What Does Ezekiel 23:21 Mean in the King James?
Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth.
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 root behind “calledst to remembrance” also means to visit or take account, so this memory returns with the Egyptian bruising still in view.
THE MEANING
Here, memory is bodily: the verse names the Egyptians’ bruising of the breasts inside the recollection of lewdness. Desire and violence occupy the same image, without the violence being softened into metaphor. The verse holds the city’s conduct and its bodily injury together, leaving their collision exposed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that this memory is only about sexual misconduct: it places the Egyptians’ bruising of the breasts inside it.
THE ROOT
וַתִּפְקְדִי
wattifqedi
GROWS FROM
פקד
paqad
Attend to, visit, or take account of.
“remembered” in this verse is wattifqedi. The verb can mean more than recalling something in the mind; its root also describes attending to or visiting. The verse’s memory therefore brings the bodily injury back into view as something reckoned with.
ALSO GROWS
paqad: Attend to, visit, or take account of.
פָּקַד
This root sense gives “remembrance” the weight of returning attention to what happened.
pequddah: Charge, oversight, appointment, or visitation.
פְּקֻדָּה
Its range includes oversight and visitation, deepening the sense of memory as a matter brought back into account.
זִמַּת
zimmat
GROWS FROM
זמם
zamam
Devise or plan.
The word for lewdness is connected to a root of devising or planning, adding the sense of deliberate intent beneath its sexual meaning. The verse places that conduct beside the Egyptians’ bruising, holding intention and bodily harm in the same scene.
ALSO GROWS
zamam: Devise, plan, or plot.
זָמַם
This verb reveals the intentional shade carried by the root beneath the word translated “lewdness.”
mezimmah: Plan, scheme, or device.
מְזִמָּה
This related noun makes the root’s sense of formed intent visible alongside the sexual conduct named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Scripture portrays a people’s attachment to powerful kingdoms as an intimate bond in which dependence, desire, and harm can become entangled.
Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians thy neighbours, great of flesh; and hast increased thy whoredoms, to provoke me to anger.And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.THE THREAD
Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt:Ezekiel’s verb translated “calledst to remembrance” comes from פקד, the same root translated “visited” here. The shared root makes memory an act of attending to what is named, bringing the injury into account.
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