What Does Ezekiel 16:58 Mean?
You have borne your lewdness and your recoiling things, says the LORD.
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
Thou hast borne thy lewdness and thine abominations, saith the LORD.THE KEY
Beneath “lewdness” is devised intent: the verse says that what is done carries weight for the one who bears it.
THE MEANING
This verse names the weight of what you devise and do as something you bear before the LORD. It brings the acts into the open and leaves their weight visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what you have done becomes weightless when you conceal it, rename it, or leave it behind.
THE ROOT
זִמָּה
zimmah
GROWS FROM
זמם
z-m-m
To devise or plan.
“lewdness” in this verse is zimmah. Zimmah can carry the sense of something devised, reaching beneath the outward act to its intent. The root can also name planning itself; here, the verse places that intent among the things the speaker bears.
ALSO GROWS
zā́mam: Devise, scheme, or plan.
זָמַם
The verb makes the element of intent in “lewdness” visible; the verse’s context gives that intent its destructive force.
mezimmah: Plan, discretion; a scheme or purpose.
מְזִמָּה
The same root can name planning itself, showing how the verse reaches into what is conceived as well as what is done.
נָשָׂאתְּ
nāśāʾt
GROWS FROM
נשא
n-ś-ʾ
Lift, carry, or bear.
The verse’s “borne” carries the sense of holding a weight. The same root can describe wrongdoing as lifted away, so Hebrew’s image of bearing also contains the possibility of release.
ALSO GROWS
nāśāʾ: Lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This is the root verb behind “borne,” giving the acts the image of weight carried.
nəsûy: Lifted or borne away; rendered “forgiven” in Psalm 32:1.
נְשׂוּי
The same root that names bearing can also describe the lifting away of wrongdoing.
תּוֹעֲבוֹת
toʿavot
GROWS FROM
תעב
t-ʿ-b
Abhor or regard as abhorrent.
“abominations” in this verse is toʿavot. The plural noun names things regarded as abhorrent, while the root also appears as the act of abhorring. The verse thus holds both the character of the acts and the response they evoke in its wording.
ALSO GROWS
toʿevah: An abhorrent thing; an abomination.
תּוֹעֵבָה
This is the singular form of the noun whose plural appears in the verse.
tetaʿev: Abhor, as in “Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite” (Deuteronomy 23:7).
תְּתַעֵב
The verb reveals the response contained in the same root: to regard something as abhorrent.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives wrongdoing the shape of weight: it is borne, heavy, and brought into view.
For each one carries his own load.For my crookednesses rise over my head; like a load too heavy for me, they weigh me down.Who himself carried our shortcomings in his own body on the tree, that we, dead to shortcomings, might live to alignment; and by his bruises you were healed.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David, Maschil. Flourishing is the one whose rebellion is released, whose shortcomings are covered.The Hebrew word rendered “forgiven” is נְשׂוּי (nəsûy, lifted or borne away), from the same root as “borne” in Ezekiel. One verse shows wrongdoing carried as weight; the other shows rebellion lifted away.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us