What Does Ezekiel 4:6 Mean in the King James?
And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year.
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 verse makes a people’s iniquity countable and embodied: one day on Ezekiel’s side bears one year.
THE MEANING
This verse sets before you a body lying on its right side under a people’s iniquity, carrying it through forty counted days. Each day stands for a year, so guilt occupies both flesh and time. The duration is given, bounded, and borne.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that collective wrongdoing is weightless or merely abstract: here it is carried in a body for a measured duration.
THE ROOT
וְנָשָׂאתָ
wenasata
GROWS FROM
נשא
Lift, carry, bear; with certain objects, take away or forgive.
The root nasa (נשא, lift, carry, bear) binds lifting and bearing together. In nose avon (נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן, bearing iniquity), the same phrase can be rendered “forgiving iniquity” elsewhere; here, the emphasis is the burden occupying a body across measured time.
ALSO GROWS
nose ʿavon: Bearing iniquity; rendered “forgiving iniquity” in Exodus 34:7.
נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן
The shared phrase shows that this verb paired with wrongdoing can also name taking its charge away, while this verse presents the burden being carried through time.
nasi: A leader or prince, associated with one lifted up.
נָשִׂיא
This branch extends the root’s sense of lifting from a physical load to a person raised into leadership.
נְתַתִּיו
netattiv
GROWS FROM
נתן
Give, set, place.
The verb under “appointed” is nathan (נתן, give, set, place): the forty-day span is given to the body as a specific charge. Its branches name both giving and what is set in place, making the duration something assigned rather than an unmarked stretch.
ALSO GROWS
netinah: Giving or granting.
נְתִינָה
This noun from the same root keeps the act of giving audible beneath the appointed measure.
natun: Given or placed.
נָתוּן
This form shows the span as something set upon Ezekiel, not an abstract count.
THE PATTERN
A people’s burden becomes visible through what a body bears across measured time.
After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.THE THREAD
After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.Numbers uses the same Hebrew root nasa (נשא, lift, carry, bear) for bearing iniquities and repeats the exact “each day for a year” measure. The repeated wording makes Ezekiel’s posture and duration part of a recurring grammar: a people’s wrong is given weight and count.
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