translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: EZK

label: NET textual note

text: The LXX reads “In the sixth year, in the fifth month, on the fifth of the month.” sn In the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth of the month would be September 17, 592 b.c. , about fourteen months after the initial vision.


label: NET translator note

text: Or “power.” sn Hand in the OT can refer metaphorically to power, authority, or influence. In Ezekiel God’s hand being on the prophet is regularly associated with communication or a vision from God ( 3:14, 22; 8:1; 37:1; 40:1 ).


text: Heb “fell upon me there,” that is, God’s influence came over him.


text: The word הִנֵּה ( hinneh , traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something and has been translated here as a verb (so also throughout the chapter).


text: The MT reads “fire” rather than “man,” the reading of the LXX. The nouns are very similar in Hebrew.


text: The MT reads “what appeared to be his waist and downwards was fire.” The LXX omits “what appeared to be,” reading “from his waist to below was fire.” Suggesting that “like what appeared to be” belongs before “fire,” D. I. Block ( Ezekiel [NICOT], 1:277) points out the resulting poetic symmetry of form with the next line as followed in the translation here.


text: The LXX omits “like a brightness.”


text: See Ezek 1:4 .


text: The Hebrew term is normally used as an architectural term in describing the pattern of the tabernacle or temple or a representation of it (see Exod 25:8 ; 1 Chr 28:11 ).


text: Or “spirit.” See note on “wind” in 2:2 .


text: For the location of Jerusalem see Map5-B1 ; Map6-F3 ; Map7-E2 ; Map8-F2 ; Map10-B3 ; JP1-F4 ; JP2-F4 ; JP3-F4 ; JP4-F4 .


text: Or “image.”


text: Heb “lift your eyes (to) the way of.”


text: Heb “house.”


text: Or “pattern.”


text: Heb “detestable.” The word is often used to describe the figures of foreign gods.


text: The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT.


text: Heb “the room of his images.” The adjective “idolatrous” has been supplied in the translation for clarity. sn This type of image is explicitly prohibited in the Mosaic law ( Lev 26:1 ).


text: Given the context this could be understood as a shock, e.g., idiomatically “Good grief! I saw….”


text: The word הִנֵּה ( hinneh , traditionally “behold”) indicates becoming aware of something.


text: The LXX reads “twenty” instead of twenty-five, perhaps because of the association of the number twenty with the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash. tn Or “exactly twenty-five.”


text: Or “the sun god.” sn The worship of astral entities may have begun during the reign of Manasseh ( 2 Kgs 21:5 ).


text: It is not clear what the practice of “holding a branch to the nose” indicates. A possible parallel is the Syrian relief of a king holding a flower to his nose as he worships the stars ( ANEP 281). See L. C. Allen, Ezekiel (WBC), 1:145-46. The LXX glosses the expression as “Behold, they are like mockers.”


text: 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.