Ezekiel 11:11-25

11:11 This city will not be a cooking pot for you, and you will not ¹  be meat within it; I will judge you at the border of Israel. 11:12 Then you will know that I am the Lord, whose statutes you have not followed and whose regulations you have not carried out. Instead you have behaved according to the regulations of the nations around you!’”

11:13 Now, while I was prophesying, Pelatiah son of Benaiah died. Then I threw myself face down and cried out with a loud voice, “Alas, sovereign Lord! You are completely wiping out the remnant of Israel!” ² 

11:14 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 11:15 “Son of man, your brothers, ³  your relatives, ⁴  and the whole house of Israel, all of them are those to whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem ⁵  have said, ‘They have gone ⁶  far away from the Lord; to us this land has been given as a possession.’

11:16 “Therefore say: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Although I have removed them far away among the nations and have dispersed them among the countries, I have been a little ⁷  sanctuary for them among the lands where they have gone.’

11:17 “Therefore say: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: When I regather you from the peoples and assemble you from the lands where you have been dispersed, I will give you back the country of Israel.’

11:18 “When they return to it, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. 11:19 I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within them; ⁸  I will remove the hearts of stone from their bodies ⁹  and I will give them tender hearts, ¹⁰  11:20 so that they may follow my statutes and observe my regulations and carry them out. Then they will be my people, and I will be their God. ¹¹  11:21 But those whose hearts are devoted to detestable things and abominations, I hereby repay them for what they have done, ¹²  says the sovereign Lord.”

11:22 Then the cherubim spread ¹³  their wings with their wheels alongside them while the glory of the God of Israel hovered above them. 11:23 The glory of the Lord rose up from within the city and stopped ¹⁴  over the mountain east of it. 11:24 Then a wind ¹⁵  lifted me up and carried me to the exiles in Babylonia, ¹⁶  in the vision given to me by the Spirit of God.

Then the vision I had seen went up from me. 11:25 So I told the exiles everything ¹⁷  the Lord had shown me.

[11:11]  ¹ tn The Hebrew text does not have the negative particle, but it is implied. The negative particle in the previous line does double duty here.

[11:13]  ² tc The LXX reads this statement as a question. Compare this to the question in 9:8. It is possible that the interrogative particle has been omitted by haplography. However, an exclamatory statement as in the MT also makes sense and the LXX may have simply tried to harmonize this passage with 9:8.

[11:15]  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.

[11:15]  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.

[11:15]  ⁵ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[11:15]  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”).

[11:16]  ⁷ tn Or “have been partially a sanctuary”; others take this as temporal (cf. NASB, NIV, NRSV “a little while”).

[11:19]  ⁸ tc The MT reads “you”; many Hebrew mss along with the LXX and other ancient versions read “within them.”

[11:19]  ⁹ tn Heb “their flesh.”

[11:19]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “heart of flesh.”

[11:20]  ¹¹ sn The expression They will be my people, and I will be their God occurs as a promise to Abraham (Gen 17:8), Moses (Exod 6:7), and the nation (Exod 29:45).

[11:21]  ¹² tn Heb “their way on their head I have placed.”

[11:22]  ¹³ tn Heb “lifted.”

[11:23]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “stood.”

[11:24]  ¹⁵ tn Or “spirit.” See note on “wind” in 2:2.

[11:24]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “to Chaldea.”

[11:25]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “all the words of.”