What Does Ezekiel 22:3 Mean in the King James?
Then say thou, Thus saith the Lord GOD, The city sheddeth blood in the midst of it, that her time may come, and maketh idols against herself to defile herself.
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 city’s violence and idols are not separate from its ruin: it spills blood within itself and sets up what stands against itself.
THE MEANING
A community brings its reckoning near when it spills blood within its own life. What it sets up as an object of devotion can stand against it and make it unclean from within. The verse locates that damage in the community’s own acts.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that what a community creates for devotion stands outside its consequences: what it sets over itself can stand against it and make it unclean.
THE ROOT
שֹׁפֶכֶת
shofekhet
GROWS FROM
שפך
sh-p-k
To pour out, spill.
“sheddeth” in this verse is shofekhet. The verb comes from a root meaning to pour out: blood is not distant or abstract here, but what the city spills into its own midst. The same root names a person who sheds blood elsewhere, keeping the act and the one who does it joined in the image.
ALSO GROWS
shafakh: To pour out or spill.
שָׁפַךְ
This is the root verb beneath “sheddeth,” so the verse’s violence carries the concrete image of pouring something out.
shofekh: One who pours out or sheds.
שֹׁפֵךְ
This form names the one doing the spilling, as in Genesis 9:6, linking the city’s act to the person who carries it out.
גִּלּוּלִים
gillulim
GROWS FROM
גלל
galal
To roll or roll away.
The word for “idols” is a contemptuous biblical term often associated with dung imagery and linked to the root meaning “roll.” That word-shape strips the objects of their claimed grandeur, while the verse says the city sets them up against herself.
ALSO GROWS
galal: To roll or roll away.
גָּלַל
This basic verb supplies the root associated with the contemptuous name for the idols.
megillah: Scroll.
מְגִלָּה
A scroll is something rolled, showing another word formed from the same root and preserving its concrete image.
לְטָמְאָה
letam'ah
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
To be or become unclean.
“defile” in this verse is letam'ah. The root names an unclean state, and the verse makes the city the agent of her own defilement. She sets the idols upon herself and, through that act, makes herself unclean.
ALSO GROWS
tame: Unclean.
טָמֵא
This adjective names the state the city brings upon herself in the verse.
tum'ah: Uncleanness, impurity.
טֻמְאָה
This noun gives the condition produced by the city’s own acts of bloodshed and idolatry.
THE PATTERN
Violence within a community turns its own life and shared ground into witnesses against it.
And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?THE THREAD
Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.The word behind “sheddeth” comes from the same root for pouring out that describes the city’s violence here. Genesis repeats that root for the return of the spilled blood, opening Ezekiel’s line as an image of violence whose consequences are bound to the act itself.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us