What Does Ezekiel 25:13 Mean in the King James?
Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; I will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman; and they of Dedan shall fall by the sword.
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 makes the sword and the wasteland echo one another: חֶרֶב (cherev) and חָרְבָּה (charbah) share the consonants ח־ר־ב.
THE MEANING
Judgment appears as an enacted severing: the hand is stretched against Edom, human and animal life are cut away, and the land is made desolate. Dedan’s people fall by the sword; the verse keeps the violence concrete, with no euphemism around death and ruin.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that divine judgment is only symbolic or bloodless; the verse names human and animal death, the sword, and desolation.
THE ROOT
חָרְבָּה
charbah cherev
GROWS FROM
ח־ר־ב
ḥ-r-b
To become dry or waste; this consonantal family also names the sword.
“desolate; sword” in this verse is charbah cherev. The verse uses חָרְבָּה (charbah, desolation) and בַּחֶרֶב (ba-cherev, by the sword), forms built on the same consonants. The land’s ruin and the instrument of death are joined in the wording: the sword and the wasteland belong to one sound-shape.
ALSO GROWS
charbah: Desolation, waste
חָרְבָּה
This names the condition the territory is brought into.
cherev: Sword
חֶרֶב
Appearing later in the same verse, it gives the desolation a concrete instrument of death.
וְהִכְרַתִּי
vehikhratti
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
To cut, sever.
“cut off” in this verse is vehikhratti. The verb names removal as severance. The same root appears in כָּרַת בְּרִית (karat berit, literally “cut a covenant”), so the root spans both cutting away and covenant-making.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: Cut a covenant; make a covenant
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb that removes life here can mark the act of establishing a covenant.
karet: Cutting off, exclusion
כָּרֵת
This branch preserves the sense of separation carried by “cut off.”
אָדָם
adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
אָדָם (adam) means human; אֲדָמָה (adamah) means ground or soil, a close Hebrew word-family link.
“man” in this verse is adam. The word for humanity shares its consonants with the word for ground. Here human life is cut off from the land, making that closeness between adam and adamah resonate in the sentence.
ALSO GROWS
adam: Human, humankind
אָדָם
This is the life named as cut off from the territory.
adamah: Ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
Its shared consonants keep humanity and ground close in Hebrew, sharpening the image of life removed from the land.
THE PATTERN
Judgment reaches across life and land: people fall, other creatures are included, and territory is left desolate.
I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the LORD.For out of the north there cometh up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.THE THREAD
In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:The Hebrew root כרת (karat), behind “cut off” here, also appears in the phrase כָּרַת בְּרִית, literally “cut a covenant,” rendered “made a covenant” in Genesis. The same root can mark a binding relation or a severing; here, life and land are severed.
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