1And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2“Man, set your face to the way of Teman and proclaim to the south, and prophesy to the wooded region of the Negeb. 3And you shall say to the wooded region of the Negeb: hear the word of the LORD. Thus said the Master, the LORD: I am about to light a fire in you, and it shall consume in you every moist tree and every dry tree. The white-hot flame shall not go out, and every face shall be scorched by it from south to north. 4And all flesh shall see that I the LORD kindled it, it shall not go out.” 5And I said, “Woe, O Master, LORD, they say to me, ‘Is he not just reciting parables?’” 6And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 7“Man, set your face to Jerusalem and proclaim concerning the sanctuaries and prophesy concerning the soil of Israel. 8And you shall say concerning the soil of Israel, Thus said the LORD: Here I am against you, and I will take out My sword from its sheath and cut off from you the righteous and the wicked. 9Inasmuch as I have cut off from you the righteous and the wicked, My sword shall come out from its sheath against all flesh from south to north. 10And all flesh shall know that I am the LORD. I have taken out My sword from its sheath, it shall no more turn back. 11And you, man, groan with shuddering loins and bitterly groan before their eyes. 12And should they say to you, ‘Why are you groaning?,’ you shall say, ‘For the tidings that have come.’ And every heart shall quail and all hands go slack and every spirit grow weak and all knees be wet. Look, it has come and has happened, said the Master, the LORD.”
13And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 14“Man, prophesy and say, Thus said the LORD:
and also it is burnished,
15to wreak slaughter it is whetted,
that it gleam it was burnished
[Or we rejoice for the rod, my son, spurning all blood.]
16And it was given to be burnished,
to be grasped in the hand.
For this the sword was whetted
and for this was burnished—
to be put in the hand of a killer.
17Scream and howl, O man,
it was against all Israel’s princes.
Felled by the sword were My people,
so clap upon the thigh.
18[For he probes and what if the rod, too, spurning shall not be?] said the LORD.
19And you, man, prophesy
and strike palm against palm.
Let the sword do double work and triple,
it is a sword for the slain,
a sword for many slain,
driving into them,
20so that the heart faint
and stumbling blocks abound.
At all their gates I set
slaughter by the sword
Ah, it is made to gleam,
burnished for the slaughter.
21Stay whetted! Lay about on the right and the left!
22And I, too, will strike palm against palm
and let My wrath come to rest.”
23And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 24“And you, man, set out for yourself two ways for the coming of the sword of the king of Babylonia from one land. The two of them shall go out, and clear away a space, and the crossroad of the way of the city, clear it. 25Set out a way for the coming of the sword against Rabbah of the Ammonites and against fortified Jerusalem in Judah. For the king of Babylonia has stood at the fork of the road, at the crossroad of the two ways, to perform divination, to shake out arrows, to inquire of the household gods, to inspect the liver. 26On its right lobe, was the omen of Jerusalem, to set up battering rams, to scream murder with full throat, to raise the voice in shouting, to set up battering rams against the gates, to pile up ramps, to build siege-towers. 27And it seemed in their eyes like an empty divination—they had oaths sworn to them, but it was a remembering of guilt for them to be caught. 28Therefore, thus said the Master, the LORD: Inasmuch as you have remembered your guilt as your trespasses are laid bare, for your offenses to be seen in all your acts, inasmuch as you have been remembered, you shall be caught in a grip. 29And you, profane in wickedness, O prince of Israel, whose day has come at the end-time of the guilt! 30Thus said the Master, the LORD: Take off the turban and lift off the diadem. This is not this—raise up what is low and bring down what is high. 31Ruins, ruins, ruins will I make it. This, too, has not come about, until the coming of him who has the judgment and will grant it to him. 32And you, man, prophesy and say, Thus said the Master, the LORD, to the Ammonites concerning their disgrace, and you shall say, ‘A sword, a sword unsheathed for slaughter, perfectly burnished to gleam, 33when empty visions were seen for you, when false divinations were cast for you concerning the necks of the profane wicked whose day has come at the end-time of guilt.’ 34Put it back in its sheath; in the place where you were created, in the land of your origin I will judge you. 35And I will pour out on you My anger, the fire of My fury I will fan against you and give you into the hand of hotheaded men, craftsmen of destruction. 36You shall be fuel for the fire. Your blood shall be in the land. You shall not be recalled. For I the LORD have spoken.”
CHAPTER 21 NOTES
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2. Teman . . . the south . . . Negeb. The Hebrew uses three different words that mean “south.” Although the territory of Judah is to the west of Ezekiel’s location in Babylonia, what this prophetic injunction has in view is a destruction of Judah that will begin from the south and sweep up through the north.
3. the wooded region. It is unclear whether the Negeb once had a wooded region. Some think this may be an area of low shrubs, but the next verse speaks of trees.
The white-hot flame. The joining of two Hebrew synonyms in the construct form (literally, “fire of flame”) is an intensifier.
5. Is he not just reciting parables? The adverb “just” has been added in the translation to bring out the sense of the Hebrew—that the people think the prophet is merely spinning out parables that have no relation to reality.
8. cut off from you the righteous and the wicked. The phrase essentially means “everyone.” It is a severe form of divine justice, in direct contradiction to the exchange between Abraham and God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18.
11. shuddering loins. More literally, “broken loins.”
12. all knees be wet. As above (7:17), the expression derisively indicates people wetting themselves in terror.
14. A sword, a sword is whetted. The sword is often used in biblical language as a metonymy for “military force” or “destructive power.” The special effectiveness of the poetry here is that it builds on this ordinary sense of “sword” but focuses with unusual concreteness on the weapon, unsheathed, whetted, burnished, and gleaming.
15. Or we rejoice for the rod. This entire bracketed sentence is unintelligible, even though each separate word is understandable. In the Hebrew, neither the syntax nor the grammar makes sense. It is hard to believe that Ezekiel could have written this sentence, at least in the form we have, though how these words got into the text is a mystery.
16. to be put in the hand of a killer. The spooky power of these lines is heightened by cloaking the identity of the killer in anonymity, but he is no doubt the fierce Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar.
17. for it was against My people. The “it” is feminine and refers to the sword, a feminine noun.
18. For he probes and what if the rod. This bracketed sentence has the same problems of intelligibility as the one in verse 15 and incorporates some of the same cryptic phrases.
21. Where do you turn? This question reinforces the sense of the sword slashing on every side.
22. let My wrath come to rest. After the sword has done its terrible work, God’s wrath against Israel will be completely spent, setting the stage for restoration.
24. two ways for the coming of the sword of the king of Babylonia. This prose prophecy, following the poetic one, more or less spells out the meaning of the oracle of the sword—here the sword comes together with its wielder, the king of Babylonia, across known geographical space. The two ways are evidently the trajectories to Rabbah of the Ammonites in trans-Jordan and to Jerusalem.
26. to perform divination, to shake out arrows. It was a regular practice in military campaigns in the ancient Near East to seek guidance through an oracle or divinatory devices in order to choose the proper route or strategy. The shaking out of arrows for divination involved writing alternatives—here, those might be “Rabbah” and “Jerusalem” on the shafts of different arrows. Inspecting patterns in animal livers was a very common divinatory procedure.
27. On its right lobe. The Hebrew says only “on its right,” but the clear reference is to the liver.
28. And it seemed in their eyes like an empty divination. The grammatical subject here refers either to Ezekiel’s audience of exiles or to the population in Judah. If it is the latter, they were imagined as somehow having got wind of the Babylonian divination.
they had oaths sworn to them. This is obscure. It might mean that the Judahites were confident in their safety because they thought God had sworn to protect them for all time.
it was a remembering of guilt for them to be caught. Perhaps: their confidence was a trap, involving their guilt or crime, in which they would be caught. The collocation “remembering of guilt” appears in Numbers 5:15 in the passage about the woman suspected of adultery, and the echo may be intended to suggest Israel’s whoring after other gods.
29. you have remembered your guilt. Or, “have called to mind your guilt”—that is, caused it to be remembered.
30. profane in wickedness. The phrase could also mean “corpse of uncleaness,” although that sense seems unlikely.
the end-time of the guilt. The literal order of the Hebrew is “the time of the end of the guilt [or punishment].” The obvious sense is: the time when you will have to pay for the guilt you have incurred.
31. This is not this. The three Hebrew words are a little obscure but probably mean: things as they are will no longer be the same.
32. until the coming of him who has the judgment and will grant it. This is another crabbed formulation, though the most likely reference is to Nebuchadnezzar, who is to be the instrument of divine judgment.
33. the Ammonites. Their capital city, Rabbah, is one of the two targets of the Babylonian assault.
34. when empty visions were seen for you. The Ammonites evidently trusted in false oracles that they would be saved from the Babylonians.
concerning the necks of the profane wicked. The Ammonites believed that the prophecy of destruction pertained only to the Judahites.
35. Put it back in its sheath. Once the ordained project of destruction has been completed, the sword must be sheathed again, for the Babylonian rampage cannot go on indefinitely. On the contrary, while they have served as God’s punishing instrument, they will now have to pay for their own excess of cruelty.
in the land of your origin I will judge you. It is the fate of conquering Babylon to become the victim of its conquerors.
36. hotheaded men. The Hebrew is probably a pun. Bo ʿarim can mean “ignorant” or “crude,” but it also means “burning.” Since fire is prominent in the immediate context, burning or heated temperament is probably the more salient meaning.