Ezekiel 5:12-17

5:12 A third of your people will die of plague or be overcome by the famine within you. 1  A third of your people will fall by the sword surrounding you, 2  and a third I will scatter to the winds. I will unleash a sword behind them. 5:13 Then my anger will be fully vented; I will exhaust my rage on them, and I will be appeased. 3  Then they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in my jealousy 4  when I have fully vented my rage against them.

5:14 “I will make you desolate and an object of scorn among the nations around you, in the sight of everyone who passes by. 5:15 You will be 5  an object of scorn and taunting, 6  a prime example of destruction 7  among the nations around you when I execute judgments against you in anger and raging fury. 8  I, the Lord, have spoken! 5:16 I will shoot against them deadly, 9  destructive 10  arrows of famine, 11  which I will shoot to destroy you. 12  I will prolong a famine on you and will remove the bread supply. 13  5:17 I will send famine and wild beasts against you and they will take your children from you. 14  Plague and bloodshed will overwhelm you, 15  and I will bring a sword against you. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

1 sn The judgment of plague and famine comes from the covenant curse (Lev 26:25-26). As in v. 10, the city of Jerusalem is figuratively addressed here.

2 sn Judgment by plague, famine, and sword occurs in Jer 21:9; 27:13; Ezek 6:11, 12; 7:15.

3 tn Or “calm myself.”

4 tn The Hebrew noun translated “jealousy” is used in the human realm to describe suspicion of adultery (Num 5:14ff.; Prov 6:34). Since Israel’s relationship with God was often compared to a marriage this term is appropriate here. The term occurs elsewhere in Ezekiel in 8:3, 5; 16:38, 42; 23:25.

5 tc This reading is supported by the versions and by the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QEzek). Most Masoretic Hebrew mss read “it will be,” but if the final he (ה) is read as a mater lectionis, as it can be with the second masculine singular perfect, then they are in agreement. In either case the subject refers to Jerusalem.

6 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT. A related verb means “revile, taunt” (see Ps 44:16).

7 tn Heb “discipline and devastation.” These words are omitted in the Old Greek. The first term pictures Jerusalem as a recipient or example of divine discipline; the second depicts her as a desolate ruin (see Ezek 6:14).

8 tn Heb “in anger and in fury and in rebukes of fury.” The heaping up of synonyms emphasizes the degree of God’s anger.

9 tn The Hebrew word carries the basic idea of “bad, displeasing, injurious,” but when used of weapons has the nuance “deadly” (see Ps 144:10).

10 tn Heb “which are/were to destroy.”

11 tn The language of this verse may have been influenced by Deut 32:23.

12 tn Or “which were to destroy those whom I will send to destroy you” (cf. NASB).

13 tn Heb, “break the staff of bread.” The bread supply is compared to a staff that one uses for support. See 4:16, as well as the covenant curse in Lev 26:26.

14 tn Heb “will bereave you.”

15 tn Heb “will pass through you.” This threat recalls the warning of Lev 26:22, 25 and Deut 32:24-25.