Ezekiel 5:12 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Ezekiel 5:12
A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee: and a third part shall fall by the sword round about thee; and I will scatter a third part into all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them.
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 5:2 Thou shalt burn with fire a third part in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are fulfilled: and thou shalt take a third part,…
Jeremiah 15:2 And it shall come to pass, if they say unto thee, Whither shall we go forth? then thou shalt tell them, Thus saith the LORD; Such as are for…
Jeremiah 43:10-11 And say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will send and take Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my serv…
Jeremiah 21:9 He that abideth in this city shall die by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence: but he that goeth out, and falleth to the Cha…
Ezekiel 12:14 And I will scatter toward every wind all that are about him to help him, and all his bands; and I will draw out the sword after them.
Jeremiah 44:27 Behold, I will watch over them for evil, and not for good: and all the men of Judah that are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the s…
Ezekiel 5:10 Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee, a…
Ezekiel 6:11-12 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Smite with thine hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Alas for all the evil abominations of the house of Israel!…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Ezekiel 5:5–end
We have here the explanation of the foregoing similitude: This is Jerusalem. Thus it is usual in scripture language to give the name of the thing signified to the sign; as when Christ said, This is my body. The prophet's head, which was to be shaved, signified Jerusalem, which by the judgments of God was now to be stripped of all its ornaments, to be emptied of all its inhabitants, and to be set naked and bare, to be shaved with a razor that is hired, Isa 7:20. The head of one that was a priest, a prophet, a holy person, was fittest to represent Jerusalem the holy city. Now the contents of these verses are much the same with what we have often met with, and still shall, in the writings of th…
Statement in plain terms of what was intended by the symbols (Eze 5:2; see Eze 6:12; Jer 15:2; Jer 21:9).
draw out . . . sword after them-- (Lev 26:33). Skeptics object; no such thing happened under Zedekiah, as is here foretold; namely, that a third part of the nation should die by pestilence, a third part by the sword, and a third be scattered unto all winds, and a sword sent after them. But the prophecy is not restricted to Zedekiah's time. It includes all that Israel suffered, or was still to suffer, for their sins, especially those committed at that period (Eze 17:21). It only received its primary fulfilment under Zedekiah: numbers then died by the pestilence and by the sword; and num…
A third part of thee - See the note on Eze 5:1-4 (note).
John Gill on Ezekiel 5:12
A third part of them shall die with the pestilence,.... This, with what follows, explains the division of the hair into the three parts, and what was done with them; and shows that the burning of one third part denotes their being destroyed by the pestilence, mentioned along with burning coals, Habakkuk 3:5; and by famine, as follows:
and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee; and though there is no account of the former, yet there is of the latter; and no doubt but the pestilence raged, as well as the famine, at the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar:
and a third part shall fall by the sword round about thee; signified by the third part of the hair, smitten with a knif…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 12, 13.) A third part of you will die by pestilence and be consumed by famine in your midst, and a third part will fall by the sword all around you. I will scatter your third part to every wind, and I will unsheathe the sword after them. And I will pour out my fury and make my anger rest upon them, and I will comfort myself. And they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in my zeal, when I have accomplished my anger upon them. Because they had divided the Septuagint into four parts, they approved that only the prophetic discourse about the fire, sword, and dispersion were superfluous, so that the first part of the fire would be divided into two parts in this place as well, they also divided the same first part into two, saying: The fourth part of you will be crushed by death, and the fourth part of you will be consumed by famine in your midst, and the fourth part of you will fall around you, and I will scatter the fourth part of you to every wind; although what we have added: And the fourth part of you will fall by the sword, is added from Theodotion's edition under asterisks. It is clear, however, that the Hebrew truth contains three parts. Of the first of these, it is said: 'And a third part of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed by famine in your midst.' It would have been much better to translate what is written than to seek support for a poorly translated matter. And we do not say that this was done by those to whom antiquity gave authority, but it was corrupted by the fault of many centuries of scribes and readers. Although both Aristeus and Josephus, and the entire school of the Jews, claim that only five books of Moses were translated by the Seventy. The chapter we mentioned above now seems to be omitted. I will only add this, which is necessary in what he says: And I will pour out my wrath and make my indignation rest upon them, and I will comfort them, and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I have poured out my indignation upon them; how the wrath, indignation, and zeal of God are to be understood, we have often explained, that God speaks with human emotions: not because he is angry himself, but so that we may perceive God as angry through punishments and torments. But zeal is to be understood under the metaphor of a husband and wife, who as long as he loves his wife, is jealous; if he neglects her, he says what we are going…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Ezekiel 5:12
12. A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee: and a third part shall fall by the sword round about thee; and I will scatter a third part into all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them.
12. Tertia pars peste morietur, et fame peribunt in medio tui: et tertia pars per gladium cadent in circuitu tuo, et tertiam partem in quemlibet ventum dispergam, et gladium evaginabo post eos.
Now he explains without a figure what he had previously proposed figuratively. For he had been commanded to shave off the hairs of his head and of his beard with a razor, and to divide them so that the pestilence should co…
Parents will eat their own children: This horrific prospect was an anticipated consequence of famine (see 2 Kgs 6:26-30), and one of the curses of disobedience (see Lev 26:29).
Rashi on Ezekiel 5:8
I too You betrayed Me, and I too, behold I am upon you.
