What Does Ezekiel 42:5 Mean?
The upper chambers were shorter, for the girdles were higher than these, than the lower, and than the middle tier of the building.
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
Now the upper chambers were shorter: for the galleries were higher than these, than the lower, and than the middlemost of the building.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “shorter” also means “reap”: the upper rooms share a root with a crop cut down.
THE MEANING
The upper chambers are shorter because the galleries stand higher in relation to them than to the lower and middle chambers. The building’s levels change in proportion as they rise.
THE ROOT
קְצֻרוֹת
qetsurot
GROWS FROM
קצר
to cut down or reap; also to be short
“shorter” in this verse is qetsurot. The same root describes these chambers as cut short and names the cutting of a crop at harvest. The verse’s measure of space carries the same seed as the act of reaping.
ALSO GROWS
qatsar: reap, cut down
קָצַר
Reaping shows the cutting action carried by the root behind “shorter.”
qatsir: harvest
קָצִיר
The harvest is what has been cut down, linking the chamber’s reduced measure to the language of reaping.
THE PATTERN
Hebrew uses one root for being cut short and for harvesting, joining reduced measure with the image of a crop cut down.
Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land that I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the first of your harvest to the priest.And it shall be as when the reaper reaps the standing grain, and his arm reaps the ears; and it shall be as one who gathers ears in the valley of Rephaim.Do you not say, There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest? Look, I say to you, lift up your eyes and see the fields, for they are already white for the harvest.THE THREAD
And it shall be as when the reaper reaps the standing grain, and his arm reaps the ears; and it shall be as one who gathers ears in the valley of Rephaim.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root for reaping that describes the chambers as shorter in Ezekiel. One root holds both a reduced measure and a crop cut down for gathering.
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