What Does Ezekiel 21:14 Mean in the King James?
Thou therefore, son of man, prophesy, and smite thine hands together, and let the sword be doubled the third time, the sword of the slain: it is the sword of the great men that are slain, which entereth into their privy chambers.
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 Hebrew verb translated “entereth” shares its root with a word for an inner chamber, joining the sword’s penetration to the private place it breaches.
THE MEANING
This verse confronts you with violence that multiplies and reaches into the private rooms of the powerful. The repeated sword and slain ones keep the image stark: rank and privacy offer no shelter from the killing it names.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that status and privacy can keep violence outside the doors of the powerful.
THE ROOT
הַחֹדֶרֶת
ha-ḥōderet
GROWS FROM
חדר
ḥ-d-r
To penetrate or enter; a related noun means an inner chamber.
The KJV pictures the sword entering private chambers. The Hebrew verb behind “entereth” comes from חדר, the same root that forms חֶדֶר, “inner chamber,” tying the act of penetration to the hidden place it reaches.
ALSO GROWS
ḥādar: To penetrate or enter
חָדַר
This verb carries the action expressed by the sword’s penetrating reach.
ḥeder: An inner room or chamber
חֶדֶר
This chamber noun shares the root, linking the penetration to the private interior.
חֶרֶב
ḥerev
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
To dry up, become desolate, or lay waste.
The repeated sword carries the root’s desolating force: the image is not only of a blade striking bodies, but of devastation. That added shade sharpens the verse without softening its killing.
ALSO GROWS
ḥārēv: Dry or desolate
חָרֵב
This form reveals the desolation carried by the sword’s root.
ḥorvot: Ruins or desolations
חָרְבוֹת
The same root extends the sword’s force from slain bodies to a ruined place.
חֲלָלִים
ḥalalim ḥalal
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To pierce or wound; a pierced or slain person.
The Hebrew word rendered “slain” carries the sense of being pierced or wounded. Its repetition keeps the verse’s focus on bodies marked by the sword, a detail the English word can leave in the background.
ALSO GROWS
ḥalal: A wounded or slain person
חָלָל
This is the singular form behind the verse’s repeated language of the slain.
meḥolal: Pierced or wounded
מְחֹלָל
This related form makes visible the wound contained in the word translated “slain.”
THE PATTERN
When a force is pictured as penetrating, neither private space nor the hidden interior places it beyond reach.
For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets.Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down:For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.THE THREAD
Cry and howl, son of man: for it shall be upon my people, it shall be upon all the princes of Israel: terrors by reason of the sword shall be upon my people: smite therefore upon thy thigh.The same Hebrew word חֶרֶב (ḥerev, sword) appears here and in verse 14. This verse names the people and princes in its reach; verse 14 shows that reach entering their private rooms.
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