What Does Ezekiel 5:16 Mean?
When I send upon them the evil arrows of hunger, which are for ruin, and which I will send to ruin you. And I will add hunger upon you, and will break your staff of bread.
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
When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for their destruction, and which I will send to destroy you: and I will increase the famine upon you, and will break your staff of bread:THE KEY
Scarcity arrives as a weapon, and the very thing that props life, bread, is made to break.
THE MEANING
Famine here arrives as an assault, aimed at the body rather than held at the level of abstract lack. Bread is a staff, support for life, and the verse names its breaking as part of the destruction.
THE ROOT
שָׁלַח
shalach
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
To send forth, release, or stretch out the hand
“send” in this verse is shalach. The verse repeats this sending verb around the famine, so hunger is a dispatched force, not a passive condition. This root-family moves from a missile to a table of provision, revealing how what is sent can wound or sustain.
ALSO GROWS
shelach: Missile or weapon
שֶׁלַח
This branch names an object sent forth; here the famine itself is dispatched alongside arrows.
shulchan: Table, provision extended
שֻׁלְחָן
The table carries the image of provision extended, sharpening the loss when bread’s support is broken.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of the sent waters
שִׁלֹחַ
This branch keeps the act of sending visible in another image of water, while Ezekiel’s sent force is famine.
שָׁבַר
shavar
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break or shatter
“break” in this verse is shavar. A branch of this root names grain, while another sense of the same word names fracture and ruin. Food and breaking occupy one word-family, so the broken staff of bread is a rupture in sustenance itself.
ALSO GROWS
shever: Grain or corn
שֶׁבֶר
This branch names food within the same root-family as breaking, tying the broken staff directly to the supply of food.
shever: Fracture, breach, or ruin
שֶׁבֶר
This sense carries the breaking beyond a single object to the collapse of support.
THE PATTERN
When famine threatens life, Scripture presents food supply as a concrete support that can be broken, rationed, or withheld.
And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall turn your bread back to you by weight. You shall eat, and not be filled.And he called for a famine upon the land, and broke every staff of bread.And I hear a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, A measure of wheat for a denarius, and three measures of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and the wine.THE THREAD
And he bent you low, and made you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you had never perceived, nor had your fathers, so that he might make you perceive that humankind does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes out from the mouth of the LORD does humankind live.“Famine” in Ezekiel and “hunger” in Deuteronomy share רָעָב (ra’av, hunger or famine), from the root רעב (r-ʿ-b). Deuteronomy places that same hunger beside manna, while Ezekiel names famine as arrows sent to destroy and bread’s staff broken; the shared root makes the difference in each verse’s force visible.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us