2. prophets out of their own heart. The idiom “out of their own heart,” which occurs elsewhere, indicates things that are purely a person’s invention.

3. follow their own spirit. Greenberg renders “spirit” here as “whims.” It is obviously a parallel to “their own heart” in verse 1.

5. the breaches. This image picks up the simile of the foxes among the ruins from the previous verse: foxes could make their way through the breach in the stone walls protecting vineyards and planted fields to wreak havoc within. Thus, the prophets, who should have protected the people, are themselves predators.

to stand in battle on the day of the LORD. As elsewhere in the Prophets, “the day of the LORD” is the day when God comes to exact retribution from Israel for its offenses. The prophets, then, in this battle metaphor, should have defended Israel and warded off punishment from God by warning the people about its waywardness.

9. shall not come to the soil of Israel. This phrase is an indication that Ezekiel is excoriating a group of false prophets in the Babylonian exile.

10. The people was building a mere partition. The subject of the verb in the Hebrew is simply “it,” but its antecedent has been introduced in the translation in order to avoid confusion. The Hebrew word ḥayits, represented in this translation as “mere partition,” occurs only here; however, it patently derives from a root that suggests demarcating inside from outside. Both the etymology and the context indicate that it is a rather flimsy barrier, hence the addition of “mere” in the translation.

they daubed it with plaster. Many interpreters conclude that the word for “plaster,” tafel (elsewhere a term for “insipid”), designates an inferior form of plaster, mixed with straw. But smearing plaster over a wall—especially if it is a shaky wall—would scarcely strengthen it against breaches, no matter what kind of plaster was used.

11. When pounding rain comes—and you. The “and you” definitely looks out of syntactic place and may reflect a scribal error.

13. Thus said the Master, the LORD. Rimon Kasher proposes that Ezekiel’s constant use of this introductory formula could be polemic: Ezekiel has been sent by God and is faithfully quoting God’s actual words, in contrast to the false prophets.

split things apart. The splitting verb is chosen in reference to the wall.

hailstones. The Hebrew ʾelgavish is not the usual word for “hail” and may reflect poetic diction.

15. I will exhaust My wrath. The Hebrew employs the same verbal stem that appears in “utter destruction” and “utterly destroyed.”

17. daughters of your people who babble prophecy out of their own heart. Having dealt with the male prophets, Ezekiel now is commanded to turn to the women. They are not so much prophets as soothsayers or fortune-tellers, and consequently the verb for prophesying is used here in the reflexive conjugation, which has the connotation of going into ecstatic fits, a nuance represented in this translation by the addition of “babble.”

18. cushions . . . padding. We have only an approximate sense of the meaning of both these nouns, and the same is true of their function. They appear to be the trappings of rites of divination performed by these women, but the specifics remain elusive.

all the joints of the arms. This same phrase in Jeremiah means “armpits,” but here the whole arm seems to be involved, as verse 21 indicates.

19. with handfuls of barley and morsels of bread. These are used in the superstitious ritual, either as instruments of divination—in Mesopotamia, flour was cast on water for this purpose—or as offerings to the gods.

22. to preserve his life. This is the same verb that is used in verse 19 in the sense of “proclaim life.” These soothsaying women, instead of making baseless proclamations about who is destined to live, should have been warning the wicked man to turn back from his path of evil in order to save his life.