Ezekiel 31:15-16

31:15 “‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: On the day it ¹  went down to Sheol I caused observers to lament. ²  I covered it with the deep and held back its rivers; its plentiful water was restrained. I clothed Lebanon in black for it, and all the trees of the field wilted because of it. 31:16 I made the nations shake at the sound of its fall, when I threw it down to Sheol, along with those who descend to the pit. ³  Then all the trees of Eden, the choicest and the best of Lebanon, all that were well-watered, were comforted in the earth below.

Ezekiel 32:27

32:27 They do not lie with the fallen warriors of ancient times, ⁴  who went down to Sheol with their weapons of war, having their swords placed under their heads and their shields on their bones, ⁵  when the terror of these warriors was in the land of the living.

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¹ tn Or “he.”

² tn Heb “I caused lamentation.” D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 2:194-95) proposes an alternative root which would give the meaning “I gated back the waters,” i.e., shut off the water supply.

³ sn For the expression “going down to the pit,” see Ezek 26:20; 32:18, 24, 29.

⁴ tc Heb “of the uncircumcised.” The LXX reads, probably correctly, “from of old” rather than “of the uncircumcised.” The phrases are very similar in spelling. The warriors of Meshech-Tubal are described as uncircumcised, so it would be odd for them to not be buried with the uncircumcised. Verse 28 specifically says that they would lie with the uncircumcised.

⁵ tn Heb “and their iniquities were over their bones.” The meaning of this statement is unclear; in light of the parallelism (see “swords”) it is preferable to emend “their iniquities” to “their swords.” See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:135.