What Does Ezekiel 20:32 Mean?
And what comes up upon your breath shall not be at all, when you say, We will be as the nations, as the clans of the lands, to serve wood and stone.
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 that which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone.THE KEY
The thought rising on your ruach, your breath, rendered “mind” here, is a wish to become like the nations, and the verse says this will not be.
THE MEANING
The wish rising within your breath, to become like the surrounding peoples and serve wood and stone, does not become your reality. The verse names a desire for likeness through allegiance, then says that imagined future will not stand.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that you can become like others by adopting what they serve.
THE ROOT
רוּחֲכֶם
ruachkem
GROWS FROM
ר־ו־ח
r-w-ḥ
Wind or breath; in this phrase, “your ruach” means your mind or inner disposition.
KJV renders this occurrence “mind,” but Hebrew uses the same word, ruach, for wind and breath. The wish is pictured rising upon the living breath itself, not as a thought cut off from the person.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: wind
רוּחַ
The same Hebrew word can name wind, so the thought here carries the image of something moving within you.
ruach: breath
רוּחַ
This is the project’s established sense of ruach; here the wish rises upon “your breath.”
ruach: spirit or inner disposition
רוּחַ
This sense helps explain why the KJV renders the word “mind” in this phrase.
הָעֹלָה
ha-‘olah
GROWS FROM
ע־ל־ה
ʿ-l-h
To rise, ascend, or go up.
“comes up” in this verse is ha-‘olah. The Hebrew phrase calls it “the thing rising” upon your ruach. This root of ascent pictures the wish as an impulse coming up within you, then the verse says it will not come to be.
ALSO GROWS
ʿalah: to rise or go up
עָלָה
This verb gives the phrase its image of a thought rising within you.
ʿolah: a burnt offering, literally something that goes up
עֹלָה
The related word carries the same rising image; here what rises is a wish rather than an offering.
THE PATTERN
What you serve shapes the likeness you take.
Those who make them are like them, everyone who leans on them.They rejected his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his witnesses that he bore witness against them. They walked after vapor and became vapor, and walked after the nations all around them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them that they should not do as they did.who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and bowed down and served the creation beside the one who created, who is praised for the ages. Amen.THE THREAD
Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live.The same Hebrew word רוּחַ (ruach), meaning breath, appears as “mind” in this verse and “breath” in Ezekiel 37:5. Here a wish rises upon ruach; there ruach enters the bones and they live, setting the breath that gives life against service directed toward lifeless wood and stone.
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