What Does Ezekiel 16:31 Mean?
You build your raised place at the head of every road, and make your high place in every street; and you are not like a harlot, for you refuse wages.
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
In that thou buildest thine eminent place in the head of every way, and makest thine high place in every street; and hast not been as an harlot, in that thou scornest hire;THE KEY
The startling turn is that she is not paid for desire; she pays to keep it alive.
THE MEANING
You can reach a point where pursuit has become an expense rather than an exchange: you lay the invitation everywhere and pay out what you once expected to receive. The verse names desire widening its reach while consuming what it has, with no return coming back.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that pouring more into a desire will eventually make it give something back.
THE ROOT
אֶתְנַן
etnan
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
To give, set, or place.
“wages” in this verse is etnan. The word for prostitution’s payment, etnan (אֶתְנַן, “hire”), grows from natan (נָתַן, “give”). The verse’s next line makes that giving-shape plain: she gives the payment, and none is given to her.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
This verb carries the same giving-root that underlies “hire,” revealing the payment as an outflow from the pursuer.
mattanah: Gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This related noun shows the root’s ordinary sense of something given, sharpening the verse’s reversal: the pursuer is the one paying out.
THE PATTERN
When desire becomes its own aim, pursuit turns from receiving into spending what cannot satisfy.
And the reverse is in you, from other women in your harlotries, for no one follows you to play the harlot; you give the wages, and no wages are given to you, so you are reversed.Why do you weigh out silver for what is not bread, and your toil for what does not fill? Hear and respond, hear and respond to me, and eat the good, and let your living soul delight itself in fatness.You ask, and do not take, because you ask badly, so that you may use it up upon your pleasures.THE THREAD
And the reverse is in you, from other women in your harlotries, for no one follows you to play the harlot; you give the wages, and no wages are given to you, so you are reversed.The same giving-root underlies “hire” here and “givest” and “given” in the next verse. That line makes the hidden inversion explicit: you pay, and no payment comes back.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us