Ezekiel Chapter 20 verse 29 Holy Bible
Then I said unto them, What meaneth the high place whereunto ye go? So the name thereof is called Bamah unto this day.
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Then I said to them, What is this high place where you go to no purpose? And it is named Bamah to this day.
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And I said unto them, What is the high place whither ye go? And the name thereof is called Bamah unto this day.
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Then I said unto them, What is the high place whereunto ye go? And the name whereof is called Bamah unto this day.
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Then I said to them, What means the high place whereunto you go? So the name of it is called Bamah to this day.
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And I say unto them: What `is' the high place whither ye are going in? And its name is called `high place' to this day.
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Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 29. - What is the high place, etc.? Bamah, in the plural Bamoth, was the Hebrew for "high place." At first it was applied to the hill on which some local sanctuary stood (1 Samuel 9:12; 1 Kings 3:4), but was gradually extended, after the building of the temple as the one appointed sanctuary, to other places which were looked upon as sacred, and which became the scenes of an idolatrous and forbidden worship. Ezekiel emphasizes his scorn by a conjectural derivation of the word, as if derived from the two words ba ("go") and mah ("whither"); or, perhaps, What comes? (comp. Exodus 16:15 for a parallel derivation of the word marones). Taking the words in their ordinary sense, they seem to express only a slight degree of contempt. "What, then, is the place to which you go?" - what is the "whither" to which it leads? But I incline (with Ewald and Smend) to see in the word "go into" the meaning which it has in Genesis 16:2 and Genesis 19:31, and elsewhere, as a euphemism for sexual union. So later the word "Bamah" becomes a witness that those who worship in the high place go there (as in ver. 30) to commit whoredom literally and spiritually. Its name showed that it was what I have called "a chapel of prostitution" (ch. 16:24, 25).
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(29) Is called Bamah.--Bamah itself means high place. Some have fancied that the word is derived from the two words "go" and "where," and therefore that it contains a play upon the question in the first part of the verse; but this etymology must be considered fanciful.