9:9 He said to me, “The sin of the house of Israel and Judah is extremely great; the land is full of murder, and the city is full of corruption, 1 for they say, ‘The Lord has abandoned the land, and the Lord does not see!’ 2
1 tn Or “lawlessness” (NAB); “perversity” (NRSV). The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT, and its meaning is uncertain. The similar phrase in 7:23 has a common word for “violence.”
2 sn The saying is virtually identical to that of the elders in Ezek 8:12.
3 tc The MT reads “your brothers, your brothers” either for empahsis (D. I. Block, Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:341, n. 1; 346) or as a result of dittography.
4 tc The MT reads גְאֻלָּתֶךָ (gÿ’ullatekha, “your redemption-men”), referring to the relatives responsible for deliverance in times of hardship (see Lev 25:25-55). The LXX and Syriac read “your fellow exiles,” assuming an underlying Hebrew text of גָלוּתֶךָ (galutekha) or having read the א (aleph) as an internal mater lectionis for holem.
5 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
6 tc The MT has an imperative form (“go far!”), but it may be read with different vowels as a perfect verb (“they have gone far”).