What Does Ezekiel 39:9 Mean in the King James?
And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years:
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 weapons do not merely fall silent; the people burn them into a seven-year fire.
THE MEANING
The people dwelling in Israel’s cities go out and burn the weapons for seven years. The instruments of harm are consumed where people live, so the threat is not merely paused; its material is removed from use.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse unsettles the belief that instruments of violence must be kept for protection or honor: here, they are burned until their threat is materially spent.
THE ROOT
וּבִעֲרוּ
u-vi’aru
GROWS FROM
ב־ע־ר
b-ʿ-r
To burn or consume; in related usage, to clear away or put away.
“burn” in this verse is u-vi’aru. This root is used for burning the weapons and, elsewhere, for putting something away from a community. That overlap makes the seven-year fire more than a pause in weapon use: the weapons themselves are consumed and cleared from the people’s reach.
ALSO GROWS
ba’ar: To burn or consume by fire.
בָּעַר
This is the verb’s basic sense in the verse: the weapons are physically consumed.
u-vi’arta: “You shall put away” (Deuteronomy 13:5).
וּבִעַרְתָּ
The same root can describe removal from a community; here, burning removes the weapons from use.
THE PATTERN
Violence loses its reach when its instruments are removed from use, broken, burned, or laid away.
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.THE THREAD
And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.The same Hebrew root translated “burn” here appears in Deuteronomy’s closing words as “put away.” There, removal is carried out through a death sentence; in Ezekiel, the object burned is weaponry, so the shared verb sharpens the image of elimination without equating the acts.
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