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Ezekiel 21:21
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19 “And son of man, appoint for yourself two ways for the sword of the king of Babylon to go; both of them shall go from the same land. Make a sign; put it at the head of the road to the city.
20 Appoint a road for the sword to go to aRabbah of the Ammonites, and to Judah, into fortified Jerusalem.  
21 For the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the road, at the fork of the two roads, to use divination: he shakes the arrows, he consults the1 images, he looks at the liver.  
22 In his right hand is the divination for Jerusalem: to set up battering rams, to call for a slaughter, to alift the voice with shouting, bto set battering rams against the gates, to heap up a siege mound, and to build a wall.  
23 And it will be to them like a false divination in the eyes of those who ahave sworn oaths with them; but he will bring their iniquity to remembrance, that they may be taken.  
24 “Therefore thus says the Lord God: ‘Because you have made your iniquity to be remembered, in that your transgressions are uncovered, so that in all your doings your sins appear—because you have come to remembrance, you shall be taken in hand.
25 ‘Now to you, O aprofane, wicked prince of Israel, bwhose day has come, whose iniquity shall end,  
Commentaries:
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown
<< Ezekiel 21:20   Ezekiel 21:22 >>


Ezekiel 21:21

parting—literally, "mother of the way." As "head of the two ways" follows, which seems tautology after "parting of the way," HAVERNICK translates, according to Arabic idiom, "the highway," or principal road. English Version is not tautology, "head of the two ways" defining more accurately "parting of the way."

made . . . bright—rather, "shook," from an Arabic root.

arrows—Divination by arrows is here referred to: they were put into a quiver marked with the names of particular places to be attacked, and then shaken together; whichever came forth first intimated the one selected as the first to be attacked [JEROME]. The same usage existed among the Arabs, and is mentioned in the Koran. In the Nineveh sculptures the king is represented with a cup in his right hand, his left resting on a bow; also with two arrows in the right, and the bow in the left, probably practising divination.

images—Hebrew, "teraphim"; household gods, worshipped as family talismans, to obtain direction as to the future and other blessings. First mentioned in Mesopotamia, whence Rachel brought them (Genesis 31:19, Genesis 31:34); put away by Jacob (Genesis 35:4); set up by Micah as his household gods (Judges 17:5); stigmatized as idolatry (I Samuel 15:23, Hebrew; Zechariah 10:2, Margin).

liver—They judged of the success, or failure, of an undertaking by the healthy, or unhealthy, state of the liver and entrails of a sacrifice.




Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Ezekiel 21:21:

Ezekiel 21:19
Hosea 3:4
Hosea 4:12

 

<< Ezekiel 21:20   Ezekiel 21:22 >>

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