What Does Ezekiel 37:18 Mean?
And when the children of your people speak to you, saying, Will you not declare to us what these mean 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
And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?THE KEY
The Hebrew asks what these signs are “to you,” making their meaning a matter of relation as well as interpretation.
THE MEANING
The question reaches you when a sign calls for interpretation: what are these things to you? Their meaning is disclosed in the relation they bear to your life, beyond simply naming what you see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Meaning is only a detached fact, unrelated to the person receiving the sign.
THE ROOT
תַּגִּיד
taggid
GROWS FROM
נגד
To stand out or be made known; in this form, to tell or declare.
“declare” in this verse is taggid. The verb asks you to bring the sign’s significance into the open. Its root also gives words for telling and for a leader who stands before others, linking disclosure with what becomes visible and speakable.
ALSO GROWS
haggadah: A telling or narrative.
הַגָּדָה
The sign’s meaning becomes a story that can be spoken and shared.
nagid: A leader or ruler; one who stands before others.
נָגִיד
This branch echoes the root’s sense of what stands out in view, illuminating the request to make the signs’ significance clear.
THE PATTERN
A sign becomes shared teaching when someone asks what it means and its significance is made known.
And it shall be when your son asks you in time to come, saying, What is this? Then you shall say to him, By a strong hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I beg you, of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself, or of some other man?THE THREAD
Look, the former things have come, and I declare new things. Before they sprout, I make you hear them.“I declare” in Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root, נגד, as “shew” here: both bring something into the open through telling. Ezekiel’s question asks for the meaning of a sign already present; Isaiah speaks of what is declared before it springs forth.
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