5:1 “As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor. 4 Shave off some of the hair from your head and your beard. 5 Then take scales and divide up the hair you cut off.
8:12 He said to me, “Do you see, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in the chamber of his idolatrous images? 8 For they think, ‘The Lord does not see us! The Lord has abandoned the land!’”
8:17 He said to me, “Do you see, son of man? Is it a trivial thing that the house of Judah commits these abominations they are practicing here? For they have filled the land with violence and provoked me to anger still further. Look, they are putting the branch to their nose! 9
12:3 “Therefore, son of man, pack up your belongings as if for exile. During the day, while they are watching, pretend to go into exile. Go from where you live to another place. Perhaps they will understand, 14 although they are a rebellious house.
24:25 “And you, son of man, this is what will happen on the day I take 16 from them their stronghold – their beautiful source of joy, the object in which their eyes delight, and the main concern of their lives, 17 as well as their sons and daughters: 18
“‘Your heart is proud 20 and you said, “I am a god; 21
I sit in the seat of gods, in the heart of the seas” –
yet you are a man and not a god,
though you think you are godlike. 22
“‘You were like a lion 25 among the nations,
but you are a monster in the seas;
you thrash about in your streams,
stir up the water with your feet,
and muddy your 26 streams.
33:10 “And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what you have said: “Our rebellious acts and our sins have caught up with us, 27 and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?”’
33:12 “And you, son of man, say to your people, 28 ‘The righteousness of the righteous will not deliver him if he rebels. 29 As for the wicked, his wickedness will not make him stumble if he turns from it. 30 The righteous will not be able to live by his righteousness 31 if he sins.’ 32
37:9 He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, 35 – prophesy, son of man – and say to the breath: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these corpses so that they may live.’”
39:17 “As for you, son of man, this is what the sovereign Lord says: Tell every kind of bird and every wild beast: ‘Assemble and come! Gather from all around to my slaughter 36 which I am going to make for you, a great slaughter on the mountains of Israel! You will eat flesh and drink blood.
43:18 Then he said to me: “Son of man, this is what the sovereign Lord says: These are the statutes of the altar: On the day it is built to offer up burnt offerings on it and to sprinkle blood on it, 39
1 tn The Hebrew term occurs only here in the OT.
2 tn The Hebrew term is found elsewhere in the OT only in Ezek 28:24.
sn Here thorns may be a figure for hostility (Ezek 28:24; Mic 7:4).
3 tn Heb “of their faces.”
4 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.
5 tn Heb, “pass (it) over your head and your beard.”
6 sn Note the contrast between these seventy men who represented Israel and the seventy elders who ate the covenant meal before God, inaugurating the covenant relationship (Exod 24:1, 9).
7 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.
8 tn Heb “the room of his images.” The adjective “idolatrous” has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
sn This type of image is explicitly prohibited in the Mosaic law (Lev 26:1).
9 tn It is not clear what the practice of “holding a branch to the nose” indicates. A possible parallel is the Syrian relief of a king holding a flower to his nose as he worships the stars (ANEP 281). See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 1:145-46. The LXX glosses the expression as “Behold, they are like mockers.”
10 tc The MT reads “your brothers, your brothers” either for empahsis (D. I. Block, Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:341, n. 1; 346) or as a result of dittography.
11 tc The MT reads גְאֻלָּתֶךָ (gÿ’ullatekha, “your redemption-men”), referring to the relatives responsible for deliverance in times of hardship (see Lev 25:25-55). The LXX and Syriac read “your fellow exiles,” assuming an underlying Hebrew text of גָלוּתֶךָ (galutekha) or having read the א (aleph) as an internal mater lectionis for holem.
12 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
13 tc The MT has an imperative form (“go far!”), but it may be read with different vowels as a perfect verb (“they have gone far”).
14 tn Heb “see.” This plays on the uses of “see” in v. 2. They will see his actions with their eyes and perhaps they will “see” with their mind, that is, understand or grasp the point.
15 tn Or “I will not reveal myself to you.”
16 tn Heb “(Will) it not (be) in the day I take?”
17 tn Heb “the uplifting of their soul.” According to BDB 672 s.v. מַשָּׂא 2, the term “uplifting” refers to “that to which they lift up their soul, their heart’s desire.” However, this text is the only one listed for this use. It seems more likely that the term has its well-attested nuance of “burden, load,” here and refers to that which weighs them down emotionally and is a constant source of concern or worry.
18 tn In the Hebrew text there is no conjunction before “their sons and daughters.” For this reason one might assume that the preceding descriptive phrases refer to the sons and daughters, but verse 21 suggests otherwise. The descriptive phrases appear to refer to the “stronghold,” which parallels “my sanctuary” in verse 21. The children constitute a separate category.
19 tn Or “ruler” (NIV, NCV).
20 tn Heb “lifted up.”
sn See Prov 16:5.
21 tn Or “I am divine.”
22 tn Heb “and you made your heart (mind) like the heart (mind) of gods.”
23 tn Heb “Nebuchadrezzar” is a variant and more correct spelling of Nebuchadnezzar, as the Babylonian name Nabu-kudurri-usur has an “r” rather than an “n” (so also in v. 19).
24 sn Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre from 585 to 571
map For location see Map1-A2; Map2-G2; Map4-A1; JP3-F3; JP4-F3.
25 tn The lion was a figure of royalty (Ezek 19:1-9).
26 tc The Hebrew reads “their streams”; the LXX reads “your streams.”
27 tn Heb “(are) upon us.”
28 tn Heb “the sons of your people.”
29 tn Heb “in the day of his rebellion.” The statement envisions a godly person rejecting what is good and becoming sinful. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:247-48.
30 tn Heb “and the wickedness of the wicked, he will not stumble in it in the day of his turning from his wickedness.”
31 tn Heb “by it.”
32 tn Heb “in the day of his sin.”
33 sn Outside of its seven occurrences in Ezekiel the term translated “possession” appears only in Exod 6:8 and Deut 33:4.
34 tn The term shepherd is applied to kings in the ancient Near East. In the OT the
35 tn Or “spirit,” and several times in this verse.
36 tn Or “sacrifice” (so also in the rest of this verse).
37 tn Heb “look with your eyes, hear with your ears, and set your mind on.”
38 tn Heb “in order to show (it) to you.”
39 sn For the “sprinkling of blood,” see Lev 1:5, 11; 8:19; 9:12.
40 tn Heb “set your heart” (so also in the latter part of the verse).
41 tn Heb “Set your mind, look with your eyes, and with your ears hear.”
42 tc The Syriac, Vulgate, and Targum read the plural. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:618.