What Does Ezekiel 14:19 Mean in the King James?
Or if I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out my fury upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast:
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
Here, “send” also carries the sense of letting go: what is released into the land is pestilence.
THE MEANING
This verse names a judgment that reaches living bodies: pestilence enters the land, fury is poured out in blood, and human and animal life are cut off. Its language is concrete and reaches the whole living field of the land.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that judgment here is only inward or symbolic: the verse speaks plainly of bodily death, including among animals.
THE ROOT
אֲשַׁלַּח
ashallach
GROWS FROM
שׁלח
sh-l-ḥ
Send out, dispatch, release, or let go.
The verb carries movement away from the sender: what is sent is let go to enter another place. Here, that outgoing force is pestilence, so “send” holds both the act of dispatch and what the land must now bear.
ALSO GROWS
shaliach: A person who is dispatched as a representative.
שָׁלִיחַ
The same root names the one who is sent, revealing the movement from the act of sending to what carries that sending onward.
shilluach: The act of sending away or releasing.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch makes the release within “send” audible: something is let go from its prior place.
Shiloach: A name associated with sent-forth waters.
שִׁלֹחַ
The same root can name waters sent forth; here it names a sending whose effect is destructive rather than restorative.
לְהַכְרִית
lehakrit
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
Cut, sever, or cut down.
“cut off” in this verse is lehakrit. The verb means more than removing a number from a list: it pictures severance. The same root appears in the phrase “cut a covenant,” so the language of cutting can bind as well as end; here it marks the severing of life from the land.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: The biblical Hebrew expression for making a covenant, literally “cut a covenant.”
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The root that marks life being cut off also names the cutting that establishes a binding relation.
sefer keritut: A document of divorce or dismissal, literally a writing of severance.
סֵפֶר כְּרִיתֻת
This branch preserves the root’s sense of a bond being cut, clarifying the force of “cut off” in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Pestilence is named as a concrete force that enters shared life and reaches bodies across categories.
I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt: your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast: they shall die of a great pestilence.And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.THE THREAD
I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt: your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.Amos repeats the Hebrew pair שָׁלַח (shalach, send) and דֶּבֶר (dever, pestilence), linking the act of sending with the plague itself. That repeated pairing makes Ezekiel’s “send” concrete: its object is a destructive force arriving among the people.
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