5:12 “These people have denied what the Lord says. 1
They have said, ‘That is not so! 2
No harm will come to us.
We will not experience war and famine. 3
“Those who are destined to die of disease will go to death by disease.
Those who are destined to die in war will go to death in war.
Those who are destined to die of starvation will go to death by starvation.
Those who are destined to go into exile will go into exile.” 12
51:19 These double disasters confronted you.
But who feels sorry for you?
Destruction and devastation,
famine and sword.
But who consoles you? 20
5:14 “I will make you desolate and an object of scorn among the nations around you, in the sight of everyone who passes by. 5:15 You will be 25 an object of scorn and taunting, 26 a prime example of destruction 27 among the nations around you when I execute judgments against you in anger and raging fury. 28 I, the Lord, have spoken! 5:16 I will shoot against them deadly, 29 destructive 30 arrows of famine, 31 which I will shoot to destroy you. 32 I will prolong a famine on you and will remove the bread supply. 33 5:17 I will send famine and wild beasts against you and they will take your children from you. 34 Plague and bloodshed will overwhelm you, 35 and I will bring a sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken!”
14:12 The word of the Lord came to me: 14:13 “Son of man, suppose a country sins against me by being unfaithful, and I stretch out my hand against it, cut off its bread supply, 40 cause famine to come on it, and kill both people and animals. 14:14 Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, 41 and Job, were in it, they would save only their own lives by their righteousness, declares the sovereign Lord.
14:15 “Suppose I were to send wild animals through the land and kill its children, leaving it desolate, without travelers due to the wild animals. 14:16 Even if these three men were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, they could not save their own sons or daughters; they would save only their own lives, and the land would become desolate.
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. 14:18 Even if these three men were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, they could not save their own sons or daughters – they would save only their own lives.
14:19 “Or suppose I were to send a plague into that land, and pour out my rage on it with bloodshed, killing both people and animals. 14:20 Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, they could not save their own son or daughter; they would save only their own lives by their righteousness.
14:21 “For this is what the sovereign Lord says: How much worse will it be when I send my four terrible judgments – sword, famine, wild animals, and plague – to Jerusalem 42 to kill both people and animals!
33:27 “This is what you must say to them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: As surely as I live, those living in the ruins will die 43 by the sword, those in the open field I will give to the wild beasts for food, and those who are in the strongholds and caves will die of disease.
1 tn Heb “have denied the
2 tn Or “he will do nothing”; Heb “Not he [or it]!”
3 tn Heb “we will not see the sword and famine.”
4 tn Heb “fathers.”
5 tn Heb “I will send the sword after them.” The sword here is probably not completely literal but refers to death by violent means, including death by the sword.
6 sn He will destroy them but not completely. See Jer 5:18; 30:11; 46:28.
7 tn Heb “Thus says the
8 tn Heb “Thus says the
9 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
10 tn Heb “And the people to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem and there will not be anyone to bury them, they, their wives, and their sons and their daughters.” This sentence has been restructured to break up a long Hebrew sentence and to avoid some awkwardness due to differences in the ancient Hebrew and contemporary English styles.
11 tn Heb “their evil.” Hebrew words often include within them a polarity of cause and effect. Thus the word for “evil” includes both the concept of wickedness and the punishment for it. Other words that function this way are “iniquity” = “guilt [of iniquity]” = “punishment [for iniquity].” Context determines which nuance is proper.
12 tn It is difficult to render the rhetorical force of this passage in meaningful English. The text answers the question “Where should we go?” with four brief staccato-like expressions with a play on the preposition “to”: Heb “Who to the death, to the death and who to the sword, to the sword and who to the starvation, to the starvation and who to the captivity, to the captivity.” The word “death” here is commonly understood to be a poetic substitute for “plague” because of the standard trio of sword, famine, and plague (see, e.g., 14:12 and the notes there). This is likely here and in 18:21. For further support see W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah (Hermeneia), 1:440. The nuance “starvation” rather than “famine” has been chosen in the translation because the referents here are all things that accompany war.
13 sn There is perhaps a two-fold wordplay in the use of this word. One involves the sound play with the word for “jar,” which has been explained as a water decanter. The word here is בַקֹּתִי (vaqqoti). The word for jar in v. 1 is בַקְבֻּק (vaqbuq). There may also be a play on the literal use of this word to refer to the laying waste or destruction of a land (see Isa 24:3; Nah 2:3). Many modern commentaries think that at this point Jeremiah emptied out the contents of the jar, symbolizing the “emptying” out of their plans.
14 sn This refers to the fact that they will die in battle. The sword would be only one of the weapons that strikes them down. It is one of the trio of “sword,” “starvation,” and “disease” which were the concomitants of war referred to so often in the book of Jeremiah. Starvation is referred to in v. 9.
15 tn Heb “I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and in the hand of those who seek their soul [= life].” In this context the two are meant as obvious qualifications of one entity, not two. Some rearrangement of the qualifiers had to be made in the English translation to convey this.
16 tn The Hebrew text has a compound object, the two terms of which have been synonyms in vv. 14, 15. G. L. Keown, P. J. Scalise, and T. G. Smothers (Jeremiah 26-52 [WBC], 189) make the interesting observation that these two terms (Heb “brother” and “neighbor”) emphasize the relationships that should have taken precedence over their being viewed as mere slaves.
17 sn This is, of course, a metaphorical and ironical use of the term “to grant freedom to.” It is, however, a typical statement of the concept of talionic justice which is quite often operative in God’s judgments in the OT (cf., e.g., Obad 15).
18 tn Heb “Oracle of the
19 sn Compare Jer 15:4; 24:9; 29:18.
20 tc The Hebrew text has אֲנַחֲמֵךְ (’anakhamekh), a first person form, but the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa reads correctly יִנַחֲמֵךְ (yinakhamekh), a third person form.
21 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.
22 sn Judgment by plague, famine, and sword occurs in Jer 21:9; 27:13; Ezek 6:11, 12; 7:15.
23 tn Or “calm myself.”
24 tn The Hebrew noun translated “jealousy” is used in the human realm to describe suspicion of adultery (Num 5:14ff.; Prov 6:34). Since Israel’s relationship with God was often compared to a marriage this term is appropriate here. The term occurs elsewhere in Ezekiel in 8:3, 5; 16:38, 42; 23:25.
25 tc This reading is supported by the versions and by the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QEzek). Most Masoretic Hebrew
26 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT. A related verb means “revile, taunt” (see Ps 44:16).
27 tn Heb “discipline and devastation.” These words are omitted in the Old Greek. The first term pictures Jerusalem as a recipient or example of divine discipline; the second depicts her as a desolate ruin (see Ezek 6:14).
28 tn Heb “in anger and in fury and in rebukes of fury.” The heaping up of synonyms emphasizes the degree of God’s anger.
29 tn The Hebrew word carries the basic idea of “bad, displeasing, injurious,” but when used of weapons has the nuance “deadly” (see Ps 144:10).
30 tn Heb “which are/were to destroy.”
31 tn The language of this verse may have been influenced by Deut 32:23.
32 tn Or “which were to destroy those whom I will send to destroy you” (cf. NASB).
33 tn Heb, “break the staff of bread.” The bread supply is compared to a staff that one uses for support. See 4:16, as well as the covenant curse in Lev 26:26.
34 tn Heb “will bereave you.”
35 tn Heb “will pass through you.” This threat recalls the warning of Lev 26:22, 25 and Deut 32:24-25.
36 tn Heb “the one who is left, the one who is spared.”
37 sn By referring to every high hill…all the mountaintops…under every green tree and every leafy oak Ezekiel may be expanding on the phraseology of Deut 12:2 (see 1 Kgs 14:23; 2 Kgs 16:4; 17:10; Jer 2:20; 3:6, 13; 2 Chr 28:4).
38 sn I will stretch out my hand against them is a common expression in the book of Ezekiel (14:9, 13; 16:27; 25:7; 35:3).
39 tc The Vulgate reads the name as “Riblah,” a city north of Damascus. The MT reads Diblah, a city otherwise unknown. The letters resh (ר) and dalet (ד) may have been confused in the Hebrew text. The town of Riblah was in the land of Hamath (2 Kgs 23:33) which represented the northern border of Israel (Ezek 47:14).
40 tn Heb “break its staff of bread.”
41 sn Traditionally this has been understood as a reference to the biblical Daniel, though he was still quite young when Ezekiel prophesied. One wonders if he had developed a reputation as an intercessor by this point. For this reason some prefer to see a reference to a ruler named Danel, known in Canaanite legend for his justice and wisdom. In this case all three of the individuals named would be non-Israelites, however the Ugaritic Danel is not known to have qualities of faith in the Lord that would place him in the company of the other men. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:447-50.
42 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
43 tn Heb “fall.”