Bible Strands
Ezekiel 3:6
not to the many peoples of unfamiliar speech and difficult language whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — God speaks to Ezekiel during his prophetic commissioning, contrasting the prophet’s actual assignment to Israel with a hypothetical mission to foreign nations.
The words — The Hebrew עִמְקֵי שָׂפָה (im.Kei sa.Fah, "deep of lip") and כִבְדֵי לָשׁוֹן (khiv.Dei la.Shon, "heavy of tongue") literally denote the unintelligible and burdensome speech of the hypothetical foreign peoples.
The thread — This contrast between receptive foreigners and stubborn Israel appears in Jonah 3:5 where Nineveh believes God’s message, and in Matthew 11:20 and Matthew 12:41 where unrepentant Jewish cities are condemned by the repentant Ninevites.
Why it lands — The text states that foreign nations would have listened to Ezekiel, establishing that the barrier to prophetic messages is human stubbornness, not linguistic complexity.
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
Not to many people of a strange speech and of an hard language, whose words thou canst not understand. Surely, had I sent thee to them, they would have hearkened unto thee.
Cross-references
- Jonah 3:5 And the Ninevites believed God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least.
- Matthew 11:20 Then Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles had been performed, because they did not repent.
- Matthew 12:41 The men of Nineveh will stand at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now One greater than Jonah is here.
- Luke 11:30 For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so the Son of Man will be a sign to this generation.
- Romans 9:30 What then will we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;
- Acts 27:28 They took soundings and found that the water was twenty fathoms deep. Going a little farther, they took another set of soundings that read fifteen fathoms.