What Does Ezekiel 43:15 Mean?
The hearth is four forearms, and from the hearth upward are four horns.
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
So the altar shall be four cubits; and from the altar and upward shall be four horns.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “horn” also names a ray, so the altar’s four raised corners hold both images at once.
THE MEANING
The altar hearth measures four cubits, and four horns rise above it. Its form has a measured center and four points that extend upward from its corners. The image gives the altar both a defined shape and a visible reach.
THE ROOT
קְרָנוֹת
qərānōt
GROWS FROM
קרן
The word names a horn; a related form names a ray sent outward.
The consonants ק־ר־ן connect the horn with the image of a projecting ray. English “horns” preserves the altar’s shape, while the Hebrew word family also carries the image of something extending outward.
ALSO GROWS
qeren: Horn; also a ray or beam.
קֶרֶן
The same noun holds the altar’s raised corner and the image of a beam in one word.
qāran: To send out rays; to shine.
קָרַן
This related verb shows how the horn’s projecting form also belongs to the language of radiance.
לְמַעְלָה
ləmaʿlāh
GROWS FROM
עלה
To go up, rise, or ascend.
The word for “upward” shares its root with the verb “rise” and with עֹלָה, the name of an offering that ascends. The verse’s upward movement and its altar setting therefore share a language of rising.
ALSO GROWS
ʿālāh: To go up or ascend.
עָלָה
This verb gives the direction named in “upward” its basic movement: rising from a lower point.
ʿōlāh: That which ascends; a whole burnt offering.
עֹלָה
This offering name comes from the same root, linking the altar’s rising form with the language of ascent.
THE PATTERN
The altar’s horns make its corners points where its force can be grasped or its voice can issue.
You shall make its horns upon its four corners, rising out of it, and you shall sheathe it with bronze.And Adonijah feared from the face of Solomon, and arose, and walked, and gripped the horns of the altar.And the sixth messenger sounds, and I hear a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God.THE THREAD
And it came to be, when Moses went down from mount Sinai with the two tablets of testimony in Moses' hand, when he went down from the mountain, that Moses did not perceive that the skin of his face sent out horns while he spoke with him.The Hebrew verb translated “shone” is קָרַן (qāran), sharing the consonants קרן with קֶרֶן (qeren), “horn.” The link carries the image of a horn and a ray in the same word family, adding a hidden echo of radiance to the altar’s four horns.
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