What Does Ezekiel 4:11 Mean?
And water by measure, a sixth of a hin, you shall drink from time to time.
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
Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink.THE KEY
Here even water arrives by measure: survival continues, but every drink bears the mark of constriction.
THE MEANING
The verse names how constriction reaches even the simplest need: water is portioned, and drinking happens only from time to time. What sustains life becomes a schedule of survival.
THE ROOT
תִּשְׁתֶּה
tishteh
GROWS FROM
שתה
sh-t-h
to drink
“drink” in this verse is tishteh. The verb repeats, placing drinking under the same measured limit: a small portion, then an interval. Its branch מִשְׁתֶּה names a drinking feast, so the same root can hold abundance and rationed necessity; here the feast-like possibility has narrowed to survival.
ALSO GROWS
shatah: to drink
שָׁתָה
This verb form shares the root of the repeated drinking in the verse.
mishteh: a drinking feast or banquet
מִשְׁתֶּה
The branch carries an image of shared abundance, sharpening the contrast with water given by measure.
THE PATTERN
Constricted life makes basic nourishment scarce; wholeness is pictured as hunger and thirst ending.
And he said to me, Son of man, look, I am breaking the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and drink water by measure, stunned.And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall turn your bread back to you by weight. You shall eat, and not be filled.They do not hunger any longer, nor thirst any longer; nor does the sun fall upon them, nor any burning heat.THE THREAD
And he said to me, Son of man, look, I am breaking the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and drink water by measure, stunned.The phrase “water by measure” repeats, and this verse places it alongside bread by weight and the breaking of bread’s staff. The small water portion is part of a whole life narrowed to counted sustenance.
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