What Does Ezekiel 22:10 Mean?
In you they have uncovered their fathers' nakedness. In you they have bent low her who is put apart.
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
In thee have they discovered their fathers’ nakedness: in thee have they humbled her that was set apart for pollution.THE KEY
The verse names a city where family boundaries are crossed and vulnerable bodies are violated.
THE MEANING
The city holds two breaches: a father’s nakedness is uncovered, and a woman in menstrual separation is sexually violated. The verse makes the community itself the scene of these acts, exposing the harm carried within it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that sexual violation is private and leaves a community untouched.
THE ROOT
גִּלּוּ
gillû
GROWS FROM
גלה
Uncover, expose, reveal.
“uncovered” in this verse is gillû. גִּלּוּ is a form of גלה, the verb for uncovering or revealing. Here the root gives “discovered” the force of exposing nakedness: what should have been protected is made bare.
ALSO GROWS
niglah: Be revealed, come into view.
נִגְלָה
This form shares the ג־ל־ה root and shows the other side of exposure: what was hidden becomes visible.
hitgallah: Reveal oneself, appear.
הִתְגַּלָּה
This form also carries the same root consonants; the verse’s uncovering turns a concealed violation into something exposed.
THE PATTERN
When a community crosses bodily and familial boundaries, the violation is named as a public breach.
Do not uncover the nakedness of your father, or your mother's. She is your mother. Do not uncover her nakedness.But he would not hear and respond to her voice, and, gripping her harder than she, bent her low, and lay with her.It is heard commonly that there is the trade of bodies among you, and such trade as is not even named among the nations, that one should hold his father's wife.THE THREAD
Do not uncover the nakedness of your father, or your mother's. She is your mother. Do not uncover her nakedness.Leviticus uses the same Hebrew root, גלה, for uncovering a parent’s nakedness. Ezekiel uses it for the violation already taking place inside the city: the boundary named there is breached here.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us