What Does Ezekiel 4:7 Mean?
Therefore you shall fix your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, your arm bared, and you shall prophesy against it.
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
Therefore thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm shall be uncovered, and thou shalt prophesy against it.THE KEY
The arm is bared toward Jerusalem under siege, exposing power precisely where Yerushalayim (יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, Yerushalayim, carrying the meaning of “wholeness”) is constricted.
THE MEANING
The face turns toward Jerusalem’s siege, the arm is exposed, and prophecy follows: the pressure is named openly. Yerushalayim (יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, Yerushalayim, “wholeness”) stands inside constriction here, and the verse holds both realities together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A name of wholeness means its bearer cannot be under siege.
THE ROOT
חֲשׂוּפָה
ḥăśûp̄āh
GROWS FROM
חָשַׂף
ḥ-ś-p̄
To uncover, strip bare, expose.
“bared” in this verse is ḥăśûp̄āh. The arm’s exposure is not incidental: its word comes from the same root Isaiah uses when the LORD “hath made bare” his arm. The shared root lets Ezekiel’s sign and Isaiah’s public unveiling speak through one image, power becomes visible by uncovering.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāśaph: To uncover or make bare.
חָשַׂף
This is the verb behind the exposed arm, and the same root appears in Isaiah 52:10’s “made bare” arm.
ḥāsûph: Bare, exposed.
חָשׂוּף
This form names the condition expressed by the feminine חֲשׂוּפָה applied to the arm: it is uncovered.
נִבֵּאתָ
nibbeʾtā
GROWS FROM
נבא
n-b-ʾ
To prophesy, speak as a prophet.
“prophesy” in this verse is nibbeʾtā. The verb belongs to the same word family as “prophet” and “prophecy.” The scene joins body and speech: the face turns, the arm is uncovered, and the prophetic word follows.
ALSO GROWS
navi: Prophet.
נָבִיא
The person who prophesies shares the verb’s root, joining the speaker to the act.
nevuah: Prophecy.
נְבוּאָה
The utterance itself grows from the same root as the action commanded here.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes the arm visible when power is being disclosed.
The LORD has bared his set-apart arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the edges of the earth shall see the deliverance of our God.Who has leaned their weight on what we have heard, and upon whom has the arm of the LORD been uncovered?He has worked strength with his arm, and scattered those lifted high in the thinking of their hearts.THE THREAD
The LORD has bared his set-apart arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the edges of the earth shall see the deliverance of our God.Isaiah uses the same חָשַׂף root with זרוע, “arm”: the LORD “hath made bare his holy arm.” That shared pairing makes the exposed arm a sign of power made visible, while Ezekiel’s verse keeps its focus on Jerusalem’s siege.
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