What Does Ezekiel 25:7 Mean?
Behold, therefore I will stretch out my hand upon you, and I will give you to the nations to be plundered, and I will cut you off from the people, and I will cause you to perish out of the lands. I will destroy you, and you will perceive that I am the LORD.
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 will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and will deliver thee for a spoil to the heathen; and I will cut thee off from the people, and I will cause thee to perish out of the countries: I will destroy thee; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD.THE KEY
The root behind “cut thee off” also appears in the Hebrew phrase “cut a covenant,” making belonging and severance share one word-family.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks in the terrible register of collective judgment: a people are handed over as plunder, cut off from other peoples, and destroyed. Its ending says that through this encounter with devastation, the LORD becomes known.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the LORD is known only through protection or rescue; here the verse names judgment as a disclosure.
THE ROOT
וְהִכְרַתִּיךָ
wehikhrattikha
GROWS FROM
כרת
To cut, sever, or cut down.
“cut you off” in this verse is wehikhrattikha. The verb translated “cut thee off” is karat, the same verb used in karat berit, “cut a covenant.” That does not make this action a covenant; it shows that the same root can shape belonging or severance, and here the text speaks of removal from the peoples.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: Cut a covenant; make a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb that names severance here can name the making of a bond elsewhere.
keritut: A cutting off; a certificate of divorce or severance.
כְּרִיתוּת
This root also gives a name to formal separation, echoing the verse’s language of removal.
וְיָדַעְתָּ
veyada'ta
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know or perceive.
“perceive” in this verse is veyada'ta. The verse ends with knowing as recognition of the one acting, not as a detached fact. The root family keeps knowing and knowledge together even as the verse places that recognition after devastation.
ALSO GROWS
da'at: Knowledge.
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root ties the verse’s final knowing to the wider word-family of knowledge.
madda: Knowledge or learning.
מַדָּע
The shared root links recognition of the LORD with the broader idea of knowing.
וְהֶאֱבַדְתִּיךָ
wehe'evadtikha
GROWS FROM
אבד
To perish, be lost, or disappear.
“perish” in this verse is wehe'evadtikha. Abad carries the sense of perishing as becoming lost or vanishing. Here that loss is placed “out of the countries,” joining the root’s sense of disappearance to the verse’s geography.
ALSO GROWS
abedah: Loss; a lost thing.
אֲבֵדָה
The branch makes visible the root’s connection between perishing and being lost.
avaddon: Destruction.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This related form carries the root’s movement from loss into destruction.
THE PATTERN
The text presents judgment as a disclosure of the LORD’s agency, bringing recognition of who acts.
And the Egyptians shall perceive that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand upon Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them.And the pierced shall fall in your midst, and you shall perceive that I am the LORD.Who will not stand in awe of you, Lord, and give weight to your name? For you alone are set apart, and all the nations come and bow down before your face, for your judgments are made visible.THE THREAD
And the pierced shall fall in your midst, and you shall perceive that I am the LORD.Both verses close judgment with “ye shall know that I am the LORD.” They use יָדַע (yada), meaning know or perceive, for that recognition. The repeated ending makes devastation a disclosure of the one acting, rather than an event left unexplained.
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