What Does Ezekiel 36:3 Mean in the King James?
Therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people:
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 מוֹרָשָׁה (morashah, possession or inheritance) grows from יָרַשׁ (yarash, possess or inherit), whose same root can mean dispossess, so this inheritance carries expulsion inside it.
THE MEANING
The place that is yours is made desolate, consumed from every side, and turned into the possession of others. Its devastation also becomes public slander, so the taking reaches both the ground and the name spoken over it.
THE ROOT
מוֹרָשָׁה
morashah
GROWS FROM
ירש
To take possession or inherit; in a causative form, to dispossess or drive out.
מוֹרָשָׁה (morashah, possession or inheritance) comes from יָרַשׁ (yarash, possess or inherit). The same root can describe dispossessing someone, so the verse’s possession is not a neutral transfer: expulsion is inside the word.
ALSO GROWS
yarash: To take possession or inherit.
יָרַשׁ
This is the root behind the land becoming a possession for others.
horish: To dispossess or drive out.
הוֹרִישׁ
This causative form names the expulsion that can make another person an inheritor.
שַׁמּוֹת
shammot
GROWS FROM
שמם
To be desolate or devastated; also to be appalled.
“desolate” in this verse is shammot. This word-family can name both a wasted place and the appalled response to devastation. Here, the desolation becomes public as well as physical: it is carried into what people say about the land.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: A desolate place or condition.
שְׁמָמָה
It makes the verse’s physical devastation visible as a condition of the land.
shamem: To become desolate or to be appalled.
שָׁמֵם
The same root can describe the ruined place and the shock its ruin provokes.
דִּבַּת
dibbat
GROWS FROM
דבב
Whispering or speech; a report that becomes slander.
דִּבַּת (dibbat, slander or evil report) turns the devastation into something said about the people. A related form describes lips being made to speak, bringing the verse’s public infamy down to the motion of speech itself.
ALSO GROWS
dibbah: A hostile report or slander.
דִּבָּה
This is the noun behind the infamy named in the verse.
dovēv: Causing lips to speak, as in Song of Solomon 7:9.
דּוֹבֵב
This related form connects the people’s infamy to speech moving from mouth to mouth.
THE PATTERN
A people can be wounded in their land and again in the public story told about them.
To make their land desolate, and a perpetual hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and wag his head.Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us.Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.THE THREAD
For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.The word for possession in Ezekiel comes from יָרַשׁ (yarash, possess or inherit), the same root behind cast out in Exodus. The shared root exposes the force inside possession: one group’s inheritance can be made through another’s expulsion.
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