¹ tn Heb “and look, from the Nile seven cows were coming up, fat of flesh and attractive of appearance, and they grazed in the reeds.”

¹ tn Once again this is an adverbial accusative of time. Each day for seven days the ritual at the altar is to be followed.

² sn Presumably in this case the blood was sprinkled seven times on the ground in front of the ark on which the atonement plate was mounted.

¹ tn Heb “If you really can tell it to me [during] the seven days of the feast and you find [its answer].”

² sn Like the number seven, the number ten is sometimes used in the OT as an ideal number (see, for example, Dan 1:20, Zech 8:23).

¹ tn Heb “And the number of the days in which David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah was seven years and six months.”

¹ tc The LXX has here “three” rather than “seven,” and is followed by NAB, NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV, NLT. See 1 Chr 21:12.

¹ tn Heb “I have kept in Israel seven thousand, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and all the mouths that have not kissed him.”

¹ tn Heb “and the remaining ones fled to Aphek to the city and the wall fell on twenty-seven thousand men, the ones who remained.”

² tn Heb “whoever comes to fill his hand with a bull of a son of cattle, and seven rams, and he is a priest to no-gods.”

¹ sn Cf. 1:10, where Harbona is one of the seven eunuchs sent by the king to summon Queen Vashti to his banquet.

¹ sn The seven to one ratio emphasizes the great disparity that will exist in the population due to the death of so many men in battle.

¹ sn To have seven children was considered a blessing and a source of pride and honor (Ruth 4:15; 1 Sam 2:5).

² sn The six men plus the scribe would equal seven, which was believed by the Babylonians to be the number of planetary deities.

¹ sn Outside of its seven occurrences in Ezekiel the term translated “possession” appears only in Exod 6:8 and Deut 33:4.

⁴ sn The numbers seven and eight here symbolize completeness and emphasize that Israel will have more than enough military leadership and strength to withstand the Assyrian advance.

² sn The seven eyes are symbolic of divine omniscience and universal dominion (cf. Zech 1:10; 4:10; 2 Chr 16:9).

¹ tn “Along with seven others” is implied in the cryptic, “the eighth, Noah.” A more literal translation thus would be, “he did protect Noah [as] the eighth…”

³ sn Some interpret the seven spirits of God as angelic beings, while others see them as a reference to the sevenfold ministry of the Holy Spirit.

² sn The symbolic number seven is used here to emphasize that the offender will receive severe punishment. For other rhetorical and hyperbolic uses of the expression “seven times over,” see Pss 12:6; 79:12; Prov 6:31; Isa 30:26.