1And you, man, take you a sharp blade, a barber’s razor, take it for yourself, and pass it over your head and your beard, and take you a scales and divide it. 2A third you shall burn in fire within the city when the days of the siege are done. And you shall take a third and strike it with a blade all round her, and a third you shall scatter to the wind. And a sword will I unsheathe after them. 3And you shall take from there a bit and wrap it in the skirts of your garment. 4And from it you shall take more and fling it into the fire and burn it in fire. From it fire shall go out to the whole house of Israel. 5Thus said the Master, the LORD: This is Jerusalem, in the midst of the nations I set her, with lands all round her. 6And she rebelled against My laws for wickedness more than the nations, and against My statutes more than the lands that are all round her. For they spurned My laws and did not follow My statutes. 7Therefore, thus said the Master, the LORD: Inasmuch as you have raised a clamor more than the nations that are all round you, My statutes you did not follow, My laws you did not keep, and like the laws of the nations that are all round you, you did not do. 8Therefore, thus said the Master, the LORD: Look, I on My part am now against you, and I will carry out judgments in your midst before the eyes of the nations. 9And I will do what I have not done and the like of which I will not do again because of all your abominations. 10Therefore, fathers shall eat sons within you and sons shall eat their fathers, and I will perform judgments against you and scatter your remnant to every wind. 11Therefore, as I live, said the Master, the LORD, because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your disgusting things and with all your abominations, I on My part will surely shear, and My eye shall not spare, and I, too, will show no pity. 12A third of you shall die by pestilence and come to an end within you by famine, and a third shall fall by the sword all round you, and a third will I scatter to every wind, and I will unsheathe the sword after them. 13And My anger shall come to an end, and I will put to rest My wrath against them, and I will repent, and they shall know that I the LORD have spoken in My passion when I bring to an end My wrath against them. 14And I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations that are all round you, before the eyes of every passerby. 15And she shall be a reproach and a revilement, an object lesson and a fright to the nations all round you when I carry out judgments in anger and in wrath and in chastisements of wrath. I the LORD have spoken. 16When I let loose My deadly arrows—famine—against them, which become a destroyer, which I will let loose against them to destroy them, and famine will I add against them and break their staff of bread. 17And I will let loose against you famine and vicious beasts, and they shall bereave you, and pestilence and bloodshed shall pass through you, and the sword will I bring against you. I the LORD have spoken.
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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1. a sharp blade. The noun ḥerev usually means “sword.” The choice of the term here, as several commentators have noted, is in order to point forward to the use of the same word in the sense of “sword” near the end of the next verse.
2. A third you shall burn in fire within the city. The city in question is the design of the city that has been incised on the brick. The destruction of the cut hair in three equal parts is thus a continuation of the symbolic modeling of the destruction of Jerusalem.
5. This is Jerusalem. In this speech, God is pointing to the image of the city incised on the brick and expounding its meaning.
6. she rebelled against My laws. The noun mishpatim can mean “judgments,” “laws,” “rules.” The English equivalent “laws” is used here because “judgments” is not right for the context, but as the passage continues, the cognate shefatim, which means “judgments” in the sense of “punishment,” is insisted on.
7. raised a clamor. The verb strongly implies rebellion.
like the laws of the nations that are all round you, you did not do. This is an extreme element in Ezekiel’s castigation of Judah. The surrounding nations, though they had no covenant with God, observed at least some basic guidelines or laws (mishpatim, also “judgments”) of civilized behavior, but even these minimal constraints on behavior you ignored.
10. fathers shall eat sons within you and sons shall eat their fathers. Although the horror of cannibalism in time of siege is frequently invoked in the Bible—see especially Leviticus 26, an important intertext to this one—the idea of reciprocal cannibalism between the generations is an added ghastly twist.
11. your disgusting things and with all your abominations. Both terms are repeatedly used in the Bible for pagan idols. Ezekiel has in mind the fact that more than once idols were actually introduced into the Jerusalem sanctuary. The language here and again further in this passage borrows from the denunciations in Deuteronomy 32, the so-called Song of Moses.
12. I will unsheathe the sword after them. In the bleakly schematic terms of Ezekiel’s prophecy of the three thirds, after a third die by pestilence and famine and a third fall to the sword, the third who flee (“scatter[ed] to every wind”) will also perish by the sword. The unusual usage of the preposition “after” is intended to indicate that the scattered ones are in flight, pursued by the sword.
13. My anger shall come to an end. This is a qualified consolation. God’s anger will come to an end only after He has thoroughly devastated the people.
passion. The Hebrew qinʾah has a core meaning of “jealousy” (and in English we speak of “jealous passion”), a sense not altogether irrelevant here because God is so often imagined as Israel’s spouse.
15. judgments. Here shefatim is used. In verse 8 the cognate mishpatim is used in the same sense as shefatim, which means “punishment.”
16. deadly. More literally, “evil.”
17. against you. The switch from third person (plural) to second person (still plural), or the other way around, is fairly common in biblical usage.
vicious beasts. Again, the literal sense is “evil beasts.” Such attacks by beasts of prey would occur because the countryside of Judah would be devastated and depopulated, allowing dangerous carnivores to proliferate.
bloodshed. The Hebrew says merely “blood,” which constitutes a somewhat unusual employment of the word.