What Does Ezekiel 16:14 Mean in the King James?
And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord GOD.
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 beauty that carries your name into the world is the LORD’s splendor made visible on you.
THE MEANING
Your renown goes out among others through a beauty whose completeness you receive. The verse locates its source in the LORD’s splendor, placed upon you. What others see in you can be real and radiant without being self-made.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that your worth is real only when you produce it yourself dissolves here: radiance can be received and still be yours.
THE ROOT
יֹפִי
yofi
GROWS FROM
יפה
y-p-h
To be beautiful or fair.
The word for beauty belongs to a family that also describes being beautiful; it joins the visible quality to the one who bears it. Here that beauty carries your renown, yet its completeness comes through splendor placed upon you.
ALSO GROWS
yafah: To be beautiful or fair.
יָפָה
The verb shows beauty as something expressed, not merely a label attached to you.
yafeh: Beautiful or fair.
יָפֶה
This adjective shares the same seed as “beauty,” joining the quality people see to the word used for it.
הָדָר
hadar
GROWS FROM
הדר
h-d-r
To be splendid, to honor, or to adorn.
The comeliness in this verse is the LORD’s hadar: splendor or honor placed upon you. The same root can describe honoring another, so the beauty here is also honor received and made visible.
ALSO GROWS
hadar: Splendor, majesty, or honor.
הָדָר
This noun names the splendor the verse says the LORD places upon you.
vehadarta: And you shall honor.
וְהָדַרְתָּ
The verb form shows the same root moving from splendor received to honor expressed.
THE PATTERN
What shines through a person is received from God and becomes visible to others.
And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.THE THREAD
His glory is great in thy salvation: honour and majesty hast thou laid upon him.Ezekiel’s הָדָר (hadar, splendor or honor) is placed upon you; Psalm 21:5 uses the same root in “majesty” and says it is laid upon him. The shared root reveals the same movement: splendor is received, then becomes visible.
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