What Does Ezekiel 21:3 Mean?
And say to the ground of Israel, "Thus says the LORD. Behold, I am against you, and I will bring my sword out from its sheath, and I will cut off from you the aligned and the wicked."
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 say to the land of Israel, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I am against thee, and will draw forth my sword out of his sheath, and will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked.THE KEY
The sword crosses the moral divide: the aligned and the wicked are both within its reach.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of violence against the land that reaches both the righteous and the wicked. Moral standing does not place someone beyond the sword’s cut when it falls across the whole land.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being righteous guarantees bodily safety when judgment reaches a whole land.
THE ROOT
וְהִכְרַתִּי
vehikhratti
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
to cut, sever, or cut off
“cut off” in this verse is vehikhratti. The same Hebrew verb used here for cutting people off also appears in the phrase for cutting a covenant. The shared root lets severance and covenant-making echo one another without making them the same act.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: to cut a covenant
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb describes a covenant being made, bringing a striking echo to this verse’s cut from the land.
karet: being cut off; excision
כָּרֵת
This related form makes the root’s severing sense explicit, as the verse does to the people named here.
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צדק
ts-d-q
alignment; being right or just
The word describes someone aligned with what is right, yet the verse places this person within the sword’s reach alongside the wicked. The contrast remains real, but it does not guarantee safety from this collective violence.
ALSO GROWS
tzedek: alignment; justice
צֶדֶק
This branch names the quality that the word “righteous” carries into the verse.
tzedakah: justice expressed in action; almsgiving
צְדָקָה
It shows alignment as something that can take visible, material form, even though alignment does not exempt a person from the sword described here.
חַרְבִּי
charbi
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
to become desolate or lay waste
The consonants in the word for sword also appear in Hebrew words for ruin and desolation. The weapon’s name carries an echo of the devastation it brings to the land.
ALSO GROWS
charav: to become desolate; to be laid waste
חָרַב
This verb gives the sword’s destructive reach a landscape-wide resonance.
chorbah: ruin; desolation
חָרְבָּה
This noun names the devastation that echoes in the sword’s consonants.
THE PATTERN
A condition that reaches a whole community can cross the boundary between the righteous and the wicked.
All things come alike to all. There is one meeting for the aligned and for the wicked, for the good and for the clean and for the stained, for the one who slaughters and for the one who does not slaughter. As the good is, so is the one who misses the mark. The one who swears is like the one who fears an oath.Or those eighteen, on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think they were more in debt than all the people who sit in Jerusalem?So that you may become children of your Father in the heavens, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the aligned and on the crooked.THE THREAD
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.The Hebrew verb behind “made a covenant” is כָּרַת (karat), “to cut,” the same root translated “cut off” here. Genesis also names the land, so the shared root makes covenant and severance resonate around the same ground.
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