Bible Strands
Ezekiel 16:38
And I will sentence you to the punishment of women who commit adultery and those who shed blood; so I will bring upon you the wrath of your bloodshed and jealousy.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God addresses Jerusalem, depicted as an unfaithful wife, immediately after promising to gather her lovers to expose her nakedness (Ezekiel 16:37).
The words — שְׁפַטְתִּיךְ (shəp̄aṯṯîḵ) translates literally as "I will judge you," while דַּם־חֵמָה (dam-ḥēmâ) means "blood of rage" or "wrath of bloodshed."
The thread — The judgment motif aligns with the blood-guilt principle in Genesis 9:6 and the adultery penalties in Leviticus 20:10, while Jeremiah 18:21 extends the consequence of bloodshed to families. Ezekiel 16:39 immediately follows by detailing how the gathered lovers will strip and destroy her.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that covenant unfaithfulness triggers proportional judicial consequences. It requires the reader to acknowledge that divine judgment operates through the very agents and penalties the covenant explicitly warns against.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged; and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy.
Cross-references
- Genesis 9:6 Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed; for in His own image God has made mankind.
- Leviticus 20:10 If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must surely be put to death.
- Jeremiah 18:21 Therefore, hand their children over to famine; pour out the power of the sword upon them. Let their wives become childless and widowed; let their husbands be slain by disease, their young men struck down by the sword in battle.
- Zephaniah 1:17 I will bring such distress on mankind that they will walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the LORD. Their blood will be poured out like dust and their flesh like dung.
- Genesis 38:11 Then Judah said to his daughter-in-law Tamar, “Live as a widow in your father’s house until my son Shelah grows up.” For he thought, “He may die too, like his brothers.” So Tamar went to live in her father’s house.
- Genesis 38:24 About three months later, Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has prostituted herself, and now she is pregnant.” “Bring her out!” Judah replied. “Let her be burned to death!”
- Exodus 21:12 Whoever strikes and kills a man must surely be put to death.
- Numbers 35:31 You are not to accept a ransom for the life of a murderer who deserves to die; he must surely be put to death.
- Deuteronomy 22:22 If a man is found lying with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.
- Psalms 79:3 They have poured out their blood like water all around Jerusalem, and there is no one to bury the dead.