What Does Ezekiel 16:47 Mean in the King James?
Yet hast thou not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations: but, as if that were a very little thing, thou wast corrupted more than they in all thy ways.
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 the trap of claiming not to follow a corrupt path while letting its corruption spread through every path of your own.
THE MEANING
You can recognize another’s way as corrupt and still carry its pattern further; the damage is no longer imitation alone but the course running through all your ways. The verse brings that contradiction into view now: distance from a model does not prove freedom from what it embodies.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief undone is that avoiding another’s visible wrongdoing proves your own freedom from it; the verse says you can surpass the pattern while claiming not to follow it.
THE ROOT
שָׁחַת
shachath
GROWS FROM
שחת
shachath
To ruin, destroy, or bring to corruption.
English “corrupted” can sound like a general moral label; שחת (shachath, to ruin or destroy) carries the force of something brought to ruin. The damage does not stop at copying those ways: it overtakes them and runs through every way of the reader’s life.
ALSO GROWS
mashchit: Destroyer; one who brings destruction.
מַשְׁחִית
This branch makes the root’s destructive force active, illuminating how the verse describes corruption that goes beyond resemblance.
shachat: Pit; destruction.
שַׁחַת
The word’s association with ruin shows the depth of the damage named here: a path can become a way into destruction.
דֶּרֶךְ
derekh
GROWS FROM
דרך
darakh
To tread or take a course.
The Hebrew uses דֶּרֶךְ (derekh, way or course) both for “their ways” and for “all your ways.” Its root דרך (darakh, to tread) makes a way a course worn by movement, so the verse moves from rejecting another’s course to exposing the pattern running through the reader’s own.
ALSO GROWS
darakh: To tread, step, or march.
דָּרַךְ
A way is a course made by repeated steps; the verse’s repeated “ways” points to corruption carried through ongoing movement.
hidrik: To guide or lead.
הִדְרִיךְ
This derived form describes leading someone along a course, echoing how a pattern can shape the direction of a whole life.
THE PATTERN
A pattern someone thinks they have refused can still spread into a fuller corruption that reaches every way of life.
And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?THE THREAD
And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.The same root שחת (shachath, to ruin or corrupt) appears in both verses. Genesis also ties that corruption to דֶּרֶךְ (derekh, way or course), making visible how the ruin takes shape through the way a life moves.
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