What Does Ezekiel 18:5 Mean?
But if a man is aligned, and does judgment and alignment,
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
But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right,THE KEY
Here, being just and doing what is right grow from the same root: alignment takes shape in action.
THE MEANING
Your alignment is not an abstract label here; it takes shape in how you act. The verse holds being just together with doing what is just and right, making that quality visible in lived conduct.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A person is just simply by claiming the right status, apart from how they act.
THE ROOT
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צ־ד־ק
ts-d-q
To be right or just; alignment.
“aligned” in this verse is tsaddiq. The verse’s word for a just person shares its root with the word translated “right.” The language ties the person’s quality to the rightness they enact.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness.
צֶדֶק
It names the rightness that underlies being called just.
tsedaqah: Righteousness, right action.
צְדָקָה
It is the same root family as “just” and is the word translated “right” in this verse.
מִשְׁפָּט
mishpat
GROWS FROM
ש־פ־ט
sh-p-t
To judge or govern; to set matters in order through judgment.
“judgment and alignment” in this verse is mishpat. The word translated “lawful” carries the sense of judgment and right ordering. Beside the shared just/right root, it makes alignment concrete in how matters are judged and handled.
ALSO GROWS
shaphat: To judge or govern.
שָׁפַט
It shows that mishpat belongs to the work of discerning and ordering what is right.
shofet: A judge.
שֹׁפֵט
The person who judges gives mishpat its active, practical dimension.
THE PATTERN
Alignment takes visible form in enacted justice and right ordering.
Flourishing are those who guard rulings, and those who make alignment at all times.Doing alignment and judgment is more chosen by the LORD than the slain offering.So also trust, if it has no works, is dead, by itself.THE THREAD
Doing alignment and judgment is more chosen by the LORD than the slain offering.Proverbs 21:3 uses the same Hebrew pair, צְדָקָה (tsedaqah, rightness) and מִשְׁפָּט (mishpat, judgment), and binds them to doing. It opens Ezekiel’s phrase further: being just is joined to right action and the ordering of what is just.
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