What Does Ezekiel 48:33 Mean?
And on the south side four thousand five hundred measures, and three gates, one gate of Simeon, one gate of Issachar, one gate of Zebulun.
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 at the south side four thousand and five hundred measures: and three gates; one gate of Simeon, one gate of Issachar, one gate of Zebulun.THE KEY
The southern gates bear names whose roots speak of hearing, wages, and dwelling, turning the city’s boundary into a map of belonging.
THE MEANING
The city’s southern entrance carries the names Simeon, Issachar, and Zebulun, hearing, wages, and dwelling are woven into its threshold. The people who belong within it remain visible in the city’s design.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Restoration does not erase particular identities into an anonymous whole; the gates carry the tribes’ names.
THE ROOT
שִׁמְעוֹן
Shim'on
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen, heed.
Simeon carries the root שמע, the same seed as shema: hearing that answers. The city’s threshold bears hearing as part of its inscribed identity.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
The shared root makes Simeon’s name resonate with hearing that receives and answers.
shemuʿah: A report; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch shows the root extending from the act of hearing to what is heard and carried onward.
יִשָּׂשכָר
Yissakhar
GROWS FROM
שכר
s-k-r
Hire, pay, wages.
Issachar’s name echoes the root שכר, which carries the language of hire and wages. The gate bears a name with exchange and recompense folded into it.
ALSO GROWS
śākār: Wages, hire, reward.
שָׂכָר
This noun carries the root’s language of what is given in return.
śākhar: Hire or pay.
שָׂכַר
The verb shows the same root in action: an exchange of labor and payment.
זְבוּלֻן
Zevulun
GROWS FROM
זבל
z-b-l
Dwell; make a habitation.
Zebulun’s name carries the root זבל, the language of dwelling. At this gate, the idea of a dwelling place is woven into the name of one of the people within the city.
ALSO GROWS
zābal: Dwell with.
זָבַל
The verb connects Zebulun’s name to the closeness of dwelling with another.
zebul: Dwelling place, habitation.
זְבֻל
This noun makes the root’s sense of dwelling visible as a place.
THE PATTERN
The restored city marks its entrances with the names of the people gathered within it.
And the gates of the city shall be after the names of the tribes of Israel. Three gates northward, one gate of Reuben, one gate of Judah, one gate of Levi.It has a great and high wall, and twelve gates, and at the gates twelve messengers, and names written upon them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.THE THREAD
And she conceived again, and bore a son, and she said, Because the LORD has heard that I was hated, he has therefore given me this son also. And she called his name Simeon, Heard.Simeon’s name shares the root שמע (shamaʿ, hear) with “the LORD hath heard.” The southern entrance carries that hearing in the name written on its gate.
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