What Does Ezekiel 5:9 Mean?
And I will do in you what I have not done, and the like of which I will not do again, because of all your loathsome things.
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 I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations.THE KEY
The repeated “do” carries the Hebrew root for “make”: this is not an announced feeling but an act, marked as unprecedented and unrepeatable.
THE MEANING
The verse confronts you now with a promised judgment of such severity that it is named as without precedent and never to be repeated. Its stated cause is the full accumulation of detestable acts. The violence stays explicit: the act is directed against the one addressed, without softening its severity.
THE ROOT
עָשָׂה
asah
GROWS FROM
עשה
to do, make, or bring about
The Hebrew verb עָשָׂה (asah, “do” or “make”) appears repeatedly in the verse: “I will do,” “I have not done,” and “I will not do.” Its range holds making and acting together, giving the announced judgment the weight of a deed, not merely a declaration.
ALSO GROWS
maʿaseh: work, deed, or act
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun from the same root shows how the verse’s repeated verb carries the sense of an accomplished deed.
ʿoseh: one who does or makes
עֹשֶׂה
This form preserves the root’s joining of action and making, the same joining present in the repeated “do” of the verse.
תּוֹעֲבוֹתָיִךְ
toʿavotayikh
GROWS FROM
תעב
to abhor or regard as detestable
“loathsome things” in this verse is toʿavotayikh. The word names a whole accumulation of what is regarded as abhorrent. Its root also appears as a verb for abhorring, so the verse describes not a vague mistake but acts held in detestation.
ALSO GROWS
taʿav: to abhor or treat as detestable
תָּעַב
The verb names the abhorrence carried by the noun “abominations.”
toʿevah: an abomination, a detestable thing
תּוֹעֵבָה
This singular form shows that the verse’s plural refers to multiple acts or things regarded as abhorrent.
THE PATTERN
When corruption fills the measure, scripture describes its consequences as breaking familiar limits.
Then the LORD will make your blows marvelous, and those upon your seed, great and steady blows, and harmful and steady sicknesses.Is it nothing to you, all you who pass over the way? Look and see if there is any pain like my pain, which is pressed upon me, which the LORD wounds me with in the day of the burning of his anger.For then there is a great pressure, such as has not come to be since the beginning of the world until now, nor will it ever come to be.THE THREAD
And God saw all that he had made, and look, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.“Made” in Genesis and “do” in Ezekiel share the Hebrew root עשה (asah, “do” or “make”). The same root names the making of what is declared very good and the terrible deed announced here, holding creation and judgment in one word.
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