5:14 So Death 5 will open up its throat,
and open wide its mouth; 6
Zion’s dignitaries and masses will descend into it,
including those who revel and celebrate within her. 7
14:15 But you were brought down 8 to Sheol,
to the remote slopes of the pit. 9
1 sn Weeping and gnashing of teeth is a figure for remorse and trauma, which occurs here because of exclusion from God’s promise.
2 tn Grk “and Isaac and Jacob,” but καί (kai) has not been translated since English normally uses a coordinating conjunction only between the last two elements in a series of three or more.
3 sn The kingdom of God is a major theme of Jesus. It is a realm in which Jesus rules and to which those who trust him belong. See Luke 6:20; 11:20; 17:20-21.
4 tn Or “being thrown out.” The present accusative participle, ἐκβαλλομένους (ekballomenous), related to the object ὑμᾶς (Jumas), seems to suggest that these evildoers will witness their own expulsion from the kingdom.
5 tn Heb “Sheol” (so ASV, NASB, NRSV); the underworld, the land of the dead, according to the OT world view. Cf. NAB “the nether world”; TEV, CEV “the world of the dead”; NLT “the grave.”
6 tn Heb “so Sheol will make wide its throat, and open its mouth without limit.”
7 tn Heb “and her splendor and her masses will go down, and her tumult and the one who exults in her.” The antecedent of the four feminine singular pronominal suffixes used in v. 14b is unclear. The likely referent is personified Zion/Jerusalem (see 3:25-26; 4:4-5).
8 tn The prefixed verb form is taken as a preterite. Note the use of perfects in v. 12 to describe the king’s downfall.
9 tn The Hebrew term בּוּר (bor, “cistern”) is sometimes used metaphorically to refer to the place of the dead or the entrance to the underworld.
10 tn Heb “to the people of antiquity.”
11 tn Heb “like.” The translation assumes an emendation of the preposition כְּ (kÿ, “like”), to בְּ (bÿ, “in, among”).
12 tn Heb “and I will place beauty.” This reading makes little sense; many, following the lead of the LXX, emend the text to read “nor will you stand” with the negative particle before the preceding verb understood by ellipsis; see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:73. D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 2:47) offers another alternative, taking the apparent first person verb form as an archaic second feminine form and translating “nor radiate splendor.”
13 tn The Hebrew verb is used as a response to death (Jer 9:17-19; Amos 5:16).
14 sn Through this prophetic lament given by God himself, the prophet activates the judgment described therein. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:217, and L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:136-37.
15 tn Heb “Bring him down, her and the daughters of the powerful nations, to the earth below.” The verb “bring down” appears in the Hebrew text only once. Because the verb takes several objects here, the repetition of the verb in the translation improves the English style.
16 tn This apparently refers to personified Egypt.
17 tc Heb “of the uncircumcised.” The LXX reads, probably correctly, “from of old” rather than “of the uncircumcised.” The phrases are very similar in spelling. The warriors of Meshech-Tubal are described as uncircumcised, so it would be odd for them to not be buried with the uncircumcised. Verse 28 specifically says that they would lie with the uncircumcised.
18 tn Heb “and their iniquities were over their bones.” The meaning of this statement is unclear; in light of the parallelism (see “swords”) it is preferable to emend “their iniquities” to “their swords.” See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:135.
19 tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated.
20 sn Judaism had a similar exhortation in 4 Macc 13:14-15.
21 sn See the note on the word hell in 5:22.
22 sn The term apostles is rare in the gospels, found only here, Mark 3:14, and six more times in Luke (6:13; 9:10; 11:49; 17:5; 22:14; 24:10).
23 sn In the various lists of the twelve, Simon (that is, Peter) is always mentioned first (see also Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:13-16; Acts 1:13) and the first four are always the same, though not in the same order after Peter.
24 tn Or “and scribes of the people.” The traditional rendering of γραμματεύς (grammateu") as “scribe” does not communicate much to the modern English reader, for whom the term might mean “professional copyist,” if it means anything at all. The people referred to here were recognized experts in the law of Moses and in traditional laws and regulations. Thus “expert in the law” comes closer to the meaning for the modern reader.
25 tn Or “Messiah”; both “Christ” (Greek) and “Messiah” (Hebrew and Aramaic) mean “one who has been anointed.”