What Does Ezekiel 16:40 Mean?
They shall also bring up an assembly against you, and they shall stone you with stones, and pierce you with their swords.
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
They shall also bring up a company against thee, and they shall stone thee with stones, and thrust thee through with their swords.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb behind “thrust thee through” means to split open, the same root describes the sea divided and the deep broken open.
THE MEANING
A gathered force comes against you with stones and swords, and the violence reaches your body. The verse names a collective assault in direct, physical terms.
THE ROOT
וּבִקְּעוּךְ
u-viqʿuḵ
GROWS FROM
בקע
b-q-ʿ
to split, cleave, or break open
“thrust thee through” in this verse is u-viqʿuḵ. The verb carries the force of splitting open. The same root describes waters being divided and the deep breaking open, linking the sword’s bodily violence with a rupture in the world around it.
ALSO GROWS
biqʿah: valley or plain
בִּקְעָה
This landscape word shares the root’s sense of a cleft or opening, giving the root a physical form beyond the verb.
vayyibaqeʿu: they were divided
וַיִּבָּקְעוּ
In Exodus 14:21 this form describes the waters dividing; here the verb describes swords splitting the body.
קָהָל
qāhāl
GROWS FROM
קהל
q-h-l
to assemble or gather
The attackers arrive as a gathered body: the word translated “company” is the same word used for an assembly. The violence is carried out by people gathered together, not by an unnamed force.
ALSO GROWS
qāhal: to assemble or gather
קָהַל
The verb names the gathering that forms the company coming against you.
haqhel: assemble or gather together
הַקְהֵל
This form makes the act of gathering explicit, echoing the assembled force in the verse.
THE PATTERN
When a gathered group turns judgment into action, one person’s body becomes the site of collective violence.
And say to the children of Israel, whoever of the children of Israel, or of the sojourners who sojourn in Israel, gives any of his seed to Molech, shall surely die. The people of the land shall stone him with stones.And they bound together against him, and pelted him with stones at the king's commandment in the court of the house of the LORD.And they threw him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man called Saul.THE THREAD
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.The verb translated “thrust thee through” comes from בקע (baqa), the same root translated “divided” here. In Exodus the waters are split; in Ezekiel the body is split by swords.
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