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!’”
8:16 Then he brought me to the inner court of the Lord’s house. Right there 9 at the entrance to the Lord’s temple, between the porch and the altar, 10 were about twenty-five 11 men with their backs to the Lord’s temple, 12 facing east – they were worshiping the sun 13 toward the east!
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! 14
9:9 He said to me, “The sin of the house of Israel and Judah is extremely great; the land is full of murder, and the city is full of corruption, 15 for they say, ‘The Lord has abandoned the land, and the Lord does not see!’ 16
14:9 “‘As for the prophet, if he is made a fool by being deceived into speaking a prophetic word – I, the Lord, have made a fool of 17 that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from among my people Israel.
17:9 “‘Say to them: This is what the sovereign Lord says:
“‘Will it prosper?
Will he not rip out its roots
and cause its fruit to rot 18 and wither?
All its foliage 19 will wither.
No strong arm or large army
will be needed to pull it out by its roots. 20
37:9 He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, 28 – 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.’”
40:1 In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after the city 29 was struck down, on this very day, 30 the hand 31 of the Lord was on me, and he brought me there. 32
40:48 Then he brought me to the porch of the temple and measured the jambs of the porch as 8¾ feet 33 on either side, and the width of the gate was 24½ feet 34 and the sides 35 were 5¼ feet 36 on each side.
42:13 Then he said to me, “The north chambers and the south chambers which face the courtyard are holy chambers where the priests 37 who approach the Lord will eat the most holy offerings. There they will place the most holy offerings – the grain offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering, because the place is holy.
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, 38
47:1 Then he brought me back to the entrance of the temple. I noticed 39 that water was flowing from under the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from under the right side of the temple, from south of the altar.
1 sn Even though the infinitive absolute is used to emphasize the warning, the warning is still implicitly conditional, as the following context makes clear.
2 tn Or “in his punishment.” The phrase “in/for [a person’s] iniquity” occurs fourteen times in Ezekiel: here and v. 19; 4:17; 7:13, 16; 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.”
3 tn Heb “his blood I will seek from your hand.” The expression “seek blood from the hand” is equivalent to requiring the death penalty (2 Sam 4:11-12).
4 tn The Hebrew term is normally used as an architectural term in describing the pattern of the tabernacle or temple or a representation of it (see Exod 25:8; 1 Chr 28:11).
5 tn Or “spirit.” See note on “wind” in 2:2.
6 map For the location of Jerusalem see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
7 tn Or “image.”
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 The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something.
10 sn The priests prayed to God between the porch and the altar on fast days (Joel 2:17). This is the location where Zechariah was murdered (Matt 23:35).
11 tc The LXX reads “twenty” instead of twenty-five, perhaps because of the association of the number twenty with the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash.
tn Or “exactly twenty-five.”
12 sn The temple faced east.
13 tn Or “the sun god.”
sn The worship of astral entities may have begun during the reign of Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:5).
14 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.”
15 tn Or “lawlessness” (NAB); “perversity” (NRSV). The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT, and its meaning is uncertain. The similar phrase in 7:23 has a common word for “violence.”
16 sn The saying is virtually identical to that of the elders in Ezek 8:12.
17 tn The translation is uncertain due to difficulty both in determining the meaning of the verb’s stem and its conjugation in this context. In the Qal stem the basic meaning of the verbal root פָּתַה (patah) is “to be gullible, foolish.” The doubling stems (the Pual and Piel used in this verse) typically give such stative verbs a factitive sense, hence either “make gullible” (i.e., “entice”) or “make into a fool” (i.e., “to show to be a fool”). The latter represents the probable meaning of the term in Jer 20:7, 10 and is followed here (see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel [WBC], 1:193; R. Mosis “Ez 14, 1-11 - ein Ruf zur Umkehr,” BZ 19 [1975]: 166-69 and ThWAT 4:829-31). In this view, if a prophet speaks when not prompted by God, he will be shown to be a fool, but this does not reflect negatively on the Lord because it is God who shows him to be a fool. Secondly, the verb is in the perfect conjugation and may be translated “I have made a fool of him” or “I have enticed him,” or to show determination (see IBHS 439-41 §27.2f and g), or in certain syntactical constructions as future. Any of these may be plausible if the doubling stems used are understood in the sense of “making a fool of.” But if understood as “to make gullible,” more factors come into play. As the Hebrew verbal form is a perfect, it is often translated as present perfect: “I have enticed.” In this case the Lord states that he himself enticed the prophet to cooperate with the idolaters. Such enticement to sin would seem to be a violation of God’s moral character, but sometimes he does use such deception and enticement to sin as a form of punishment against those who have blatantly violated his moral will (see, e.g., 2 Sam 24). If one follows this line of interpretation in Ezek 14:9, one would have to assume that the prophet had already turned from God in his heart. However, the context gives no indication of this. Therefore, it is better to take the perfect as indicating certitude and to translate it with the future tense: “I will entice.” In this case the Lord announces that he will judge the prophet appropriately. If a prophet allows himself to be influenced by idolaters, then the Lord will use deception as a form of punishment against that deceived prophet. A comparison with the preceding oracles also favors this view. In 14:4 the perfect of certitude is used for emphasis (see “I will answer”), though in v. 7 a participle is employed. For a fuller discussion of this text, see R. B. Chisholm, Jr., “Does God Deceive?” BSac 155 (1998): 23-25.
18 tn The Hebrew root occurs only here in the OT and appears to have the meaning of “strip off.” In application to fruit the meaning may be “cause to rot.”
19 tn Heb “all the טַרְפֵּי (tarpey) of branches.” The word טַרְפֵּי occurs only here in the Bible; its precise meaning is uncertain.
20 tn Or “there will be no strong arm or large army when it is pulled up by the roots.”
21 tn Or “in his punishment.” The phrase “in/for [a person’s] iniquity/punishment” occurs fourteen times in Ezekiel: here and in vv. 8 and 9; 3:18, 19; 4:17; 7:13, 16; 18: 17, 18, 19, 20; 24:23; 39:23. The Hebrew word for “iniquity” may also mean the “punishment” for iniquity or “guilt” of iniquity.
22 tn Heb “his blood from the hand of the watchman I will seek.”
23 tn The other occurrences of the phrase “the hand of the
24 tn Heb “he”; the referent has been specified in the translation for clarity.
25 tn Heb “by the time of the arrival to me.” For clarity the translation specifies the refugee as the one who arrived.
26 sn Ezekiel’s God-imposed muteness was lifted (see 3:26).
27 sn Outside of its seven occurrences in Ezekiel the term translated “possession” appears only in Exod 6:8 and Deut 33:4.
28 tn Or “spirit,” and several times in this verse.
29 sn That is, Jerusalem.
30 tn April 19, 573
31 tn Or “power.”
sn Hand in the OT can refer metaphorically to power, authority, or influence. In Ezekiel God’s hand being on the prophet is regularly associated with communication or a vision from God (3:14, 22; 8:1; 37:1; 40:1).
32 sn That is, to the land of Israel (see v. 2).
33 tn Heb “five cubits” (i.e., 2.625 meters).
34 tn The LXX reads “fourteen cubits” (i.e., 7.35 meters). See following note.
35 tc The translation follows the LXX. The MT reads “the width of the gate was three cubits,” the omission due to haplography.
tn Or “sidewalls.”
36 tn Heb “three cubits” (i.e., 1.575 meters).
37 sn The priests are from the Zadokite family (Ezek 40:6; 44:15).
38 sn For the “sprinkling of blood,” see Lev 1:5, 11; 8:19; 9:12.
39 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.