What Does Ezekiel 16:55 Mean?
When your sisters, Sodom and her daughters, return to their former state, and Samaria and her daughters return to their former state, then you and your daughters shall return to your former state.
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
When thy sisters, Sodom and her daughters, shall return to their former estate, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former estate, then thou and thy daughters shall return to your former estate.THE KEY
Sodom and Samaria are named as returning before Jerusalem, placing even the names most marked by ruin inside the promise of return.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses you through Jerusalem: your return belongs to a wider restoration, with Sodom and Samaria named before you. Its repeated promise is that each returns to what was before, though the sequence remains intact: their return, then yours.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that Sodom’s ruin makes return impossible: Sodom, Samaria, and Jerusalem are all named as returning.
THE ROOT
תְּשֻׁבֶיןָ
teshuvenah
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
sh-w-b
Turn back; return.
The same verb is repeated for Sodom, Samaria, and Jerusalem, joining their returns in one movement. The root holds turning back and returning together, so the verse describes restoration as a return to what came before.
ALSO GROWS
yashuv: He returns.
יָשׁוּב
This form makes the same return explicit as an action: what has gone away comes back.
teshuvah: Return; turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun carries the turn within the idea of return, echoing the verse’s repeated movement back to a former state.
לְקַדְמָתָן
leqadmatān
GROWS FROM
קָדַם
q-d-m
Come before; be in front, hence what precedes or came earlier.
The phrase translated “former estate” belongs to the language of what came before. Paired with “return,” it presents restoration as a movement back toward a prior condition.
ALSO GROWS
qedem: What is before; ancient time, and the east.
קֶדֶם
This branch links the former state to what lies before or earlier.
qedmah: Eastward; forward.
קֵדְמָה
Its sense of direction shows how the same word family can point toward what is in front.
THE PATTERN
Return restores what has been lost or displaced to a former condition.
He turns back my living soul; he leads me in the tracks of alignment for the sake of his nature.And the LORD returned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the LORD added to all that was Job's, twice over.Whom the heaven must take in until the times of setting upright again of all things, which God has spoken through the mouth of his set-apart prophets from the ages.THE THREAD
He turns back my living soul; he leads me in the tracks of alignment for the sake of his nature.The Hebrew verb behind “restoreth” comes from the same root as the repeated “shall return” in Ezekiel. One root holds the return of whole cities and the restoring of a person together.
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