What Does Ezekiel 14:13 Mean in the King James?
Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it:
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew names repeated treachery, then shows judgment breaking the land’s staff of bread and cutting off both people and beasts from it.
THE MEANING
This verse confronts you now with judgment reaching the material supports of life: the land’s betrayal of God is met by a broken staff of bread, famine sent into it, and people and animals cut off from it. The sequence places breach before God and bodily survival in the same frame, without softening the stated loss.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This overturns the assumption that judgment stays abstract or inward: the verse names hunger, broken provision, and the loss of human and animal life.
THE ROOT
מָעַל
ma'al
GROWS FROM
מעל
ma'al
To act treacherously or violate trust.
The Hebrew phrase repeats the root: ma’al ma’al, literally, to trespass a trespass. It names betrayal of trust, giving the land’s offense a sharper edge than a general mistake.
ALSO GROWS
ma'al: To act treacherously or breach trust.
מָעַל
This is the verb repeated in the verse, intensifying the land’s breach.
me'ilah: A breach involving what is sacred or entrusted.
מְעִילָה
This branch shows how the root can describe violated trust in what is set apart.
וְהִכְרַתִּי
vehikhraṭti
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
To cut or sever.
The verb behind cut off is also used in the biblical phrase cut a covenant. The same root holds severance and covenant-making, so the verse’s removal of people and animals resonates with the language of binding relationship.
ALSO GROWS
karat: To cut or sever.
כָּרַת
This is the root’s basic action, made stark in the removal of people and animals.
karat berit: To cut a covenant; to establish a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
This covenant phrase uses the same verb, linking the verse’s severance to the language of binding relationship.
וְהִשְׁלַחְתִּי
vehishlaḥti
GROWS FROM
שלח
shalach
To send forth, send away, or release.
“send” in this verse is vehishlaḥti. The famine is not merely a condition that happens upon the land; the verse says it is sent into it. The root also carries the sense of sending away or releasing, giving the famine an agent and a trajectory.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: To send forth, dispatch, or release.
שָׁלַח
The verse uses this action to say that famine is sent into the land.
shilleaḥ: To send away, dismiss, or release.
שִׁלֵּחַ
This branch preserves the root’s sending-away sense, while the verse names famine as what is dispatched.
THE PATTERN
In judgment, a breach before God reaches the material supports of life and can bring hunger and loss across the land.
And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water,And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.THE THREAD
In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:The Hebrew verb translated cut off in Ezekiel comes from כרת (karat), the same verb used in the phrase for making a covenant with Abram, literally, cutting a covenant. The shared root joins severance and binding relationship in a way the English wording does not show.
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