What Does Ezekiel 18:31 Mean?
Send away from you all the rebellions in which you have rebelled, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new breath. For why will you die, house of Israel?
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
Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?THE KEY
The same passage that names rebellion twice gives you verbs for casting it off and making the inner life new.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you as capable of casting away the rebellion you carry and making a new heart and breath within yourself. It asks why you die while naming that inward change as possible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that past rebellion has permanently fixed your nature and made death unavoidable.
THE ROOT
פִּשְׁעֵיכֶם
pisheikhem
GROWS FROM
פשע
pasha
To break away; to rebel.
“rebellions” in this verse is pisheikhem. The verse repeats this root in both the noun translated “transgressions” and the verb translated “transgressed.” English can make them sound like separate items and actions, while the Hebrew binds them as one pattern of rebellion that can be cast away.
ALSO GROWS
pasha: To rebel; to break away.
פָּשַׁע
The verse uses this verb for the repeated act named by the noun “transgressions.”
pesha: Rebellion; a breakaway.
פֶּשַׁע
This noun is the seed of the plural in the verse, framing the things cast away as rebellion.
poshea: A rebel; one who breaks away.
פֹּשֵׁעַ
This branch names the one acting in rebellion, extending the root from deeds to the person caught in the pattern.
חֲדָשָׁה
chadashah
GROWS FROM
חדש
chadash
To be new; to renew.
The same word for “new” modifies both the heart and the breath. Its root also gives Hebrew a verb for renewal and the word for a month, linking newness with recurring freshness rather than a single fixed state.
ALSO GROWS
chadash: New.
חָדָשׁ
This is the masculine form of the adjective used for the heart’s newness.
chiddesh: Renewed; made new.
חִדֵּשׁ
This verb shows the root’s movement from newness to renewal.
chodesh: Month; new moon.
חֹדֶשׁ
The word connects newness with the recurring appearance of the moon at the start of a month.
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
ruach
Breath; moving air or wind; inward life.
“a new breath” in this verse is ruach. The Hebrew word translated “spirit” also means breath and wind. Here a new ruach joins inward life to the breath moving through a living body, a connection English can split into separate ideas.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Breath, wind, or inward spirit.
רוּחַ
This single word carries the bodily and inward dimensions together in the verse.
ruchot: Winds; breaths; spirits.
רוּחוֹת
The plural preserves the same word across the moving air and inward presences English often names separately.
THE PATTERN
Renewal joins the removal of an old inner pattern with the emergence of a new heart and breath.
A new heart I will give you, and a new breath I will set within you. I will take the stone heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steady breath within me.So if anyone is in the Anointed One, he is a new creation. What was old has passed by. Look, all things have become new.THE THREAD
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steady breath within me.The Hebrew root חָדַשׁ (chadash, to be new or renew) appears in Ezekiel’s “new” and the psalm’s “renew.” The two verses show renewal reaching both the heart and the ruach, the breath and inward life within.
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