What Does Ezekiel 40:1 Mean in the King James?
In the five and twentieth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten, in the selfsame day the hand of the LORD was upon me, and brought me thither.
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
Captivity still names the years, but on that very date the LORD’s hand carries the speaker into a new place of seeing.
THE MEANING
Your life can still carry the marks of displacement and a city’s wound while the LORD’s hand brings you somewhere beyond what those marks seem to allow. The same day holds devastation and arrival: it records what was struck and the moment the speaker is carried into vision.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that displacement decides where you can be brought: a day marked by devastation can also hold an arrival into vision.
THE ROOT
לְגָלוּתֵנוּ
le-galutenu
GROWS FROM
גלה
Uncover, reveal; also go into exile.
The Hebrew word for captivity comes from גלה, a root whose verbs also mean to uncover or reveal. This does not erase the force of exile; it lets the verse hold displacement and exposure together as the speaker is brought into a new place of seeing.
ALSO GROWS
galah: Uncover, reveal; also go into exile.
גָּלָה
The same verb spans exposure and displacement, holding captivity and revelation within one consonantal seed.
galuy: Uncovered, exposed, revealed.
גָּלוּי
This branch gives captivity an echo of being laid bare, while the verse ends with the speaker being brought into a place of encounter.
golah: An exile; a captive community.
גּוֹלָה
This branch names those displaced by exile; here, the years themselves are counted through that shared captivity.
וַיָּבֵא
vayyāvēʾ
GROWS FROM
בוא
Come, enter, arrive; in a causative form, bring someone to a place.
The verb translated “brought” is a causative form of בוא, “to come”: the LORD’s hand causes the speaker to arrive. The verse ends not with the record of exile and destruction, but with movement into a place.
ALSO GROWS
boʾ: Come, enter, arrive.
בּוֹא
This basic verb sits beneath “brought”: the speaker is caused to come into the place named by the vision.
māvoʾ: Entrance, entry.
מָבוֹא
This related noun carries the same root toward arrival, illuminating how the verse turns from a date of loss to an entry into a new place.
בְּרֹאשׁ
berosh
GROWS FROM
ראש
Head, top, chief; by extension, beginning or first.
“Beginning of the year” is literally “at the head of the year.” The date places a new cycle beside the years counted by captivity, holding an onset and a history of loss in the same line.
ALSO GROWS
rosh: Head, top, chief.
רֹאשׁ
The literal sense remains visible in the phrase “head of the year.”
reshit: Beginning, first part.
רֵאשִׁית
This branch carries the head-of-year image into the idea of a beginning.
rishon: First, foremost.
רִאשׁוֹן
This branch links the year’s head with what stands first, sharpening the verse’s sense of a threshold.
THE PATTERN
A place or moment marked by exile, ruin, or need can become the immediate site of opened vision.
Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth:THE THREAD
The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,The same hand is upon the speaker in both passages, and in both it carries him to a distinct place. That repetition makes “thither” part of a recurring pattern: the LORD’s hand carries the speaker into vision.
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