What Does Ezekiel 44:20 Mean?
Neither shall they shave their heads, nor let their locks grow long; they shall only shear their heads.
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
Neither shall they shave their heads, nor suffer their locks to grow long; they shall only poll their heads.THE KEY
The Hebrew describes the locks as “let loose” and the verb as “send forth,” framing the haircut as a boundary between erasure and unrestrained growth.
THE MEANING
The priestly head is held between two edges: it is neither shaved bare nor left with untrimmed locks, but kept in a measured form. Set-apartness here has a visible boundary, preserving form without letting it run loose.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that setting a body apart means either erasing its natural form or leaving it entirely unbounded; it gives the head a measure between both.
THE ROOT
פֶּרַע
peraʿ
GROWS FROM
פרע
paraʿ
To loosen or let go; to become unrestrained.
The word for locks carries the sense of hair let loose or left untrimmed. Its root also appears in language about casting off restraint, so the verse’s concern reaches beyond a length of hair to what is allowed to run loose.
ALSO GROWS
pāruaʿ: Let loose, unrestrained; rendered “naked” in Exodus 32:25.
פָּרֻעַ
It shows the root’s sense of something released from its bounds, echoing the untrimmed locks here.
yippāraʿ: Cast off restraint; rendered “perish” in Proverbs 29:18.
יִפָּרַע
The shared root connects loose hair with a wider image of what happens when restraint is let go.
יְשַׁלֵּחוּ
yeshallechu
GROWS FROM
שלח
shalach
To send or send forth; in relevant forms, to release or let go.
The verb behind “suffer their locks to grow long” is built on send forth. Beside the word for loose locks, it makes the hair’s unchecked growth sound like something being let out, while the permitted trimming keeps a boundary.
ALSO GROWS
yeshallechu: They send forth or let go.
יְשַׁלֵּחוּ
This is the verb used in the verse: the locks are not sent forth without measure.
shallach: Send forth, release; as in “Let my people go” in Exodus 8:1.
שַׁלַּח
The same root carries the concrete sense of letting something go, illuminating the verse’s image of locks released to grow.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats hair and bodily presentation as visible forms shaped by the identity and order a community lives under.
They do not shave bare a place upon their head, nor shave the corner of their beard, nor cut any gash into their flesh.You are the children of the LORD your God. You shall not gash yourselves, nor shave a bare place between your eyes for the dead.Does not the way things grow itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a shame to him?THE THREAD
Where there is no vision, the people run loose, but flourishing is the one who guards the instruction.Ezekiel’s פֶּרַע (peraʿ, “loose or untrimmed hair”) and Proverbs’ יִפָּרַע (yippāraʿ, “cast off restraint”) share the root פרע (paraʿ, “loosen, let go”). The connection widens the haircut image: what is let loose in the head echoes what can happen when restraint is absent.
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