What Does Ezekiel 22:13 Mean?
Behold, therefore I have struck my hand against your unjust gain, which you have made, and against the blood that has been within you.
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
Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee.THE KEY
The profit is itself a cut: what is taken as gain leaves blood inside the community.
THE MEANING
Where you make gain by taking from others, blood is already in your midst; profit and violence share one reality. The voice of God strikes its hand against both, exposing the harm accumulation holds inside the community.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
I can keep the profit and separate it from the bloodshed that produced it.
THE ROOT
בֶּצַע
betsaʿ
GROWS FROM
בצע
b-ts-ʿ
to cut off, break off; by extension, gain or profit
“unjust gain” in this verse is betsaʿ. English makes gain sound like a possession; Hebrew places it on the same root as cutting off. Here the profit and the blood in the community are not separate wrongs: the gain carries the harm of what was taken.
ALSO GROWS
bātsaʿ: to cut off, break off, or gain
בָּצַע
The verb keeps the image of taking something away inside the word for acquiring.
betsaʿ: gain, profit, or ill-gotten gain
בֶּצַע
This is the noun used for the city’s gain, joining its enrichment to the act of taking.
botseaʿ: one who gains or covets
בֹּצֵעַ
The same root describes the person pursuing gain, connecting the profit to the one who takes it.
הִכֵּיתִי
hikkēti
GROWS FROM
נכה
n-k-h
to strike or smite
“struck my hand” in this verse is hikkēti. The verse makes the response bodily: the speaker strikes his palm against the gain and the blood. The gesture puts both harms in view together, instead of leaving the violence abstract or hidden.
ALSO GROWS
makkāh: a blow, wound, or plague
מַכָּה
The branch names the injury carried by an act of striking, echoing the blood already present in the verse.
mukkēh: struck or wounded
מֻכֶּה
The participle describes one who bears the impact, keeping the focus on the harm behind the city’s gain.
THE PATTERN
Profit taken from others carries harm into the community, where it becomes visible and is heard by God.
They build Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with crookedness.Woe to the one who builds his house out of alignment, and his upper rooms without judgment, who makes his neighbor serve for nothing, and does not give him the wage of his work.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
Woe to the one who cuts out evil gain for his house, to set his nest on high, to be snatched from the palm of evil!Habakkuk uses the same root, בצע, for covetous gain, linking the passages through the word itself. There, as here, gain is accumulated into a house meant to offer security, while the harm of taking remains bound to it.
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