What Does Ezekiel 21:14 Mean?
And you, son of man, prophesy, and strike palm against palm, and let the sword fold a third time, the sword of the pierced. It is the sword of the great ones who are pierced, which enters their inner rooms.
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
Thou therefore, son of man, prophesy, and smite thine hands together, and let the sword be doubled the third time, the sword of the slain: it is the sword of the great men that are slain, which entereth into their privy chambers.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb translated “entereth” shares its root with a word for an inner chamber, joining the sword’s penetration to the private place it breaches.
THE MEANING
This verse confronts you with violence that multiplies and reaches into the private rooms of the powerful. The repeated sword and slain ones keep the image stark: rank and privacy offer no shelter from the killing it names.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that status and privacy can keep violence outside the doors of the powerful.
THE ROOT
הַחֹדֶרֶת
ha-ḥōderet
GROWS FROM
חדר
ḥ-d-r
To penetrate or enter; a related noun means an inner chamber.
“inner rooms” in this verse is ha-ḥōderet. The KJV pictures the sword entering private chambers. The Hebrew verb behind “entereth” comes from חדר, the same root that forms חֶדֶר, “inner chamber,” tying the act of penetration to the hidden place it reaches.
ALSO GROWS
ḥādar: To penetrate or enter
חָדַר
This verb carries the action expressed by the sword’s penetrating reach.
ḥeder: An inner room or chamber
חֶדֶר
This chamber noun shares the root, linking the penetration to the private interior.
חֶרֶב
ḥerev
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
To dry up, become desolate, or lay waste.
The repeated sword carries the root’s desolating force: the image is not only of a blade striking bodies, but of devastation. That added shade sharpens the verse without softening its killing.
ALSO GROWS
ḥārēv: Dry or desolate
חָרֵב
This form reveals the desolation carried by the sword’s root.
ḥorvot: Ruins or desolations
חָרְבוֹת
The same root extends the sword’s force from slain bodies to a ruined place.
חֲלָלִים
ḥalalim ḥalal
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To pierce or wound; a pierced or slain person.
The Hebrew word rendered “slain” carries the sense of being pierced or wounded. Its repetition keeps the verse’s focus on bodies marked by the sword, a detail the English word can leave in the background.
ALSO GROWS
ḥalal: A wounded or slain person
חָלָל
This is the singular form behind the verse’s repeated language of the slain.
meḥolal: Pierced or wounded
מְחֹלָל
This related form makes visible the wound contained in the word translated “slain.”
THE PATTERN
When a force is pictured as penetrating, neither private space nor the hidden interior places it beyond reach.
For death has climbed up into our windows, and entered our strongholds, to cut off the children from outside, and the young men from the streets.Though they dig into the grave, from there my hand will take them. Though they climb up into the heavens, from there I will bring them down.For the word of God is living and working, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching through even to the dividing of living soul and breath, of joints and marrow, and it separates the inward movements and thoughts of the heart.THE THREAD
Cry and howl, son of man, for it shall be upon my people, it shall be upon all the lifted ones of Israel. Terror by reason of the sword shall be upon my people. Strike therefore upon your thigh.The same Hebrew word חֶרֶב (ḥerev, sword) appears here and in verse 14. This verse names the people and princes in its reach; verse 14 shows that reach entering their private rooms.
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