What Does Ezekiel 36:13 Mean in the King James?
Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because they say unto you, Thou land devourest up men, and hast bereaved thy nations;
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 land is given a mouth: the Hebrew verb for ordinary eating makes human life its food, while the next verb names the nations’ bereavement.
THE MEANING
When the place around you feels as though it consumes people, this verse gives that harm two linked names: eating and bereavement. It reaches from bodies lost to grief carried by whole peoples.
THE ROOT
אֹכֶלֶת
ʾokhelet
GROWS FROM
אכל
eat, consume
“devourest up” in this verse is ʾokhelet. The same root names eating and food, so the accusation pictures people as food for the land. The Hebrew image makes the place itself the eater, with human life taken into it.
ALSO GROWS
ʾākal: to eat
אָכַל
This is the ordinary verb beneath the accusation, making the land’s consuming action stark and bodily.
maʾakhal: food, something eaten
מַאֲכָל
This branch completes the image: the root for eating also names what is eaten, placing people in the role of food.
שִׁכַּלְתְּ
shikkalt
GROWS FROM
שכל
to bereave, to cause the loss of children or offspring
This root carries the wound beyond individual death into the loss of descendants and a people’s future. The verbs echo through their shared k-l consonants, though they are distinct roots: the land eats, and the nations are left bereaved.
ALSO GROWS
shakul: bereaved, deprived of children
שָׁכוּל
This describes the state left behind by the land’s consuming violence.
shikkel: to bereave, deprive of children
שִׁכֵּל
This causative form makes the loss active: someone or something has caused a family to lose its next generation.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses the language of eating to expose forces that consume people and the life that shelters them.
And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.THE THREAD
And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.Numbers uses the same root, אכל (ʾākal), for a land eating its inhabitants. The shared verb reveals how this verse gives the land a mouth and names human loss as consumption.
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