What Does Ezekiel 7:5 Mean in the King James?
Thus saith the Lord GOD; An evil, an only evil, behold, is come.
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
In Hebrew, “evil” can mean calamity as well as wrongdoing, so its repetition announces harm arriving rather than merely naming a moral category.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks into the moment when calamity ceases to be remote: what was approaching now stands present. Its repeated name gives the harm no cover of softer language.
THE ROOT
רָעָה
raʿah
GROWS FROM
רעע
rāʿaʿ
To be bad or harmful; to do harm.
The Hebrew repeats רָעָה (raʿah, evil or calamity) around אַחַת (ʾaḥat, one), making the warning singular and unmistakable. The root holds badness and harm together, so “evil” reaches beyond a moral label to the calamity that arrives.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil, harmful.
רַע
This adjective carries the root’s basic quality; the verse’s noun can name harm with that same quality.
hēraʿ: To do harm or act wickedly.
הֵרֵעַ
This verbal form moves from a harmful quality to harmful action, showing that the root can name both evil’s character and its doing.
THE PATTERN
A coming day of calamity is named as near or already present, bringing what is feared into the open.
An end is come, the end is come: it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come.Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?THE THREAD
Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?Amos uses the same Hebrew word רָעָה (raʿah, evil or calamity) in its question about a city’s devastation. The shared root opens Ezekiel’s word to mean calamity and harm as well as moral evil, deepening the force of its arrival.
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