What Does Ezekiel 46:13 Mean?
You prepare an ascending offering to the LORD daily, a lamb in its first year, whole; you prepare it every morning.
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
Thou shalt daily prepare a burnt offering unto the LORD of a lamb of the first year without blemish: thou shalt prepare it every morning.THE KEY
The burnt offering is an ascent by name, and this verse places that ascent at the start of every day.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a daily offering before you: a lamb in its first year, whole, prepared every morning for the LORD. The Hebrew name for the burnt offering, ʿōlāh, carries the sense of rising, so the morning act is both sacrifice and ascent. The repeated rhythm is part of the verse’s meaning, not an isolated gesture.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The sacred belongs only to rare, dramatic moments. Here, the offering returns day after day, every morning.
THE ROOT
עֹלָה
ʿōlāh
GROWS FROM
עלה
To go up, rise, or ascend.
“ascending offering” in this verse is ʿōlāh. The word translated “burnt offering” carries the movement of going up. The offering is named not only by what is placed on the altar, but by its ascent toward the LORD; here that ascent is prepared again each morning.
ALSO GROWS
ʿālāh: To go up or ascend.
עָלָה
This verb is the root itself, making the upward movement inside ʿōlāh audible.
maʿălāh: An ascent, step, or degree.
מַעֲלָה
This related noun preserves the root’s upward movement, like the “degrees” in the biblical heading “Song of degrees.”
ʿăliyyāh: Ascent or going up.
עֲלִיָּה
This noun makes explicit the rising carried by the offering’s name.
תָּמִים
tamim
GROWS FROM
תמם
To be complete or whole.
“whole” in this verse is tamim. Tamim describes more than a surface without damage: it carries the sense of wholeness or completeness. The lamb prepared for the offering is named as intact, and that detail stands beside the upward movement in ʿōlāh.
ALSO GROWS
tam: Whole, complete, or blameless.
תָּם
This related form shows the same root’s sense of integrity in a person or thing.
tom: Integrity or completeness.
תֹּם
This noun brings out the quality of wholeness carried by tamim in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Offering is a recurring presentation before God, from the daily altar to a life presented in service.
This is what you offer on the altar. Two lambs of a year, day by day continually.Then you delight in the slaughtered offerings of alignment, in the rising offering and the whole; then they ascend your altar with young bulls.Therefore I urge you, brothers, through the compassions of God, to set your bodies beside God as a living sacrifice, set apart, well-pleasing to him, which is your true service.THE THREAD
And Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird, and sent up rising offerings on the altar.Ezekiel’s daily lamb and the burnt offerings in Genesis share the Hebrew word-family of ʿōlāh, “burnt offering,” rooted in ʿālāh, “to rise.” In both verses, the name carries the image of ascent alongside what is placed on the altar.
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