What Does Ezekiel 32:25 Mean in the King James?
They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her multitude: her graves are round about him: all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword: though their terror was caused in the land of the living, yet have they borne their shame with them that go down to the pit: he is put in the midst of them that be slain.
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 ones whose terror filled the land of the living are laid among the pierced, carrying their shame into the pit.
THE MEANING
Here, you see terror stripped of its apparent permanence: those who cause fear in the land of the living lie among the slain, surrounded by graves. They carry shame into the pit; the force they wield does not lift them out of the shared place of the dead.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a person who can make others tremble is beyond the reach of death or disgrace is undone.
THE ROOT
חֲלָלִים
ḥalālîm
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To pierce or wound; this consonantal root also carries the sense of profaning or desecrating.
The word translated “slain” names the pierced ones. The same consonants also appear in a word for profaning, placing bodily violence beside the language of desecration.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālāl: Someone pierced or killed.
חָלָל
The verse repeatedly places these bodies among the slain by the sword.
ḥillēl: To violate or treat as common what is set apart.
חִלֵּל
This related word adds an echo of desecration to the image of bodies laid among the dead.
בּוֹר
bōr
GROWS FROM
בור
b-w-r
A dug hollow, such as a pit or cistern.
The same Hebrew noun appears in Isaiah 14:15, where a ruler is brought down to the pit. Here the pit receives the slain; there it receives the one brought low.
ALSO GROWS
bōr: A hollow dug to hold water.
בּוֹר
The word can name a hollow that receives and holds what is placed in it.
bōr: A deep hollow used as a pit, grave, or place of confinement.
בּוֹר
In this verse, the pit is the destination of those who descend among the dead.
כְּלִמָּתָם
kelimmātām
GROWS FROM
כלם
k-l-m
To shame, humiliate, or confound.
Their shame is something they bear down with them; death does not erase it in the verse’s image. The root also names the act of putting someone to shame, linking disgrace to what is done to a person as well as what they carry.
ALSO GROWS
kelimmāh: Disgrace or humiliation.
כְּלִמָּה
This is the noun carried with the dead into the pit.
hikhlim: To bring someone into disgrace.
הִכְלִים
The verb form shows shame as an exposure imposed on someone, not merely a private feeling.
THE PATTERN
Terror and status among the living cannot exempt a body from death’s exposure.
Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in the grave from their dwelling.That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.THE THREAD
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.Both verses use בּוֹר (bōr), “pit”: Ezekiel places the slain among those descending into it, while Isaiah says the exalted ruler is brought down to its depths. The shared word makes the pit the common endpoint of massed force and solitary elevation.
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