What Does Ezekiel 21:3 Mean in the King James?
And say to the land of Israel, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I am against thee, and will draw forth my sword out of his sheath, and will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked.
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 crosses the moral divide: the aligned and the wicked are both within its reach.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of violence against the land that reaches both the righteous and the wicked. Moral standing does not place someone beyond the sword’s cut when it falls across the whole land.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being righteous guarantees bodily safety when judgment reaches a whole land.
THE ROOT
וְהִכְרַתִּי
vehikhratti
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
to cut, sever, or cut off
“cut off” in this verse is vehikhratti. The same Hebrew verb used here for cutting people off also appears in the phrase for cutting a covenant. The shared root lets severance and covenant-making echo one another without making them the same act.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: to cut a covenant
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb describes a covenant being made, bringing a striking echo to this verse’s cut from the land.
karet: being cut off; excision
כָּרֵת
This related form makes the root’s severing sense explicit, as the verse does to the people named here.
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צדק
ts-d-q
alignment; being right or just
“righteous” in this verse is tsaddiq. The word describes someone aligned with what is right, yet the verse places this person within the sword’s reach alongside the wicked. The contrast remains real, but it does not guarantee safety from this collective violence.
ALSO GROWS
tzedek: alignment; justice
צֶדֶק
This branch names the quality that the word “righteous” carries into the verse.
tzedakah: justice expressed in action; almsgiving
צְדָקָה
It shows alignment as something that can take visible, material form, even though alignment does not exempt a person from the sword described here.
חַרְבִּי
charbi
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
to become desolate or lay waste
The consonants in the word for sword also appear in Hebrew words for ruin and desolation. The weapon’s name carries an echo of the devastation it brings to the land.
ALSO GROWS
charav: to become desolate; to be laid waste
חָרַב
This verb gives the sword’s destructive reach a landscape-wide resonance.
chorbah: ruin; desolation
חָרְבָּה
This noun names the devastation that echoes in the sword’s consonants.
THE PATTERN
A condition that reaches a whole community can cross the boundary between the righteous and the wicked.
All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.THE THREAD
In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:The Hebrew verb behind “made a covenant” is כָּרַת (karat), “to cut,” the same root translated “cut off” here. Genesis also names the land, so the shared root makes covenant and severance resonate around the same ground.
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