What Does Ezekiel 21:20 Mean in the King James?
Appoint a way, that the sword may come to Rabbath of the Ammonites, and to Judah in Jerusalem the defenced.
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 sword is given a route, and Jerusalem is named as a destination even while it is called defenced.
THE MEANING
The verse brings the reader face to face with violence as a force directed toward named places and people. Jerusalem’s defenses are real, yet they do not remove it from the sword’s route. The passage holds protection and exposure together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a fortified place is beyond the reach of violence: Jerusalem is called defenced and still named as a destination.
THE ROOT
דֶּרֶךְ
déreḵ
GROWS FROM
דָּרַךְ
d-r-k
To tread, step, or march.
The noun for “way” grows from a verb meaning “to tread”: a route is a course made by movement. That same verb can describe bending a bow, joining a laid-out course with force made ready; here, the way is set for the sword’s approach.
ALSO GROWS
dāraḵ: To tread, step, or march.
דָּרַךְ
The path is connected to the act of moving along it; in this verse, the sword’s approach follows a set course.
dāraḵ qešet: To bend or draw a bow.
דָּרַךְ קֶשֶׁת
The same verb can describe bringing a weapon into readiness, echoing the force directed along the sword’s route.
חֶרֶב
ḥerev
GROWS FROM
חָרַב
ḥ-r-b
To dry up or become desolate.
“Sword” shares its root with words for dryness and desolation. Its word-family carries the devastation the weapon can bring: the sword does not merely arrive at a place; it can leave that place laid waste.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāraḇ: To dry up, become desolate, or be laid waste.
חָרַב
This verbal branch makes the possible consequence of the sword audible in its root: a place can be made desolate.
ḥōreḇ: Dryness or drought.
חֹרֶב
The related noun extends the root’s image of a place stripped of what sustains it, deepening the force of “sword” here.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats a way as a course that carries its traveler toward a real end.
For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked in the liver.For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.THE THREAD
For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked in the liver.The next verse repeats the Hebrew word for “way” and places the sword at a fork in the road. It reveals that the route named here is part of a deliberate choice about where violence will arrive.
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