What Does Ezekiel 40:38 Mean?
And the chambers and their openings were beside the posts of the gates, where they washed the ascending offering.
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 the chambers and the entries thereof were by the posts of the gates, where they washed the burnt offering.THE KEY
The burnt offering is an ascent offering, and the gate is where it is washed before it rises.
THE MEANING
The verse places the washing at the gate: what rises is washed before it enters the fire. עֹלָה (ʿolah, ascending offering) keeps ascent inside the offering’s name. The image holds cleansing at the threshold where ascent begins.
THE ROOT
עֹלָה
ʿolah
GROWS FROM
עלה
ʿ-l-h
Go up, ascend.
“ascending offering” in this verse is ʿolah. The offering’s name carries the motion: it is an offering that rises. English names the ritual form, while the Hebrew root also places washing before an ascent.
ALSO GROWS
ʿālāh: Go up, ascend.
עָלָה
This verb supplies the motion held in the offering’s name.
maʿălāh: An ascent, step, or degree.
מַעֲלָה
The same root can name a path upward, making the offering’s ascent part of a wider language of rising.
וּפִתְחָה
u-pitḥāh
GROWS FROM
פתח
p-t-ḥ
Open; make an opening.
“openings” in this verse is u-pitḥāh. The word translated “entry” grows from the root for opening, so the place is named as a passage. The verse locates the washing at that opening beside the gateposts, on the edge of movement.
ALSO GROWS
petaḥ: An entrance or opening.
פֶּתַח
This noun names the passage where the washing takes place.
pataḥ: To open.
פָּתַח
The verb reveals the action beneath the entry: a way is opened through the boundary.
maphteaḥ: A key.
מַפְתֵּחַ
The key belongs to the same opening-root, linking access with the passage named here.
THE PATTERN
At the point of approach or ascent, cleansing is placed before entry or rising.
When they enter the tent of meeting, they shall wash with waters, so that they do not die; or when they draw near to the altar to serve, to make smoke rise from the offering of fire to the LORD.Who climbs the mountain of the LORD? Who stands in his set-apart place? Clean of hands and clear of heart, he who does not lift up his living soul to emptiness, nor swears in deceit.Let us draw near with a true heart in the fullness of trust, our hearts sprinkled from a burdened shared sight, and our bodies bathed in clean waters.THE THREAD
And its inward parts and its legs he shall wash in water, and the priest shall send all of it up in smoke upon the altar, a rising offering, an offering of fire, a fragrance that settles to the LORD.Leviticus uses עֹלָה (ʿolah, ascending offering) for the burnt offering and names the washing of its inner parts and legs before the whole is burned. Ezekiel places that washing at the gate, binding cleansing to ascent through the shared root.
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