Ezekiel 6:8-11

6:8 “‘But I will spare some of you. Some will escape the sword when you are scattered in foreign lands. ¹  6:9 Then your survivors will remember me among the nations where they are exiled. They will realize ²  how I was crushed by their unfaithful ³  heart which turned from me and by their eyes which lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves ⁴  because of the evil they have done and because of all their abominable practices. 6:10 They will know that I am the Lord; my threats to bring this catastrophe on them were not empty.’ ⁵ 

6:11 “‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Clap your hands, stamp your feet, and say, “Ah!” because of all the evil, abominable practices of the house of Israel, for they will fall by the sword, famine, and pestilence. ⁶ 

[6:8]  ¹ tn Heb “when you have fugitives from the sword among the nations, when you are scattered among the lands.”

[6:9]  ² tn The words “they will realize” are not in the Hebrew text; they are added here for stylistic reasons since this clause assumes the previous verb “to remember” or “to take into account.”

[6:9]  ³ tn Heb “how I was broken by their adulterous heart.” The image of God being “broken” is startling, but perfectly natural within the metaphorical framework of God as offended husband. The idiom must refer to the intense grief that Israel’s unfaithfulness caused God. For a discussion of the syntax and semantics of the Hebrew text, see M. Greenberg, Ezekiel (AB), 1:134.

[6:9]  ⁴ tn Heb adds “in their faces.”

[6:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “not in vain did I speak to do to them this catastrophe.” The wording of the last half of v. 10 parallels God’s declaration after the sin of the golden calf (Exod 32:14).

[6:11]  ⁶ sn By the sword and by famine and by pestilence. A similar trilogy of punishments is mentioned in Lev 26:25-26. See also Jer 14:12; 21:9; 27:8, 13; 29:18).