What Does Ezekiel 15:8 Mean?
And I will set the land as an emptiness, because they have broken trust, and broken it, declares the Lord LORD.
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 I will make the land desolate, because they have committed a trespass, saith the Lord GOD.THE KEY
The Hebrew says, in effect, “they trespassed a trespass”: the repeated root makes the breach itself visible in the land’s desolation.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now in a severe register: the LORD makes the land desolate because of a breach of trust. The consequence reaches the shared ground people inhabit; the text does not soften the devastation or detach it from the trespass.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a breach can stay private and leave the shared ground untouched.
THE ROOT
מַעַל
ma'al
GROWS FROM
מ־ע־ל
m-ʿ-l
To act unfaithfully; to commit a breach of trust.
“have broken trust, and broken it” in this verse is ma'al. The Hebrew pairs מָעֲלוּ (ma’alu, “they acted unfaithfully”) with מַעַל (ma’al, “a breach”): literally, “they trespassed a trespass.” The repeated seed makes the offense a breach of relationship, whose consequence reaches beyond the people who commit it.
ALSO GROWS
ma'al: To act treacherously or unfaithfully.
מָעַל
This is the verb in the verse’s repeated-root phrase, naming what the people do.
ma'al: A breach, trespass, or act of unfaithfulness.
מַעַל
The noun repeats the verb’s root, giving the act the shape of a breach that has become visible.
שְׁמָמָה
shemamah
GROWS FROM
שׁ־מ־ם
sh-m-m
To become desolate or be appalled by devastation.
“as an emptiness” in this verse is shemamah. The land’s שְׁמָמָה (shemamah, “desolation”) belongs to a word family that also describes being appalled. The ruin is more than emptiness: it is devastation that leaves its witness stunned.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation or devastation.
שְׁמָמָה
This is the condition the verse says the land enters.
shamem: To be desolate or appalled.
שָׁמֵם
This related form adds the sense of devastation so stark it produces astonishment.
THE PATTERN
Human breach does not stay private; its consequences reach the land and the life sustained within it.
The earth is soiled beneath those who settle in it, because they have crossed over the instruction, exchanged the statutes, broken the covenant of the ages.Therefore the land shall mourn, and every one who settles in it shall wither, along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens. Even the fish of the sea shall be swept away.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.THE THREAD
Son of man, when the land misses the mark against me by great treachery, then I will stretch out my hand upon it, and will break the staff of its bread, and will send hunger upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it.This verse uses the same root, מָעַל (ma’al, “to act unfaithfully”), in “trespassing grievously,” then shows the breach reaching bread, famine, people, and animals. Ezekiel 15:8 widens that consequence to the land itself.
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