What Does Ezekiel 17:4 Mean in the King James?
He cropped off the top of his young twigs, and carried it into a land of traffick; he set it in a city of merchants.
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 “young twigs” are the cedar’s sucklings, growth named by nourishment just as it is cut loose and carried into a merchant city.
THE MEANING
A tender shoot is clipped from the cedar, carried into a merchant city, and set there. The verse holds an uncomfortable truth: living growth can be removed from its source and placed where exchange surrounds it.
THE ROOT
יְנִיקוֹתָיו
yeniqotav
GROWS FROM
ינק
ינק (y-n-q) means to suck or suckle; the word carries the image of growth drawing nourishment.
“young twigs” in this verse is yeniqotav. The Hebrew word for these young shoots belongs to the same root as suckling. English makes them ordinary twigs, while the Hebrew lets their tenderness and dependence on nourishment remain in view even as they are severed and relocated.
ALSO GROWS
yōnēq: A suckling child or a young shoot.
יונק
Isaiah uses this word for a tender plant growing before the LORD, linking the image of a shoot with the language of nursing.
yānaq: To suckle or nurse.
יָנַק
This verb shows the root’s nourishing action: the twig in Ezekiel is named through the same root that describes drawing in what sustains life.
THE PATTERN
The life of a branch is shown by what is done with it and where it is planted.
Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will also take of the highest branch of the high cedar, and will set it; I will crop off from the top of his young twigs a tender one, and will plant it upon an high mountain and eminent:And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.THE THREAD
For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.Isaiah calls the tender shoot יונק (yōnēq, “a young shoot” or “a suckling”), from the same root ינק (y-n-q, “to suckle”) as Ezekiel’s “young twigs.” The shared root lets the shoot carry the language of nourishment even where the verse shows it cut away and carried into a merchant city.
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