2. Teman . . . the south . . . Negeb. The Hebrew uses three different words that mean “south.” Although the territory of Judah is to the west of Ezekiel’s location in Babylonia, what this prophetic injunction has in view is a destruction of Judah that will begin from the south and sweep up through the north.

3. the wooded region. It is unclear whether the Negeb once had a wooded region. Some think this may be an area of low shrubs, but the next verse speaks of trees.

The white-hot flame. The joining of two Hebrew synonyms in the construct form (literally, “fire of flame”) is an intensifier.

5. Is he not just reciting parables? The adverb “just” has been added in the translation to bring out the sense of the Hebrew—that the people think the prophet is merely spinning out parables that have no relation to reality.

8. cut off from you the righteous and the wicked. The phrase essentially means “everyone.” It is a severe form of divine justice, in direct contradiction to the exchange between Abraham and God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18.

11. shuddering loins. More literally, “broken loins.”

12. all knees be wet. As above (7:17), the expression derisively indicates people wetting themselves in terror.

14. A sword, a sword is whetted. The sword is often used in biblical language as a metonymy for “military force” or “destructive power.” The special effectiveness of the poetry here is that it builds on this ordinary sense of “sword” but focuses with unusual concreteness on the weapon, unsheathed, whetted, burnished, and gleaming.

15. Or we rejoice for the rod. This entire bracketed sentence is unintelligible, even though each separate word is understandable. In the Hebrew, neither the syntax nor the grammar makes sense. It is hard to believe that Ezekiel could have written this sentence, at least in the form we have, though how these words got into the text is a mystery.

16. to be put in the hand of a killer. The spooky power of these lines is heightened by cloaking the identity of the killer in anonymity, but he is no doubt the fierce Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar.

17. for it was against My people. The “it” is feminine and refers to the sword, a feminine noun.

18. For he probes and what if the rod. This bracketed sentence has the same problems of intelligibility as the one in verse 15 and incorporates some of the same cryptic phrases.

21. Where do you turn? This question reinforces the sense of the sword slashing on every side.

22. let My wrath come to rest. After the sword has done its terrible work, God’s wrath against Israel will be completely spent, setting the stage for restoration.

24. two ways for the coming of the sword of the king of Babylonia. This prose prophecy, following the poetic one, more or less spells out the meaning of the oracle of the sword—here the sword comes together with its wielder, the king of Babylonia, across known geographical space. The two ways are evidently the trajectories to Rabbah of the Ammonites in trans-Jordan and to Jerusalem.

26. to perform divination, to shake out arrows. It was a regular practice in military campaigns in the ancient Near East to seek guidance through an oracle or divinatory devices in order to choose the proper route or strategy. The shaking out of arrows for divination involved writing alternatives—here, those might be “Rabbah” and “Jerusalem” on the shafts of different arrows. Inspecting patterns in animal livers was a very common divinatory procedure.

27. On its right lobe. The Hebrew says only “on its right,” but the clear reference is to the liver.

28. And it seemed in their eyes like an empty divination. The grammatical subject here refers either to Ezekiel’s audience of exiles or to the population in Judah. If it is the latter, they were imagined as somehow having got wind of the Babylonian divination.

they had oaths sworn to them. This is obscure. It might mean that the Judahites were confident in their safety because they thought God had sworn to protect them for all time.

it was a remembering of guilt for them to be caught. Perhaps: their confidence was a trap, involving their guilt or crime, in which they would be caught. The collocation “remembering of guilt” appears in Numbers 5:15 in the passage about the woman suspected of adultery, and the echo may be intended to suggest Israel’s whoring after other gods.

29. you have remembered your guilt. Or, “have called to mind your guilt”—that is, caused it to be remembered.

30. profane in wickedness. The phrase could also mean “corpse of uncleaness,” although that sense seems unlikely.

the end-time of the guilt. The literal order of the Hebrew is “the time of the end of the guilt [or punishment].” The obvious sense is: the time when you will have to pay for the guilt you have incurred.

31. This is not this. The three Hebrew words are a little obscure but probably mean: things as they are will no longer be the same.

32. until the coming of him who has the judgment and will grant it. This is another crabbed formulation, though the most likely reference is to Nebuchadnezzar, who is to be the instrument of divine judgment.

33. the Ammonites. Their capital city, Rabbah, is one of the two targets of the Babylonian assault.

34. when empty visions were seen for you. The Ammonites evidently trusted in false oracles that they would be saved from the Babylonians.

concerning the necks of the profane wicked. The Ammonites believed that the prophecy of destruction pertained only to the Judahites.

35. Put it back in its sheath. Once the ordained project of destruction has been completed, the sword must be sheathed again, for the Babylonian rampage cannot go on indefinitely. On the contrary, while they have served as God’s punishing instrument, they will now have to pay for their own excess of cruelty.

in the land of your origin I will judge you. It is the fate of conquering Babylon to become the victim of its conquerors.

36. hotheaded men. The Hebrew is probably a pun. Bo ʿarim can mean “ignorant” or “crude,” but it also means “burning.” Since fire is prominent in the immediate context, burning or heated temperament is probably the more salient meaning.