ר (Resh)
2:20 Look, O Lord! Consider! 1
Whom have you ever afflicted 2 like this?
Should women eat their offspring, 3
their healthy infants? 4
Should priest and prophet
be killed in the Lord’s 5 sanctuary?
9:5 While I listened, he said to the others, 6 “Go through the city after him and strike people down; do no let your eye pity nor spare 7 anyone! 9:6 Old men, young men, young women, little children, and women – wipe them out! But do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary!” So they began with the elders who were at the front of the temple.
9:7 He said to them, “Defile the temple and fill the courtyards with corpses. Go!” So they went out and struck people down throughout the city.
9:1 Then he shouted in my ears, “Approach, 8 you who are to visit destruction on the city, each with his destructive weapon in his hand!”
4:1 “And you, son of man, take a brick 10 and set it in front of you. Inscribe 11 a city on it – Jerusalem.
1 tn Heb “Look, O
2 tn For the nuance “afflict” see the note at 1:12.
3 tn Heb “their fruit.” The term פְּרִי (pÿri, “fruit”) is used figuratively to refer to children as the fruit of a mother’s womb (e.g., Gen 30:2; Deut 7:13; 28:4, 11, 18, 53; 30:9; Pss 21:11; 127:3; 132:11; Isa 13:18; Mic 6:7).
4 tn Heb “infants of healthy childbirth.” The genitive-construct phrase עֹלֲלֵי טִפֻּחִים (’olale tippukhim) functions as an attributive genitive construction: “healthy newborn infants.” The noun טִפֻּחִים (tippukhim) appears only here. It is related to the verb טָפַח (tafakh), meaning “to give birth to a healthy child” or “to raise children” depending on whether the Arabic or Akkadian cognate is emphasized. For the related verb, see below at 2:22.
5 tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the
6 tn Heb “to these he said in my ears.”
7 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.
8 tc Heb “they approached.” Reading the imperative assumes the same consonantal text but different vowels.
9 tn Or “in their punishment.” Ezek 4:16-17 alludes to Lev 26:26, 39. The phrase “in/for [a person’s] iniquity” occurs fourteen times in Ezekiel: here, 3:18, 19; 7:13, 16; 18: 17, 18, 19, 20; 24:23; 33:6, 8, 9; 39:23. The Hebrew word for “iniquity” may also mean the “punishment for iniquity.”
10 sn Ancient Near Eastern bricks were 10 to 24 inches long and 6 to 13 1/2 inches wide.
11 tn Or perhaps “draw.”