to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
certain
אֲנָשִׁ֔ים'a.na.Shim
H582
a man in general (singly or collectively) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
elders
מִזִּקְנֵ֖יmi.zik.Nei
H2205
old · preposition + adjective, masculine plural construct
Israel
יִשְׂרָאֵ֑לYis.ra.'El
H3478
Jisrael · proper noun, a place name
sat
וַיֵּשְׁב֖וּvai.ye.she.Vu
H3427
properly · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
before
לְפָנָֽיle.fa.Nai
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Ezekiel 8:1 And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sa…
2 Kings 6:32 But Elisha sat in his house, and the elders sat with him; and the king sent a man from before him: but ere the messenger came to him, he sai…
Isaiah 29:13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their he…
Ezekiel 20:1 And it came to pass in the seventh year, in the fifth month, the tenth day of the month, that certain of the elders of Israel came to enquir…
Ezekiel 33:31 And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for…
Acts 4:5 And it came to pass on the morrow, that their rulers, and elders, and scribes,
Acts 4:8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, Ye rulers of the people, and elders of Israel,
Acts 22:3 I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught accordi…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Ezekiel 14:1-11
Here is, I. The address which some of the elders of Israel made to the prophet, as an oracle, to enquire of the Lord by him. They came, and sat before him, Eze 14:1. It is probable that they were not of those who were now his fellow-captives, and constantly attended his ministry (such as those we read of Eze 8:1), but some occasional hearers, some of the grandees of Jerusalem who had come upon business to Babylon, perhaps public business, on an embassy from the king, and in their way called on the prophet, having heard much of him and being desirous to know if he had any message from God, which might be some guide to them in their negotiation. By the severe answer given them one would suspec…
Then came certain of the elders of Israel unto me - These probably came to tempt him, or get him to say something that would embroil him with the government. They were bad men, as we shall see in the third verse.
John Gill on Ezekiel 14:1
Then came certain, of the elders of Israel unto me,.... The Syriac version adds, "to consult the Lord"; by the prophet. These, according to Kimchi, were the elders of the captivity, the heads of the captives that were now in Babylon with Ezekiel: but there are others that think they were some that came from Jerusalem to Babylon on some business or another; and having heard much of the prophet, came to visit him, and to hear his prophecies, and inquire of the Lord by him:
and sat before me; silent and pensive, as persons in anxiety and distress; or as hearers of him, for sitting is a hearing gesture; they sat and heard with great attention, gravity, and seriousness, with seeming affection an…
Ezekiel 14:1-3
1. Then came certain of the elders of Israel unto me, and sat before me.
1. Et venerunt ad me viri ex senioribus Israel, et sederunt coram facie mea. [33]
2. And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2. Et fuit sermo Iehovae ad me, dicendo,
3. Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumblingblock of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them?
3. Fili hominis, viri isti ascendere fecerunt idola sua super cor suum, et offendiculum iniquitatis suae posuerunt coram facie sua. An quaerendo quaerar ipsis? [34]
Here Ezekiel relates an event worthy of notice. For this was not a mere vision, but a real transa…
The Church Fathers
(Chapter 14, Verse 1 onwards) And the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts and have put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I be consulted by them? Therefore speak to them and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Every man of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart and puts the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face and comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him with the multitude of his idols, that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who have turned away from me through all their idols. Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord God: Turn away and withdraw from your idols, and turn your faces away from all your abominations. For any man of the house of Israel, or of the aliens who immigrate to Israel, if he has estranged himself from me in Israel and has set up his idols in his heart, and has placed the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and has come to the prophet to inquire of me through him: I, the Lord, will answer him in person. And I will set my face against that man and make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people. Then you will know that I am the Lord. And if the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I am the Lord who has deceived that prophet. I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. And they shall bear their punishment—the punishment of the inquirer shall be the same as the punishment of the prophet—so that the house of Israel may no longer go astray from me, nor defile themselves anymore with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people and I may be their God, declares the Lord of hosts. LXX: And the men of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, these men have set their thoughts in their hearts and have set the torment of their iniquities before their face: If I answer them when they ask? Therefore, speak to them and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Every man of the house of Israel who sets his thoughts in his heart and sets the torment of his iniquity before his face, and comes to the prophet to inquire of him concerning me: I, the Lord, will answer him with…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Synagogue — (Gr. sunagoge, i.e., “an assembly”), found only once in the Authorized Version of Ps. 74:8, where the margin of Revised Version has “places of assembly,” which is probably correct; for while the…
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The Lord Gives No Answer to the Idolaters
Eze 14:1 narrates the occasion for this and the following words of God: There came to me men of the elders of Israel, and sat down before me. These men were not deputies from the Israelites in Palestine, as Grotius and others suppose, but elders of the exiles among whom Ezekiel had been labouring. They came to visit the prophet (v. 3), evidently with the intention of obtaining, through him, a word of God concerning the future of Jerusalem, or the fate of the kingdom of Judah. But Hvernick is wrong in supposing that we may infer, from either the first or second word of God in this chapter, that they had addressed to the prophet a distinct inquiry of t…
The leaders of the exiled community of Israel came to visit Ezekiel again, probably seeking encouragement (cp. 8:1; 20:1). The people were tainted with the same kinds of sin, such as idolatry, that affected the people in Judah (cp. 8:10-12).
Rashi on Ezekiel 14:1
Now there came to me some men Heb. וַיָבוֹא. All of them with one accord for evil. Therefore, it is said: וַיָבוֹא, and came [the singular form]. The Midrash Aggadah says that [the word is in the singular] because the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed to the ear of the prophet beforehand, “Behold so-and- so and so-and-so will come to you.”
