What Does Ezekiel 16:14 Mean?
And your name went out among the nations for your beauty, for it was complete through my splendor, which I had set upon you, says 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 thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord GOD.THE KEY
The beauty that carries your name into the world is the LORD’s splendor made visible on you.
THE MEANING
Your renown goes out among others through a beauty whose completeness you receive. The verse locates its source in the LORD’s splendor, placed upon you. What others see in you can be real and radiant without being self-made.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that your worth is real only when you produce it yourself dissolves here: radiance can be received and still be yours.
THE ROOT
יֹפִי
yofi
GROWS FROM
יפה
y-p-h
To be beautiful or fair.
The word for beauty belongs to a family that also describes being beautiful; it joins the visible quality to the one who bears it. Here that beauty carries your renown, yet its completeness comes through splendor placed upon you.
ALSO GROWS
yafah: To be beautiful or fair.
יָפָה
The verb shows beauty as something expressed, not merely a label attached to you.
yafeh: Beautiful or fair.
יָפֶה
This adjective shares the same seed as “beauty,” joining the quality people see to the word used for it.
הָדָר
hadar
GROWS FROM
הדר
h-d-r
To be splendid, to honor, or to adorn.
The comeliness in this verse is the LORD’s hadar: splendor or honor placed upon you. The same root can describe honoring another, so the beauty here is also honor received and made visible.
ALSO GROWS
hadar: Splendor, majesty, or honor.
הָדָר
This noun names the splendor the verse says the LORD places upon you.
vehadarta: And you shall honor.
וְהָדַרְתָּ
The verb form shows the same root moving from splendor received to honor expressed.
THE PATTERN
What shines through a person is received from God and becomes visible to others.
Let the sweetness of the LORD our God be upon us, and set firm upon us the work of our hands; the work of our hands, set it firm.Rise, shine, for your light has come, and the weight of the LORD has risen upon you.But we all, with uncovered faces, mirror the weight of the LORD, and are being reshaped into the same image, ever increasing in weight, even as from the breath of the LORD.THE THREAD
His weight is great in your deliverance; majesty and splendor you set upon him.Ezekiel’s הָדָר (hadar, splendor or honor) is placed upon you; Psalm 21:5 uses the same root in “majesty” and says it is laid upon him. The shared root reveals the same movement: splendor is received, then becomes visible.
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