What Does Ezekiel 28:12 Mean?
Son of man, lift up a lament over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord GOD, You seal the pattern, full of wisdom, and crowned with shining.
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
Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.THE KEY
The word behind “sum” carries the idea of a measured design, so perfection here has proportion and a finished form.
THE MEANING
The image meets you now as a picture of wholeness: wisdom fills a form, beauty marks it, and measured design gives it proportion. Fullness takes shape as something complete and particular.
THE ROOT
תָּכְנִית
tokhnit
GROWS FROM
תכן
To measure, weigh, or reckon; in this form, a measured pattern or design.
The Hebrew form תָּכְנִית (tokhnit) means a measured pattern or design. Its root also appears when the LORD “weigheth” a person’s inner life, so this verse’s fullness carries the sense of proportion and reckoning.
ALSO GROWS
weigh: Measures or weighs; the same root תכן (takan) appears in Proverbs 16:2.
תֹּכֵן
The shared root connects this verse’s measured design with the weighing of what is within a person.
quota: A measured amount or required quota, as in the “tale of bricks” in Exodus 5:18.
תֹּכֶן
This branch shows the root naming a defined measure, giving “sum” the sense of a whole held in proportion.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom gives fullness a measured form, and that form makes its wholeness visible.
All the ways of a person are clean in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the breaths.How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you make them all; the earth is full of your possessions.For we are his making, created in the Anointed One, Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that in them we might walk.THE THREAD
All the ways of a person are clean in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the breaths.The Hebrew word תָּכְנִית (tokhnit), “measured pattern,” and תֹּכֵן (tokhen), “weigheth,” grow from the root תכן (takan), “to measure or weigh.” That shared root opens Ezekiel’s image of completeness as a formed whole whose measure is known.
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