What Does Ezekiel 4:15 Mean in the King James?
Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow’s dung for man’s dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith.
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
Nourishment and waste stay in the same frame: the cooking fuel changes, but the bread is still made over it.
THE MEANING
Your bodily limits are acknowledged in plain material terms: the fuel changes from human dung to cattle dung, while the bread is still made over it. Nourishment appears inside a condition that remains degrading; the verse places food and waste side by side in one act.
THE ROOT
גְּלָלֵי
gelalei
GROWS FROM
גלל
To roll or roll away.
The Hebrew word for human dung shares a root with rolling, keeping this image bodily and concrete. Set beside bread, it makes the verse’s contact between waste and nourishment impossible to soften into abstraction.
ALSO GROWS
galal: To roll or roll away.
גָּלַל
The verb shares the seed of the word for human dung, carrying a physical sense of motion into the verse’s blunt image.
galgal: A wheel or rolling object.
גַּלְגַּל
This related form keeps the root’s motion visible, showing how the same consonants extend into the world of tangible things.
וְעָשִׂיתָ
ve'asita
GROWS FROM
עשה
To do or make.
“prepare” in this verse is ve'asita. The Hebrew verb is literally to do or make: the bread is made over the dung. The root keeps the preparation physical and deliberate, with no distance between the act of making food and the material beneath it.
ALSO GROWS
asah: To do or make.
עָשָׂה
This is the verb used here, grounding the bread’s preparation in an actual act.
ma'aseh: A deed, work, or thing made.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun from the same root shows how the root moves from the act of making to what that act produces.
נָתַתִּי
natatti
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, set, or place.
The sentence names the changed material as something given, then immediately names what is made with it. The root holds together provision and placement without changing the material’s plain character.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
The verb describes what happens to the cow dung: it is supplied and placed for use.
mattanah: A gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This noun shares the root of giving, showing how the same word-family can name both the act of giving and what is handed over.
THE PATTERN
Scripture keeps bread in material contact with the conditions of making, scarcity, and sharing.
And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.And she said, As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.THE THREAD
Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.The same Hebrew word, lechem (לֶחֶם), means bread in both verses. In 4:9 the bread is assembled from grains and measured across days; here it is made over dung, keeping its ingredients, ration, and fuel in one continuous bodily scene.
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