What Does Ezekiel 16:21 Mean?
That you have slaughtered my children, and given them over to cross through the fire for them?
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
That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?THE KEY
The word translated “delivered” comes from נתן (natan), “give, set, place”: the verse names a deliberate handing over as part of the violence.
THE MEANING
The verse confronts you with a deliberate act: children are slaughtered, then handed over to be made to pass through fire. The handoff does not soften the killing; the children remain “my children” as they are given to others.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that religious dedication can turn the killing of a child into a holy act.
THE ROOT
וַתִּתְּנִי
vattitteni
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
give, set, place
“delivered” in this verse is vattitteni. Here, vattitteni (“you gave”) makes the act a deliberate transfer: the children are placed into the fire rite. The same root forms words for a gift, exposing the grim shape of devotion that treats a child as something to hand over.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: gift
מַתָּנָה
This branch makes the language of giving especially stark beside the children being handed over.
netinah: giving, bestowal
נְתִינָה
It echoes the deliberate transfer expressed by the verb in this verse.
וַתִּשְׁחֲטִי
vattishchati
GROWS FROM
שׁחט
sh-ḥ-ṭ
slaughter
“slaughtered” in this verse is vattishchati. The verb is built on the word for slaughter, giving “slain” the concrete image of butchery. Beside natan (“give”), it leaves both acts in view: the killing and the deliberate handoff.
ALSO GROWS
shachat: to slaughter
שָׁחַט
This is the verb’s root form and keeps the verse’s violence explicit.
shechitah: slaughtering
שְׁחִיטָה
This related noun carries the same direct, physical sense of killing.
לְהַעֲבִירָם
leha'aviram
GROWS FROM
עבר
ʿ-b-r
pass over, cross
“cross through” in this verse is leha'aviram. Leha’aviram is a causative form: you make them cross. The root names movement across a threshold, but here the crossing is imposed through fire and on children.
ALSO GROWS
avar: to pass over, cross
עָבַר
This verb gives the phrase its sense of movement across or through.
ma'avar: passage, crossing
מַעֲבָר
This noun from the same root makes the forced passage through fire visible as a route imposed on them.
THE PATTERN
When devotion turns a child’s life into a gift for a god, scripture exposes the act as violence rather than reverence.
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.They slaughtered their sons and their daughters to the demons.THE THREAD
And they made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, and used divination and read omens, and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.Both verses use forms of עבר (avar), “cross, pass over,” for the children’s forced movement through fire. The repeated root names a crossing imposed on them, while Ezekiel makes the handing over explicit with נתן (natan), “give, set, place.”
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