Ezekiel 7:1-13

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! ¹  7:3 The end is now upon you, and I will release my anger against you; I will judge ²  you according to your behavior, ³  I will hold you accountable for ⁴  all your abominable practices. 7:4 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare ⁵  you. ⁶  For I will hold you responsible for your behavior, ⁷  and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. ⁸  Then you will know that I am the Lord!

7:5 “This is what the sovereign Lord says: A disaster ⁹  – a one-of-a-kind ¹⁰  disaster – is coming! 7:6 An end comes ¹¹  – the end comes! ¹²  It has awakened against you ¹³  – the end is upon you! Look, it is coming! ¹⁴  7:7 Doom is coming upon you who live in the land! The time is coming, the day ¹⁵  is near. There are sounds of tumult, not shouts of joy, on the mountains. ¹⁶  7:8 Soon now I will pour out my rage ¹⁷  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 ¹⁸  you. For your behavior I will hold you accountable, ¹⁹  and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. Then you will know that it is I, the Lord, who is striking you. ²⁰ 

7:10 “Look, the day! Look, it is coming! Doom has gone out! The staff has budded, pride has blossomed! 7:11 Violence ²¹  has grown into a staff that supports wickedness. Not one of them will be left ²²  – not from their crowd, not from their wealth, not from their prominence. ²³  7:12 The time has come; the day has struck! The customer should not rejoice, nor the seller mourn; for divine wrath ²⁴  comes against their whole crowd. 7:13 The customer will no longer pay the seller ²⁵  while both parties are alive, for the vision against their whole crowd ²⁶  will not be revoked. Each person, for his iniquity, ²⁷  will fail to preserve his life.

[7:2]  ¹ tn Or “earth.” Elsewhere the expression “four corners of the earth” figuratively refers to the whole earth (Isa 11:12).

[7:3]  ² tn Or “punish” (cf. BDB 1047 s.v. שָׁפַט 3.c).

[7:3]  ³ tn Heb “ways.”

[7:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “I will place on you.”

[7:4]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ tn The pronoun “you” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied.

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

[7:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “and your abominable practices will be among you.”

[7:5]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ tc So most Hebrew mss; many Hebrew mss read “disaster after disaster” (cf. NAB, NCV, NRSV, NLT).

[7:6]  ¹¹ tn Or “has come.”

[7:6]  ¹² tn Or “has come.”

[7:6]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ tc For this entire verse, the LXX has only “the end is come.”

[7:7]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ 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]  ¹⁷ 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]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “According to your behavior I will place on you.”

[7:9]  ²⁰ tn The MT lacks “you.” It has been added for clarification.

[7:11]  ²¹ tn Heb “the violence.”

[7:11]  ²² tc The LXX reads “he will crush the wicked rod without confusion or haste.”

[7:11]  ²³ tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.

[7:12]  ²⁴ tn Heb “wrath.” Context clarifies that God’s wrath is in view.

[7:13]  ²⁵ 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]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ 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.”