What Does Ezekiel 28:23 Mean?
For I will send into her pestilence, and blood into her streets; and the pierced shall be judged in the midst of her by the sword upon her all around; and they shall know 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
For I will send into her pestilence, and blood into her streets; and the wounded shall be judged in the midst of her by the sword upon her on every side; and they shall know that I am the LORD.THE KEY
The verse’s shalach sends plague and blood into her rechovot, the broad, open spaces the English calls streets.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a whole city inside a public assault: pestilence enters, blood fills the streets, and the sword reaches from every side. In the midst of that violence, the people know the LORD as one whose action is present and impossible to miss.
THE ROOT
וְשִׁלַּחְתִּי
veshillachti
GROWS FROM
שלח
Shalach means to send forth, release, or let go.
“send” in this verse is veshillachti. The verse makes the violence a sending: pestilence is dispatched into the city, and blood into its streets. The same root appears in Shiloach, meaning “sent forth,” and in shilluach, “sending away”; the root holds the act of sending, while what is sent determines its force here.
ALSO GROWS
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of a watercourse.
שִׁלֹחַ
The name is linked to the same root; John 9:7 renders Siloam as “Sent.” Here the sending carries pestilence and blood into the city.
shilluach: Sending away or dismissal.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch shows the root’s range of sending forth or away; in this verse, what is sent enters the streets.
רְחֹבוֹתֶיהָ
rechovoteha
GROWS FROM
רחב
Rachav means to be broad or spacious.
The word translated “streets” comes from a root of breadth: these are the city’s open, public spaces. English gives the location; Hebrew also carries its spaciousness, now filled with blood.
ALSO GROWS
rachav: Broad or wide.
רָחָב
This adjective carries the breadth heard in the word for streets.
merchav: A broad or spacious place.
מֶרְחָב
This noun shares the root and makes the spatial sense of the city’s “streets” audible.
וְיָדְעוּ
veyad'u
GROWS FROM
ידע
Yada means to know or perceive through encounter.
“know” in this verse is veyad'u. The closing line describes recognition that comes through direct encounter, not information at a distance. The city’s violence and the LORD’s presence meet in the same scene.
ALSO GROWS
da'at: Knowledge or understanding.
דַּעַת
This noun shares the root and connects knowing with what is grasped or recognized.
noda': Made known or becoming known.
נוֹדָע
This form brings out the movement from something hidden to something recognized.
THE PATTERN
In these judgments, calamity becomes the scene in which people recognize the LORD.
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.Thus I will make myself great, and set myself apart; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they will perceive that I am the LORD.THE THREAD
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.“Streets” here is rechovot, from rachav, “broad”; Psalm 118:5 uses the related word merchav, “a spacious place.” The shared root links the blood-filled public breadth of this verse with the spacious place in which the psalmist is answered.
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