What Does Ezekiel 4:1 Mean in the King James?
Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:
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 city whose name carries wholeness is etched onto a small surface, making what is vast visible as a mark.
THE MEANING
You are met with Jerusalem as a visible image: its name carries shalom, wholeness, while the drawn city takes shape on a tile. The verse makes the city legible at human scale, a whole place held in a bounded mark.
THE ROOT
וְחַקּוֹתָ
veḥaqqōtā
GROWS FROM
חקק
Cut, engrave, or mark out.
“pourtray” in this verse is veḥaqqōtā. The verb carries more than making a likeness: this root can also name an inscribed boundary or decree. The city is marked into view, as though drawing it gives it a defined shape.
ALSO GROWS
ḥoq: A prescribed boundary or decree.
חֹק
The root links a drawn outline with a boundary that defines what is set within it.
meḥoqeq: An inscriber, lawgiver, or ruler.
מְחֹקֵק
The marked line can become an established order, giving the image the force of a defined form.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
Wholeness, completeness.
The city’s name carries shalom, wholeness. Here that wholeness is not an abstraction: Jerusalem is traced as a city you can see.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
This is the wholeness carried in the city’s name.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
The root lets the city name echo the idea of a whole place held in view.
בֶּן־אָדָם
ben-adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
The ground-being; the human associated with adamah, ground or soil.
“son of man” in this verse is ben-adam. The address names the one who receives the vision as a human of the ground. The city’s image is placed before an earthbound person, making the sign something seen and handled.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: Ground, soil.
אֲדָמָה
This is the ground-word from which the human name is understood.
adam: Human, ground-being.
אָדָם
The address keeps the vision rooted in embodied human seeing.
THE PATTERN
A mark, image, or enacted sign makes a larger truth legible before it unfolds.
And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.And when he was come unto us, he took Paul’s girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.THE THREAD
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.Ezekiel’s word for “pourtray” and Isaiah’s “graven” share the root חקק, to cut or inscribe. One image marks Jerusalem on a tile; the other marks the addressed person on palms, making what is held in view tangible.
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