Ezekiel 7:1-7

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 

[7:2]  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.”