What Does Ezekiel 48:15 Mean?
And the five thousand that remain in the width, facing the twenty-five thousand, shall be a common place for the city, for settling, and for the pastureland. The city shall be in its midst.
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 five thousand, that are left in the breadth over against the five and twenty thousand, shall be a profane place for the city, for dwelling, and for suburbs: and the city shall be in the midst thereof.THE KEY
The city is given a measured place within sacred order, with common ground around it and the city at its center.
THE MEANING
Ordinary life has a defined place within the ordered whole: dwellings and open ground are measured, and the city stands in their midst. The common space is shaped for habitation and held within the design.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief this dissolves is that what is common has no place within sacred order; the verse gives the city, its dwellings, and its surrounding ground a measured place.
THE ROOT
חֹל
ḥol
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
ḥālal, to make common, or to treat as profane.
“common place” in this verse is ḥol. The word translated “profane” also carries the sense of what is common or ordinary; here it names land assigned to city life. The distinction between sacred and common remains, while both have a place in the measured design.
ALSO GROWS
ḥillēl: to profane, or treat as common
חִלֵּל
This verbal form shows that the root can name the act of assigning something to the common category.
ḥillul: profanation; treating something as common
חִלּוּל
This noun carries the same distinction between what is set apart and what belongs to ordinary use.
מִגְרָשׁ
migrash
GROWS FROM
גרש
g-r-sh
gārash, to drive out or send away; the root carries a movement outward.
“pastureland” in this verse is migrash. The word for the open ground around a city is linked to a root of driving outward. The city’s allotted space therefore includes its surrounding reach, and the city stands within a landscape shaped for habitation.
ALSO GROWS
gārash: to drive out, expel, or send away
גָּרַשׁ
Its outward motion echoes the open space extending beyond the city’s center.
gērūshīm: expulsion; divorce
גֵּרוּשִׁים
This related form retains the root’s sense of sending away, illuminating the outward movement carried by the root family.
מוֹשָׁב
moshav
GROWS FROM
ישב
y-sh-b
yāshav, to sit, settle, or dwell.
The word for dwelling grows from the verb for sitting or settling: this space is arranged for people to stay. The measured common ground is built around inhabitation, with the city in its midst.
ALSO GROWS
yāshav: to sit, remain, or dwell
יָשַׁב
The verb shows dwelling as settled presence, the purpose of the city’s allotted ground.
yōshēv: one who dwells; an inhabitant
יֹשֵׁב
This form names the person who inhabits the space the verse sets aside.
THE PATTERN
Sacredly ordered space makes room for ordinary human dwelling and communal life.
Command the children of Israel to give the Levites cities to settle in from the inheritance of their holding, and you shall also give the Levites pasturelands for the cities round about them.The broad streets of the city shall be filled with boys and girls laughing in them.And I hear a great voice from the throne, saying, Look, the tent of God is with humankind, and he will pitch his tent among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.THE THREAD
Command the children of Israel to give the Levites cities to settle in from the inheritance of their holding, and you shall also give the Levites pasturelands for the cities round about them.The same Hebrew word, מִגְרָשׁ (migrash, open ground around a town), names the suburbs in both verses. Its repeated use shows the surrounding land as part of the city’s provision for habitation.
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