1And the word of the LORD came to me saying, 2“Man, in the midst of the house of rebellion you dwell, who have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a house of rebellion. 3And you, man, make for yourself exile’s gear and go into exile by day before their eyes, and go into exile from your place to another place before their eyes. Perhaps they will see that they are a house of rebellion. 4And you shall take out your gear as exile’s gear by day before their eyes. And you, you shall go out at evening before their eyes as the going out to exile. 5Before their eyes, break through the wall and take out your gear through it. 6Before their eyes you shall shoulder the burden. In the gloom you shall take it out. Your face you shall cover and you shall not see the land, for I am making you a portent for the house of Israel.” 7And so did I do as I was charged. I took out my gear as exile’s gear by day, and at evening I broke through the wall by hand in the gloom. I took it out, I shouldered the burden before their eyes. 8And the word of the LORD came to me in the morning, saying, 9“Man, have not the house of Israel, the house of rebellion, said to you, ‘What are you doing?’ 10Say to them, Thus said the Master, the LORD: The prince is this burden in Jerusalem and all the house of Israel who are in their midst. 11Say, I am your portent. As I have done, so it will be done to them. In exile in captivity they shall go. 12And the prince who is in their midst shall shoulder the burden in the gloom, and he shall go out, they shall break through the wall to bring out gear through it. His face he shall cover, so that he not see the land with his eyes. 13And I will cast My net over him, and he shall be caught in My toils. And I will bring him to Babylonia, to the land of the Chaldeans, but he shall not see it, and there shall he die. 14And all that is around him, his allies and all his divisions, I will scatter to every wind, and the sword I will unsheathe after him. 15And they shall know that I am the LORD when I disperse them among the nations and scatter them in the lands. 16And I will leave of them a handful of men from the sword, from the famine, and from pestilence, that they may recount all their abominations among the nations where they have come. And they shall know that I am the LORD.”
17And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 18“Man, your bread you shall eat quaking, and your water you shall drink in upheaval and in unease. 19And you shall say of the people of the land, Thus said the Master, the LORD, concerning the dwellers of Jerusalem on the soil of Israel: their bread they shall eat in unease, and their water they shall drink in desolation, so that its land be desolate of what fills it, because of the outrage of all who dwell in it. 20And the settled towns shall be in ruins, and the land shall be a desolation, and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
21And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 22“Man, what means this proverb for you on the soil of Israel, saying, ‘Long days will pass and vision will vanish’? 23Therefore, say to them, Thus said the Master, the LORD: I have put an end to this proverb, and they shall no longer recite it in Israel. Rather, speak to them, ‘The time has drawn near for every vision to come about.’ 24For there shall no longer be any empty vision or soothing divination within the house of Israel. 25For I the LORD, I will speak the word that I speak and it shall be done. It shall no longer be drawn out, but in your days, O house of rebellion. I will speak a word and do it, said the Master, the LORD.” 26And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 27“Man, look, the house of Israel say, ‘The vision that he sees, of many days hence and of faraway times he prophesies.’ 28Therefore say to them, Thus said the LORD: All My words shall no longer be drawn out. I will speak a word and it shall be done,’” said the Master, the LORD.
CHAPTER 12 NOTES
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2. who have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear. The people’s resistance to the prophetic message is a recurrent theme in the prophecies (see especially Isaiah’s dedication scene, Isaiah 6). But this clause also recalls the language of Psalm 115:5–6, where it is applied to idols—as if to say, these stupidly obtuse people are no better than dumb carvings of wood.
3. exile’s gear. These would be the basic implements of daily survival wrapped up in a pack and carried on the shoulder. Assyrian bas-reliefs depict precisely this image of exiles driven off by Assyrian troops.
go into exile . . . before their eyes. Ezekiel is addressing a group of exiles in Babylonia in the late 590s B.C.E., but his symbolic act prefigures a much more comprehensive exile that in fact will take place in 586.
4. you shall go out at evening. Although this looks like a contradiction of his going out into exile by day, the intention may be to suggest the encompassing nature of the departure into exile—by day, yomam, and in the evening, ba ʿerev, as well.
5. break through the wall. This peculiar detail is an odd echo of the prophet’s breaking through the wall of the Temple in 8:8 in order to witness the abominations performed inside. Perhaps an equivalence is suggested between discovering the shame within the chambers and the shame of exile outside. There may be an intimation here of something surreptitious in the flight into exile. Perhaps more pertinent, he is asked to do damage to the house he is leaving, with no expectation that he will return to it.
6. Your face you shall cover and you shall not see the land. Some interpreters take this as a gesture of hiding because of the humiliation of exile. The second clause, however, suggests that the aim is to cover the eyes so that the exile will not look on the homeland he is forced to abandon.
10. The prince is this burden. The Hebrew shows a pun: hanasiʾ, “the prince” (etymologically, “the one borne up”), and hamasa’, “the burden.”
13. he shall not see it. Many interpreters, medieval and modern, take this as a reference to the last Judahite king, Zedekiah, who was blinded before he was brought to Babylonia (the medieval exegetes see this as a prophecy that was fulfilled, the moderns as a prophecy ex eventu, after the fact). Even if this clause does refer to Zedekiah’s fate, it does not follow that the preceding verses about the exile of the king reflect that fate, because the terms are rather general. Even the wording here could simply stem from the prophet’s knowledge that it was a common practice to blind vassal kings who had rebelled.
22. what means this proverb for you. The “you” is plural in the Hebrew, so in contrast to other passages that begin with the vocative “man,” it is not the prophet but the people that is addressed.
Long days will pass and vision will vanish. Time will go on, and the prophet’s vision of impending doom will not come to pass.
23. The time has drawn near for every vision to come about. This reversal of the popular proverb that dismisses prophecy has in view the prophecies of doom pronounced by Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and a few others, “every vision” being a kind of ellipsis for prophecies of doom.
24. For there shall no longer be any empty vision or soothing divination. It now emerges that the people, while rejecting the prophecies of imminent disaster, embraced false prophets who assured them nothing amiss would happen. This is a theme emphatically displayed in Jeremiah.
25. It shall no longer be drawn out. This translation reproduces the literal force of the Hebrew, which obviously means “to be delayed.”
27. of many days hence and of faraway times he prophesies. This is a somewhat different formulation of dismissal of the prophecy from the proverb cited in verse 22. According to the proverb, with the passage of time it will be seen that the prophecy is entirely groundless. Here, the deniers say that these predictions of doom may someday be fulfilled, but that time is so distant that it is of no concern to them. Ezekiel, we should recall, is at this point prophesying no more than five years before the final destruction of the kingdom of Judah, so in fact his prediction will come about very soon and not in “faraway times.”