What Does Ezekiel 16:20 Mean?
Moreover, you took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to me, and these you slaughtered for them to devour. Was your harlotry such a small thing,
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
Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter,THE KEY
The verse exposes a brutal transfer: what is borne to God is slaughtered for rival powers and made their food.
THE MEANING
The verse puts a brutal charge before you: children borne to God are taken, sacrificed to other powers, and given to be eaten. Its closing question refuses to call that violence a small matter; the act exposes how far divided allegiance can turn what is entrusted into what gets consumed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
That this violence is only a minor extension of unfaithfulness, the verse directly rejects that minimization.
THE ROOT
זָבַח
zābaḥ
GROWS FROM
זבח
to slaughter an offering; to sacrifice
“slaughtered” in this verse is zābaḥ. The Hebrew root joins sacrifice to slaughter: the children are not merely dedicated but killed and made food for the powers receiving them. The verse makes the violence inside the act impossible to miss.
ALSO GROWS
zebaḥ: a sacrifice or slaughtered offering
זֶבַח
It names the offering made from the children in the verse.
mizbēaḥ: an altar, the place of sacrifice
מִזְבֵּחַ
It carries the same root into the structure where an offering is presented.
לֶאֱכֹל
leʾĕkhol
GROWS FROM
אכל
to eat
“to be devoured” in this verse is leʾĕkhol. The phrase literally presents the children as food to be eaten. That closes the verse’s brutal circuit: they are first made offerings, then treated as nourishment for the powers receiving them.
ALSO GROWS
ʾăkhīlāh: eating
אֲכִילָה
It names the act expressed by “to be devoured.”
maʾakhāl: food
מַאֲכָל
It makes explicit the children’s horrifying role as what the offering is meant to supply.
יָלַדְתְּ
yāladt
GROWS FROM
ילד
to bear, beget, or give birth
The same root gives both the act of bearing and the word for a child. The verse sharply marks the transfer: these children are borne “unto me” before they are handed over to others.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: a child
יֶלֶד
It names the one brought forth by the act of bearing.
tōledōt: generations, descendants
תּוֹלְדוֹת
It extends the birth-root from one child to the generations that follow.
THE PATTERN
When worship transfers what belongs in relationship with God to rival powers, devotion becomes an instrument of destruction.
You shall not do so to the LORD your God, for every recoiling thing to the LORD, which he hates, they have done to their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burned in the fire to their gods.And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it rise up into my heart.But I say that what the nations offer, they offer to demons and not to God, and I do not wish you to become sharers in common with demons.THE THREAD
They slaughtered their sons and their daughters to the demons.The Hebrew verb translated “sacrificed” here shares the זבח (zābaḥ, to sacrifice) root with Ezekiel’s charge. Psalm 106 names the recipients as devils, making explicit who the children are sacrificed to.
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