Ezekiel 5:12

5:12 A third of your people will die of plague or be overcome by the famine within you. ¹  A third of your people will fall by the sword surrounding you, ²  and a third I will scatter to the winds. I will unleash a sword behind them.

Ezekiel 5:17

5:17 I will send famine and wild beasts against you and they will take your children from you. ³  Plague and bloodshed will overwhelm you, ⁴  and I will bring a sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

Ezekiel 21:3-4

21:3 and say to them, ⁵  ‘This is what the Lord says: Look, ⁶  I am against you. ⁷  I will draw my sword ⁸  from its sheath and cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked. ⁹  21:4 Because I will cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked, my sword will go out from its sheath against everyone ¹⁰  from the south ¹¹  to the north.

Ezekiel 21:9-15

21:9 “Son of man, prophesy and say: ‘This is what the Lord says:

“‘A sword, a sword is sharpened,

and also polished.

21:10 It is sharpened for slaughter,

it is polished to flash like lightning!

“‘Should we rejoice in the scepter of my son? No! The sword despises every tree! ¹² 

21:11 “‘He gave it to be polished,

to be grasped in the hand –

the sword is sharpened, it is polished –

giving it into the hand of the executioner.

21:12 Cry out and moan, son of man,

for it is wielded against my people;

against all the princes of Israel.

They are delivered up to the sword, along with my people.

Therefore, strike your thigh. ¹³ 

21:13 “‘For testing will come, and what will happen when the scepter, which the sword despises, is no more? ¹⁴  declares the sovereign Lord.’

21:14 “And you, son of man, prophesy,

and clap your hands together.

Let the sword strike twice, even three times!

It is a sword for slaughter,

a sword for the great slaughter surrounding them.

21:15 So hearts melt with fear and many stumble.

At all their gates I have stationed the sword for slaughter.

Ah! It is made to flash, it is drawn for slaughter!

Ezekiel 29:8

29:8 “‘Therefore, this is what the sovereign Lord says: Look, I am about to bring a sword against you, and I will kill ¹⁵  every person and every animal.

Ezekiel 38:21-22

38:21 I will call for a sword to attack ¹⁶  Gog ¹⁷  on all my mountains, declares the sovereign Lord; every man’s sword will be against his brother. 38:22 I will judge him with plague and bloodshed. I will rain down on him, his troops and the many peoples who are with him a torrential downpour, hailstones, fire, and brimstone.

Leviticus 26:25

26:25 I will bring on you an avenging sword, a covenant vengeance. ¹⁸  Although ¹⁹  you will gather together into your cities, I will send pestilence among you and you will be given into enemy hands. ²⁰ 

Jeremiah 25:9

25:9 So I, the Lord, affirm that ²¹  I will send for all the peoples of the north ²²  and my servant, ²³  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and all the nations that surround it. I will utterly destroy ²⁴  this land, its inhabitants, and all the nations that surround it ²⁵  and make them everlasting ruins. ²⁶  I will make them objects of horror and hissing scorn. ²⁷ 

Jeremiah 47:6

47:6 How long will you cry out, ²⁸  ‘Oh, sword of the Lord,

how long will it be before you stop killing? ²⁹ 

Go back into your sheath!

Stay there and rest!’ ³⁰ 

¹ sn The judgment of plague and famine comes from the covenant curse (Lev 26:25-26). As in v. 10, the city of Jerusalem is figuratively addressed here.

² sn Judgment by plague, famine, and sword occurs in Jer 21:9; 27:13; Ezek 6:11, 12; 7:15.

³ tn Heb “will bereave you.”

⁴ tn Heb “will pass through you.” This threat recalls the warning of Lev 26:22, 25 and Deut 32:24-25.

⁵ tn Heb “the land of Israel.”

⁶ tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) draws attention to something and has been translated here as a verb.

⁷ tn Or “I challenge you.” The phrase “I am against you” may be a formula for challenging someone to combat or a duel. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:201-2, and P. Humbert, “Die Herausforderungsformel ‘h!nn#n' ?l?K>,’” ZAW 45 (1933): 101-8.

⁸ sn This is the sword of judgment, see Isa 31:8; 34:6; 66:16.

⁹ sn Ezekiel elsewhere pictures the Lord’s judgment as discriminating between the righteous and the wicked (9:4-6; 18:1-20; see as well Pss 1 and 11) and speaks of the preservation of a remnant (3:21; 6:8; 12:16). Perhaps here he exaggerates for rhetorical effect in an effort to subdue any false optimism. See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:25-26; D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:669-70; and W. Zimmerli, Ezekiel (Hermeneia), 1:424-25.

¹⁰ tn Heb “all flesh” (also in the following verse).

¹¹ tn Heb “Negev.” The Negev is the south country.

¹² tn Heb “Or shall we rejoice, scepter of my son, it despises every tree.” The translation understands the subject of the verb “despises,” which is a feminine form in the Hebrew text, to be the sword (which is a feminine noun) mentioned just before this. Alternatively, the line may be understood as “let us not rejoice, O tribe of my son; it despises every tree.” The same word in Hebrew may be either “rod,” “scepter,” or “tribe.” The word sometimes translated as “or” or taken as an interrogative particle may be a negative particle. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:672, n. 79.

¹³ sn This physical action was part of an expression of grief. Cp. Jer. 31:19.

¹⁴ tn Heb “For testing (will come) and what if also a scepter, it despises, will not be?” The translation understands the subject of the verb “despises,” which is a feminine form in the Hebrew text, to be the sword (which is a feminine noun) mentioned in the previous verses. The text is very difficult and any rendering is uncertain.

¹⁵ tn Heb “I will cut off from you.”

¹⁶ tn Heb “against.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “him”; the referent (Gog, cf. v. 18) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹⁸ tn Heb “vengeance of covenant”; cf. NAB “the avenger of my covenant.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “and.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) has a concessive force in this context.

²⁰ tn Heb “in hand of enemy,” but Tg. Ps.-J. and Tg. Neof. have “in the hands of your enemies” (J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 454).

²¹ tn Heb “Oracle of the Lord.”

²² sn The many allusions to trouble coming from the north are now clarified: it is the armies of Babylon which included within it contingents from many nations. See 1:14, 15; 4:6; 6:1, 22; 10:22; 13:20 for earlier allusions.

²³ sn Nebuchadnezzar is called the Lord’s servant also in Jer 27:6; 43:10. He was the Lord’s servant in that he was the agent used by the Lord to punish his disobedient people. Assyria was earlier referred to as the Lord’s “rod” (Isa 10:5-6) and Cyrus is called his “shepherd” and his “anointed” (Isa 44:28; 45:1). P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, and J. F. Drinkard (Jeremiah 1-25 [WBC], 364) make the interesting observation that the terms here are very similar to the terms in v. 4. The people of Judah ignored the servants, the prophets, he sent to turn them away from evil. So he will send other servants whom they cannot ignore.

²⁴ tn The word used here was used in the early years of Israel’s conquest for the action of killing all the men, women, and children in the cities of Canaan, destroying all their livestock, and burning their cities down. This policy was intended to prevent Israel from being corrupted by paganism (Deut 7:2; 20:17-18; Josh 6:18, 21). It was to be extended to any city that led Israel away from worshiping God (Deut 13:15) and any Israelite who brought an idol into his house (Deut 7:26). Here the policy is being directed against Judah as well as against her neighbors because of her persistent failure to heed God’s warnings through the prophets. For further usage of this term in application to foreign nations in the book of Jeremiah see 50:21, 26; 51:3.

²⁵ tn Heb “will utterly destroy them.” The referent (this land, its inhabitants, and the nations surrounding it) has been specified in the translation for clarity, since the previous “them” referred to Nebuchadnezzar and his armies.

²⁶ sn The Hebrew word translated “everlasting” is the word often translated “eternal.” However, it sometimes has a more limited time reference. For example it refers to the lifetime of a person who became a “lasting slave” to another person (see Exod 21:6; Deut 15:17). It is also used to refer to the long life wished for a king (1 Kgs 1:31; Neh 2:3). The time frame here is to be qualified at least with reference to Judah and Jerusalem as seventy years (see 29:10-14 and compare v. 12).

²⁷ tn Heb “I will make them an object of horror and a hissing and everlasting ruins.” The sentence has been broken up to separate the last object from the first two which are of slightly different connotation, i.e., they denote the reaction to the latter.

²⁸ tn The words “How long will you cry out” are not in the text but some such introduction seems necessary because the rest of the speech assumes a personal subject.

²⁹ tn Heb “before you are quiet/at rest.”

³⁰ sn The passage is highly figurative. The sword of the Lord, which is itself a figure of the destructive agency of the enemy armies, is here addressed as a person and is encouraged in rhetorical questions (the questions are designed to dissuade) to “be quiet,” “be at rest,” “be silent,” all of which is designed to get the Lord to call off the destruction against the Philistines.