What Does Ezekiel 9:7 Mean in the King James?
And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city.
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 Hebrew calls the slain “pierced ones,” and its consonants echo the verb for profaning, making the bodies the visible mark of the house’s desecration.
THE MEANING
The command makes the sanctuary’s courts a place of slaughter: the house is defiled, the courts are filled with the dead, and the violence continues through the city. The sacred place itself bears the mark of what is done; its holiness does not conceal the bodies or the force that kills them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that sacred space remains untouched simply because it is sacred: here, the house itself is made to bear the dead.
THE ROOT
חֲלָלִים
ḥălālîm
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To pierce or wound; the same consonantal form also appears in a verb meaning to profane or desecrate.
English “slain” gives the result; the Hebrew noun retains the image of the pierced or wounded. Its consonants also echo the verb translated “pollute” in Ezekiel 7:22, bringing the pierced dead and the desecration of the sacred place into one sound-pattern.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālāl: A pierced or wounded person; a slain one.
חָלָל
This form names the dead through the wound, preserving the physical mark that the English word “slain” leaves implicit.
ḥillēl: To profane or desecrate.
חִלֵּל
Its consonants echo those in the word for the slain, linking bodily violence with the violation of sacred space in Ezekiel’s wording.
טַמְּאוּ
ṭamməʾû
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
To be or make unclean.
“Defile” in this verse is ṭamməʾû. The command makes uncleanness something done to the house, and the courts filled with corpses show what brings that condition about. Defilement names the state of a sacred place made to contain slaughter.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāmēʾ: Unclean or impure.
טָמֵא
The adjective names the condition the command imposes on the house.
ṭumʾāh: Uncleanness or impurity.
טֻמְאָה
This noun makes the same condition explicit: the violence changes the state of the place itself.
THE PATTERN
Bloodshed does not stay confined to the body: it marks the land, sanctuary, and city where it is found.
So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.A Psalm of Asaph. O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.THE THREAD
My face will I turn also from them, and they shall pollute my secret place: for the robbers shall enter into it, and defile it.Here, “pollute” translates חִלֵּל (ḥillēl, chillel), “profane or desecrate,” whose consonants echo חֲלָלִים (ḥălālîm, chalalim), “the slain,” in Ezekiel 9:7. That sound-link draws the pierced dead and the desecrated sacred place into one field: the violence in the courts is itself how the place is profaned.
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