What Does Ezekiel 35:7 Mean?
Thus I will set mount Seir into emptiness and into emptiness, and I will cut off from it the one who crosses over and the one who turns back.
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
Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.THE KEY
One Hebrew root names both Mount Seir’s desolation and the devastation of those who pass through or return.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now in the stark image of a land made so desolate that no one passes through or returns. The devastation reaches the place and the movement through it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that desolation is only an empty-looking landscape: here, the same root joins the place’s ruin to what happens to those within it.
THE ROOT
לְשִׁמְמָה
ləshimmāh
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
sh-m-m
To be devastated or become desolate.
“into emptiness and into emptiness” in this verse is ləshimmāh. The Hebrew first describes the mountain as לְשִׁמְמָה (ləshimmāh), “a desolation,” then repeats the root in the verb the KJV renders “cut off.” The language joins the condition of the place to what happens to those in it: both are engulfed in one devastation.
ALSO GROWS
shemāmāh: Desolation, waste.
שְׁמָמָה
This noun makes the mountain’s desolate state explicit; it comes from the same root repeated in the next clause.
ūshimmamtī: And I will devastate, make desolate.
וּשְׁמַמְתִּי
This is the root’s second appearance in the verse, linking the mountain’s ruin with the removal of its passersby and returners.
עֹבֵר
ʿōvēr
GROWS FROM
עבר
ʿ-b-r
To cross over, pass across, traverse.
“crosses over” in this verse is ʿōvēr. The word carries the motion of crossing through, not simply being present. Its root also appears in עִבְרִי (ʿivrī), “Hebrew,” a term traditionally associated with crossing over.
ALSO GROWS
ʿivrī: Hebrew; traditionally associated with one who crosses over.
עִבְרִי
The shared root gives “passeth” the sense of movement across a boundary or through a place.
maʿavār: Passage, crossing, or crossing place.
מַעֲבָר
This branch makes the route itself visible: the verse removes those who travel through.
וָשָׁב
wāshāv
GROWS FROM
שוב
sh-w-b
To turn back, return, or restore.
“turns back” in this verse is wāshāv. The returner’s word comes from a root of turning back. The verse closes both directions of movement: crossing through and turning back.
ALSO GROWS
shūv: Turn back, return.
שׁוּב
This is the root’s basic motion, made concrete in the person returning to Mount Seir.
teshūvāh: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch shows the returning as a turn or reversal of direction, the very movement the verse says is removed.
THE PATTERN
Judgment becomes visible as a place emptied of inhabitants and the movement that makes it livable.
I will also send the wild beasts among you, which shall strip you of your children, and cut off your cattle, and make you few in number; and your paths shall be emptied.And I will make Jerusalem heaps of stone, and a den of jackals, and I will make the cities of Judah a waste, with none settling in them.Look, your house is left to you, empty.THE THREAD
I will also send the wild beasts among you, which shall strip you of your children, and cut off your cattle, and make you few in number; and your paths shall be emptied.Leviticus describes the high ways as desolate with the same Hebrew root שׁמם (sh-m-m), “be desolate,” that Ezekiel uses for the mountain and again for what is cut off from it. The shared root joins the devastated place to the disappearance of passage through it.
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