What Does Ezekiel 18:18 Mean?
As for his father, because he pressed down cruelly, tore away plunder from his brother, and did what is not good among his people, behold, he shall die in his crookedness.
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
As for his father, because he cruelly oppressed, spoiled his brother by violence, and did that which is not good among his people, lo, even he shall die in his iniquity.THE KEY
The Hebrew says he “robbed a robbery”: violence is not incidental to the taking; it is the taking.
THE MEANING
His father takes from his own brother, does what is not good among his people, and dies in his own crookedness. Kinship does not turn exploitation into care, and the wrongdoing remains his own.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that closeness or power makes exploitation permissible: taking from a brother is still harm, and the one who does it answers for his own crookedness.
THE ROOT
גָזַל
gāzal
GROWS FROM
גזל
To rob, seize, or take by force.
“tore away plunder” in this verse is gāzal. The Hebrew pairs גָזַל (gāzal, rob) with גֵּזֶל (gēzel, robbery), repeating the same root. English spreads that echo across “spoiled ... by violence,” while Hebrew keeps the act and the robbery bound together.
ALSO GROWS
gēzel: The robbery itself.
גֵּזֶל
This cognate noun follows the verb in the Hebrew line, making the taking itself visible as robbery.
gĕzēlāh: Goods or property taken by force.
גְּזֵלָה
The branch keeps the concrete loss inside the same root as the act that caused it.
עָשַׁק
ʿāšaq
GROWS FROM
עשק
To press upon, exploit, or defraud.
“pressed down cruelly” in this verse is ʿāšaq. The Hebrew echoes עָשַׁק עֹשֶׁק (ʿāšaq ʿōšeq), literally “oppressed oppression.” The repeated root keeps exploitation itself in view, where English describes it as “cruelly oppressed.”
ALSO GROWS
ʿōšeq: Oppression or extortion itself.
עֹשֶׁק
This noun repeats the root of the verb in the verse, binding the father’s act to the harm it names.
ʿāšûq: A person bearing the pressure or loss caused by oppression.
עָשׁוּק
The root can name the one doing the exploiting and the person bearing its cost.
THE PATTERN
When one person’s gain is built by coercively taking from another, the harm remains visible and the taker is answerable.
They covet fields and tear them away, and houses, and carry them off. So they press a man and his house, even a man and his inheritance.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
You shall not press a hired hand who is bowed down and needy, whether he is of your brothers or of your sojourners who are in your land within your gates.The same root, עָשַׁק (ʿāšaq, oppress or defraud), names the father’s act here and the act forbidden there. Ezekiel names a brother as the one harmed; Deuteronomy makes clear that the same oppression reaches a worker, whether kin or stranger.
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