What Does Ezekiel 24:26 Mean?
That the one who slips free on that day shall come to you, to make you hear it with your ears?
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
That he that escapeth in that day shall come unto thee, to cause thee to hear it with thine ears?THE KEY
The survivor does not leave the catastrophe behind: the one who escapes carries its report into another’s hearing.
THE MEANING
When you cannot witness an event yourself, the one who gets through can bring it within your hearing. The verse makes knowing bodily and immediate: the report reaches your ears.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the thought that what you did not see cannot reach you as truth; the survivor’s report brings it to your ears.
THE ROOT
פָּלִיט
palit
GROWS FROM
פלט
p-l-ṭ
To slip away, escape, or bring out of danger.
“slips free” in this verse is palit. The Hebrew names the person by the act of escaping: this is a survivor who arrives carrying what happened. The same root can describe deliverance and a deliverer, so escape here becomes the means by which the event reaches someone else.
ALSO GROWS
palit: One who has escaped.
פָּלִיט
This is the word for the person who arrives to make the report heard.
mephalleti: One who brings another out of danger.
מְפַלְטִי
The shared root links the survivor’s escape with the act of bringing someone through.
לְהַשְׁמִיעַ
lehashmi'a
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
To hear, listen, or respond.
“to cause thee to hear” in this verse is lehashmi'a. The phrase says more than that the survivor speaks: he causes hearing. The same root forms a word for a report or news, joining what arrives to what the ears receive.
ALSO GROWS
shemu'ah: Something heard and passed on as a report.
שְׁמוּעָה
The survivor carries news whose arrival makes the event heard.
shomea: A listener or hearer.
שׁוֹמֵעַ
The verse places the hearing in the addressee’s own ears: the report has a receiver.
THE PATTERN
A report crosses the gap between an event and those who did not witness it through someone who arrives to tell.
And there came one who had slipped free, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he settled in the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner; and these were bound to Abram by covenant.And the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away; yea, they struck down the servants by the mouth of the sword, and I alone have slipped away to tell you.And they turned back from the tomb, and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest.THE THREAD
And it came to pass in the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, on the fifth day of the month, that one who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me, saying, The city is struck.Ezekiel 24:26 names the survivor’s arrival; Ezekiel 33:21 uses the same Hebrew word, פָּלִיט (palit), for the one who arrives saying, “The city is smitten.” The shared root joins escape to report: the survivor carries the catastrophe into hearing.
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