What Does Ezekiel 34:18 Mean?
Is it a small thing to you to have eaten the good pasture, but you must trample the remnant of your pasture with your feet? And to have drunk of the deep waters, but you must muddy the remnant with your feet?
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
Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet?THE KEY
The harm does not end with taking the good: the feet that receive nourishment also trample and foul what remains.
THE MEANING
You can be fed and refreshed, yet the way you use a shared good can leave what remains unusable for others. The verse keeps your attention on the pasture and water after you have taken from them. What is left still matters.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that taking only what you need means the rest is no longer your concern.
THE ROOT
מִרְעֶה
mir'eh
GROWS FROM
רעה
ra'ah
to graze, feed, or tend a flock
English makes pasture sound like a place and tending like a separate act, but both grow from רעה. The nourishment here carries a relationship of care with it: what feeds the flock is bound up with whether it is tended.
ALSO GROWS
ra'ah: graze, feed, or tend
רָעָה
The action of feeding shares the root of the pasture itself, linking the provision to its use.
ro'eh: shepherd, one who tends the flock
רֹעֶה
The shepherd and the pasture belong to the same word family, tying nourishment to care for those who depend on it.
תִּרְמְסוּ
tirmesu
GROWS FROM
רמס
r-m-s
to tread down or trample
“trample” in this verse is tirmesu. The verse names the feet as agents of the damage: first the surplus is trampled, then what remains is fouled. The language distinguishes receiving the provision from crushing what is left for others.
ALSO GROWS
ramas: to trample or tread down
רָמַס
This verb names what happens to the pasture after the flock has fed.
mirmas: a place trampled underfoot
מִרְמָס
This related noun pictures the lasting condition created when feet keep passing over what remains.
THE PATTERN
Shared provision is cared for by leaving it able to nourish those who come after.
And the LORD God took Adam and set him down in the garden of Eden, to serve it and to guard it.And when you cut the harvest of your land, you shall not finish cutting to the edge of your field, nor gather up what falls from your harvest.Each of you, do not fix your eyes on your own things, but also on the things of others.THE THREAD
I will feed them in a good pasture, and on the high mountains of Israel will be their fold. There they will lie down in a good fold, and in a fat pasture they will feed on the mountains of Israel.“Pasture” and “feed” both grow from רעה (ra’ah), the root of grazing and tending. Read beside verse 18, this reveals the breach: receiving good pasture belongs with preserving the care that lets the flock keep feeding.
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