Yehezkiel 5:15

5:15 You will be ¹  an object of scorn and taunting, ²  a prime example of destruction ³  among the nations around you when I execute judgments against you in anger and raging fury. ⁴  I, the Lord, have spoken!

Yehezkiel 29:3

29:3 Tell them, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says:

“‘Look, I am against ⁵  you, Pharaoh king of Egypt,

the great monster ⁶  lying in the midst of its waterways,

who has said, “My Nile is my own, I made it for myself.” ⁷ 

[5:15]  ¹ tc This reading is supported by the versions and by the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QEzek). Most Masoretic Hebrew mss read “it will be,” but if the final he (ה) is read as a mater lectionis, as it can be with the second masculine singular perfect, then they are in agreement. In either case the subject refers to Jerusalem.

[5:15]  ² tn The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT. A related verb means “revile, taunt” (see Ps 44:16).

[5:15]  ³ tn Heb “discipline and devastation.” These words are omitted in the Old Greek. The first term pictures Jerusalem as a recipient or example of divine discipline; the second depicts her as a desolate ruin (see Ezek 6:14).

[5:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “in anger and in fury and in rebukes of fury.” The heaping up of synonyms emphasizes the degree of God’s anger.

[29:3]  ⁵ tn Or “I challenge you.” The phrase “I am against you” may be a formula for challenging someone to combat or a duel. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (NICOT), 1:201-2, and P. Humbert, “Die Herausforderungsformel ‘h!nn#n' ?l?K>,’” ZAW 45 (1933): 101-8.

[29:3]  ⁶ tn Heb “jackals,” but many medieval Hebrew mss read correctly “the serpent.” The Hebrew term appears to refer to a serpent in Exod 7:9-10, 12; Deut 32:33; and Ps 91:13. It also refers to large creatures that inhabit the sea (Gen 1:21; Ps 148:7). In several passages it is associated with the sea or with the multiheaded sea monster Leviathan (Job 7:12; Ps 74:13; Isa 27:1; 51:9). Because of the Egyptian setting of this prophecy and the reference to the creature’s scales (v. 4), many understand a crocodile to be the referent here (e.g., NCV “a great crocodile”; TEV “you monster crocodile”; CEV “a giant crocodile”).

[29:3]  ⁷ sn In Egyptian theology Pharaoh owned and controlled the Nile. See J. D. Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament, 240-44.