Ezekiel 6:1--7:27

Judgment on the Mountains of Israel

6:1 The word of the Lord came to me: 6:2 “Son of man, turn toward ¹  the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them: 6:3 Say, ‘Mountains of Israel, ²  Hear the word of the sovereign Lord! ³  This is what the sovereign Lord says to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys: I am bringing ⁴  a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places. ⁵  6:4 Your altars will be ruined and your incense altars will be broken. I will throw down your slain in front of your idols. ⁶  6:5 I will place the corpses of the people of Israel in front of their idols, ⁷  and I will scatter your bones around your altars. 6:6 In all your dwellings, the cities will be laid waste and the high places ruined so that your altars will be laid waste and ruined, your idols will be shattered and demolished, your incense altars will be broken down, and your works wiped out. ⁸  6:7 The slain will fall among you and then you will know that I am the Lord. ⁹ 

6:8 “‘But I will spare some of you. Some will escape the sword when you are scattered in foreign lands. ¹⁰  6:9 Then your survivors will remember me among the nations where they are exiled. They will realize ¹¹  how I was crushed by their unfaithful ¹²  heart which turned from me and by their eyes which lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves ¹³  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.’ ¹⁴ 

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. ¹⁵  6:12 The one far away will die by pestilence, the one close by will fall by the sword, and whoever is left and has escaped these ¹⁶  will die by famine. I will fully vent my rage against them. 6:13 Then you will know that I am the Lord – when their dead lie among their idols around their altars, on every high hill and all the mountaintops, under every green tree and every leafy oak, ¹⁷  the places where they have offered fragrant incense to all their idols. 6:14 I will stretch out my hand against them ¹⁸  and make the land a desolate waste from the wilderness to Riblah, ¹⁹  in all the places where they live. Then they will know that I am the Lord!”

The End Arrives

7:1 The word of the Lord came to me: 7:2 “You, son of man – this is what the sovereign Lord says to the land of Israel: An end! The end is coming on the four corners of the land! ²⁰  7:3 The end is now upon you, and I will release my anger against you; I will judge ²¹  you according to your behavior, ²²  I will hold you accountable for ²³  all your abominable practices. 7:4 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare ²⁴  you. ²⁵  For I will hold you responsible for your behavior, ²⁶  and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. ²⁷  Then you will know that I am the Lord!

7:5 “This is what the sovereign Lord says: A disaster ²⁸  – a one-of-a-kind ²⁹  disaster – is coming! 7:6 An end comes ³⁰  – the end comes! ³¹  It has awakened against you ³²  – the end is upon you! Look, it is coming! ³³  7:7 Doom is coming upon you who live in the land! The time is coming, the day ³⁴  is near. There are sounds of tumult, not shouts of joy, on the mountains. ³⁵  7:8 Soon now I will pour out my rage ³⁶  on you; I will fully vent my anger against you. I will judge you according to your behavior. I will hold you accountable for all your abominable practices. 7:9 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare ³⁷  you. For your behavior I will hold you accountable, ³⁸  and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. Then you will know that it is I, the Lord, who is striking you. ³⁹ 

7:10 “Look, the day! Look, it is coming! Doom has gone out! The staff has budded, pride has blossomed! 7:11 Violence ⁴⁰  has grown into a staff that supports wickedness. Not one of them will be left ⁴¹  – not from their crowd, not from their wealth, not from their prominence. ⁴²  7:12 The time has come; the day has struck! The customer should not rejoice, nor the seller mourn; for divine wrath ⁴³  comes against their whole crowd. 7:13 The customer will no longer pay the seller ⁴⁴  while both parties are alive, for the vision against their whole crowd ⁴⁵  will not be revoked. Each person, for his iniquity, ⁴⁶  will fail to preserve his life.

7:14 “They have blown the trumpet and everyone is ready, but no one goes to battle, because my anger is against their whole crowd. ⁴⁷  7:15 The sword is outside; pestilence and famine are inside the house. Whoever is in the open field will die by the sword, and famine and pestilence will consume everyone in the city. 7:16 Their survivors will escape to the mountains and become like doves of the valleys; all of them will moan – each one for his iniquity. 7:17 All of their hands will hang limp; their knees will be wet with urine. ⁴⁸  7:18 They will wear sackcloth, terror will cover them; shame will be on all their faces, and all of their heads will be shaved bald. ⁴⁹  7:19 They will discard their silver in the streets, and their gold will be treated like filth. ⁵⁰  Their silver and gold will not be able to deliver them on the day of the Lord’s fury. ⁵¹  They will not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs because their wealth ⁵²  was the obstacle leading to their iniquity. ⁵³  7:20 They rendered the beauty of his ornaments into pride, ⁵⁴  and with it they made their abominable images – their detestable idols. Therefore I will render it filthy to them. 7:21 I will give it to foreigners as loot, to the world’s wicked ones as plunder, and they will desecrate it. 7:22 I will turn my face away from them and they will desecrate my treasured place. ⁵⁵  Vandals will enter it and desecrate it. ⁵⁶  7:23 (Make the chain, ⁵⁷  because the land is full of murder ⁵⁸  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 ⁵⁹  will be desecrated. 7:25 Terror ⁶⁰  is coming! They will seek peace, but find none. 7:26 Disaster after disaster will come, and one rumor after another. They will seek a vision from a prophet; priestly instruction will disappear, along with counsel from the elders. 7:27 The king will mourn and the prince will be clothed with shuddering; the hands of the people of the land will tremble. Based on their behavior I will deal with them, and by their standard of justice ⁶¹  I will judge them. Then they will know that I am the Lord!”

[6:2]  ¹ tn Heb “set your face against.” The expression occurs at the beginning of Ezekiel’s prophetic oracles in Ezek 13:17; 20:46; 21:2; 25:2; 28:21; 29:2; 35:2; 38:2.

[6:3]  ² tn The phrase “mountains of Israel” occurs only in the book of Ezekiel (6:2, 3; 19:9; 33:28; 34:13, 14; 35:12; 36:1, 4, 8; 37:22; 38:8; 39:2, 4, 17). The expression refers to the whole land of Israel.

[6:3]  ³ tn The introductory formula “Hear the word of the sovereign Lord” parallels a pronouncement delivered by the herald of a king (2 Kgs 18:28).

[6:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “Look I, I am bringing.” The repetition of the pronoun draws attention to the speaker. The construction also indicates that the action is soon to come; the Lord is “about to bring a sword against” them.

[6:3]  ⁵ tn The Hebrew term refers to elevated platforms where pagan sacrifices were performed.

[6:4]  ⁶ tn Thirty-nine of the forty-eight biblical occurrences of this Hebrew word are found in the book of Ezekiel.

[6:5]  ⁷ tc This first sentence, which explains the meaning of the last sentence of the previous verse, does not appear in the LXX and may be an instance of a marginal explanatory note making its way into the text.

[6:6]  ⁸ tn The Hebrew verb translated “wiped out” is used to describe the judgment of the Flood (Gen 6:7; 7:4, 23).

[6:7]  ⁹ sn The phrase you will know that I am the Lord concludes over sixty oracles in the book of Ezekiel and indicates the ultimate goal of God’s action. The phrase is often used in the book of Exodus as well (Exod 7:5; 14:4, 18). By Ezekiel’s day the people had forgotten that the Lord (Yahweh) was their covenant God and had turned to other gods. They had to be reminded that Yahweh alone deserved to be worshiped because only he possessed the power to meet their needs. Through judgment and eventually deliverance, Israel would be reminded that Yahweh alone held their destiny in his hands.

[6:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “when you have fugitives from the sword among the nations, when you are scattered among the lands.”

[6:9]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² 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]  ¹³ tn Heb adds “in their faces.”

[6:10]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ 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).

[6:12]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “the one who is left, the one who is spared.”

[6:13]  ¹⁷ sn By referring to every high hill…all the mountaintops…under every green tree and every leafy oak Ezekiel may be expanding on the phraseology of Deut 12:2 (see 1 Kgs 14:23; 2 Kgs 16:4; 17:10; Jer 2:20; 3:6, 13; 2 Chr 28:4).

[6:14]  ¹⁸ sn I will stretch out my hand against them is a common expression in the book of Ezekiel (14:9, 13; 16:27; 25:7; 35:3).

[6:14]  ¹⁹ tc The Vulgate reads the name as “Riblah,” a city north of Damascus. The MT reads Diblah, a city otherwise unknown. The letters resh (ר) and dalet (ד) may have been confused in the Hebrew text. The town of Riblah was in the land of Hamath (2 Kgs 23:33) which represented the northern border of Israel (Ezek 47:14).

[7:2]  ²⁰ tn Or “earth.” Elsewhere the expression “four corners of the earth” figuratively refers to the whole earth (Isa 11:12).

[7:3]  ²¹ tn Or “punish” (cf. BDB 1047 s.v. שָׁפַט 3.c).

[7:3]  ²² tn Heb “ways.”

[7:3]  ²³ tn Heb “I will place on you.”

[7:4]  ²⁴ 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.

[7:4]  ²⁵ tn The pronoun “you” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied.

[7:4]  ²⁶ tn “I will set your behavior on your head.”

[7:4]  ²⁷ tn Heb “and your abominable practices will be among you.”

[7:5]  ²⁸ tn The Hebrew term often refers to moral evil (see Ezek 6:10; 14:22), but in many contexts it refers to calamity or disaster, sometimes as punishment for evil behavior.

[7:5]  ²⁹ tc So most Hebrew mss; many Hebrew mss read “disaster after disaster” (cf. NAB, NCV, NRSV, NLT).

[7:6]  ³⁰ tn Or “has come.”

[7:6]  ³¹ tn Or “has come.”

[7:6]  ³² tc With different vowels the verb rendered “it has awakened” would be the noun “the end,” as in “the end is upon you.” The verb would represent a phonetic wordplay. The noun by virtue of repetition would continue to reinforce the idea of the end. Whether verb or noun, this is the only instance to occur with this preposition.

[7:6]  ³³ tc For this entire verse, the LXX has only “the end is come.”

[7:7]  ³⁴ sn The day refers to the day of the Lord, a concept which, beginning in Amos 5:18-20, became a common theme in the OT prophetic books. It refers to a time when the Lord intervenes in human affairs as warrior and judge.

[7:7]  ³⁵ tc The LXX reads “neither tumult nor birth pains.” The LXX varies at many points from the MT in this chapter. The context suggests that one or both of these would be present on a day of judgment, thus favoring the MT. Perhaps more significant is the absence of “the mountains” in the LXX. If the ר (resh) in הָרִים (harim, “the mountains” not “on the mountains”) were a ד (dalet), which is a common letter confusion, then it could be from the same root as the previous word, הֵד (hed), meaning “the day is near – with destruction, not joyful shouting.”

[7:8]  ³⁶ tn The expression “to pour out rage” also occurs in Ezek 9:8; 14:19; 20:8, 13, 21; 22:31; 30:15; 36:18.

[7:9]  ³⁷ 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.

[7:9]  ³⁸ tn Heb “According to your behavior I will place on you.”

[7:9]  ³⁹ tn The MT lacks “you.” It has been added for clarification.

[7:11]  ⁴⁰ tn Heb “the violence.”

[7:11]  ⁴¹ tc The LXX reads “he will crush the wicked rod without confusion or haste.”

[7:11]  ⁴² tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.

[7:12]  ⁴³ tn Heb “wrath.” Context clarifies that God’s wrath is in view.

[7:13]  ⁴⁴ tc The translation follows the LXX for the first line of the verse, although the LXX has lost the second line due to homoioteleuton (similar endings of the clauses). The MT reads “The seller will not return to the sale.” This Hebrew reading has been construed as a reference to land redemption, the temporary sale of the use of property, with property rights returned to the seller in the year of Jubilee. But the context has no other indicator that land redemption is in view. If correct, the LXX evidence suggests that one of the cases of “the customer” has been replaced by “the seller” in the MT, perhaps due to hoimoioarcton (similar beginnings of the words).

[7:13]  ⁴⁵ tn The Hebrew word refers to the din or noise made by a crowd, and by extension may refer to the crowd itself.

[7:13]  ⁴⁶ tn Or “in their punishment.” The phrase “in/for [a person’s] iniquity” occurs fourteen times in Ezekiel: here and in v. 16; 3:18, 19; 4:17; 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.”

[7:14]  ⁴⁷ tn The Hebrew word refers to the din or noise made by a crowd, and by extension may refer to the crowd itself.

[7:17]  ⁴⁸ tn Heb “their knees will run with water.” The expression probably refers to urination caused by fright, which is how the LXX renders the phrase. More colloquial English would simply be “they will wet their pants,” but as D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:261, n. 98) notes, the men likely wore skirts which were short enough to expose urine on the knees.

[7:18]  ⁴⁹ tn Heb “baldness will be on their heads.”

[7:19]  ⁵⁰ tn The Hebrew term can refer to menstrual impurity. The term also occurs at the end of v. 20.

[7:19]  ⁵¹ sn Compare Zeph 1:18.

[7:19]  ⁵² tn Heb “it.” Apparently the subject is the silver and gold mentioned earlier (see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel [WBC], 1:102).

[7:19]  ⁵³ tn The “stumbling block of their iniquity” is a unique phrase of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 14:3, 4, 7; 18:30; 44:12).

[7:20]  ⁵⁴ tc The MT reads “he set up the beauty of his ornament as pride.” The verb may be repointed as plural without changing the consonantal text. The Syriac reads “their ornaments” (plural), implying עֶדְיָם (’edyam) rather than עֶדְיוֹ (’edyo) and meaning “they were proud of their beautiful ornaments.” This understands “ornaments” in the common sense of women’s jewelry, which then were used to make idols. The singular suffix “his ornaments” would refer to using items from the temple treasury to make idols. D. I. Block points out the foreshadowing of Ezek 16:17 which, with Rashi and the Targum, supports the understanding that this is a reference to temple items. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:265.

[7:22]  ⁵⁵ sn My treasured place probably refers to the temple (however, cf. NLT “my treasured land”).

[7:22]  ⁵⁶ 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]  ⁵⁷ 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]  ⁵⁸ 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]  ⁵⁹ sn Or “their holy places” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV).

[7:25]  ⁶⁰ tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT. It is interpreted based on a Syriac cognate meaning “to bristle or stiffen (in terror).”

[7:27]  ⁶¹ tn Heb “and by their judgments.”