What Does Ezekiel 18:10 Mean in the King James?
If he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, and that doeth the like to any one of these things,
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 “robber” is a breaker-through: this verse places the breach in the son’s own actions, not in his father’s character.
THE MEANING
The verse puts the son’s conduct in view as his own: a parent’s uprightness does not erase his violence. “Robber” carries the image of breaking through, and the bloodshed remains starkly present. The sentence is still unfolding; the next verse continues the account of what he does.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A righteous parent’s life guarantees that the child is righteous too.
THE ROOT
פָּרִיץ
pārîṣ
GROWS FROM
פרץ
To break through, burst forth, or make a breach.
English “robber” can sound like a category; פָּרִיץ carries the image of someone breaking through a boundary. The same root can name both a breach and an outward break-through, so the verse’s force lies in how this person’s breaking-through harms another.
ALSO GROWS
perets: A breach or opening made by breaking through.
פֶּרֶץ
This noun from the same root makes visible what the “robber” does: breaks a boundary and leaves an opening.
u-faratzta: You shall spread out or break through.
וּפָרַצְתָּ
In Genesis 28:14, the same root describes spreading outward; here its force is turned toward an intrusion that harms.
שֹׁפֵךְ
shōphēkh
GROWS FROM
שפך
To pour out or spill.
“shedder” in this verse is shōphēkh. The verb means “pour out”: bloodshed is pictured as something poured out, not as a bloodless label. The same verb can describe pouring out the heart, so its force rests in what is emptied and exposed.
ALSO GROWS
shifkhu: Pour out; used in the phrase “pour out your heart before him.”
שִׁפְכוּ
Psalm 62:8 uses the same verb for opening the heart before God, showing how this root can name an inward pouring out as well as physical spilling.
nishpakhti: I am poured out, as in Psalm 22:14.
נִשְׁפַּכְתִּי
The image of being poured out sharpens the verse’s wording: bloodshed is rendered as a concrete spilling.
THE PATTERN
A person’s conduct is answerable as that person’s own, even within a family line.
The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.THE THREAD
And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.The same root, פרץ, is present in “robber” as a breaker-through and in “gap” as the breach itself. The shared image makes the harm concrete: breaking through leaves a breach that someone must face.
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