much less shall it be meet yet for any work, when the fire hath devoured it, and it is burned?THE KEY
The fire does not begin the vine’s unsuitability; even whole, it is already fit for no work.
THE MEANING
A vine can be whole and still be unfit for work; intactness does not make its wood useful. Once fire consumes it, the loss deepens, leaving it even less fit for any task. The verse names the damage plainly, without pretending the intact state was already useful.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that being intact proves a thing is fit for the work at hand.
THE ROOT
תָּמִים
tāmîm
GROWS FROM
תמם
תמם (tāmam): to be complete, whole, or finished.
The verse’s תָּמִים (tāmîm, whole) comes from תמם (tāmam), whose range includes being complete and reaching an end. The vine is complete in condition yet unsuited to the work at hand; fire carries its remaining capacity toward an end rather than creating a usefulness it never had.
ALSO GROWS
tāmam: To be complete or finished; to come to an end.
תָּמַם
This verb shares all three root consonants and holds completion and ending in one family, echoing the vine’s movement from whole to burned.
temimim: Complete, sound, or blameless; plural form.
תְּמִימִים
This related form describes an intact or unblemished state, yet the verse shows that completeness alone does not make vine wood fit for work.
אֲכָלַתְהוּ
ʾăkālathû
GROWS FROM
אכל
אכל (ʾākhal): to eat or consume.
The verse describes fire with the verb eat, not merely scorch: the fire consumes the vine. The same root names food and what is eaten, making the destruction a consumption that removes the wood’s remaining use.
ALSO GROWS
ʾākhal: To eat or consume.
אָכַל
This verb shares all three root consonants and names the action the fire performs on the vine.
maʾăkāl: Food; something eaten.
מַאֲכָל
This noun shares the root consonants and shows the other side of the same action: what is consumed.
THE PATTERN
Destruction compounds a limitation already present; fire leaves the vine less able to serve than it was while whole.
When its boughs dry up, they will be broken off. Women will come and light it. For it is a people that cannot discern; therefore the one who made them will not have compassion on them, and the one who molded them will not show them favor.If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown out as a branch and dries up, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they burn.But what bears thorns and thistles fails the test, and is near a curse; its end is the burning.THE THREAD
Therefore, thus says the LORD God of hosts. Because you speak this word, look, I will set my words in your mouth as fire, and this people as wood, and it shall eat them.Both passages use אכל (ʾākhal, eat or consume) for what fire does. Jeremiah makes the image starkly personal: the people are wood and the words become fire, while Ezekiel keeps the burned vine’s uselessness in view.
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