Ezekiel 7
New English Translation
The End Arrives
7 The Lord’s message came to me: 2 “You, son of man—this is what the Sovereign Lord says to the land of Israel: An end! The end is coming on the four corners of the land![a] 3 The end is now upon you, and I will release my anger against you. I will judge[b] you according to your behavior;[c] I will hold you accountable for[d] all your abominable practices. 4 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare[e] you.[f] For I will hold you responsible for your behavior,[g] and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices.[h] Then you will know that I am the Lord!
5 “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: A disaster[i]—a one-of-a-kind[j] disaster—is coming! 6 An end comes[k]—the end comes![l] It has awakened against you![m] Look, it is coming![n] 7 Doom is coming upon you who live in the land! The time is coming, the day[o] is near. There are sounds of tumult, not shouts of joy, on the mountains.[p] 8 Soon now I will pour out my rage[q] on you; I will fully vent my anger against you. I will judge you according to your behavior. I will hold you accountable for all your abominable practices. 9 My eye will not pity you; I will not spare[r] you. For your behavior I will hold you accountable,[s] and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. Then you will know that it is I, the Lord, who is striking you.[t]
10 “Look, the day! Look, it is coming! Doom has gone out! The staff has budded, pride has blossomed! 11 Violence[u] has grown into a staff that supports wickedness. Not one of them will be left[v]—not from their crowd, not from their wealth, not from their prominence.[w] 12 The time has come; the day has struck! The customer should not rejoice, nor the seller mourn; for divine wrath[x] comes against their whole crowd. 13 The customer will no longer pay the seller[y] while both parties are alive, for the vision against their whole crowd[z] will not be revoked. Each person, for his iniquity,[aa] will fail to preserve his life.
14 “They have blown the trumpet and everyone is ready, but no one goes to battle, because my anger is against their whole crowd.[ab] 15 The sword is outside; pestilence and famine are inside the house. Whoever is in the open field will die by the sword, and famine and pestilence will consume everyone in the city. 16 Their survivors will escape to the mountains and become like doves of the valleys[ac] ; all of them will moan—each one for his iniquity. 17 All their hands will hang limp; their knees will be wet with urine.[ad] 18 They will wear sackcloth, terror will cover them; shame will be on all their faces, and all their heads will be shaved bald.[ae] 19 They will discard their silver in the streets, and their gold will be treated like filth.[af] Their silver and gold will not be able to deliver them on the day of the Lord’s fury.[ag] They will not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs because their wealth[ah] was the obstacle leading to their iniquity.[ai] 20 They rendered the beauty of his ornaments into pride,[aj] and with it they made their abominable images—their detestable idols. Therefore I will render it filthy to them. 21 I will give it to foreigners as loot, to the world’s wicked ones as plunder, and they will desecrate it. 22 I will turn my face away from them, and they will desecrate my treasured place.[ak] Vandals will enter it and desecrate it.[al] 23 (Make the chain,[am] because the land is full of murder[an] and the city is full of violence.) 24 I will bring the most wicked of the nations, and they will take possession of their houses. I will put an end to the arrogance of the strong, and their sanctuaries[ao] will be desecrated. 25 Terror[ap] is coming! They will seek peace, but find none. 26 Disaster after disaster will come, and one rumor after another. They will seek a vision from a prophet; priestly instruction will disappear, along with counsel from the elders. 27 The king will mourn and the prince will be clothed with shuddering; the hands of the people of the land will tremble. Based on their behavior I will deal with them, and by their standard of justice[aq] I will judge them. Then they will know that I am the Lord!”
Footnotes
- Ezekiel 7:2 tn Or “earth.” Elsewhere the expression “four corners of the earth” figuratively refers to the whole earth (Isa 11:12).
- Ezekiel 7:3 tn Or “punish” (cf. BDB 1047 s.v. שָׁפַט 3.c).
- Ezekiel 7:3 tn Heb “ways.”
- Ezekiel 7:3 tn Heb “I will place on you.”
- Ezekiel 7:4 tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.
- Ezekiel 7:4 tn The pronoun “you” is not in the Hebrew text but is implied.
- Ezekiel 7:4 tn “I will set your behavior on your head.”
- Ezekiel 7:4 tn Heb “and your abominable practices will be among you.”
- Ezekiel 7:5 tn The Hebrew term often refers to moral evil (see Ezek 6:10; 14:22), but in many contexts it refers to calamity or disaster, sometimes as punishment for evil behavior.
- Ezekiel 7:5 tc So most Hebrew mss; many Hebrew mss read “disaster after disaster” (cf. NAB, NCV, NRSV, NLT).
- Ezekiel 7:6 tn Or “has come.”
- Ezekiel 7:6 tn Or “has come.”
- Ezekiel 7:6 tc With different vowels the verb rendered “it has awakened” would be the noun “the end,” as in “the end is upon you.” The verb would represent a phonetic wordplay. The noun by virtue of repetition would continue to reinforce the idea of the end. Whether verb or noun, this is the only instance to occur with this preposition.
- Ezekiel 7:6 tc For this entire verse, the LXX has only “the end is come.” tn In each of the three cases of the verb translated with forms of “to come,” the form may either be a participle (“comes/is coming”) or a perfect (“has come”). Either form would indicate that the end is soon to arrive. This last form appears also to be feminine, although “end” is masculine. This shift may be looking ahead to the next verse, whose first noun (“Doom”) is feminine.
- Ezekiel 7:7 sn The day refers to the day of the Lord, a concept which, beginning in Amos 5:18-20, became a common theme in the OT prophetic books. It refers to a time when the Lord intervenes in human affairs as warrior and judge.
- Ezekiel 7:7 tc The LXX reads “neither tumult nor birth pains.” The LXX varies at many points from the MT in this chapter. The context suggests that one or both of these would be present on a day of judgment, thus favoring the MT. Perhaps more significant is the absence of “the mountains” in the LXX. If the ר (resh) in הָרִים (harim, “the mountains” not “on the mountains”) were a ד (dalet), which is a common letter confusion, then it could be from the same root as the previous word, הֵד (hed), meaning “the day is near—with destruction, not joyful shouting.”
- Ezekiel 7:8 tn The expression “to pour out rage” also occurs in Ezek 9:8; 14:19; 20:8, 13, 21; 22:31; 30:15; 36:18.
- Ezekiel 7:9 tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.
- Ezekiel 7:9 tn Heb “According to your behavior I will place on you.”
- Ezekiel 7:9 tn The MT lacks “you.” It has been added for clarification.
- Ezekiel 7:11 tn Heb “the violence.”
- Ezekiel 7:11 tc The LXX reads “he will crush the wicked rod without confusion or haste.”tn The verb has been supplied for the Hebrew text to clarify the sense.
- Ezekiel 7:11 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.
- Ezekiel 7:12 tn Heb “wrath.” Context clarifies that God’s wrath is in view.
- Ezekiel 7:13 tc The translation follows the LXX for the first line of the verse, although the LXX has lost the second line due to homoioteleuton (similar endings of the clauses). The MT reads “The seller will not return to the sale.” This Hebrew reading has been construed as a reference to land redemption, the temporary sale of the use of property, with property rights returned to the seller in the year of Jubilee. But the context has no other indicator that land redemption is in view. If correct, the LXX evidence suggests that one of the cases of “the customer” has been replaced by “the seller” in the MT, perhaps due to hoimoioarcton (similar beginnings of the words).
- Ezekiel 7:13 tn The Hebrew word refers to the din or noise made by a crowd, and by extension may refer to the crowd itself.
- Ezekiel 7:13 tn Or “in their punishment.” The phrase “in/for [a person’s] iniquity” occurs fourteen times in Ezekiel: here and in v. 16; 3:18, 19; 4:17; 18:17, 18, 19, 20; 24:23; 33:6, 8, 9; 39:23. The Hebrew word for “iniquity” may also mean the “punishment for iniquity.”
- Ezekiel 7:14 tn The Hebrew word refers to the din or noise made by a crowd, and by extension may refer to the crowd itself.
- Ezekiel 7:16 sn The simile compares doves that flee their valley home for the mountains, where they coo in mournful discomfort. For doves moaning or mourning see Isa 38:14; 59:11; Ezek 7:16 and Nah 2:7.
- Ezekiel 7:17 tn Heb “their knees will run with water.” The expression probably refers to urination caused by fright, which is how the LXX renders the phrase. More colloquial English would simply be “they will wet their pants,” but as D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:261, n. 98) notes, the men likely wore skirts which were short enough to expose urine on the knees.
- Ezekiel 7:18 tn Heb “baldness will be on their heads.”
- Ezekiel 7:19 tn The Hebrew term can refer to menstrual impurity. The term also occurs at the end of v. 20.
- Ezekiel 7:19 sn Cf. Zeph 1:18.
- Ezekiel 7:19 tn Heb “it.” Apparently the subject is the silver and gold mentioned earlier (see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel [WBC], 1:102).
- Ezekiel 7:19 tn The “stumbling block of their iniquity” is a unique phrase of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 14:3, 4, 7; 18:30; 44:12).
- Ezekiel 7:20 tc The MT reads “he set up the beauty of his ornament as pride.” The verb may be repointed as plural without changing the consonantal text. The Syriac reads “their ornaments” (plural), implying עֶדְיָם (ʿedyam) rather than עֶדְיוֹ (ʿedyo) and meaning “they were proud of their beautiful ornaments.” This understands “ornaments” in the common sense of women’s jewelry, which then was used to make idols. The singular suffix “his ornaments” would refer to using items from the temple treasury to make idols. D. I. Block points out the foreshadowing of Ezek 16:17, which, with Rashi and the Targum, supports the understanding that this is a reference to temple items. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:265.
- Ezekiel 7:22 sn My treasured place probably refers to the temple (however, cf. NLT’s “my treasured land”).
- Ezekiel 7:22 sn Since the pronouns “it” are both feminine, they do not refer to the masculine “my treasured place”; instead they probably refer to Jerusalem or the land, both of which are feminine in Hebrew.
- Ezekiel 7:23 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 הַבַּתּוֹק (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.”
- Ezekiel 7:23 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.
- Ezekiel 7:24 sn Or “their holy places” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV).
- Ezekiel 7:25 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT. It is interpreted based on a Syriac cognate meaning “to bristle or stiffen (in terror).”
- Ezekiel 7:27 tn Heb “and by their judgments.”
Ezekiel 7
New Life Version
The End Has Come for Israel
7 The Word of the Lord came to me saying, 2 “Son of man, this is what the Lord God says to the land of Israel: ‘The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land. 3 Now the end is upon you. I will send My anger against you and punish you because of your ways. I will make you pay for all your sinful actions. 4 My eye will have no pity on you. And I will not let you go without punishment. I will punish you for your ways, and for the hated sins that are among you. Then you will know that I am the Lord!’
5 “The Lord God says, ‘See, much trouble is coming! 6 An end has come! The end has come! It has come up against you. See, it has come! 7 Your punishment has come upon you, O you who live in the land. The time has come. The day is near. The sound of trouble and not of joy is upon the mountains. 8 Now I will soon pour out My anger upon you. I will send My anger against you. I will punish you for your ways and for the hated sins that are among you. 9 My eye will show no pity, and I will not let you go without punishment. I will make you pay for your ways, and for the hated sins that are among you. Then you will know that it is I, the Lord, Who punishes you.
10 ‘See, the day! See, it is coming! The time for your punishment has come. The power against you has started to grow. Pride has begun to grow. 11 Angry action has grown into a power of sin. None of them will be left. None of their people, none of their riches, or anything of honor, will be left among them. 12 The time has come. The day has come. Let not the one who buys have joy, or the one who sells have sorrow. For anger is against all their people. 13 For the one who sells will not get back what he has sold as long as both of them live. For the punishment of all their people will not be turned back. Because of their sins, not one of them will keep his life.
14 ‘They have sounded the horn and made everything ready, but no one is going to the battle. For My anger is against all their people. 15 The sword is outside, and disease and hunger are inside. He who is in the field will die by the sword. And he who is in the city will be destroyed by disease and hunger. 16 Whoever gets away alive will be on the mountains like doves of the valleys. Each of them will be crying in sorrow because of his sin. 17 All hands will hang without strength, and all knees will be as weak as water. 18 They will dress themselves in cloth made from hair. Much fear will cover them. Shame will be upon all faces, and the hair will be cut from all their heads. 19 They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will become an unclean thing. Their silver and gold will not be able to help them in the day of the Lord’s anger. They cannot stop their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For riches have been the cause of their falling into sin. 20 They turned the beauty of gold into objects of pride, and made their hated objects of worship with it. So I will make it an unclean thing to them. 21 I will give it to the strangers and to the sinful people of the earth as a prize of war, and they will make it sinful. 22 I will turn My face from them, and they will make My secret place sinful. Robbers will go into it and make it sinful.
23 ‘Make chains, for the land is guilty of blood and the city is full of angry actions. 24 So I will bring the worst of the nations to take their houses for their own. I will put an end to the pride of the strong ones, and their holy places will become unclean. 25 When suffering comes, they will look for peace, but there will be none. 26 Trouble will come upon trouble, and one story will come after another. They will look for a special dream from a man of God, but the Law will be lost from the religious leader. And wisdom will be lost from the leaders. 27 The king will be full of sorrow. The king’s son will be covered with fear. And the hands of the people of the land will shake in fear. I will punish them for their ways. I will give them the punishment they have earned. And they will know that I am the Lord.’”
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