What Does Ezekiel 36:38 Mean?
As the set-apart flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her appointed feasts, so the emptied cities will be filled with flocks of people, and they will know that I am the LORD.
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
As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the LORD.THE KEY
The city’s return is revealed as a feast-like multitude of people, whose presence makes the LORD known.
THE MEANING
A place you experience as ruined can teem again with people, as Jerusalem does at its feasts. That abundance is visible human life, and through it you recognize the LORD. Knowing here is encounter with what has been restored, not mere information.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a place emptied by ruin has no future: barrenness is not proof that life cannot return.
THE ROOT
יָדַע
yadaʿ
GROWS FROM
י־ד־ע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive through acquaintance.
English “know” can sound like possessing a fact; יָדַע (yadaʿ, to know or perceive) reaches recognition through lived acquaintance. Here, the crowding of emptied cities becomes an encounter through which the LORD is recognized.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: knowledge, understanding
דַּעַת
This related form points to knowledge that takes shape through recognition, not information held at a distance.
maddaʿ: knowledge, understanding
מַדָּע
Its shared root connects knowing the LORD with a recognition that becomes clear through what is experienced.
אָדָם
adam
GROWS FROM
א־ד־ם
ʾ-d-m
Human being; in the creation story’s wordplay, the ground-being linked to soil.
“people” in this verse is adam. The phrase צֹאן אָדָם (tson adam, a flock of human beings) names the multitude as אָדָם (adam, human beings), linked in the creation story to אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground or soil). The returning multitude is earth-born human life inhabiting the ground again.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
The human name shares its root with the ground, fitting the image of cities filled again with embodied inhabitants.
adom: red
אָדֹם
This related word shares the consonants and carries an earthy color association in the Hebrew word-family.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s restorative work turns ruin and scattering into gathered, living abundance.
For your dry ruins and your emptied places, and the land of your tearing down, will even now be too narrow for those who settle there, and those who swallowed you will be far off.The voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who say, Extend your hands to the LORD of hosts, for the LORD is good, for his faithful love reaches to the ages, and the voice of those who bring the offering of extended hands into the house of the LORD. For I will turn back the captives of the land, as at the first, says the LORD.And I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I must lead them also, and they shall hear and respond to my voice, and there shall be one flock, and one shepherd.THE THREAD
And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God, and you shall perceive that I am the LORD your God, who brings you out from under the loads of the Egyptians.The verb יָדַע (yadaʿ, to know or perceive) links this verse with Ezekiel’s “they shall know.” In Exodus, the people know the LORD through being brought out from under burdens; here, a city filled with people makes the LORD known through restored life.
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