What Does Ezekiel 16:48 Mean?
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.
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
As I live, saith the Lord GOD, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.THE KEY
The condemned city is called your sister, yet even she has not done what you have done.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the reader who finds safety in a worse example: that comparison does not settle the measure of their own conduct. The living oath places the claim under God’s present judgment. The shock is plain, the one treated as infamous has not gone as far as the one addressed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief this undoes is that being less notorious than the worst example makes your own conduct acceptable; here, the condemned example is still surpassed.
THE ROOT
עָשְׂתָה
ʿāśətāh
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿ-ś-h
Do, make, bring about.
The Hebrew repeats this same root for Sodom’s actions and yours. The comparison weighs what each has done, so a notorious reputation cannot decide the verdict in advance.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāsâ: Do, make.
עָשָׂה
These are the root’s basic actions, the same family behind both forms in the verse.
maʿaseh: Deed, work.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun makes visible the concrete deeds that the repeated verb measures.
חַי
ḥay
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
Live, be alive.
“As I live” grounds the comparison in the living speaker’s own reality. The verse presents its judgment as active and present, not as a detached saying about the past.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāyâ: Live, remain alive.
חָיָה
This verb shares the root of the oath’s word for “live.”
ḥayyîm: Life, living.
חַיִּים
The related noun carries the same language of life that gives the oath its force.
THE PATTERN
A comparison with another’s wrongdoing can turn back on the one who uses it as shelter.
Samaria has not done half of your shortcomings; but you have multiplied your recoiling things more than they, and declared your sisters aligned in all your recoiling things which you have done.But I say to you, it will be more bearable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.Therefore you have no word to answer with, O human, whoever you are who judges others, for in whatever you judge in another you press the sentence down upon yourself, for you who judge practice the very same things.THE THREAD
Behold, this was the crookedness of your sister Sodom, the swelling, the fullness of bread, and the abundance of ease that were in her and in her daughters; and she did not strengthen the hand of the bowed ones and the lacking.The same Hebrew word אֲחוֹתֵךְ (ʾaḥōtēḵ, “your sister”) links the comparison to Sodom’s description. The kinship remains even as the verdict distinguishes their conduct, bringing the reader’s own measure into view.
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