What Does Ezekiel 21:6 Mean?
Groan therefore, son of man, with the breaking of your loins, and with groaning in bitterness before their eyes.
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
Sigh therefore, thou son of man, with the breaking of thy loins; and with bitterness sigh before their eyes.THE KEY
Here, a sigh is not a small sound that conceals pain; it is the body’s public language for a breaking too deep for composure.
THE MEANING
Your grief is not reduced to a private thought here: it moves through your body and becomes audible before others. The repeated sigh carries the ache of rupture, while bitterness gives that sound its sharp edge. This verse names suffering without making it tidy.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that grief must stay composed and private to be real dissolves here: the verse places its bitter sound and bodily rupture in full view.
THE ROOT
הֵאָנַח
heʾānēaḥ
GROWS FROM
אנח
ʾ-n-ḥ
To sigh or groan.
“groan” in this verse is heʾānēaḥ. The Hebrew repeats this root in הֵאָנַח (heʾānēaḥ, “sigh”) and תֵּאָנַח (tēʾānēaḥ, “you will sigh”), giving the grief a sound that returns, not a single composed breath. The same root appears in וַיֵּאָנְחוּ (wayyēʾānḥû, “they groaned”) in Exodus 2:23, where groaning voices distress under a burden.
ALSO GROWS
wayyēʾānḥû: They groaned or sighed.
וַיֵּאָנְחוּ
Exodus 2:23 uses the same root for distress made audible, giving Ezekiel’s sigh the weight of a groan.
ʾănāḥâ: Sighing or groaning.
אֲנָחָה
This noun in Psalm 31:10 carries the same voiced grief as Ezekiel’s repeated verb.
שִׁבְרוֹן
shivrōn
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break or shatter.
“the breaking of your loins” in this verse is shivrōn. The word for “breaking” shares its root with words for a break or fracture. That shared seed gives the “breaking of thy loins” the force of bodily rupture, rather than a merely decorative way to describe sadness.
ALSO GROWS
shāvar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
The verb makes explicit the action carried in the “breaking” of the verse.
shever: A break, fracture, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This related noun shows how the root can name the rupture itself, deepening the bodily image.
THE PATTERN
Deep grief and longing become audible through bodily groaning rather than remaining abstract.
For my life runs out with grief, and my years in groaning; my strength stumbles in my crookedness, and my bones waste away.When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping with her, he snorted in his breath and was stirred within himself.And not only the creation, but we ourselves also, who hold the firstfruits of the breath, groan within ourselves, waiting for our placing as sons, the release of our body.THE THREAD
For my life runs out with grief, and my years in groaning; my strength stumbles in my crookedness, and my bones waste away.The word translated “sighing” is אֲנָחָה (ʾănāḥâ, “sighing or groaning”), from the same root אנח (ʾ-n-ḥ, “to sigh or groan”) as Ezekiel’s repeated command. The shared root lets you hear the same sound in both verses: grief voiced and felt in the body.
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