What Does Ezekiel 23:35 Mean?
Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD. Because you have forgotten me, and thrown me behind your back, therefore bear your lewdness and your harlotries.
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
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast forgotten me, and cast me behind thy back, therefore bear thou also thy lewdness and thy whoredoms.THE KEY
What you cast behind your back does not vanish; it becomes what you must carry.
THE MEANING
When you forget the LORD and cast him behind your back, you bear your own lewdness and whoredoms. The verse names the burden plainly and leaves it with the one who carries it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what you throw out of sight ceases to belong to you; the verse says you still bear what you have done.
THE ROOT
שְׂאִי
seʾi from nasaʾ
GROWS FROM
נשא
Lift, carry, bear.
Here “bear” is not just endure: it is taking something up and carrying it. After you cast the LORD behind your back, the thing you must carry is your own lewdness and whoredoms.
ALSO GROWS
massaʾ: A burden or load.
מַשָּׂא
A burden is what is taken up and carried, giving physical weight to the verse’s demand to bear.
nasaʾ ʿavon: Bear crookedness or guilt.
נָשָׂא עָוֹן
Leviticus 16:22 uses this same verb for bearing the people’s crookedness, showing how the root links carrying with responsibility for a burden.
וַתַּשְׁלִיכִי
vatashlikhi
GROWS FROM
שלך
Throw, cast, or hurl.
“thrown” in this verse is vatashlikhi. The Hebrew gives forgetting a bodily direction: the LORD is cast behind the speaker’s back. What is pushed out of sight is still present in the sentence, followed by what the speaker must carry.
ALSO GROWS
hishlikh: He cast or threw.
הִשְׁלִיךְ
This form shows the root’s force as a deliberate act of throwing away, like the action named here.
mushlakh: Cast out or thrown down.
מֻשְׁלָךְ
This form describes what has been thrown; the verse pairs the act of casting the LORD away with the burden that remains.
שְׁכַחְתְּנִי
shakhaḥtani
GROWS FROM
שכח
Forget or cease to remember.
“forgotten” in this verse is shakhaḥtani. The verse places forgetting beside a concrete act: casting the LORD behind the back. Together, the words make forgetting more than a lapse of memory; it is expressed as turning away, with a consequence that remains.
ALSO GROWS
shakhaḥ: Forget or cease to remember.
שָׁכַח
This is the root’s basic action, made explicit in the verse’s charge.
yishakhaḥ: Be forgotten.
יִשָּׁכַח
This form shifts the root from the one who forgets to the one left unremembered, showing the relational weight of forgetting.
hishkiaḥ: Cause to forget.
הִשְׁכִּיחַ
This form shows the root can describe forgetting as something brought about, rather than only something that happens passively.
THE PATTERN
What is pushed out of sight is not thereby removed; it returns as a burden or consequence.
But if you will not do so, look, you have missed the mark against the LORD, and know that your falling short will find you.His toil turns back upon his head, and his violence comes down upon his skull.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
The goat carries upon himself all their crookedness into a cut-off land, and he sends the goat away into the wilderness.Both verses use נשא (nasaʾ), “bear” or “carry.” Ezekiel places the burden on the one who cast the LORD behind her back; Leviticus pictures a goat carrying the people’s iniquities away, then being sent into the wilderness.
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