What Does Ezekiel 16:46 Mean?
And your elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters who dwell at your left hand; and your younger sister, who dwells at your right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.
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
And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.THE KEY
Jerusalem’s boundaries close into family: Samaria is her elder sister on one side, Sodom her younger sister on the other.
THE MEANING
You are addressed as Jerusalem, with Samaria as your elder sister at your left and Sodom as your younger sister at your right. Both sisters dwell with their daughters, so the verse places kin communities on either side of you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that you have nothing in common with those you call other dissolves here: the verse names Samaria and Sodom as your sisters.
THE ROOT
אֲחוֹתֵךְ
achotekh
GROWS FROM
אח
A two-consonant kinship base meaning sibling or brother; אחות (achot) means sister.
The Hebrew kinship family includes both sister and brotherhood, holding them under a shared bond. Here the verse makes Samaria and Sodom Jerusalem’s sisters, bringing both communities inside the family image.
ALSO GROWS
ach: Brother; male sibling.
אָח
The masculine sibling term shares the kinship base behind sister.
achavah: Brotherhood or kinship.
אַחֲוָה
The word extends the sibling bond into a relationship between people.
הַיֹּשֶׁבֶת
hayoshevet
GROWS FROM
ישב
To sit, settle, or dwell in a place.
“dwell” in this verse is hayoshevet. The same form of this verb describes Samaria and Sodom. Its sense of sitting or settling gives the family map a settled presence: each sister dwells on a different side of Jerusalem.
ALSO GROWS
yashav: To sit, remain, or dwell.
יָשַׁב
This verb is the root whose feminine form describes each sister’s dwelling.
moshav: A dwelling place, seat, or settlement.
מוֹשָׁב
This branch carries the root’s sense of an established place of residence.
THE PATTERN
Scripture redraws distance by naming people and communities as family or members of one household.
And Abram said to Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray you, between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brothers.For whoever does the will of God, this one is my brother, and my sister, and my mother.So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens of the set-apart ones, and of the household of God.THE THREAD
As I live, says the Lord LORD, Sodom your sister has not done, she nor her daughters, as you have done, you and your daughters.The phrase “thy sister” repeats the same Hebrew term, אֲחוֹתֵךְ (achotekh, “your sister”), used here. The next verse uses that kinship to compare Sodom’s deeds with Jerusalem’s own, so the family image carries judgment as well as geography.
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