What Does Ezekiel 17:13 Mean?
And has taken of the royal seed, and cut a covenant with him, and has taken an oath of him. He has also taken the mighty of the land.
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 hath taken of the king’s seed, and made a covenant with him, and hath taken an oath of him: he hath also taken the mighty of the land:THE KEY
The covenant is part of a seizure: the royal future is taken, its ruler is bound by oath, and the land’s strength is taken.
THE MEANING
Here, power takes the royal line, binds its ruler by oath, and takes the land’s strongest; the covenant sits inside that sequence of control. The Hebrew verb translated “made” carries the image of cutting a covenant, a bond with consequences. The verse speaks wherever a people’s future, allegiance, and strength are gathered under another’s power.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A covenant does not prove that a bond is freely chosen; here, the oath stands among acts of taking.
THE ROOT
וַיִּכְרֹת
wayyikhrat
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
to cut; to cut off
“cut a covenant” in this verse is wayyikhrat. The Hebrew says he “cut” a covenant, preserving an image of a bond made with consequences beneath the English “made.” Here, that bond is surrounded by taking, so the pledge belongs to the verse’s account of power.
ALSO GROWS
karat: to cut or cut off
כָּרַת
This verb supplies the image behind the phrase “cut a covenant.”
keritut: a cutting off; a certificate of divorce
כְּרִיתוּת
This noun carries the root’s severing sense into a formal bond that ends a relationship.
זֶרַע
zera
GROWS FROM
זרע
zara
to sow; seed
“royal seed” in this verse is zera. The king’s seed is both royal offspring and the seed of what continues. Taking it reaches into the future of the kingdom, so the seizure begins with lineage.
ALSO GROWS
zera: seed; offspring
זֶרַע
The same word names the royal line whose continuation is taken.
zorea: sower
זֹרֵעַ
The sower and the seed share a root, linking lineage with what is planted to continue.
THE PATTERN
A covenant or oath binds a future by giving a pledge consequences in the present.
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.And Joshua made wholeness with them, and cut a covenant with them, to let them live; and the lifted ones of the assembly swore to them.For humankind swears by the greater, and an oath for steadying is for them the boundary of every word set against.THE THREAD
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.The Hebrew phrase for “made a covenant” uses the same root כרת (karat), “to cut,” that appears in Ezekiel. In Genesis, the bond carries a promise; here, the same covenant language sits within taking, showing how the power around a pledge shapes what it means.
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