33:12 “And you, son of man, say to your people, 1 ‘The righteousness of the righteous will not deliver him if he rebels. 2 As for the wicked, his wickedness will not make him stumble if he turns from it. 3 The righteous will not be able to live by his righteousness 4 if he sins.’ 5 33:13 Suppose I tell the righteous that he will certainly live, but he becomes confident in his righteousness and commits iniquity. None of his righteous deeds will be remembered; because of the iniquity he has committed he will die.
“‘The fathers eat sour grapes
And the children’s teeth become numb?’ 7
2:1 He said to me, “Son of man, 8 stand on your feet and I will speak with you.”
1 tn Heb “the sons of your people.”
2 tn Heb “in the day of his rebellion.” The statement envisions a godly person rejecting what is good and becoming sinful. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:247-48.
3 tn Heb “and the wickedness of the wicked, he will not stumble in it in the day of his turning from his wickedness.”
4 tn Heb “by it.”
5 tn Heb “in the day of his sin.”
6 tn Heb “for them” or “because of them.”
7 tn This word only occurs here and in the parallel passage in Jer 31:29-30 in the Qal stem and in Eccl 10:10 in the Piel stem. In the latter passage it refers to the bluntness of an ax that has not been sharpened. Here the idea is of the “bluntness” of the teeth, not from having ground them down due to the bitter taste of sour grapes but to the fact that they have lost their “edge,” “bite,” or “sharpness” because they are numb from the sour taste. For this meaning for the word, see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 2:197.
8 sn The phrase son of man occurs ninety-three times in the book of Ezekiel. It simply means “human one,” and distinguishes the prophet from the nonhuman beings that are present in the world of his vision.
9 tn Grk “my soul.”
10 sn A quotation from Hab 2:4.