What Does Ezekiel 39:14 Mean in the King James?
And they shall sever out men of continual employment, passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search.
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
Here, cleansing is the sustained work of burying the dead and searching the land for what remains.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the reader in the work that follows mass death: men are set apart to pass through the land and bury the bodies left on its surface. The labor continues for seven months, followed by another search. The verse speaks now of cleansing as sustained work upon the ground after devastation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that catastrophe is finished when the violence ends; bodies remain, and the work of cleansing continues through months of burial and searching.
THE ROOT
לְטַהֲרָהּ
lətaharah
GROWS FROM
טהר
ṭ-h-r
Be clean or pure; make clean.
“cleanse” in this verse is lətaharah. The same root names both cleanness and the act of cleansing. Here it ties cleanness to the physical work of removing the bodies death leaves across the land.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāhōr: Clean; pure.
טָהוֹר
This is the adjective in Ezekiel 36:25’s “clean water,” where the same root opens another image of cleansing.
ṭāhārah: Cleanness; purification.
טָהֳרָה
This noun names the condition or process that the burial work in this verse serves.
יַחְקֹרוּ
yaḥqoru
GROWS FROM
חקר
ḥ-q-r
Search out; investigate; probe.
The verse places a search after seven months of burial work, so the labor does not end with what is first found. This root carries the sense of investigation: the land is examined for what may still remain.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēqer: Search; investigation.
חֵקֶר
Job 11:7 uses this noun for searching out what cannot be fully discovered, giving the word a sense of inquiry that probes its subject.
ḥōqēr: One who searches or investigates.
חֹקֵר
The active form echoes the workers’ continued examination of the land after months of burial.
THE PATTERN
Cleansing after devastation takes sustained work that finds and removes what remains defiling.
His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.THE THREAD
Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.Ezekiel 36:25 uses the same טהר (ṭ-h-r) root for “clean” and “cleanse.” There it reaches filthiness and idols; here it is tied to bodies on the land, giving cleansing a stark physical edge: what death leaves behind must be found and removed.
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