9:5 While I listened, he said to the others, 3 “Go through the city after him and strike people down; do no let your eye pity nor spare 4 anyone!
14:17 “Or suppose I were to bring a sword against that land and say, ‘Let a sword pass through the land,’ and I were to kill both people and animals.
16:6 “‘I passed by you and saw you kicking around helplessly in your blood. I said to you as you lay there in your blood, “Live!” I said to you as you lay there in your blood, “Live!” 5
16:15 “‘But you trusted in your beauty and capitalized on your fame by becoming a prostitute. You offered your sexual favors to every man who passed by so that your beauty 6 became his.
46:21 Then he brought me out to the outer court and led me past the four corners of the court, and I noticed 16 that in every corner of the court there was a court.
1 tn Heb “will bereave you.”
2 tn Heb “will pass through you.” This threat recalls the warning of Lev 26:22, 25 and Deut 32:24-25.
3 tn Heb “to these he said in my ears.”
4 tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.
5 tc The translation reflects the Hebrew text, which repeats the statement, perhaps for emphasis. However, a few medieval Hebrew manuscripts, the Old Greek, and the Syriac do not include the repetition. The statement could have been accidentally repeated or the second occurrence could have been accidentally omitted. Based on the available evidence it is difficult to know which is more likely.
7 tn Heb “it” (so KJV, ASV); the referent (the beauty in which the prostitute trusted, see the beginning of the verse) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
9 tn Heb “treated as if abominable,” i.e., repudiated.
10 tn The only other occurrence of the Hebrew root is found in Prov 13:3 in reference to the talkative person who habitually “opens wide” his lips.
11 tn Or “gifts.”
12 sn This act is prohibited in Deut 12:29-31 and Jer 7:31; 19:5; 32:35. See also 2 Kgs 21:6; 23:10. This custom indicates that the laws the Israelites were following were the disastrous laws of pagan nations (see Ezek 16:20-21).
13 sn God sometimes punishes sin by inciting the sinner to sin even more, as the biblical examples of divine hardening and deceit make clear. See Robert B. Chisholm, Jr., “Divine Hardening in the Old Testament,” BSac 153 (1996): 410-34; idem, “Does God Deceive?” BSac 155 (1998): 11-28. For other instances where the Lord causes individuals to act unwisely or even sinfully as punishment for sin, see 1 Sam 2:25; 2 Sam 17:14; 1 Kgs 12:15; 2 Chr 25:20.
13 sn The Lord speaks here in the role of the husband of the sisters.
14 tn Heb “they have passed to them for food.” The verb is commonly taken to refer to passing children through fire, especially as an offering to the pagan god Molech. See Jer 32:35.
15 tn Heb “and he made me pass over them, around, around.”
16 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and is here translated as “I realized” because it results from Ezekiel’s recognition of the situation around him. In Hebrew, the exclamation is repeated in the following sentence.
17 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.