What Does Ezekiel 18:10 Mean?
If he begets a son who is a breaker, who pours out blood, and does one of these,
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
If he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, and that doeth the like to any one of these things,THE KEY
The “robber” is a breaker-through: this verse places the breach in the son’s own actions, not in his father’s character.
THE MEANING
The verse puts the son’s conduct in view as his own: a parent’s uprightness does not erase his violence. “Robber” carries the image of breaking through, and the bloodshed remains starkly present. The sentence is still unfolding; the next verse continues the account of what he does.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A righteous parent’s life guarantees that the child is righteous too.
THE ROOT
פָּרִיץ
pārîṣ
GROWS FROM
פרץ
To break through, burst forth, or make a breach.
“breaker” in this verse is pārîṣ. English “robber” can sound like a category; פָּרִיץ carries the image of someone breaking through a boundary. The same root can name both a breach and an outward break-through, so the verse’s force lies in how this person’s breaking-through harms another.
ALSO GROWS
perets: A breach or opening made by breaking through.
פֶּרֶץ
This noun from the same root makes visible what the “robber” does: breaks a boundary and leaves an opening.
u-faratzta: You shall spread out or break through.
וּפָרַצְתָּ
In Genesis 28:14, the same root describes spreading outward; here its force is turned toward an intrusion that harms.
שֹׁפֵךְ
shōphēkh
GROWS FROM
שפך
To pour out or spill.
“pours out blood” in this verse is shōphēkh. The verb means “pour out”: bloodshed is pictured as something poured out, not as a bloodless label. The same verb can describe pouring out the heart, so its force rests in what is emptied and exposed.
ALSO GROWS
shifkhu: Pour out; used in the phrase “pour out your heart before him.”
שִׁפְכוּ
Psalm 62:8 uses the same verb for opening the heart before God, showing how this root can name an inward pouring out as well as physical spilling.
nishpakhti: I am poured out, as in Psalm 22:14.
נִשְׁפַּכְתִּי
The image of being poured out sharpens the verse’s wording: bloodshed is rendered as a concrete spilling.
THE PATTERN
A person’s conduct is answerable as that person’s own, even within a family line.
The fathers shall not be put to death for the sons, nor the sons for the fathers; each man shall be put to death for his own falling short.But each one shall die in his own crookedness; every man who eats the unripe grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.So then each of us shall give an account of himself to God.THE THREAD
And I sought among them for a man who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, so that I would not ruin it, but I found none.The same root, פרץ, is present in “robber” as a breaker-through and in “gap” as the breach itself. The shared image makes the harm concrete: breaking through leaves a breach that someone must face.
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