Ezekiel 16:24-25

16:24 you built yourself a chamber ¹  and put up a pavilion ²  in every public square. 16:25 At the head of every street you erected your pavilion and you disgraced ³  your beauty when you spread ⁴  your legs to every passerby and multiplied your promiscuity.

Ezekiel 16:31

16:31 When you built your chamber at the head of every street and put up your pavilion in every public square, you were not like a prostitute, because you scoffed at payment. ⁵ 

Ezekiel 7:22-24

7:22 I will turn my face away from them and they will desecrate my treasured place. ⁶  Vandals will enter it and desecrate it. ⁷  7:23 (Make the chain, ⁸  because the land is full of murder ⁹  and the city is full of violence.) 7:24 I will bring the most wicked of the nations and they will take possession of their houses. I will put an end to the arrogance of the strong, and their sanctuaries ¹⁰  will be desecrated.

Isaiah 27:9

27:9 So in this way Jacob’s sin will be forgiven, ¹¹ 

and this is how they will show they are finished sinning: ¹² 

They will make all the stones of the altars ¹³ 

like crushed limestone,

and the Asherah poles and the incense altars will no longer stand. ¹⁴ 

[16:24]  ¹ tn The Hebrew גֶּב (gev) may represent more than one word, each rare in the Old Testament. It may refer to a “mound” or to “rafters.” The LXX, Syriac, and Vulgate interpret this as a brothel.

[16:24]  ² tn Or “lofty place” (NRSV). See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 1:229, and B. Lang, Frau Weisheit, 137.

[16:25]  ³ tn Heb “treated as if abominable,” i.e., repudiated.

[16:25]  ⁴ tn The only other occurrence of the Hebrew root is found in Prov 13:3 in reference to the talkative person who habitually “opens wide” his lips.

[16:31]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew term, which also occurs in vv. 34 and 41 of this chapter, always refers to the payment of a prostitute (Deut 23:19; Isa 23:17; Hos 9:1; Mic 1:7).

[7:22]  ⁶ sn My treasured place probably refers to the temple (however, cf. NLT “my treasured land”).

[7:22]  ⁷ sn Since the pronouns “it” are both feminine, they do not refer to the masculine “my treasured place”; instead they probably refer to Jerusalem or the land, both of which are feminine in Hebrew.

[7:23]  ⁸ tc The Hebrew word “the chain” occurs only here in the OT. The reading of the LXX (“and they will make carnage”) seems to imply a Hebrew text of ַהבַּתּוֹק (habbattoq, “disorder, slaughter”) instead of הָרַתּוֹק (haratoq, “the chain”). The LXX is also translating the verb as a third person plural future and taking this as the end of the preceding verse. As M. Greenberg (Ezekiel [AB], 1:154) notes, this may refer to a chain for a train of exiles but “the context does not speak of exile but of the city’s fall. The versions guess desperately and we can do little better.”

[7:23]  ⁹ tn Heb “judgment for blood,” i.e., indictment or accountability for bloodshed. The word for “judgment” does not appear in the similar phrase in 9:9.

[7:24]  ¹⁰ sn Or “their holy places” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV).

[27:9]  ¹¹ tn Or “be atoned for” (NIV); cf. NRSV “be expiated.”

[27:9]  ¹² tn Heb “and this [is] all the fruit of removing his sin.” The meaning of the statement is not entirely clear, though “removing his sin” certainly parallels “Jacob’s sin will be removed” in the preceding line. If original, “all the fruit” may refer to the result of the decision to remove sin, but the phrase may be a corruption of לְכַפֵּר (lekhaper, “to atone for”), which in turn might be a gloss on הָסִר (hasir, “removing”).

[27:9]  ¹³ tn Heb “when he makes the stones of an altar.” The singular “altar” is collective here; pagan altars are in view, as the last line of the verse indicates. See also 17:8.

[27:9]  ¹⁴ sn As interpreted and translated above, this verse says that Israel must totally repudiate its pagan religious practices in order to experience God’s forgiveness and restoration. Another option is to understand “in this way” and “this” in v. 9a as referring back to the judgment described in v. 8. In this case כָּפַר (kafar, “atone for”) is used in a sarcastic sense; Jacob’s sin is “atoned for” and removed through severe judgment. Following this line of interpretation, one might paraphrase the verse as follows: “So in this way (through judgment) Jacob’s sin will be “atoned for,” and this is the way his sin will be removed, when he (i.e., God) makes all the altar stones like crushed limestone….” This interpretation is more consistent with the tone of judgment in vv. 8 and 10-11.