What Does Ezekiel 21:4 Mean in the King James?
Seeing then that I will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked, therefore shall my sword go forth out of his sheath against all flesh from the south to the north:
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 boundary the verse names: even the aligned remain within its reach.
THE MEANING
This verse places the reader inside a world where judgment reaches across the line between the righteous and the wicked. The sword comes out of its sheath against all flesh, moving from south to north; even a person aligned with what is right remains within its reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that being aligned with what is right makes a person untouchable by violence is undone here: the sword reaches the righteous too.
THE ROOT
הִכְרַתִּי
hikhratti
GROWS FROM
כרת
Cut, sever, remove by cutting.
The verb translated “cut off” belongs to כרת (karat, to cut or sever), the same root used in the Hebrew idiom “cut a covenant.” The root carries a decisive act of cutting; here it marks people within the sword’s reach, and elsewhere it names the cutting that establishes a bond.
ALSO GROWS
keritut: Severance; a certificate of divorce.
כְּרִיתֻת
This noun grows from the same cut-and-sever root and names a formal severance, making the root’s decisive force visible.
karat berit: Cut a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The idiom uses this same verb for establishing a binding covenant, revealing that the root’s cutting can mark a decisive bond.
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צדק
To be right or just; rightness, justice.
“righteous” in this verse is tsaddiq. The word’s root ties righteousness to alignment with what is right. The verse names that aligned person within the sword’s reach.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Rightness, justice, alignment.
צֶדֶק
This noun makes the alignment within “righteous” visible and shows the quality the verse names among those exposed.
tsedaqah: Justice, righteous conduct, alignment.
צְדָקָה
This related word carries the same root into lived justice, while the verse still places the righteous within the reach of the sword.
THE PATTERN
In the face of a sweeping calamity, moral standing does not guarantee exemption from its reach.
This is one thing, therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect 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?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 same Hebrew root כרת (karat, to cut or sever) appears here as “cut off” and in Genesis 15:18 as “made” in the covenant phrase. The shared verb lets the reader hear decisive cutting in both places: severance in Ezekiel and a covenant being cut into place in Genesis.
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