Bible Strands
Ezekiel 24:4
Put in the pieces of meat, every good piece—thigh and shoulder—fill it with choice bones.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Yahweh commands Ezekiel to deliver a parable to the rebellious house, instructing him to describe adding meat to a pot already placed on fire.
The words — The text uses אֱסֹף ('e.Sof), meaning gather, and נְתָחֶ֙י/הָ֙ (ne.ta.Chei./ha), meaning pieces of meat or its pieces, to command filling the pot with select cuts.
The thread — The imagery of gathering meat and bones for a pot parallels Ezekiel 22:18’s furnace metaphor for Israel’s corruption, while Micah 3:2 describes the violent stripping of flesh and bones from God’s people. Matthew 7:2 applies the principle of measured judgment to this context of divine reckoning.
Why it lands — The text states a command to fill a cooking pot with the choicest cuts and bones before describing the subsequent boiling process. It requires the reader to recognize that the chosen meat represents a people being prepared for a process of purification and judgment.
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
Gather the pieces thereof into it, even every good piece, the thigh, and the shoulder; fill it with the choice bones.
Cross-references
- Micah 3:2 You hate good and love evil. You tear the skin from my people and strip the flesh from their bones.
- Ezekiel 22:18 “Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me. All of them are copper, tin, iron, and lead inside the furnace; they are but the dross of silver.
- Matthew 7:2 For with the same judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.