What Does Ezekiel 46:3 Mean?
Likewise the people of the land bow down at the door of this gate before the LORD in the sabbaths and in the new moons.
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
Likewise the people of the land shall worship at the door of this gate before the LORD in the sabbaths and in the new moons.THE KEY
The people bow before the LORD at the gate’s opening as the moon renews, joining embodied worship to a recurring passage into presence.
THE MEANING
The verse places you among a people who bow before the LORD at the gate, returning at Sabbath and new moon. Your approach is embodied and recurring: it happens at a threshold and within a rhythm that begins again.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Approach to the LORD is not only an inward idea detached from body, place, or shared time; here, the people bow together at a gate on recurring appointed days.
THE ROOT
פֶּתַח
petaḥ
GROWS FROM
פָּתַח
To open; the root names both the action of opening and the opening it makes.
The word translated “door” names an opening or entrance. The people bow at the mouth of a passage, so their approach is pictured at a threshold they can cross.
ALSO GROWS
pataḥ: To open
פָּתַח
The verb reveals the action beneath the doorway: it is where passage becomes possible.
petaḥ: Opening, entrance, doorway
פֶּתַח
This is the word in the verse; the people bow at the entrance of the gate.
mafteaḥ: Key
מַפְתֵּחַ
A key belongs to the same word family as opening; it gives access through what is closed.
חֳדָשִׁים
ḥodashim
GROWS FROM
חָדַשׁ
To be new; to renew.
“new moons” in this verse is ḥodashim. חֹדֶשׁ (ḥodesh, “month” or “new moon”) shares its root with חָדָשׁ (ḥadash, “new”). The verse sets the people’s bowing within a cycle of renewal, where the appointed time returns again.
ALSO GROWS
ḥodesh: Month, new moon
חֹדֶשׁ
The new moon marks the beginning of a month, placing the gathering at a recurring turn in time.
ḥadash: New
חָדָשׁ
The shared root joins the calendar’s new moon to the idea of newness.
ḥiddēsh: Renewed, made new
חִדֵּשׁ
This verb form makes renewal an action, echoing the cycle that brings the people back to the gate.
וְהִשְׁתַּחֲווּ
vehishtachavu
GROWS FROM
שָׁחָה
To bow down or prostrate oneself.
“bow down” in this verse is vehishtachavu. The Hebrew word translated “worship” gives devotion a visible posture: bowing down. Its plural form makes the gesture communal, as the people gather and bow together at the opening.
ALSO GROWS
shachah: To bow down, prostrate oneself
שָׁחָה
This root restores the bodily gesture within the English word “worship.”
hishtachavah: To bow oneself down
הִשְׁתַּחֲוָה
The form describes a person lowering themselves in the act of bowing.
vehishtachavu: And they shall bow down
וְהִשְׁתַּחֲווּ
This is the plural form in the verse: the people share the same posture before the LORD.
THE PATTERN
The community’s approach to the LORD takes shape in shared, recurring rhythms.
And it shall be, that from one new moon to the next, and from one sabbath to the next, all flesh will come to bow down before me, says the LORD.Blow the horn at the new moon, at the full moon, on the day of our feast.And they, holding fast day by day with one passion in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, took their food with gladness and singleness of heart.THE THREAD
Blow the horn at the new moon, at the full moon, on the day of our feast.The shared Hebrew word חֹדֶשׁ (ḥodesh, “month” or “new moon”) ties these verses at the root level. Psalm 81 makes the new moon audible as an appointed feast; Ezekiel shows the people bowing at the gate before the LORD when that appointed time returns.
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