Discovery BoxEzekiel 5:12-17 
Context5:12 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
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.
