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The End Arrives

The Lord’s message came to me: “You, son of man—this is what the Sovereign Lord says to the land of Israel: An end! The end is coming on the four corners of the land![a] The end is now upon you, and I will release my anger against you. I will judge[b] you according to your behavior;[c] I will hold you accountable for[d] all your abominable practices. My eye will not pity you; I will not spare[e] you.[f] For I will hold you responsible for your behavior,[g] and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices.[h] Then you will know that I am the Lord!

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: A disaster[i]—a one-of-a-kind[j] disaster—is coming! An end comes[k]—the end comes![l] It has awakened against you![m] Look, it is coming![n] Doom is coming upon you who live in the land! The time is coming, the day[o] is near. There are sounds of tumult, not shouts of joy, on the mountains.[p] Soon now I will pour out my rage[q] on you; I will fully vent my anger against you. I will judge you according to your behavior. I will hold you accountable for all your abominable practices. My eye will not pity you; I will not spare[r] you. For your behavior I will hold you accountable,[s] and you will suffer the consequences of your abominable practices. Then you will know that it is I, the Lord, who is striking you.[t]

10 “Look, the day! Look, it is coming! Doom has gone out! The staff has budded, pride has blossomed! 11 Violence[u] has grown into a staff that supports wickedness. Not one of them will be left[v]—not from their crowd, not from their wealth, not from their prominence.[w] 12 The time has come; the day has struck! The customer should not rejoice, nor the seller mourn; for divine wrath[x] comes against their whole crowd. 13 The customer will no longer pay the seller[y] while both parties are alive, for the vision against their whole crowd[z] will not be revoked. Each person, for his iniquity,[aa] will fail to preserve his life.

14 “They have blown the trumpet and everyone is ready, but no one goes to battle, because my anger is against their whole crowd.[ab] 15 The sword is outside; pestilence and famine are inside the house. Whoever is in the open field will die by the sword, and famine and pestilence will consume everyone in the city. 16 Their survivors will escape to the mountains and become like doves of the valleys[ac] ; all of them will moan—each one for his iniquity. 17 All their hands will hang limp; their knees will be wet with urine.[ad] 18 They will wear sackcloth, terror will cover them; shame will be on all their faces, and all their heads will be shaved bald.[ae] 19 They will discard their silver in the streets, and their gold will be treated like filth.[af] Their silver and gold will not be able to deliver them on the day of the Lord’s fury.[ag] They will not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs because their wealth[ah] was the obstacle leading to their iniquity.[ai] 20 They rendered the beauty of his ornaments into pride,[aj] and with it they made their abominable images—their detestable idols. Therefore I will render it filthy to them. 21 I will give it to foreigners as loot, to the world’s wicked ones as plunder, and they will desecrate it. 22 I will turn my face away from them, and they will desecrate my treasured place.[ak] Vandals will enter it and desecrate it.[al] 23 (Make the chain,[am] because the land is full of murder[an] and the city is full of violence.) 24 I will bring the most wicked of the nations, and they will take possession of their houses. I will put an end to the arrogance of the strong, and their sanctuaries[ao] will be desecrated. 25 Terror[ap] is coming! They will seek peace, but find none. 26 Disaster after disaster will come, and one rumor after another. They will seek a vision from a prophet; priestly instruction will disappear, along with counsel from the elders. 27 The king will mourn and the prince will be clothed with shuddering; the hands of the people of the land will tremble. Based on their behavior I will deal with them, and by their standard of justice[aq] I will judge them. Then they will know that I am the Lord!”

Footnotes

  1. Ezekiel 7:2 tn Or “earth.” Elsewhere the expression “four corners of the earth” figuratively refers to the whole earth (Isa 11:12).
  2. Ezekiel 7:3 tn Or “punish” (cf. BDB 1047 s.v. שָׁפַט 3.c).
  3. Ezekiel 7:3 tn Heb “ways.”
  4. Ezekiel 7:3 tn Heb “I will place on you.”
  5. Ezekiel 7:4 tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.
  6. Ezekiel 7:4 tn The pronoun “you” is not in the Hebrew text but is implied.
  7. Ezekiel 7:4 tn “I will set your behavior on your head.”
  8. Ezekiel 7:4 tn Heb “and your abominable practices will be among you.”
  9. Ezekiel 7:5 tn The Hebrew term often refers to moral evil (see Ezek 6:10; 14:22), but in many contexts it refers to calamity or disaster, sometimes as punishment for evil behavior.
  10. Ezekiel 7:5 tc So most Hebrew mss; many Hebrew mss read “disaster after disaster” (cf. NAB, NCV, NRSV, NLT).
  11. Ezekiel 7:6 tn Or “has come.”
  12. Ezekiel 7:6 tn Or “has come.”
  13. Ezekiel 7:6 tc With different vowels the verb rendered “it has awakened” would be the noun “the end,” as in “the end is upon you.” The verb would represent a phonetic wordplay. The noun by virtue of repetition would continue to reinforce the idea of the end. Whether verb or noun, this is the only instance to occur with this preposition.
  14. Ezekiel 7:6 tc For this entire verse, the LXX has only “the end is come.” tn In each of the three cases of the verb translated with forms of “to come,” the form may either be a participle (“comes/is coming”) or a perfect (“has come”). Either form would indicate that the end is soon to arrive. This last form appears also to be feminine, although “end” is masculine. This shift may be looking ahead to the next verse, whose first noun (“Doom”) is feminine.
  15. Ezekiel 7:7 sn The day refers to the day of the Lord, a concept which, beginning in Amos 5:18-20, became a common theme in the OT prophetic books. It refers to a time when the Lord intervenes in human affairs as warrior and judge.
  16. Ezekiel 7:7 tc The LXX reads “neither tumult nor birth pains.” The LXX varies at many points from the MT in this chapter. The context suggests that one or both of these would be present on a day of judgment, thus favoring the MT. Perhaps more significant is the absence of “the mountains” in the LXX. If the ר (resh) in הָרִים (harim, “the mountains” not “on the mountains”) were a ד (dalet), which is a common letter confusion, then it could be from the same root as the previous word, הֵד (hed), meaning “the day is near—with destruction, not joyful shouting.”
  17. Ezekiel 7:8 tn The expression “to pour out rage” also occurs in Ezek 9:8; 14:19; 20:8, 13, 21; 22:31; 30:15; 36:18.
  18. Ezekiel 7:9 tn The meaning of the Hebrew term is primarily emotional: “to pity,” which in context implies an action, as in being moved by pity in order to spare them from the horror of their punishment.
  19. Ezekiel 7:9 tn Heb “According to your behavior I will place on you.”
  20. Ezekiel 7:9 tn The MT lacks “you.” It has been added for clarification.
  21. Ezekiel 7:11 tn Heb “the violence.”
  22. Ezekiel 7:11 tc The LXX reads “he will crush the wicked rod without confusion or haste.”tn The verb has been supplied for the Hebrew text to clarify the sense.
  23. Ezekiel 7:11 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.
  24. Ezekiel 7:12 tn Heb “wrath.” Context clarifies that God’s wrath is in view.
  25. Ezekiel 7:13 tc The translation follows the LXX for the first line of the verse, although the LXX has lost the second line due to homoioteleuton (similar endings of the clauses). The MT reads “The seller will not return to the sale.” This Hebrew reading has been construed as a reference to land redemption, the temporary sale of the use of property, with property rights returned to the seller in the year of Jubilee. But the context has no other indicator that land redemption is in view. If correct, the LXX evidence suggests that one of the cases of “the customer” has been replaced by “the seller” in the MT, perhaps due to hoimoioarcton (similar beginnings of the words).
  26. Ezekiel 7:13 tn The Hebrew word refers to the din or noise made by a crowd, and by extension may refer to the crowd itself.
  27. Ezekiel 7:13 tn Or “in their punishment.” The phrase “in/for [a person’s] iniquity” occurs fourteen times in Ezekiel: here and in v. 16; 3:18, 19; 4:17; 18:17, 18, 19, 20; 24:23; 33:6, 8, 9; 39:23. The Hebrew word for “iniquity” may also mean the “punishment for iniquity.”
  28. Ezekiel 7:14 tn The Hebrew word refers to the din or noise made by a crowd, and by extension may refer to the crowd itself.
  29. Ezekiel 7:16 sn The simile compares doves that flee their valley home for the mountains, where they coo in mournful discomfort. For doves moaning or mourning see Isa 38:14; 59:11; Ezek 7:16 and Nah 2:7.
  30. Ezekiel 7:17 tn Heb “their knees will run with water.” The expression probably refers to urination caused by fright, which is how the LXX renders the phrase. More colloquial English would simply be “they will wet their pants,” but as D. I. Block (Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:261, n. 98) notes, the men likely wore skirts which were short enough to expose urine on the knees.
  31. Ezekiel 7:18 tn Heb “baldness will be on their heads.”
  32. Ezekiel 7:19 tn The Hebrew term can refer to menstrual impurity. The term also occurs at the end of v. 20.
  33. Ezekiel 7:19 sn Cf. Zeph 1:18.
  34. Ezekiel 7:19 tn Heb “it.” Apparently the subject is the silver and gold mentioned earlier (see L. C. Allen, Ezekiel [WBC], 1:102).
  35. Ezekiel 7:19 tn The “stumbling block of their iniquity” is a unique phrase of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 14:3, 4, 7; 18:30; 44:12).
  36. Ezekiel 7:20 tc The MT reads “he set up the beauty of his ornament as pride.” The verb may be repointed as plural without changing the consonantal text. The Syriac reads “their ornaments” (plural), implying עֶדְיָם (ʿedyam) rather than עֶדְיוֹ (ʿedyo) and meaning “they were proud of their beautiful ornaments.” This understands “ornaments” in the common sense of women’s jewelry, which then was used to make idols. The singular suffix “his ornaments” would refer to using items from the temple treasury to make idols. D. I. Block points out the foreshadowing of Ezek 16:17, which, with Rashi and the Targum, supports the understanding that this is a reference to temple items. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:265.
  37. Ezekiel 7:22 sn My treasured place probably refers to the temple (however, cf. NLT’s “my treasured land”).
  38. Ezekiel 7:22 sn Since the pronouns “it” are both feminine, they do not refer to the masculine “my treasured place”; instead they probably refer to Jerusalem or the land, both of which are feminine in Hebrew.
  39. Ezekiel 7:23 tc The Hebrew word “the chain” occurs only here in the OT. The reading of the LXX (“and they will make carnage”) seems to imply a Hebrew text of הַבַּתּוֹק (habbattoq, “disorder, slaughter”) instead of הָרַתּוֹק (haratoq, “the chain”). The LXX is also translating the verb as a third person plural future and taking this as the end of the preceding verse. As M. Greenberg (Ezekiel [AB], 1:154) notes, this may refer to a chain for a train of exiles, but “the context does not speak of exile but of the city’s fall. The versions guess desperately, and we can do little better.”
  40. Ezekiel 7:23 tn Heb “judgment for blood,” i.e., indictment or accountability for bloodshed. The word for “judgment” does not appear in the similar phrase in 9:9.
  41. Ezekiel 7:24 sn Or “their holy places” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV).
  42. Ezekiel 7:25 tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT. It is interpreted based on a Syriac cognate meaning “to bristle or stiffen (in terror).”
  43. Ezekiel 7:27 tn Heb “and by their judgments.”

The End Has Come

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, this is what the Sovereign Lord says to the land of Israel:

“‘The end!(A) The end has come
    upon the four corners(B) of the land!
The end is now upon you,
    and I will unleash my anger against you.
I will judge you according to your conduct(C)
    and repay you for all your detestable practices.(D)
I will not look on you with pity;(E)
    I will not spare you.
I will surely repay you for your conduct
    and for the detestable practices among you.

“‘Then you will know that I am the Lord.’(F)

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says:

“‘Disaster!(G) Unheard-of[a] disaster!
    See, it comes!
The end(H) has come!
    The end has come!
It has roused itself against you.
    See, it comes!
Doom has come upon you,
    upon you who dwell in the land.
The time has come! The day(I) is near!(J)
    There is panic, not joy, on the mountains.
I am about to pour out my wrath(K) on you
    and spend my anger against you.
I will judge you according to your conduct
    and repay you for all your detestable practices.(L)
I will not look on you with pity;
    I will not spare you.(M)
I will repay you for your conduct
    and for the detestable practices among you.(N)

“‘Then you will know that it is I the Lord who strikes you.(O)

10 “‘See, the day!
    See, it comes!
Doom has burst forth,
    the rod(P) has budded,
    arrogance has blossomed!
11 Violence(Q) has arisen,[b]
    a rod to punish the wicked.
None of the people will be left,
    none of that crowd—
none of their wealth,
    nothing of value.(R)
12 The time has come!
    The day has arrived!
Let not the buyer(S) rejoice
    nor the seller grieve,
    for my wrath is on the whole crowd.(T)
13 The seller will not recover
    the property that was sold—
    as long as both buyer and seller live.
For the vision concerning the whole crowd
    will not be reversed.
Because of their sins, not one of them
    will preserve their life.(U)

14 “‘They have blown the trumpet,(V)
    they have made all things ready,
but no one will go into battle,
    for my wrath(W) is on the whole crowd.
15 Outside is the sword;
    inside are plague and famine.
Those in the country
    will die by the sword;
those in the city
    will be devoured by famine and plague.(X)
16 The fugitives(Y) who escape
    will flee to the mountains.
Like doves(Z) of the valleys,
    they will all moan,
    each for their own sins.(AA)
17 Every hand will go limp;(AB)
    every leg will be wet with urine.(AC)
18 They will put on sackcloth(AD)
    and be clothed with terror.(AE)
Every face will be covered with shame,
    and every head will be shaved.(AF)

19 “‘They will throw their silver into the streets,(AG)
    and their gold will be treated as a thing unclean.
Their silver and gold
    will not be able to deliver them
    in the day of the Lord’s wrath.(AH)
It will not satisfy(AI) their hunger
    or fill their stomachs,
    for it has caused them to stumble(AJ) into sin.(AK)
20 They took pride in their beautiful jewelry
    and used it to make(AL) their detestable idols.
They made it into vile images;(AM)
    therefore I will make it a thing unclean for them.(AN)
21 I will give their wealth as plunder(AO) to foreigners
    and as loot to the wicked of the earth,
    who will defile it.(AP)
22 I will turn my face(AQ) away from the people,
    and robbers will desecrate the place I treasure.
They will enter it
    and will defile it.(AR)

23 “‘Prepare chains!
    For the land is full of bloodshed,(AS)
    and the city is full of violence.(AT)
24 I will bring the most wicked of nations
    to take possession of their houses.
I will put an end to the pride of the mighty,
    and their sanctuaries(AU) will be desecrated.(AV)
25 When terror comes,
    they will seek peace in vain.(AW)
26 Calamity upon calamity(AX) will come,
    and rumor upon rumor.
They will go searching for a vision from the prophet,(AY)
    priestly instruction in the law will cease,
    the counsel of the elders will come to an end.(AZ)
27 The king will mourn,
    the prince will be clothed with despair,(BA)
    and the hands of the people of the land will tremble.
I will deal with them according to their conduct,(BB)
    and by their own standards I will judge them.

“‘Then they will know that I am the Lord.(BC)’”

Footnotes

  1. Ezekiel 7:5 Most Hebrew manuscripts; some Hebrew manuscripts and Syriac Disaster after
  2. Ezekiel 7:11 Or The violent one has become