What Does Ezekiel 23:33 Mean in the King James?
Thou shalt be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of astonishment and desolation, with the cup of thy sister Samaria.
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
“Astonishment” and “desolation” spring from one Hebrew root: the shock of ruin and the ruined state are bound together.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of devastation that fills and disorients: drunkenness and grief crowd the same cup, followed by shock and desolation. Samaria’s cup becomes the image of ruin passed between sisters, placing another’s collapse at the reader’s lips.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that another’s devastation can stay safely on the other side of the boundary.
THE ROOT
שַׁמָּה
shammah
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
sh-m-m
To become desolate or be appalled.
“astonishment and desolation” in this verse is shammah. English separates a reaction, “astonishment,” from a condition, “desolation,” but both words carry the same Hebrew root. The cup holds the shock of ruin and the ruin itself together.
ALSO GROWS
shamem: To be desolate or appalled.
שָׁמֵם
This verbal form holds both devastation and the stunned response it produces.
shammah: Horror or astonishment.
שַׁמָּה
It names the shock in the cup as an experience rooted in desolation.
shemamah: Desolation or devastation.
שְׁמָמָה
It names the ruined state that accompanies the shock.
שִׁכָּרוֹן
shikkaron
GROWS FROM
שכר
To become drunk or intoxicated.
“drunkenness” in this verse is shikkaron. The cup is filled with intoxication alongside sorrow, joining impaired perception to grief. The root’s other forms name both the intoxicating drink and the person under its influence.
ALSO GROWS
shekhar: Intoxicating drink or strong drink.
שֵׁכָר
This branch makes the cup’s contents concrete: intoxication is something taken in.
shikkor: A drunk or intoxicated person.
שִׁכּוֹר
It shows the condition the cup brings about in the one who drinks.
THE PATTERN
In Scripture, the cup can hold a measured portion of judgment that its drinker must receive.
For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it.The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:THE THREAD
And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof.Jeremiah 19:8 uses the same שׁמם root for the city made desolate and the passerby left appalled. The root binds devastation to the shock it produces, just as Ezekiel’s cup holds both together.
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