What Does Ezekiel 28:24 Mean?
And no more shall there be a pricking brier to the house of Israel, nor a thorn that pains, from all who are around them and despise them; and they shall know that I am the Lord GOD.
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
And there shall be no more a pricking brier unto the house of Israel, nor any grieving thorn of all that are round about them, that despised them; and they shall know that I am the Lord GOD.THE KEY
The verse ties knowing the LORD to the disappearance of what keeps wounding Israel.
THE MEANING
This promise speaks into the reader’s present: the contemptuous pressure around Israel is not granted permanence. The verse pictures its pain-producing presence gone, and the LORD known through that changed reality. Knowing here is lived recognition, not a bare fact.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a people’s hostile surroundings are permanent or that contempt has the final word. The thorn’s promised end opens the way to recognition of the LORD.
THE ROOT
מַכְאִב
mak'iv
GROWS FROM
כאב
k-ʾ-b
To hurt, cause pain, or be in pain.
“grieving” in this verse is mak'iv. The thorn is described not only by its shape but by what it does: it makes pain. The same root names pain as ke’ev and mak’ov, so the threat around Israel is portrayed as an ongoing hurt; when that painful presence is gone, the verse links relief with knowing the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
ke'ev: Pain or ache.
כְּאֵב
This names the hurt itself, sharing the thorn’s root of pain.
mak'ov: Pain or sorrow.
מַכְאוֹב
This branch shows the root can name pain that is felt as sorrow as well as bodily hurt.
יָדְעוּ
yad'u
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know or perceive through encounter.
English “know” can sound like possessing a fact, while yada carries the sense of knowing through lived encounter. The verse places recognition of the LORD in the reality that follows the thorn’s removal, making this knowing more than an idea.
ALSO GROWS
da'at: Knowledge or understanding.
דַּעַת
This noun shows the root can name knowledge as something held and understood.
yodea: Knowing; one who knows.
יוֹדֵעַ
This form keeps the root’s knowing active, illuminating the verse’s recognition as lived perception.
THE PATTERN
Scripture portrays wholeness as the ending of what wounds and surrounds a people.
In alignment you will be set firm. You will be far from the squeeze, for you will not fear, and far from shattering, for it will not draw near you.He mends the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.And God wipes away every tear from their eyes, and there is no more death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the first things have gone away.THE THREAD
Why has my pain become unending, and my wound past mending, refusing to be healed? Will you be to me like a lie, like waters that do not hold?Ezekiel calls the thorn מַכְאִב (mak’iv, pain-making), from כאב (k-ʾ-b); Jeremiah names pain כְּאֵבִי (ke’ev-i, my pain), from the same root. The shared seed places Ezekiel’s surrounding thorn beside the voice that experiences hurt as unending, so the promise meets pain at its own name.
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