What Does Ezekiel 18:25 Mean in the King James?
Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel; Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?
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 word translated “equal” also carries the sense of being measured, so the charge against God’s measure turns into a question about your own.
THE MEANING
When you weigh what is fair, this verse asks what measure is shaping your own way. The LORD’s way and yours stand under the same question: are they rightly measured? An accusation against God does not, by itself, establish the accuser’s own rightness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
I can declare God’s way unfair by my preferred measure without letting my own way be measured.
THE ROOT
יִתָּכֵן
yittākhēn
GROWS FROM
תכן
t-k-n
To measure or weigh; by extension, to assess whether something measures up.
“equal” in this verse is yittākhēn. The repeated word makes this more than a dispute about fairness: the LORD’s way and the reader’s ways face the same measure. The complaint is turned back as a question about what the reader’s own path weighs.
ALSO GROWS
yittākhēn: Be measured; be found right or fitting.
יִתָּכֵן
In Ezekiel’s question, the same verb frames both the claim about the LORD’s way and the challenge about the reader’s ways.
tōkhēn: Weighs or measures; used of the LORD weighing the inner life.
תֹכֵן
Proverbs 16:2 uses this form from the same root, showing that the measure in Ezekiel also reaches inward.
THE PATTERN
The measure used to judge another also turns back to expose the one who judges.
All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits.Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.THE THREAD
All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits.The Hebrew word translated “weigheth” comes from the same root, תכן (t-k-n), as “equal” in Ezekiel. Proverbs shows what that measure reaches: even when your way looks right to you, the LORD weighs what lies within.
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