1. in the ninth year in the seventh month. This computes to January 587 B.C.E., which means that the final conquest of Jerusalem is only a year and a half in the future. Ezekiel could well have had word in Babylonia of the expeditionary force sent to take Jerusalem.

2. has laid siege. An unusual verb is used here that has the more common sense of “lean on” or “support.”

3. speak a parable. The fluid sense of the Hebrew mashal is in this instance close to “veiled saying.” That is, an image of uncertain reference is developed through the lines of poetry; then its meaning is spelled out in the prose that follows.

4. Gather in it the cuts of meat, / every good cut. The poetic parable unfolds through a false lead: it seems as though what is being evoked is the preparation of a sumptuous meat meal, but then the explication of the images will turn them into a portent of total destruction.

6. pot with its filth within it. Only now are we told that there is something disgusting in this pot of cooking meat.

No lot has fallen on it. This brief sentence is rather cryptic. Since lots were sometimes used to single out the guilty person in a crowd (see, for example, the story of Achan in Joshua 7), the meaning may be that here no lots were cast because everyone was guilty and everyone would be punished.

7. For her blood has been within it. In this prophecy, Ezekiel targets bloodshed rather than idolatry as the crime for which the city is condemned. Child sacrifice, of course, combines the two.

to cover it with dirt. This violates the injunction to cover spilled blood. Blood splashed on bare rock is painfully conspicuous, as is the crime of Judah in the eyes of the prophet.

10. let the meat be consumed, stir the broth, and let the bones be charred. In the poem, it seemed as if a proper meal were cooking in the pot. Now it emerges that the contents of the pot are to be cooked to death—the meat boiling until there is nothing left, the bones entirely charred. As the next verse spells out, only the destruction of the unclean matter within the pot will cleanse it, which is to say, the defilement of the people of Judah can be eradicated only by fiery annihilation.

12. but it will not leave it. The first Hebrew word of this verse, teʾunim, is unintelligible, and the second word, ḥelʾat, makes no syntactic sense. This translation assumes an erroneous scribal duplication here—teʾunim repeating and expanding the penultimate word of the previous verse, titom, and ḥelʾat repeating the last word of that verse, ḥelʾatah.

13. My wrath. The word for “wrath” suggests “heat,” and thus picks up the image of the burning pot.

14. It has come. “It” is the catastrophe.

16. what is dear in your eyes. It is not at first revealed to Ezekiel that the dear possession to be taken away is his wife. This is the first mention of the marital status of this prophet so morbidly obsessed with female sexuality. One may assume that the loss of his wife by plague is a biographical fact, but it is turned here into a portent of the destiny of the nation.

17. Wear your head-cloth. Going bareheaded was one of the practices of mourning.

do not cover your moustache. This is an odd-sounding gesture of mourning, but it is attested elsewhere (Leviticus 13:45).

do not eat the bread of other men. As in later Jewish practice, it was customary for mourners not to prepare their own food but to be fed by members of their community.

21. I am about to profane My sanctuary. Because God determines all things in this theological perspective, it is He Who decrees that the Babylonians should profane the Temple.

and your sons and your daughters whom you abandoned. What is suggested is that the panicked parents fled the city, leaving their children behind.

24. And Ezekiel shall be a portent for you. At this point, God, as it were, interrupts Ezekiel’s address to the exiles in order to comment on the meaning of the prophet’s acts.

25. their heart’s longing. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “their being’s longing.” (The same is true of “cherished in your heart” in verse 21.) The multipurpose noun nefesh is used here and in verse 21.

26. a fugitive come to you to let you hear with your own ears. Ezekiel has been constantly prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem, but now he will be confronted with an eyewitness account of the actual horror.