28:1 The wicked person flees when there is no one pursuing, 12
but the righteous person is as confident 13 as a lion.
58:1 “Shout loudly! Don’t be quiet!
Yell as loud as a trumpet!
Confront my people with their rebellious deeds; 14
confront Jacob’s family with their sin! 15
58:2 They seek me day after day;
they want to know my requirements, 16
like a nation that does what is right
and does not reject the law of their God.
They ask me for just decrees;
they want to be near God.
3:8 “I have made your face adamant 23 to match their faces, and your forehead hard to match their foreheads. 3:9 I have made your forehead harder than flint – like diamond! 24 Do not fear them or be terrified of the looks they give you, 25 for they are a rebellious house.”
3:10 And he said to me, “Son of man, take all my words that I speak to you to heart and listen carefully. 3:11 Go to the exiles, to your fellow countrymen, 26 and speak to them – say to them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says,’ whether they pay attention or not.”
33:7 “As for you, son of man, I have made you a watchman 31 for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you must warn them on my behalf. 33:8 When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you must certainly die,’ 32 and you do not warn 33 the wicked about his behavior, 34 the wicked man will die for his iniquity, but I will hold you accountable for his death. 35 33:9 But if you warn the wicked man to change his behavior, 36 and he refuses to change, 37 he will die for his iniquity, but you have saved your own life.
3:12 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with a heart of mercy, 39 kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,
1 tn Or “forefathers”; Grk “fathers.”
2 sn Which…persecute. The rhetorical question suggests they persecuted them all.
3 tn Grk “And they.” Because of the difference between Greek style, which often begins sentences or clauses with “and,” and English style, which generally does not, καί (kai) has not been translated here.
4 sn The Righteous One is a reference to Jesus Christ.
5 sn Whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. The harsh critique has OT precedent (1 Kgs 19:10-14; Neh 9:26; 2 Chr 36:16).
6 tn Or “testify.”
7 tn Grk “clean, pure,” thus “guiltless” (BDAG 489 s.v. καθαρός 3.a).
8 tn That is, “that if any of you should be lost, I am not responsible” (an idiom). According to L&N 33.223, the meaning of the phrase “that I am innocent of the blood of all of you” is “that if any of you should be lost, I am not responsible.” However, due to the length of this phrase and its familiarity to many modern English readers, the translation was kept closer to formal equivalence in this case. The word “you” is not in the Greek text, but is implied; Paul is addressing the Ephesian congregation (in the person of its elders) in both v. 25 and 27.
9 tn Or “did not avoid.” BDAG 1041 s.v. ὑποστέλλω 2.b has “shrink from, avoid implying fear…οὐ γὰρ ὑπεστειλάμην τοῦ μὴ ἀναγγεῖλαι I did not shrink from proclaiming Ac 20:27”; L&N 13.160 has “to hold oneself back from doing something, with the implication of some fearful concern – ‘to hold back from, to shrink from, to avoid’…‘for I have not held back from announcing to you the whole purpose of God’ Ac 20:27.”
10 tn Or “proclaiming,” “declaring.”
11 tn Or “plan.”
12 sn The line portrays the insecurity of a guilty person – he flees because he has a guilty conscience, or because he is suspicious of others around him, or because he fears judgment.
13 tn The verb בָּטַח (batakh) means “to trust; to be secure; to be confident.” Cf. KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT “bold.”
14 tn Heb “declare to my people their rebellion.”
15 tn Heb “and to the house of Jacob their sin.” The verb “declare” is understood by ellipsis (note the preceding line).
16 tn Heb “ways” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV, TEV); NLT “my laws.”
17 tn The Hebrew term occurs only here in the OT.
18 tn The Hebrew term is found elsewhere in the OT only in Ezek 28:24.
19 tn Heb “of their faces.”
20 sn Moses (Exod 3:19) and Isaiah (Isa 6:9-10) were also told that their messages would not be received.
21 sn A similar description of Israel’s disobedience is given in 1 Sam 8:7.
22 tn Heb “hard of forehead and stiff of heart.”
23 tn Heb “strong, resolute.”
24 tn The Hebrew term translated “diamond” is parallel to “iron” in Jer 17:1. The Hebrew uses two terms which are both translated at times as “flint,” but here one is clearly harder than the other. The translation “diamond” attempts to reflect this distinction in English.
25 tn Heb “of their faces.”
26 tn Heb “to the sons of your people.”
27 sn Even though the infinitive absolute is used to emphasize the warning, the warning is still implicitly conditional, as the following context makes clear.
28 tn Or “in his punishment.” The phrase “in/for [a person’s] iniquity” occurs fourteen times in Ezekiel: here and v. 19; 4:17; 7:13, 16; 18: 17, 18, 19, 20; 24:23; 33:6, 8, 9; 39:23. The Hebrew word for “iniquity” may also mean the “punishment for iniquity.”
29 tn Heb “his blood I will seek from your hand.” The expression “seek blood from the hand” is equivalent to requiring the death penalty (2 Sam 4:11-12).
30 tn Verses 17-19 are repeated in Ezek 33:7-9.
31 sn Jeremiah (Jer 6:17) and Habakkuk (Hab 2:1) also served in the role of a watchman.
32 tn The same expression occurs in Gen 2:17.
33 tn Heb “and you do not speak to warn.”
34 tn Heb “way.”
35 tn Heb “and his blood from your hand I will seek.”
36 tn Heb “from his way to turn from it.”
37 tn Heb “and he does not turn from his way.”
38 tn Heb “sons of your people.”
39 tn If the genitive construct σπλάγχνα οἰκτιρμοῦ (splancna oiktirmou) is a hendiadys then it would be “compassion” or “tenderheartedness.” See M. J. Harris, Colossians and Philemon (EGGNT), 161.