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SCRIPTURAL ACCURACY, SPELLING, OR GRAMMAR

E Z E K I E L

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE BOOK 2

Ezek 21:1-7 Bible Text

21:1 AND THE word of the Lord came to me, saying, 2 Son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem and direct your [prophetic] word against the holy places; prophesy against the land of Israel 3 And say to the land of Israel, Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against you and will draw forth My sword out of its sheath and will cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked. 4 Because I will cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked, therefore shall My sword go out of its sheath against all flesh from the south to the north, 5 And all living shall know, understand, and realize that I the Lord have drawn My sword out of its sheath; it shall not be sheathed any more. 6 Sigh therefore, son of man! With breaking heart and with bitterness shall you sigh before their eyes. 7 And it shall be that when they say to you, Why do you sigh? that you shall answer, Because of the tidings. When it comes, every heart will melt and all hands will be feeble, and every spirit will faint and all knees will be weak as water. Behold, it comes and it shall be fulfilled, says the Lord God. AMP

Ezekiel 21:3

21:1-32 Yahweh's Sword: Babylon

21:3. enemy armies as divine punishment. As early as the end of the third millennium, the invasion of armies is interpreted as the intentional actions of a patron deity who has been angered by the behavior of the people (the Gutian invasion that brought an end to the empire of Agade in the Curse of Agade). In Mesopotamia this traditional theology is represented also in Cyrus's rhetoric concerning the overthrow of the Babylonians because of Marduk's displeasure with Nabonidus.

21:1-5 A prophecy against the Negeb.

The Negeb (Negev) is the desert region of southern Judah; here it is an allusion to Jerusalem. 2: Teman designates the location of the Edomites (25:13), who are condemned for assisting Babylonia in Judah’s destruction (25:12-14). Both Teman and Darom refer to the south. The repetition is for emphasis. 5: Riddle monger, Hebrew “memashal meshalim,” an allegorizer of allegories” (echoing 17:2 ‘O mortal, propound a riddle and relate an allegory to the House of Israel’ Tanakh Hebrew Text. Jewish Study Bible

Ezek 21:2

[Set thy face toward Jerusalem] This is a continuation of the preceding prophecy; and in this chapter the prophet sets before them, in the plainest language, what the foregoing metaphors meant, so that they could not complain of his parables.

Ezek 21:3

[Behold, I am against thee] Dismal news! When God is against us, who can be for us?

[And will draw forth my sword] War.

[And will cut off from thee] The land of Judea.

[The righteous and the wicked.] All shall be removed from thee. Some shall be cut off-removed by the sword; shall be slain in battle, or by the pestilence; and some shall be cut off-die by the famine; and some shall be cut off-removed from the land by captivity. Now, among the two latter classes there might be many righteous as well as wicked.

EZEKIEL CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

And when all the provisions were consumed, so that there was no more bread in the city, during the siege by Nebuchadnezzar, the righteous must have suffered as well as the wicked; for they could not be preserved alive, but by miracle, when there was no bread; nor was their perishing for want any loss to them, because the Lord would take them straight to his glory. And however men in general are unwilling to die, yet there is no instance, nor can there be, of any man's complaint that he got to heaven too soon.

Again, if God had permitted none to be carried off captive but the wicked, the case of these would be utterly hopeless, as there would be none to set a good example, to preach repentance, to reprove sin, or to show God's willingness to forgive sinners. But God, in his mercy, permitted many of the righteous to be carried off also, that the wicked might not be totally abandoned, or put beyond the reach of being saved. Hence, both Ezekiel and Daniel, and indeed several others, prophets and righteous men, were thus cut off from the land, and carried into captivity.

And how much was God's glory and the good of men promoted by this! What a seed of salvation was sown, even in the pagan countries, by thus cutting off the righteous with the wicked! To this we owe, under God, many of the Psalms, the whole of the Book of Ezekiel, all the prophecies of Daniel, the bright example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, the decrees passed in favour of the religion of the true God by Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Darius, etc.

And to this dispensation of God's merciful providence we owe the Books and example of Ezra and Nehemiah. Where then is the injustice, so loudly declaimed against, of God's thus cutting off from the land of Judea the righteous with the wicked? The righteous were not cut off for the crimes of the wicked, (see Ezek 18 :) nor were these crimes visited upon them; yet several of them shared in the common calamity, but none perished. Those that were removed by a violent death, (and I believe we shall find few such,) got a speedier entrance into eternal glory.

Ezek 21:4

[From the south to the north] The whole land shall be ravaged from one end to the other.

Ezek 21:5

[It shall not return anymore.] That is, till all the work that I have designed for it is done. Nor did it; for Nebuchadnezzar never rested till he had subdued all the lands from the south to the north, from the Euphrates to the Nile.

Ezek 21:6

[Sigh therefore, thou son of man, with the breaking of thy loins] Let thy mourning for this sore calamity is like that of a woman in the pains of travail.

Ezek 21:7

[Therefore sighest thou?] The prophet was a sign unto them. His sighing and mourning showed them how they should act.

[All knees shall be weak as water] See the note at Ezek 7:17.

EZEKIEL CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Ch. 20:45 to Ch. 21:32 (Heb. Ch. 21) Prophecy of the Burning Forest and the Sword of the Lord

(Note: In the Hebrew Bible the previous chapter closes at v. 44, and ch. 21 commences there. Keil has adhered to this division of chapters; but for the sake of convenience we have followed the arrangement adopted in the English authorized version. - Tr.)

A fire kindled by the Lord will burn the forest of the south (Ezekiel 20:45-48). This figurative announcement is explained in what follows, in order that the divine threat may make an impression upon the people (v. 49) The Lord will draw His sword from its scabbard, and cut off from Jerusalem and the land of Israel both righteous and wicked (Ezekiel 21:1-17); that is to say, the king of Babylon will draw his sword against Jerusalem and the sons of Ammon, and will, first of all, put an end to the kingdom of Judah, and then destroy the Ammonites (vv. 18-32).

The prophecy divides itself accordingly into three parts: viz.,

(1) the prediction of the destruction of the kingdom of Judah;

(2) the explanation of this prediction by the threat that the sword of the Lord will smite all the inhabitants of Judah, which threat is divisible into three sections, Ezek 21:1-8-13 , and 14-17; (3) the application of what is said with regard to the sword to Nebuchadnezzar's expedition against Jerusalem and the Ammonites, which may also be divided into three sections-viz.

(a) the general announcement of Nebuchadnezzar's design (vv. 18-23) and its execution;

(b) by his expedition against Jerusalem, to destroy the kingdom of Judah (vv. 24-27); and

The first four or five verses are taken by many in connection with ch. 20; and Kliefoth still maintains that they should be separated from what follows, and attached to that chapter as a second word of God. But neither Ezekiel 20:49 nor the formula in ch. 21:1, "the word of Jehovah came to me," warrants our separating the parabolic prediction in Ezekiel 20:45-48 from the interpretation in vv. 1-17.

And the third part is also connected with what precedes, so as to form one single discourse, by the allusion to the sword in vv. 19 and 28, and by the fact that the figure of the fire is resumed in vv. 21 and 32. And there is all the less ground for taking the formula, "and the word of Jehovah came to me," as determining the division of the several portions in this particular instance, form the circumstance that the section (vv. 1-17) in which it occurs both at the commencement and in the middle (vv. 1 and 8), is obviously divided into the minor sections or turns by the threefold occurrence of the verb whinaabee° ("and prophesy": vv. 2, 9, and 14).

Note: Now you know the reason why we are finishing up Ezekiel 20 here. Paul the Learner

Ezekiel 20:45-49

Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

Verse 45-49. The burning forest. –

V. 45. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,

V. 46. Son of man, direct thy face toward the south, and trickle down towards the south, and prophesy concerning the forest of the field in the south land;

EZEKIEL CHAPTER TWENTY ONE [END OF CHAPTER 20]

V. 47. And say to the forest of the south land, Hear the word of Jehovah; Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I kindle a fire in thee, which will consume in thee every green tree, and every dry tree: the blazing flame will not be extinguished, and all faces from the south to the north will be burned thereby.

V. 48. And all flesh shall see that I, Jehovah, have kindled it: it shall not be extinguished.

V. 49. And I said, Ah, Lord Jehovah! they say of me, Does he not speak in parables? –

The prophet is to turn his face toward the south, and prophesy concerning the forest of the field there. HiTiyp is used for prophesying, as in Amos 7:16 and Micah 2:6, 11. The distinction between the three epithets applied to the south is the following:

1. teeymaan (Teman the region of the Edomites) is literally that which lies on the right hand, hence the south is a particular quarter of the heavens;

2. daarowm (the south), which only occurs in Ezekiel and Ecclesiastes, with the exception of Deuteronomy 33:23 and Job 37:17, is derived from daarar, to shine or emit streams of light, and probably signifies the brilliant quarter;

3. Negeb, the dry, parched land, is a standing epithet for the southern district of Palestine and the land of Judah (see the comm. on Josh 15:21). –

The forest of the field in the south is a figure denoting the kingdom of Judah (Negeb is in apposition to hasaadeh (to spread out, a field as flat), and is appended to it as a more precise definition). Saadeh is not used here for a field, as distinguished from a city or a garden; but for the fields in the sense of country or territory, as in Genesis 14:7 and 32:3.

In v. 47, hanegeb ya±ar, forest of the south land, is the expression applied to the same object (

Hanegeb to be parched the Negeb, with the article, is a geographical term for the southern portion of Palestine). The forest is a figure signifying the population, or the mass of people. Individual men are trees. The green tree is a figurative representation of the righteous man, and the dry tree of the ungodly (v. 3, compare Luke 23:31). The fire which Jehovah kindles is the fire of war.

The combination of the synonyms shalhebet (a flare of fire) lahebet (flame head), flame of the flaming brightness, serves to strengthen the expression, and is equivalent to the strongest possible flame, the blazing fire. kaal-paaniym, all faces are not human faces or persons, in which case the prophet would have dropped the figure; but pânim denotes generally the outside of things, which is the first to feel the force of the flame. "All the faces" of the forest are every single thing in the forest, which is caught at once by the flame.

In v. 4, kol-pânim (all faces) is interpreted by kol-bâsar (all flesh). From south to north, i.e., through the whole length of the land. From the terrible fierceness of the fire, which cannot be extinguished, every one will know that God has kindled it, that it has been sent in judgment. The words of the prophet himself, in Ezekiel 20:49, presuppose that he has uttered these parabolic words in the hearing of the people, and that they have ridiculed them as obscure (mâshâl is used here in the sense of obscure language, words difficult to understand, as parabolee' (Parable a similitude also is in Matthew 13:10). At the same time, it contains within itself request that they may be explained. This request is granted; and the simile is first of all interpreted in Ezekiel 21:1-7, and then still further expanded in vv. 8 ff.

EZEKIEL CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

21:6-12 The first oracle concerning God’s sword.

The three oracles concerning God’s sword in (21:6-12; 21:13-22; and 21:23-27) may have accompanied a symbolic action involving a sword (see 5:1-4; 14:21). Ezekiel speaks toward the Jerusalem sanctuary as the holy center of the nation. 8: God’s threat to wipe out from you both the righteous and the wicked contradicts Ezekiel’s concept of individual moral responsibility (chapter 18), and instead conforms to the portrayal of slaughter in (chapter 9).