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? 1 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! 2
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, 3 for they say, ‘The Lord has abandoned the land, and the Lord does not see!’ 4
“‘Your heart is proud 10 and you said, “I am a god; 11
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. 12
“‘Look, I am against 13 you, Pharaoh king of Egypt,
the great monster 14 lying in the midst of its waterways,
who has said, “My Nile is my own, I made it for myself.” 15
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, 16 and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?”’
37:9 He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, 17 – 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.’”
42:13 Then he said to me, “The north chambers and the south chambers which face the courtyard are holy chambers where the priests 20 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, 21
1 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).
2 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.”
3 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.”
4 sn The saying is virtually identical to that of the elders in Ezek 8:12.
5 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.
6 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.
7 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.
8 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”).
9 tn Or “ruler” (NIV, NCV).
10 tn Heb “lifted up.”
sn See Prov 16:5.
11 tn Or “I am divine.”
12 tn Heb “and you made your heart (mind) like the heart (mind) of gods.”
13 tn Or “I challenge you.” The phrase “I am against you” may be a formula for challenging someone to combat or a duel. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:201-2, and P. Humbert, “Die Herausforderungsformel ‘h!nn#n' ?l?K>,’” ZAW 45 (1933): 101-8.
14 tn Heb “jackals,” but many medieval Hebrew
15 sn In Egyptian theology Pharaoh owned and controlled the Nile. See J. D. Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament, 240-44.
16 tn Heb “(are) upon us.”
17 tn Or “spirit,” and several times in this verse.
18 tn Heb “look with your eyes, hear with your ears, and set your mind on.”
19 tn Heb “in order to show (it) to you.”
20 sn The priests are from the Zadokite family (Ezek 40:6; 44:15).
21 sn For the “sprinkling of blood,” see Lev 1:5, 11; 8:19; 9:12.
22 tn Heb “set your heart” (so also in the latter part of the verse).
23 tn Heb “Set your mind, look with your eyes, and with your ears hear.”
24 tc The Syriac, Vulgate, and Targum read the plural. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:618.