Discovery BoxEzekiel 4:12 
Context4:12 And you must eat the food like you would a barley cake. You must bake it in front of them over a fire made with dried human excrement.” 1
Ezekiel 7:16
Context7:16 Their survivors will escape to the mountains and become like doves of the valleys; all of them will moan – each one for his iniquity.
Ezekiel 10:1
Context10:1 As I watched, I saw 2 on the platform 3 above the top of the cherubim something like a sapphire, resembling the shape of a throne, appearing above them.
Ezekiel 10:5
Context10:5 The sound of the wings of the cherubim could be heard from the outer court, like the sound of the sovereign God 4 when he speaks.
Ezekiel 17:5
Context17:5 He took one of the seedlings 5 of the land,
placed it in a cultivated plot; 6
a shoot by abundant water,
like a willow he planted it.
Ezekiel 19:10
Context19:10 “‘Your mother was like a vine in your vineyard, 7 planted by water.
It was fruitful and full of branches because it was well-watered.
Ezekiel 20:30
Context20:30 “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Will you defile yourselves like your fathers 8 and engage in prostitution with detestable idols?
Ezekiel 21:10
Context21:10 It is sharpened for slaughter,
it is polished to flash like lightning!
“‘Should we rejoice in the scepter of my son? No! The sword despises every tree! 9
Ezekiel 22:27
Context22:27 Her officials are like wolves in her midst rending their prey – shedding blood and destroying lives – so they can get dishonest profit.
Ezekiel 23:15
Context23:15 wearing belts on their waists and flowing turbans on their heads, all of them looking like officers, the image of Babylonians 10 whose native land is Chaldea.
Ezekiel 25:8
Context25:8 “This is what the sovereign Lord says: ‘Moab 11 and Seir say, “Look, the house of Judah is like all the other nations.”
Ezekiel 31:3
Context31:3 Consider Assyria, 12 a cedar in Lebanon, 13
with beautiful branches, like a forest giving shade,
and extremely tall;
its top reached into the clouds.
Ezekiel 33:32
Context33:32 Realize 14 that to them you are like a sensual song, a beautiful voice and skilled musician. 15 They hear your words, but they do not obey them. 16
Ezekiel 36:35
Context36:35 They will say, “This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; the ruined, desolate, and destroyed cities are now fortified and inhabited.”
Ezekiel 40:25
Context40:25 There were windows all around it and its porches, like the windows of the others; 17 87½ feet 18 long and 43¾ feet 19 wide.
Ezekiel 43:2-3
Context43:2 I saw 20 the glory of the God of Israel 21 coming from the east; 22 the sound was like that of rushing water; 23 and the earth radiated 24 his glory. 43:3 It was like the vision I saw when he 25 came to destroy the city, and the vision I saw by the Kebar River. I threw myself face down.
1 sn Human waste was to remain outside the camp of the Israelites according to Deut 23:15.
2 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.
3 tn Or “like a dome.” See 1:22-26.
4 tn The name (“El Shaddai”) has often been translated “God Almighty,” primarily because Jerome translated it omnipotens (“all powerful”) in the Latin Vulgate. There has been much debate over the meaning of the name. For discussion see W. F. Albright, “The Names Shaddai and Abram,” JBL 54 (1935): 173-210; R. Gordis, “The Biblical Root sdy-sd,” JTS 41 (1940): 34-43; and especially T. N. D. Mettinger, In Search of God, 69-72.
5 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.
6 tn Heb “a field for seed.”
7 tc The Hebrew text reads “in your blood,” but most emend to “in your vineyard,” assuming a ב-כ (beth-kaph) confusion. See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 1:284. Another attractive emendation assumes a faulty word division and yields the reading “like a vine full of tendrils, which/because…”; see D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:607, n. 68.
8 tn Heb “in the way of your fathers.”
9 tn Heb “Or shall we rejoice, scepter of my son, it despises every tree.” The translation understands the subject of the verb “despises,” which is a feminine form in the Hebrew text, to be the sword (which is a feminine noun) mentioned just before this. Alternatively, the line may be understood as “let us not rejoice, O tribe of my son; it despises every tree.” The same word in Hebrew may be either “rod,” “scepter,” or “tribe.” The word sometimes translated as “or” or taken as an interrogative particle may be a negative particle. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:672, n. 79.
sn The people of Judah should not place false hope in their king, symbolized by his royal scepter, for God’s judgment (symbolized by fire and then a sword) would destroy every tree (see 20:47), symbolizing the righteous and wicked (see 21:3-4).
10 tn Heb “the sons of Babel.”
11 sn Moab was located immediately south of Ammon.
12 sn Either Egypt, or the Lord compares Egypt to Assyria, which is described in vv. 3-17 through the metaphor of a majestic tree. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 2:185. Like Egypt, Assyria had been a great world power, but in time God brought the Assyrians down. Egypt should learn from history the lesson that no nation, no matter how powerful, can withstand the judgment of God. Rather than following the text here, some prefer to emend the proper name Assyria to a similar sounding common noun meaning “boxwood” (see Ezek 27:6), which would make a fitting parallel to “cedar of Lebanon” in the following line. In this case vv. 3-18 in their entirety refer to Egypt, not Assyria. See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 2:121-27.
13 sn Lebanon was know for its cedar trees (Judg 9:15; 1 Kgs 4:33; 5:6; 2 Kgs 14:9; Ezra 3:7; Pss 29:5; 92:12; 104:16).
14 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.
15 tn Heb “one who makes playing music well.”
16 sn Similar responses are found in Isa 29:13; Matt 21:28-32; James 1:22-25.
17 tn Heb “as these windows.”
18 tn Heb “fifty cubits” (i.e., 26.25 meters).
19 tn Heb “twenty-five cubits” (i.e., 13.125 meters).
20 tn The word הִנֵּה (hinneh, traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb.
21 sn This same title appears in 8:4; 9:3; 10:19; and 11:22.
22 sn Earlier Ezekiel had observed God leaving the temple to the east (11:23).
23 sn See Ezek 1:24; Rev 1:15; 14:2; 19:6.
24 tn Heb “shone from.”
25 tc Heb “I.” The reading is due to the confusion of yod (י, indicating a first person pronoun) and vav (ו, indicating a third person pronoun). A few medieval Hebrew
