Ezekiel 7:23

(Make the chain, ¹  because the land is full of murder ²  and the city is full of violence.)

2Ki 21:16; 2Ki 24:4; Isa 1:15; Isa 59:3,7; Jer 2:34; Jer 7:6; Jer 22:17; Jer 27:2; Jer 40:1; La 3:7; Eze 9:9; Eze 11:6; Eze 19:3-6; Eze 22:3-6,9,13,27; Ho 4:2; Mic 2:2; Mic 7:2; Na 3:10; Zep 3:3,4

¹ tc The Hebrew word “the chain” occurs only here in the OT. The reading of the LXX (“and they will make carnage”) seems to imply a Hebrew text of ַהבַּתּוֹק (habbattoq, “disorder, slaughter”) instead of הָרַתּוֹק (haratoq, “the chain”). The LXX is also translating the verb as a third person plural future and taking this as the end of the preceding verse. As M. Greenberg (Ezekiel [AB], 1:154) notes, this may refer to a chain for a train of exiles but “the context does not speak of exile but of the city’s fall. The versions guess desperately and we can do little better.”

² tn Heb “judgment for blood,” i.e., indictment or accountability for bloodshed. The word for “judgment” does not appear in the similar phrase in 9:9.