What Does Ezekiel 6:10 Mean?
And they shall perceive that I am the LORD, and that I have not spoken for nothing when I said I would do this evil to them.
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 they shall know that I am the LORD, and that I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them.THE KEY
Knowing the LORD here is forced recognition: the calamity he brings makes his spoken words impossible to dismiss as empty.
THE MEANING
The verse places knowing the LORD alongside the devastation he brings and names the harm as proof that his words are not empty. That knowing arrives through the event itself, not through an abstract claim.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that knowing the LORD always comes as comfort: here, recognition arrives through destructive judgment.
THE ROOT
הָרָעָה
hā-rāʿāh
GROWS FROM
רעע
raʿaʿ
To be bad or to do harm.
English “evil” can sound like an abstract quality, while רָעָה (raʿah) can name harm or calamity. The verse keeps the LORD’s agency and the devastation named as evil in the same sentence.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad or evil; an adjective.
רַע
It shares the root’s language of what is bad, making the verse’s “evil” concrete in the harm that follows.
raʿah: Evil, harm, or calamity; a noun.
רָעָה
This noun form names the destructive thing the verse says will be done to them.
וְיָדְעוּ
wəyāḏəʿū
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“perceive” in this verse is wəyāḏəʿū. יָדַע (yādaʿ) carries the sense of knowing or perceiving through encounter, as well as knowing information. Here, the recognition of the LORD is bound to what unfolds, not to a detached fact.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: Knowledge or perception.
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root shows that the verb’s knowing belongs to a wider family of perception and understanding.
maddaʿ: Knowledge or learning.
מַדָּע
This branch shows the root can name what is known; the verse’s verb points to recognition made real through experience.
דִּבַּרְתִּי
dibbartî
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak or declare.
“said” in this verse is dibbartî. דִּבַּרְתִּי (dibbartî), “I spoke,” shares its root with דָּבָר (dāḇār), which can mean a word or a matter. The verse says this speech is not empty: it is bound to the harm carried out.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke or declared.
דִּבֵּר
This verbal form makes clear that the root names the act of speaking.
dāḇār: A word, matter, or affair.
דָּבָר
The noun’s range connects speech with a matter or event, echoing the verse’s movement from what is spoken to what is done.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s spoken word reaches its force when it comes to pass in action.
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should relent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not make it stand?For I am the LORD. I will speak, and the word I speak shall be done. It shall no more be drawn out. For in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak a word and do it, says the Lord GOD.For these are days of vengeance, so that all that is written may be filled.THE THREAD
And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God, and you shall perceive that I am the LORD your God, who brings you out from under the loads of the Egyptians.The same verb יָדַע (yādaʿ), “know,” appears in the near-identical promise, “ye shall know that I am the LORD.” Exodus connects that knowing with being brought out from burdens; Ezekiel connects it with devastation, showing recognition through what the LORD does.
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