1And the word of the LORD came to me, saying: 2“And you, man, thus said the Master, the LORD, concerning the country of Israel:
upon the four corners of the earth.
3Now the end is upon you,
and I have let loose My wrath against you
and exacted judgment of you by your ways
and laid upon you all your abominations.
4And My eye shall not spare you
nor will I show pity,
for your ways will I lay upon you,
and your abominations shall be in your midst,
and you shall know that I am the LORD.
5Thus said the Master, the LORD:
6One evil, an evil about to come,
the end has come, is roused against you, yes, it comes!
7The gyre has come round against you,
O dweller in the land.
The time has come, the day is near,
an uproar, no cheers in the mountains.
8Now soon I will pour out My anger against you,
and bring My wrath to an end against you,
And judge you by your ways
and lay upon you all your abominations.
9And My eye shall not spare,
nor will I show pity,
by your ways I will lay upon you
and your abominations shall be in your midst,
and you shall know that I am the LORD.
10Here is the day, here it comes,
the gyre has turned around,
the staff blooms, arrogance flowers.
11Outrage rises as a staff of wickedness—
not of them nor of their crowd,
not of them, and no lament in them.
12The time has come, the day arrived.
Let not the buyer rejoice nor the seller mourn,
for there is wrath against all her crowd.
13For the seller to his sold goods shall not come back,
for the vision against all her around shall not turn back,
each alive in his crime shall not hold fast.
14They have sounded the horn and readied all things,
but none goes to the battle,
for My wrath is against all her crowd.
15The sword is outside,
pestilence and famine within.
Who is out in the field by the sword shall die,
and he in the town, famine and pestilence consume him.
16And their refugees flee
and come to the mountains,
they all moan in their crime.
17All hands go slack,
18And they shall gird sackcloth,
and shudders cover them.
On every face is shame,
and all their heads are shaven.
19Their silver they fling into the streets,
and their gold becomes unclean.
Their silver and their gold cannot save them
on the day of the wrath of the LORD.
Their gullets shall not be sated
nor their innards shall they fill,
for a stumbling block their crime has become.
20And their lovely ornaments of which they were proud,
they made of them images of their loathsome abominations,
therefore will I make them unclean.
21And I will give them into the hand of strangers as booty
and to the wicked of the earth as spoils, and they shall defile her.
22And I will turn My face from them,
and they shall defile My treasure,
and brutes shall enter her and defile her.
23Forge a chain,
for the land is filled with blood-justice
and the city is filled with outrage.
24And I will bring the most evil of nations,
and they shall take hold of your homes;
and I will end the pride of the strong,
and their sanctuaries shall be defiled.
25Terror comes!
They shall seek peace and it shall not be.
26Disaster upon disaster shall come,
and rumor after rumor shall be.
And they shall seek vision from a prophet,
but teaching shall be gone from the priest
and counsel from the elders.
27The king shall mourn,
and the prince don desolation.
The hands of the people of the land shall panic.
By their way will I do with them,
and by their judgments will I exact judgment of them.
And they shall know that I am the LORD.
CHAPTER 7 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
2. An end, the end has come / upon the four corners of the earth. This is the first prophecy in Ezekiel unambiguously cast as poetry. Perhaps Ezekiel sensed an appropriate match between the incantatory force of the poetic medium and the apocalyptic reach of the prophetic message (note the hypnotic insistence on “the end” at the very beginning of this prophecy). Although what follows concentrates on the judgment of the people of Israel, “the four corners of the earth” embraces the entire world, as if to say: the catastrophe about to overtake Israel will engulf all humanity.
3. exacted judgment. Though the verb relates to the root concept of “judgment,” its sense in context is close to “punish.”
4. you shall know that I am the LORD. This is a virtual refrain in Ezekiel. The idea behind it is that until now the people, pursuing its refractory ways, behaved as though YHWH did not exist, but as they bear the terrible punishment for their acts, they will be forced to recognize His existence and power.
7. the gyre. The Hebrew tsefirah is a rare term. It has most plausibly been linked by both medieval and modern commentators with a root that indicates something round, here perhaps a cycle of time. Because of the unusualness of the Hebrew term, this translation uses “gyre” (the same element one finds in “gyroscope”), a word famously deployed by the poet W. B. Yeats for an apocalyptic turn in the cycle of time.
no cheers in the mountains. Following many interpreters, this translation understands hed as a shortened variant form of heydad, the cry of joy of grape harvesters.
10. the staff blooms, arrogance flowers. As has often been noted, this is a sardonic reversal of the blooming of Aaron’s staff (Numbers 17:23), which was a sign of divine election.
11. not of them nor of their crowd, / not of them, and no lament in them. The Hebrew is one long string of fused phonemes, perhaps a sign that the text has been garbled, perhaps an intended poetic effect. It sounds like this: lo’-meihem weloʾ meihamonam weloʾ mehameihem welo’-nohah bahem.
12. Let not the buyer rejoice nor the seller mourn. In ordinary circumstances, the buyer would rejoice at having acquired something he wanted and the seller mourn for having lost something he was obliged to part with. Now, however, all exchanges of property become meaningless because everyone is about to be swept up in the general destruction.
13. though they be still alive. The Hebrew here is a little obscure.
14. readied all things. Given the sounding of the horn and the reference to battle in the next verset, this means readied weapons for war.
16. like doves of the valleys. There is a species of dove that nests among the rocks and crevices of valleys. Greenberg proposes that geʾayot, “valleys,” puns on hogot, the moaning sound made by doves.
17. all knees run with water. This refers to urinating in terror. The line thus neatly illustrates the general pattern in which the second verset in a line concretizes or intensifies what is stated in the first verset: “slack hands” is a very common idiom for weakness, but then we see the shameful evidence of fear in urine running down the knees.
18. all their heads are shaven. As elsewhere, the shaving of the head is a sign of mourning, prohibited to the Israelites, but much in evidence in the language of poetry.
19. Their silver they fling into the streets. This is in keeping with the pointlessness of buying and selling in verse 12. Wealth is now utterly useless because, as the next line goes on to say, it cannot save them.
22. and they shall defile My treasure. Since the defiling by “brutes” that follows has a feminine object, God’s “treasure” is in all likelihood the city of Jerusalem, regularly represented as a feminine singular.
23. blood-justice. The collocation mishpat-damim in the Hebrew is unusual, but the parallel with “outrage” (others, “violence”) clearly indicates it is a perversion of justice that victimizes the innocent. The plural form of “blood” used here almost always indicates unjust or murderous violence.
25. Terror comes! The word for “terror,” qefadah, is unusual but appears to relate to a root that means “to bristle.” Note that “comes,” a verb prominent at the beginning of this prophecy, is repeated as a kind of key word, stressing the terrible imminence of the end.
26. rumor after rumor. These are clearly rumors of disaster.
vision from a prophet, / . . . teaching . . . from the priest / . . . counsel from the elders. These are the three sources of authority in ancient Israelite society: the prophet is the vehicle of vision; the priest offers instruction, perhaps from a written text; the elders, with their accumulated wisdom, proffer counsel. In the dire end-time, a manifestation of the punishment of the people will be that all sources of authority and guidance will be taken away.
27. don desolation. After the mourning of the king, we might have expected the formulaic “don sackcloth,” so “desolation” comes as a small but striking surprise. Ordinarily, of course, princes would put on regal raiment.
by their judgments. The multipurpose mishpatim can also mean something like “practices” or “modes of behavior.”