What Does Ezekiel 28:21 Mean?
Son of man, set your face against Sidon, and prophesy against her,
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, set thy face against Zidon, and prophesy against it,THE KEY
The message begins before the prophecy: a face is deliberately placed toward Sidon, making confrontation a directed presence.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks as a moment of direct address: a face turns toward Sidon, and a prophetic word is directed upon her. The city is named and faced; the message has a specific object and direction.
THE ROOT
פָּנֶיךָ
panekha
GROWS FROM
פנה
panah
Turn; face toward; direct oneself.
The Hebrew pairs placing the face with turning it toward Sidon. The face carries more than expression: it marks a directed presence, so the address has both a place it faces and a word spoken upon it.
ALSO GROWS
panim: Face; presence.
פָּנִים
The face marks whose presence is turned toward the city.
panah: Turn; turn toward.
פָּנָה
This verbal branch makes the face’s direction a movement toward what is being addressed.
הִנָּבֵא
hinnave
GROWS FROM
נבא
nava
Prophesy; utter a prophetic message.
“prophesy” in this verse is hinnave. The word’s family joins the act of prophesying to the prophet and the prophetic utterance. Here the speech is directed toward a named city and concerns her.
ALSO GROWS
navi: Prophet.
נָבִיא
The prophet and the act of prophesying belong to the same word family.
nevu'ah: Prophecy; prophetic utterance.
נְבוּאָה
The spoken message is the other branch of the same prophetic family.
אָדָם
adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
adam
Human, linked with אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground or soil).
“man” in this verse is adam. The address calls its hearer a human being, a ground-being. Even this direct oracle is framed through embodied human life.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: Ground; soil.
אֲדָמָה
It ties the human addressed by the oracle to the ground and to embodied creatureliness.
adom: Red; ruddy.
אָדֹם
Its shared root carries a concrete, earth-colored resonance within the word for the human.
THE PATTERN
A prophetic word takes shape through a face deliberately directed toward the place it addresses.
Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them,For I have set my face against this city for evil, and not for good, says the LORD. It shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.And it came to pass, when the days of his being taken up were filling full, he firmly set his face to go to Jerusalem.THE THREAD
Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them,Ezekiel 6:2 uses the same face-root, פנה (panah, turn or face toward), in the same face-and-prophesy construction. In both verses, a place is faced and then addressed through prophetic speech.
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