What Does Ezekiel 3:6 Mean?
Not to many peoples deep of lip and heavy of tongue, whose words you cannot hear and understand. Surely, had I sent you to them, they would have heard and responded to you.
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
Not to many people of a strange speech and of an hard language, whose words thou canst not understand. Surely, had I sent thee to them, they would have hearkened unto thee.THE KEY
The people who seem impossible to reach would listen, while familiarity alone cannot make anyone hear.
THE MEANING
The verse holds an unsettling possibility: people whose speech seems impossible to understand may still receive the message, while familiar hearers may refuse it. Difference and distance do not decide whether words are heard; reception reaches deeper than familiarity. The same contrast appears wherever the expected outsider is more open than the person who assumes the message is already familiar.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A person is unreachable just because their language or world is unfamiliar. Familiarity with a message does not guarantee that it is being heard.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁמְעוּ
yishme'u
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen, and receive; when a response is implied, hear and respond.
“hear and understand” in this verse is yishme'u. The Hebrew repeats the root for hearing in the final phrase: “they would hear you.” It points beyond sound reaching an ear to a message being received, so the verse’s surprise is that the apparently distant hearers may respond while familiar hearers may not.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
The familiar call to hear holds listening and response together, as the verse does.
shemu'ah: A report or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch names the message as something received by hearing, echoing the verse’s question of who takes in the words.
שְׁלַחְתִּיךָ
shelachtikha
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
Send, send forth, release, or let go.
“sent” in this verse is shelachtikha. The verb describes movement outward: the messenger is released toward people beyond his familiar reach. The same root carries the sense of letting go, so sending opens a path across the very distance that looks like an obstacle.
ALSO GROWS
Shiloach: Sent; the name associated with the waters of Siloam.
שִׁלֹחַ
The name preserves the root’s sense of what is sent forth, while this verse sends a message toward people expected to be unreachable.
shaliach: A messenger or emissary, one who is sent.
שָׁלִיחַ
The messenger is defined by being sent outward; the verse places the possibility of hearing beyond the sender’s familiar community.
THE PATTERN
A message can find receptive hearers beyond the people expected to receive it.
When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, Truly, I say to you, I have not found such leaning of the full weight, not even in Israel.So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.Let it be known therefore to you that the deliverance of God has been sent to the nations, and they will hear it.THE THREAD
But the house of Israel will not hear and respond to you, for they will not hear and respond to me; for all the house of Israel are hard of forehead and hard of heart.The same root, שמע (shama), links both verses: the distant peoples would hear Ezekiel, while Israel will not hear him or God. The contrast turns on reception, not on how familiar the message sounds.
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