What Does Ezekiel 22:27 Mean in the King James?
Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain.
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 verse exposes power’s hidden equation: it turns living people into prey so their destruction can become profit.
THE MEANING
Wherever people entrusted with authority consume those in their care, authority has become predatory. Here, shedding blood and destroying living souls serve the pursuit of private gain. The verse names this pattern wherever a person’s life becomes the price of another’s profit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that success is innocent when the people who produce it are being consumed: gain purchased with their lives is predation, not stewardship.
THE ROOT
בְּצֹעַ בָּצַע
bĕṣōaʿ bāṣaʿ
GROWS FROM
בצע
Cut off or break off; in this word family, gain or profit.
The Hebrew repeats the word family in the phrase rendered “to get dishonest gain,” a construction like “to gain gain.” The same root can also mean “cut off”; set after bloodshed and destroyed lives, the language binds profit to what is taken from others.
ALSO GROWS
bāṣaʿ: To cut off or break off.
בָּצַע
This sense gives the verse’s pursuit of gain an edge of extraction, set beside the rulers’ violence.
betsaʿ: Gain, profit, or spoil.
בֶּצַע
This is the gain the rulers seek; the repeated form makes profit their explicit aim.
טֹרְפֵי טֶרֶף
ṭōrəp̄ê ṭerep̄
GROWS FROM
טרף
Tear or tear apart; as a noun, prey or torn food.
“ravening the prey” in this verse is ṭōrəp̄ê ṭerep̄. The verse repeats the root in טֹרְפֵי טֶרֶף (ṭōrəp̄ê ṭerep̄, “those who tear prey”). That echo makes the comparison physical: the rulers do not merely resemble wolves in appearance; their way of exercising power is to tear into those among them.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāraph: To tear or tear apart.
טָרַף
The verb names the violence at the heart of the wolf image.
ṭerep̄: Prey or torn food.
טֶרֶף
The people under the rulers’ power are treated as something to be consumed.
נְפָשׁוֹת
nefashot
GROWS FROM
נפש
Living soul, living being, or life.
נְפָשׁוֹת (nefashot, “living souls”) names living persons in the fullness of their lives. The prey here is not an abstract inner part: the rulers’ violence reaches the people themselves and their survival.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh: A living soul, person, or life.
נֶפֶשׁ
The singular form keeps the focus on a living person, the very life placed at risk in the verse.
naphash: To rest or be refreshed.
נָפַשׁ
This related verb names refreshment; the verse’s destruction targets living beings whose lives also include the possibility of rest and renewal.
THE PATTERN
When those entrusted with people’s well-being consume them for private gain, leadership takes the shape of predation.
Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
And Judah said unto his brethren, What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood?The same בֶּצַע (betsaʿ, “profit” or “gain”) appears in the question about profiting from a brother’s death. The shared root exposes the same calculation: another person’s life is weighed against what can be gained.
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