What Does Ezekiel 20:4 Mean?
Will you judge them, son of man? Will you judge them? Cause them to perceive the sickening things of their fathers.
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
Wilt thou judge them, son of man, wilt thou judge them? cause them to know the abominations of their fathers:THE KEY
The repeated call to judge resolves into “cause them to know”: here, judgment exposes what has been inherited.
THE MEANING
The passage speaks now as inherited patterns come into conscious recognition: what was handed down is named in its concrete shape. Judgment brings the fathers’ abominations into view instead of leaving them blurred as family inheritance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that inherited wrongdoing is too old or distant to be named and recognized in the present.
THE ROOT
הוֹדִיעֵם
hodi'em
GROWS FROM
ידע
to know, recognize, perceive by encounter
“perceive” in this verse is hodi'em. The verb is causative: the charge is to bring them into knowing, not merely to pronounce a verdict. English can make this sound like passing on information, but yada carries recognition through encounter.
ALSO GROWS
yada: know, recognize
יָדַע
It carries the root sense of knowing through direct recognition, the work the command calls for.
da'at: knowledge, perception
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root shows that the verse moves wrongdoing from obscurity into something recognized.
הֲתִשְׁפֹּט
ha-tishpot
GROWS FROM
שפט
to judge, govern, adjudicate
The word appears twice, then the verse directs judgment toward making the abominations known. Its branches connect a judge with the ordering judgment brings, so the verse presents exposure as part of judgment’s work.
ALSO GROWS
mishpat: judgment, justice
מִשְׁפָּט
This branch names the ordering judgment brings to what has been concealed or left unexamined.
shofet: judge
שֹׁפֵט
The judge is the one who brings a matter into judgment, echoing the verse’s repeated charge.
תּוֹעֲבוֹת
to'evot
GROWS FROM
תעב
to abhor, regard as repugnant
“sickening things” in this verse is to'evot. The root carries a sense of revulsion beneath the formal English word “abominations.” The verse asks that this repellent inheritance be brought into recognition, not left as an unnamed past.
ALSO GROWS
to'evah: abomination, something abhorrent
תּוֹעֵבָה
This singular form shows the same root beneath the verse’s plural “abominations.”
to'ev: detestable, loathsome
תּוֹעֵב
This related form makes the root’s quality of repugnance explicit.
THE PATTERN
Judgment brings concealed wrongdoing into recognition by exposing it to view.
You set our crookedness before you, our hidden things into the light of your face.For there is nothing covered that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not be known.Therefore by the works of the instruction no flesh will be aligned before his face, for through the instruction comes the full knowing of falling short.THE THREAD
Son of man, make Jerusalem perceive her recoiling things.This repeats the same Hebrew roots: יָדַע (yada, know) and תּוֹעֵבָה (to’evah, abomination). It shows that making the abominations known is itself the work the verse names as judgment.
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