What Does Ezekiel 16:6 Mean?
And when I passed by you and saw you trampled in your own blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, "Live." Yes, I said to you while you were in your blood, "Live."
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 when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.THE KEY
“Live” is spoken twice while she is still in her blood: the condition does not get the last word.
THE MEANING
This word reaches you while your exposed condition is still visible; it does not wait for the scene to change before addressing you. Its repetition lets “Live” meet you twice in the very place that seems to define you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that life can address you only after the visible mess is gone: here, the command comes while she is still in her blood.
THE ROOT
חֲיִי
chayi
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, be alive, remain alive.
The command comes from חיה (chayah, to live), repeated while she is still in her blood. This same root can name the living and the act of living; the Hebrew holds the bloodied condition and the command to live together.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living; alive.
חַי
This form names the living state that the repeated command addresses.
chayyim: Life; living.
חַיִּים
This noun carries the same root into the very thing spoken over her in the verse.
vayechi: And he lived.
וַיְחִי
The same root appears in the account of a child’s life returning in 1 Kings 17:22, where the KJV renders it “revived.”
THE PATTERN
Life is spoken into places where helplessness or death appears to have the final word.
Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live.And the LORD heard and responded to the voice of Elijah, and the living soul of the child returned into him, and he lived.And when he had said these things, he cried out with a great voice, Lazarus, come out!THE THREAD
And the LORD heard and responded to the voice of Elijah, and the living soul of the child returned into him, and he lived.The Hebrew וַיְחִי (vayechi, “and he lived”) comes from חיה (chayah, “to live”), the same root as Ezekiel’s doubled “Live!” In one verse life is spoken as a command; in the other, the same root names a child living again.
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