Ezekiel 23:18

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

So she uncovered her prostitution, and uncovered her nakedness: then my soul was alienated from her, like as my soul was alienated from her sister.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

1 first appearance in the Hebrew Bible

Full analysis ↓

Download a study sheet

One document with this verse’s original text, its word-by-word gloss line, the meaning frame, cross-references with their text, attributed commentary, and full source and license credits — printable, and it pastes into notes with its structure intact.

This verse Autodidact and up

Study sheet (.html) Plain text (.txt)

A passage Seminary Student

Up to 50 verses in one chapter. A passage sheet keeps up to 6 commentary sources and 12 cross-references per verse, in the order this page ranks them, and says so on the sheet whenever that leaves anything out. Ask for a single verse and you get the Autodidact verse sheet above.

Everything on this page stays free to read, with no account — the sheet is a download of what is already on screen, not access to it.

Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

Word by word

More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →

Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →

נָקְעָ֥ה

nâqaʻ

H5361

“to be estranged”

Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular

Appears 3× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears here

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 1414

(Qal) to be estranged, be alienated - to be severed (figuratively)

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

13: words
10: distinct lemmas
Prophets: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is נָקְעָ֥ה to be estranged H5361 — appearing just 3 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

First appearance in Scripture

This word makes its first canonical appearance in the Hebrew Bible here:

נָקְעָ֥ה to be estranged H5361

Shared distinctive vocabulary

נָקְעָ֥ה to be estranged H5361 occurs in 3 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

4 verbs
5 nouns
2 prepositions
2 particles

Verb forms

וַתְּגַל֙ Piel · Sequential Imperfect
וַתְּגַ֖ל Piel · Sequential Imperfect
וַתֵּ֤קַע Qal · Sequential Imperfect
נָקְעָ֥ה Qal · Perfect

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

וַתְּגַל֙ to uncover H1540 ×2
נַפְשִׁי֙ soul H5315 ×2
מֵֽעָלֶ֔יהָ upon H5921 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 25 words from the Hebrew and 25 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the same length.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Ezekiel 23:18 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Psalms 78:59 When God heard this, he was angry, And greatly abhorred Israel;
Psalms 106:40 Therefore Yahweh burned with anger against his people. He abhorred his inheritance.
Jeremiah 12:8 My heritage is become to me as a lion in the forest: she has uttered her voice against me; therefore I have hated her.
Jeremiah 6:8 Be instructed, Jerusalem, lest my soul be alienated from you; lest I make you a desolation, a land not inhabited.
Jeremiah 8:12 Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among those who fall; in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, says Yahweh.
Ezekiel 21:24 Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh: Because you have made your iniquity to be remembered, in that your transgressions are uncovered, so that in all your doings your sins do appear; because you have come to memory, you shall be taken with the hand.
Deuteronomy 32:19 Yahweh saw [it], and abhorred [them], Because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.
Isaiah 3:9 The look of their faces testify against them. They parade their sin like Sodom. They don't hide it. Woe to their soul! For they have brought disaster upon themselves.

Jeremiah 15:1 Then said Yahweh to me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind would not be toward this people: cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth.
Lamentations 2:7 The Lord has cast off his altar, he has abhorred his sanctuary; He has given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces: They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh, as in the day of a solemn assembly.
Ezekiel 16:36 Thus says the Lord Yahweh, Because your filthiness was poured out, and your nakedness uncovered through your prostitution with your lovers; and because of all the idols of your abominations, and for the blood of your children, that you gave to them;
Hosea 2:2 Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, Neither am I her husband; And let her put away her prostitution from her face, And her adulteries from between her breasts;
Hosea 7:1 When I would heal Israel, Then the iniquity of Ephraim is uncovered, Also the wickedness of Samaria; For they commit falsehood, And the thief enters in, And the gang of robbers ravages outside.
Amos 5:21 I hate, I despise your feasts, And I can't stand your solemn assemblies.
Amos 6:8 "The Lord Yahweh has sworn by himself," says Yahweh, the God of hosts: "I abhor the pride of Jacob, And detest his fortresses. Therefore I will deliver up the city with all that is in it.
Zechariah 11:8 I cut off the three shepherds in one month; for my soul was weary of them, and their soul also loathed me.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Ezekiel 23:18 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַתְּגַל֙ תַּזְנוּתֶ֔יהָ וַתְּגַ֖ל אֶת עֶרְוָתָ֑הּ וַתֵּ֤קַע נַפְשִׁי֙ מֵֽעָלֶ֔יהָ כַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר נָקְעָ֥ה נַפְשִׁ֖י מֵעַ֥ל אֲחוֹתָֽהּ

So she uncovered her prostitution, and uncovered her nakedness: then my soul was alienated from her, like as my soul was alienated from her sister.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Ezekiel 23:18 Septuagint · lemma form

καί ἀποκαλύπτω ὁ πορνεία αὐτός καί ἀποκαλύπτω ὁ αἰσχύνη αὐτός καί ἀποἵστημι ὁ ψυχή ἐγώ ἀπό αὐτός ὅς τρόπος ἀποἵστημι ὁ ψυχή ἐγώ ἀπό ὁ ἀδελφή αὐτός

And she exposed her fornication, and exposed her shame: and my soul was alienated from her, even as my soul was alienated from her sister.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וְאִתְגְלִיאַת בַּהֲתָתָהּ וְאִתְחַזֵי קְלָנָהּ וְרַחֵיק מֵימְרִי יָתָהּ כְּמָא דְרָחֵיק מֵימְרִי יַת אֲחָתָהּ:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Ezekiel 23:18 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Eze 23:18 So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness: then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated from her sister.

Ver. 18. Then my mind was alienated from her.] So Jer 6:8; see there.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

my mind was alienated from her--literally, "was broken off from her." Just retribution for "her mind being alienated (broken off) from the Chaldeans" (Eze 23:17), to whom she had sworn fealty (Eze 17:12-19). "Discovered" implies the open shamelessness of her apostasy.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

18. “Discovered” is uncovered, revealed.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness,.... The Jews did not cease from their idolatries when they broke with the Babylonians; but were rather more frequent and impudent in them, and courted the friendship and alliance of other Heathen nations, and their worship; even as a lewd woman, when she has cast off her former lovers, does not leave her lewdness, but seeks after others; and by her impudence in discovering her whoredoms, and her nakedness, and by all the signs of a prostitute, draws in others to commit lewdness with her:

then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated from her sister; as a virtuous husband is alienated from an adulterous wife, and cannot admit her to his bed and board, so the mind of the Lord was alienated from the Jews, because of their idolatries; nor could he favour them with his presence, and the blessings of his providence and goodness, as he had formerly done; even as his mind had been alienated, on the same account, from the ten tribes of Israel, and which he showed by suffering them to be carried captive.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

So, by this unsatiableness and change of lovers,

she discovered her whoredoms; made it appear to all, far and near, that she was a most notorious and infamous strumpet.

Her nakedness; her weakness, and her shame.

Then, when I saw the lewdness, impudence, and boundlessness of her adulteries,

my mind was alienated; turned from her with abhorrency, I could no longer endure it.

From her; Jerusalem, the land of Judea, the kingdom of the two tribes.

As from her sister; Samaria, the ten tribes; and I resolved to destroy them both alike by their lovers.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

Discovered - Made it appear to all, far and near.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

unfoldingWord translationNotes

Door43 World Missions Community

General Information:

Yahweh continues his metaphor in which he speaks of the cities of Jerusalem and Samaria as if they were two prostitutes. This metaphor continues through Ezekiel 23:34. (See: Metaphor)

translationWords

Egypt

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Ezekiel, in the Prophets, opens this verse with 13 words (10 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is nâqaʻ (“to be estranged”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “to be estranged” (nâqaʻ) contribute to the verse as a whole?
This is the first place “to be estranged” appears in Scripture (first appears here). What does its debut here establish?
How does Ezekiel 23:22, which shares the word «to be estranged», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “to uncover” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
«וַתְּגַל֙» is a Piel Sequential Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

1 word makes its first canonical appearance in Scripture here.
These translations choose different wording for 17 words in this verse.
“to uncover” occurs 2× in this single verse.
10 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 13 words in this verse.