What Does Ezekiel 16:29 Mean?
You also multiplied your harlotries in the land of Canaan as far as Chaldea; and still you were not filled by this.
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
Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea; and yet thou wast not satisfied herewith.THE KEY
The reach can multiply without desire ever becoming full.
THE MEANING
The verse names desire as fornication and says its reach spreads from Canaan to Chaldea without bringing satisfaction. It speaks now wherever betrayal multiplies outward while the inner hunger remains unfilled.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that widening the pursuit will eventually make it enough.
THE ROOT
שָׂבַעְתְּ
śāvaʿat
GROWS FROM
שבע
To be sated, to have one’s fill.
“filled” in this verse is śāvaʿat. The same root names both being sated and satiety itself, so the verse describes more than a pause in wanting: fullness does not arrive despite multiplied reach. Expansion and satiety are different movements.
ALSO GROWS
śāvēaʿ: Sated, full, satisfied.
שָׂבֵעַ
This form names the state the verse says does not arrive, making the distance between expanding reach and actual fullness visible.
śōvaʿ: Satiety, fullness, abundance.
שֹׂבַע
This noun carries the same root into the idea of fullness itself: the pursuit can multiply while the state of satiety remains absent.
THE PATTERN
The pursuit can expand without making a person full, because possession and satiety are not the same measure.
Sheol and the place of perishing are never filled, and the eyes of man are never filled.The lover of silver is not filled with silver, and the lover of the crowd is not filled with the harvest. This too is vapor.And he said to them, Watch, and guard yourselves against grasping, for a person's life does not lie in the overflow of what they hold.THE THREAD
For he sates the thirsting living soul, and fills the hungry living soul with goodness.The verb translated “satisfieth” shares the root שׂבע (ś-b-ʿ, to be sated) with Ezekiel’s “satisfied.” Here the pursuit expands without satiety; the psalm names goodness as what fills.
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