5:5 “This is what the sovereign Lord says: This is Jerusalem; I placed her in the center of the nations with countries all around her.
17:5 He took one of the seedlings 1 of the land,
placed it in a cultivated plot; 2
a shoot by abundant water,
like a willow he planted it.
24:8 To arouse anger, to take vengeance,
I have placed her blood on an exposed rock so that it cannot be covered up.
28:14 I placed you there with an anointed 3 guardian 4 cherub; 5
you were on the holy mountain of God;
you walked about amidst fiery stones.
1 tn Heb “took of the seed of the land.” For the vine imagery, “seedling” is a better translation, though in its subsequent interpretation the “seed” refers to Zedekiah through its common application to offspring.
2 tn Heb “a field for seed.”
3 tn Or “winged”; see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:91.
4 tn The meaning of this phrase in Hebrew is uncertain. The word translated here “guards” occurs in Exod 25:20 in reference to the cherubim “covering” the ark.
5 tn Heb “you (were) an anointed cherub that covers and I placed you.” In the Hebrew text the ruler of Tyre is equated with a cherub, and the verb “I placed you” is taken with what follows (“on the holy mountain of God”). However, this reading is problematic. The pronoun “you” at the beginning of verse 14 is feminine singular in the Hebrew text; elsewhere in this passage the ruler of Tyre is addressed with masculine singular forms. It is possible that the pronoun is a rare (see Deut 5:24; Num 11:15) or defectively written (see 1 Sam 24:19; Neh 9:6; Job 1:10; Ps 6:3; Eccl 7:22) masculine form, but it is more likely that the form should be repointed as the preposition “with” (see the LXX). In this case the ruler of Tyre is compared to the first man, not to a cherub. If this emendation is accepted, then the verb “I placed you” belongs with what precedes and concludes the first sentence in the verse. It is noteworthy that the verbs in the second and third lines of the verse also appear at the end of the sentence in the Hebrew text. The presence of a conjunction at the beginning of “I placed you” is problematic for the proposal, but it may reflect a later misunderstanding of the syntax of the verse. For a defense of the proposed emendation, see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:91.