What Does Ezekiel 16:36 Mean in the King James?
Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness discovered through thy whoredoms with thy lovers, and with all the idols of thy abominations, and by the blood of thy children, which thou didst give unto them;
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 verse exposes one pattern by placing sexual betrayal, idolatry, and the blood of children in the same line.
THE MEANING
The verse names an exposed pattern: sexual betrayal, allegiance to idols, and children’s blood handed over within that allegiance. It speaks now wherever power treats the vulnerable as payment and conceals the cost.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that devotion can be private or costless: the verse names the children’s blood as part of the same disclosed pattern.
THE ROOT
הִשָּׁפֵךְ
hishafekh
GROWS FROM
שפך
sh-p-kh
To pour out or spill.
The Hebrew verb used for “poured out” also describes shedding blood and pouring out anger. That makes the image of outflow sit beside the verse’s explicit naming of children’s blood: the exposure includes the violence attached to it.
ALSO GROWS
shafakh dam: To shed blood.
שָׁפַךְ דָּם
This branch brings the verse’s language of outpouring into direct contact with its mention of the children’s blood.
shafakh ḥemah: To pour out anger or wrath.
שָׁפַךְ חֵמָה
The same verb describes force emptied outward, adding weight to the verse’s image of what has been poured out.
וַתִּגָּלֶה
vatiggaleh
GROWS FROM
גלה
g-l-h
To uncover or reveal; also to remove or carry away into exile.
“discovered” in this verse is vatiggaleh. The verb makes the nakedness a concrete uncovering. Its wider root family also names removal and exile, giving exposure a sense of being taken out of concealment.
ALSO GROWS
galui: Exposed, revealed.
גָּלוּי
This form keeps the physical sense of uncovering present in the verse’s description of nakedness.
golah: Exile, or those carried away into exile.
גּוֹלָה
This branch shows that the root can carry a sense of removal as well as revelation.
THE PATTERN
What is hidden is brought into view, and its cost appears alongside the act.
Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen: I will take vengeance, and I will not meet thee as a man.Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.THE THREAD
And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.The Hebrew uses the same plural form דְּמֵי (demei, “blood of”) for the children here and for Abel’s blood in Genesis. There, blood cries from the ground, making it a witness to violence rather than a hidden cost.
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