Ezekiel 7:23-25

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. 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.”
2. 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.
3. Ezekiel 7:24 sn Or “their holy places” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV, NRSV).
4. 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).”