Yehezkiel 9:9

9:9 He said to me, “The sin of the house of Israel and Judah is extremely great; the land is full of murder, and the city is full of corruption, ¹  for they say, ‘The Lord has abandoned the land, and the Lord does not see!’ ² 

Yehezkiel 29:3

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

“‘Look, I am against ³  you, Pharaoh king of Egypt,

the great monster ⁴  lying in the midst of its waterways,

who has said, “My Nile is my own, I made it for myself.” ⁵ 

Yehezkiel 38:4

38:4 I will turn you around, put hooks into your jaws, and bring you out with all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them fully armed, a great company with shields of different types, ⁶  all of them armed with swords.

[9:9]  ¹ tn Or “lawlessness” (NAB); “perversity” (NRSV). The Hebrew word occurs only here in the OT, and its meaning is uncertain. The similar phrase in 7:23 has a common word for “violence.”

[9:9]  ² sn The saying is virtually identical to that of the elders in Ezek 8:12.

[29:3]  ³ 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]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ sn In Egyptian theology Pharaoh owned and controlled the Nile. See J. D. Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament, 240-44.

[38:4]  ⁶ sn The Hebrew text mentions two different types of shields here.