What Does Ezekiel 16:7 Mean?
I set you to multiply like the sprout of the field; you grew and became great, and came into finery; your breasts took shape, and your hair grew, though you were naked and bare.
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
I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare.THE KEY
The Hebrew root for the field’s “bud” is also the root for your hair being “grown”: the verse gives one word for life sprouting in the field and in the body.
THE MEANING
You are pictured moving from nakedness and bareness into physical maturity. The field’s sprout, breasts taking shape, and hair growing belong to one movement of life becoming visible. The verse holds your exposed beginning inside the growth that follows.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that nakedness and bareness are your final state. The verse names them as where you were, then shows growth continuing.
THE ROOT
צֶמַח
tsemaḥ
GROWS FROM
צמח
To sprout, shoot up, grow.
The plant phrase and the hair phrase both come from צמח (tsāmaḥ, “sprout, grow”). English renders one as a field image and the other as hair growing; Hebrew ties them together as one movement, life arriving in visible form in both field and body.
ALSO GROWS
tsemaḥ: Sprout, shoot, growth.
צֶמַח
This noun is rendered as the field’s “bud,” placing the body’s development within the field’s pattern of living growth.
matsmiaḥ: Causing to sprout.
מַצְמִיחַ
This causative form appears in Psalm 147:8 for making grass grow, showing the same root can name growth being brought forth.
THE PATTERN
Life takes visible form as it grows, from sprout to stature.
And out of the ground the LORD God caused to sprout every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowing good and evil.The aligned one blooms like the palm tree; he grows tall like the cedar in Lebanon.The soil bears fruit by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.THE THREAD
For as the earth brings out its sprout, and as a garden makes what is sown in it shoot up; so the Lord GOD will make alignment and praise sprout before the face of all the nations.Isaiah uses צֶמַח (tsemaḥ, “bud”) for what the earth brings forth, then uses the same root in a causative form for what the garden makes spring up. Ezekiel uses that root for both the field’s plant and the body’s growth, linking flourishing to life appearing in its own form.
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