What Does Ezekiel 30:14 Mean?
And I will empty Pathros, and set fire in Zoan, and do judgments in No.
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 I will make Pathros desolate, and will set fire in Zoan, and will execute judgments in No.THE KEY
Judgment here is mapped, not abstract: desolation, fire, and verdict fall on three named places.
THE MEANING
Judgment moves through named places: Pathros becomes desolate, Zoan burns, and No receives enacted judgments. The verse keeps its violence visible; no named center is outside its reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief it undoes is that a powerful or familiar place can remain untouched by judgment.
THE ROOT
וַהֲשִׁמֹּתִי
vahashimmoti
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
To be devastated or appalled; in this verb form, to lay waste.
“empty Pathros” in this verse is vahashimmoti. The Hebrew verb וַהֲשִׁמֹּתִי (vahashimmoti, “I will make desolate”) comes from שׁמם (sh-m-m; shamam), whose word family also describes being appalled. The English “desolate” can sound like an empty place; the root holds ruin together with the stunned response it produces.
ALSO GROWS
shamem: To be devastated or stunned.
שָׁמֵם
The same root links the ruined place with the shock its ruin evokes.
shemamah: A desolate or wasted place.
שְׁמָמָה
This noun names the condition Pathros is made to enter.
meshōmēm: A person or force that lays waste.
מְשׁוֹמֵם
This branch keeps the agent of devastation visible in the root family.
מִשְׁפָּטִים
mishpatim
GROWS FROM
שׁפט
To judge, decide a case, or govern by judgment.
The plural מִשְׁפָּטִים (mishpatim, “judgments”) comes from שׁפט (sh-p-t; shaphat, “to judge”). Its word family links the judge with the ruling itself, so what happens in No is presented as an active judicial act, not a nameless disaster.
ALSO GROWS
mishpat: A judgment, decision, or ordinance.
מִשְׁפָּט
This singular form names the ruling contained in the plural judgments enacted in No.
shofet: One who judges or decides a case.
שֹׁפֵט
The related person-word makes the act in the verse more than an impersonal calamity.
THE PATTERN
Judgment reaches named powers and extends to the whole world.
The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, declares, Look, I will visit upon the multitude of No, and the Great House, and Egypt, with her gods and her kings; even the Great House, and all who lean their full weight upon him.And he judges the world in alignment; he pleads the case of the peoples in straightness.Because he has set a day in which he will judge the settled world in alignment, by the man whom he has marked out, giving all people trust through raising him up from among the dead.THE THREAD
Thus will I do judgments in Egypt, and they shall perceive that I am the LORD.This verse repeats מִשְׁפָּטִים (mishpatim, “judgments”) from שׁפט (sh-p-t; shaphat, “to judge”), then names what the judgments make known. It opens the destruction in Pathros, Zoan, and No as part of a movement across Egypt with an explicit recognition at its end.
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