What Does Ezekiel 46:5 Mean?
And the grain gift is an ephah for a ram, and the grain gift for the lambs as his hand gives, and a hin of oil to an ephah.
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
And the meat offering shall be an ephah for a ram, and the meat offering for the lambs as he shall be able to give, and an hin of oil to an ephah.THE KEY
The lamb offering is measured by the giver’s hand: capacity itself becomes part of the measure.
THE MEANING
You meet a concrete measure alongside a gift proportioned to what the hand can give. The lambs’ offering follows the giver’s capacity, while the oil is still named in a set proportion. Giving here has form without requiring every hand to hold the same amount.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that every offering must match everyone else’s measure: the lamb offering is shaped by what the hand can give.
THE ROOT
מַתַּת
mattat
GROWS FROM
נתן
natan
Give, set, place.
“as his hand gives” in this verse is mattat. The phrase rendered “as he shall be able to give” is literally “the gift of his hand” (מַתַּת יָדוֹ, mattat yado), tying the measure to what the giver’s hand places forward. The root נתן (natan), “give, set, place,” makes giving concrete: something is placed into the offering, rather than measured against an invisible standard shared by every giver.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, put, or set.
נָתַן
This verb is the root behind the “gift of his hand,” linking the offering to what the hand gives or places forward.
mattanah: Gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This noun branch makes clear that the giver’s measure takes the form of a concrete gift.
THE PATTERN
Giving can have a stated measure while remaining proportioned to what the giver’s hand can offer.
Each one shall give according to the gift of his hand, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which he has given you.For if the leaning heart is there first, it is well received according to what one has, and not according to what one does not have.For they all threw in out of their overflow, but she, out of her lack, threw in all that she had, even all her living.THE THREAD
Each one shall give according to the gift of his hand, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which he has given you.Deuteronomy uses the Hebrew phrase מַתְּנַת יָדוֹ (matnat yado), “the gift of his hand,” and נָתַן (natan), “gave”, the same root behind Ezekiel’s wording. The shared root shows the offering’s measure in relation to what the hand has received and can set forward.
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