What Does Ezekiel 14:15 Mean in the King James?
If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts:
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 desolation is not lifelessness: animal life persists, while human passage ends.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s judgment takes the form of harmful beasts moving through the land and bereaving it until no one can pass. The desolation is a place where animal life remains, but human passage ends.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that a desolate place must be lifeless: here, life remains, but the land becomes impassable to people.
THE ROOT
וְשִׁכְּלָתְהוּ
ve-shikkəlāṯəhû
GROWS FROM
שׁכל
To bereave, especially by depriving someone of children or offspring.
The verb translated “spoil” carries the force of bereaving, not merely damaging. The land is pictured as stripped of human presence, with no one left to pass through it.
ALSO GROWS
shākōl: Bereaved; deprived of children.
שָׁכוֹל
This branch makes the loss inside “spoil” more specific: the damage is figured as bereavement.
shekhol: Bereavement; loss of children.
שְׁכוֹל
The noun names the grief carried by the verb, sharpening the verse’s picture of the land’s devastation.
חַיָּה
ḥayyāh
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, be alive; life.
The word for “beasts” grows from the root for living and life. The verse holds a stark reversal: life persists in the land, but human passage disappears.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Living; alive.
חַי
The shared root shows that the beasts are named as living beings, even as their presence makes the land unpassable for people.
ḥayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
This branch exposes the verse’s contrast: life remains, but the land no longer supports human movement.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures devastation as animal violence that bereaves people and makes their land or roads desolate.
I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee. I the LORD have spoken it.And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the LORD: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.THE THREAD
I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.Leviticus uses the same שׁכל root for beasts that “rob you of your children”; Ezekiel’s “spoil” carries that same bereaving force. The shared root makes the desolation more than damage: people are lost, and the roads fall silent.
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