Being Was Being

Ezekiel 1:3 · Infinitive absolute + finite verb · 2026-07-31

הָיֹ֣ה הָיָ֣ה דְבַר יְ֠הוָה אֶל יְחֶזְקֵ֨אל בֶּן בּוּזִ֧י הַ כֹּהֵ֛ן בְּ אֶ֥רֶץ כַּשְׂדִּ֖ים עַל נְהַר כְּבָ֑ר וַ תְּהִ֥י עָלָ֛יו שָׁ֖ם יַד יְהוָֽה

hayoh hayah devar YHWH

The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.

The KJV reads 'the word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel' — the word 'expressly' suggests a clear, definite delivery, a plain report of an event.

That single word 'expressly' is doing the work of two Hebrew words stacked on the same root. *Hayoh* is the infinitive absolute of the verb 'to be,' and *hayah* is that same verb conjugated in the finite past tense — 'to be, it was.' Hebrew often doubles a verb this way for emphasis, piling the raw form of the verb atop its inflected form: 'dying you shall die,' or here, 'being, it was.' There is no separate word for 'certainly' or 'truly' — the intensity is built by repeating the verb itself, so that the coming of the word of the LORD is not merely reported but insisted upon, doubled in the reader's ear before the sentence even names what came.

This is no small stylistic flourish. The whole event the book of Ezekiel rests on — the LORD speaking to a priest-turned-exile by a foreign canal — is anchored by the strongest grammatical certainty Hebrew possesses. Before Ezekiel sees wheels or living creatures or a throne of sapphire, the text first secures its own reliability: this happened, this really happened.

And here the editor's observation about letters becomes worth pausing on: the verb 'to be' — *hayah* — shares its very consonants with the name the LORD gave Moses from the burning bush, 'I AM WHO I AM,' *ehyeh asher ehyeh*. The same letters that insist 'it was, it truly was' are the letters of the God who simply is. Ezekiel's opening line, doubling the verb of being, is not decoration; it echoes the name of the One whose word it reports. The God who cannot fail to exist is the God whose word cannot fail to come. Certainty of speech mirrors certainty of being.

Today

Before you pray today, say the words 'I am' slowly of God — not as a title but as a fact more solid than your own morning — and let one worry you're carrying be handed to that certainty.