What Does Ezekiel 6:5 Mean?
And I will place the dead bodies of the children of Israel before their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars.
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 lay the dead carcases of the children of Israel before their idols; and I will scatter your bones round about your altars.THE KEY
The bones end up where the worship was: the altar becomes a witness to what the idols could not preserve.
THE MEANING
Dead bodies lie before the idols, and the people’s bones are scattered around their altars. The places of worship become scenes of exposure and death; the idols cannot shield those who stand before them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that the things worshiped can guarantee safety is undone: bodies lie before them, and bones surround their altars.
THE ROOT
עַצְמוֹתֵיכֶם
ʿatzmotekhem
GROWS FROM
עצם
Bone, bodily substance, and strength.
The word for bones grows from a root that also names bodily substance and strength. Genesis uses the same root in “bone of my bones”; here that same substance is scattered around the altars.
ALSO GROWS
etsem: Bone; substance; self or same in idiomatic use.
עֶצֶם
Genesis 2:23 calls close kin “bone of my bones,” using the word for shared embodied substance.
ʿatsum: Mighty, strong, or numerous.
עָצוּם
The root’s strength sense adds weight: what is scattered is the body’s structural core.
מִזְבְּחוֹתֵיכֶם
mizbeḥoteikhem
GROWS FROM
זבח
To slaughter or sacrifice.
Mizbeach is formed from zabach, the language of slaughter and sacrifice. The bones around these altars make the places of sacrifice the visible setting of judgment.
ALSO GROWS
zevaḥ: Sacrifice.
זֶבַח
It names the offering associated with the altar.
zoveaḥ: One who sacrifices; sacrificing.
זֹבֵחַ
This branch keeps the altar’s action in view as the bones lie around it.
וְזֵרִיתִי
wezeriti
GROWS FROM
זרה
To scatter or winnow.
“scatter” in this verse is wezeriti. Zarah is used both for scattering and for winnowing grain. Here the dispersal is literal and violent: the bones are spread around the altars.
ALSO GROWS
zarah: To scatter or winnow.
זָרָה
This is the verb used for the scattering in the verse.
mizreh: A winnowing fork or shovel.
מִזְרֶה
The tool separates and scatters; the root’s image makes the bones’ dispersal vivid.
THE PATTERN
Things treated as powers of protection are exposed as unable to answer or preserve life.
They lift him on the shoulder, and bear him, and set him in his place, and he stands; from his place he does not move. Even if one cries to him, he does not answer, nor deliver him from his narrow place.Those who make them are like them, everyone who leans on them.So then, as touching the eating of what is slaughtered for idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one.THE THREAD
And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for out of man she was taken.Genesis uses the same root for bone to name shared substance; Adam, the ground-being, speaks of kinship through embodied life. Ezekiel’s bones are that same substance scattered around the altars.
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