What Does Ezekiel 45:1 Mean?
And when you divide the land by lot for inheritance, you shall lift a lifted portion to the LORD, a set-apart portion of the land. Its length shall be five and twenty thousand reeds, and its breadth ten thousand. It shall be set apart in all its borders round about.
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
Moreover, when ye shall divide by lot the land for inheritance, ye shall offer an oblation unto the LORD, an holy portion of the land: the length shall be the length of five and twenty thousand reeds, and the breadth shall be ten thousand. This shall be holy in all the borders thereof round about.THE KEY
The repeated root turns the oblation into a raised portion of the inheritance, whose holiness reaches every border.
THE MEANING
The verse presents an inheritance with a precisely measured portion set apart for the LORD. Its holiness reaches all the way around its borders, giving the sacred a defined place within the whole land.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that the sacred is vague or without boundaries: this portion has exact dimensions, and its holiness extends to every edge.
THE ROOT
תָּרִימוּ תְּרוּמָה
tarimu terumah
GROWS FROM
רום
To rise or be high; in the causative, to raise or lift up.
“lift a lifted portion” in this verse is tarimu terumah. The verb tarimu and the noun terumah grow from the same root, a repetition English renders as two different words. The contribution is a portion raised from the inheritance and set apart for the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
tarimu: You shall raise or set apart.
תָּרִימוּ
This is the verse’s verb for designating the portion, echoing the root of the noun that follows.
terumah: A raised contribution or portion.
תְּרוּמָה
This is the word translated “oblation”; its root links the offering to the act of raising a portion from the land.
קֹדֶשׁ
qodesh
GROWS FROM
קדש
To set apart or consecrate.
“set-apart portion” in this verse is qodesh. The verse calls both the portion and its surrounding boundary qodesh. Set-apartness reaches around the whole measured space, rather than naming only a point at its center.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart; holy.
קָדוֹשׁ
This adjective shares the root and describes the quality assigned to the whole portion.
miqdash: Sanctuary; a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
This branch shows how the root can name a distinct place, illuminating the measured land as a defined sacred space.
THE PATTERN
What is set apart for God takes on a distinct identity within the larger whole.
And let them make me a set-apart place, that I may pitch my tent among them.For a tent is built, the first one, in which are the lampstand, the table, and the loaves laid out, which is called the set-apart place.Because it stands written, You shall be set apart, for I am set apart.THE THREAD
And by the border of Judah, from the east side to the sea, shall be the lifted portion which you shall lift, of twenty-five thousand reeds in width, and in length like one of the other shares, from the east side to the sea, and the set-apart place shall be in its midst.The Hebrew repeats the terumah/tarimu word-family, again naming a measured portion raised from the land. Here the sanctuary stands in its midst, showing how the set-apart portion gives the sacred a defined center and extent.
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