What Does Ezekiel 23:20 Mean in the King James?
For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.
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 Hebrew word translated “issue” belongs to the language of rushing torrents, so the verse casts sexual appetite as an inundating outflow.
THE MEANING
This verse exposes desire fixed on excess: the desired body becomes an image of force and overflowing discharge. Its bluntness makes the longing feel consuming rather than tender; appetite fills the whole field of vision.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that overwhelming desire proves intimacy: here, intensity is portrayed as appetite that consumes perception, not as mutual knowing.
THE ROOT
זִרְמַת
zirmat
GROWS FROM
ז־ר־ם
z-r-m
To rush, pour down, or flow as a torrent.
The word for bodily emission grows from the same root as rushing water. English leaves “issue” vague, while Hebrew gives the image the force of an outpouring.
ALSO GROWS
zerem: A torrent or flood.
זֶרֶם
This branch names floodwater, so the bodily image carries a sense of inundation.
zāram: To pour down or rush like a torrent.
זָרַם
The verb emphasizes forceful outflow, echoing the verse’s physical comparison.
וַתַּעְגְּבָה
vattaʿăgəḇāh
GROWS FROM
ע־ג־ב
ʿ-g-b
To lust after or become erotically infatuated.
This root gives “doted” an explicitly erotic charge. Its related noun can describe love songs, showing how desire may be made alluring even as it draws attention toward itself.
ALSO GROWS
vattaʿăgaḇ: She lusted after.
וַתַּעְגַּב
The same verb appears in Ezekiel 23:5, keeping the passage’s desire language direct and unmistakable.
ʿăgāvîm: Love songs or songs of desire.
עֲגָבִים
In Ezekiel 33:32, the related noun describes an alluring song, connecting this root with desire made pleasing to hear.
THE PATTERN
When appetite governs perception, desire becomes a force that draws a person toward betrayal and consequence.
And Aholah played the harlot when she was mine; and she doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbours,He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks;But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.THE THREAD
Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a flood of mighty waters overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand.Isaiah’s flood language uses the same ז־ר־ם root that appears in Ezekiel’s word for “issue.” The shared root lets the sexual image carry the force of a rushing inundation.
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