44:15 “‘But the Levitical priests, the descendants of Zadok 4 who kept the charge of my sanctuary when the people of Israel went astray from me, will approach me to minister to me; they will stand before me to offer me the fat and the blood, declares the sovereign Lord.
1 tn The words “they will realize” are not in the Hebrew text; they are added here for stylistic reasons since this clause assumes the previous verb “to remember” or “to take into account.”
2 tn Heb “how I was broken by their adulterous heart.” The image of God being “broken” is startling, but perfectly natural within the metaphorical framework of God as offended husband. The idiom must refer to the intense grief that Israel’s unfaithfulness caused God. For a discussion of the syntax and semantics of the Hebrew text, see M. Greenberg, Ezekiel (AB), 1:134.
3 tn Heb adds “in their faces.”
4 sn Zadok was a descendant of Aaron through Eleazar (1 Chr 6:50-53), who served as a priest during David’s reign (2 Sam 8:17).