What Does Ezekiel 5:16 Mean in the King James?
When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for their destruction, and which I will send to destroy you: and I will increase the famine upon you, and will break your staff of bread:
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
Scarcity arrives as a weapon, and the very thing that props life, bread, is made to break.
THE MEANING
Famine here arrives as an assault, aimed at the body rather than held at the level of abstract lack. Bread is a staff, support for life, and the verse names its breaking as part of the destruction.
THE ROOT
שָׁלַח
shalach
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
To send forth, release, or stretch out the hand
“send” in this verse is shalach. The verse repeats this sending verb around the famine, so hunger is a dispatched force, not a passive condition. This root-family moves from a missile to a table of provision, revealing how what is sent can wound or sustain.
ALSO GROWS
shelach: Missile or weapon
שֶׁלַח
This branch names an object sent forth; here the famine itself is dispatched alongside arrows.
shulchan: Table, provision extended
שֻׁלְחָן
The table carries the image of provision extended, sharpening the loss when bread’s support is broken.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of the sent waters
שִׁלֹחַ
This branch keeps the act of sending visible in another image of water, while Ezekiel’s sent force is famine.
שָׁבַר
shavar
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break or shatter
“break” in this verse is shavar. A branch of this root names grain, while another sense of the same word names fracture and ruin. Food and breaking occupy one word-family, so the broken staff of bread is a rupture in sustenance itself.
ALSO GROWS
shever: Grain or corn
שֶׁבֶר
This branch names food within the same root-family as breaking, tying the broken staff directly to the supply of food.
shever: Fracture, breach, or ruin
שֶׁבֶר
This sense carries the breaking beyond a single object to the collapse of support.
THE PATTERN
When famine threatens life, Scripture presents food supply as a concrete support that can be broken, rationed, or withheld.
And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.Moreover he called for a famine upon the land: he brake the whole staff of bread.And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.THE THREAD
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.“Famine” in Ezekiel and “hunger” in Deuteronomy share רָעָב (ra’av, hunger or famine), from the root רעב (r-ʿ-b). Deuteronomy places that same hunger beside manna, while Ezekiel names famine as arrows sent to destroy and bread’s staff broken; the shared root makes the difference in each verse’s force visible.
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