What Does Ezekiel 5:5 Mean?
Thus says the Lord GOD, This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the midst of the nations, and the lands all around her.
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
Thus saith the Lord GOD; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her.THE KEY
Jerusalem’s name carries wholeness, and the verse places that wholeness in the middle of the peoples around it.
THE MEANING
You are placed within the human world around you, not beyond it. Jerusalem’s name carries the language of wholeness, while its position among nations makes that nature publicly situated. What stands in the center is seen in relation to all around it.
THE ROOT
יְרוּשָׁלַם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
sh-l-m
To be whole, complete, or intact; wholeness.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The place-name carries שׁלם, the language of wholeness and completion. Here, that name stands among surrounding nations: wholeness is named at a shared center, rather than as an isolated realm.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
This branch lets the verse’s geographic center carry the language of wholeness in Jerusalem’s name.
shalem: Whole, complete, intact.
שָׁלֵם
It brings out the root’s sense of an undivided condition within the name.
shillem: To repay, recompense, or make good.
שִׁלֵּם
This branch carries a sense of making complete, adding depth to the wholeness held in the city’s name.
THE PATTERN
What is placed among peoples becomes visible and consequential to the peoples around it.
And it shall come to pass in the hindmost days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be set firm at the head of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills, and all nations shall flow toward it.You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.For so the Lord commanded us, saying, "I have set you as a light for the Gentiles, that you may be for deliverance to the far ends of the land."THE THREAD
For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; the governance shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Father of the Ages, Prince of Wholeness.“Peace” here is שָׁלוֹם (shalom), sharing the root שׁלם carried in Jerusalem’s name. The connection ties the city placed among nations to a rule named through wholeness.
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