Ezekiel 23:25

Eze 23:25 And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal furiously with thee: they shall take away thy nose and thine ears; and thy remnant shall fall by the sword: they shall take thy sons and thy daughters; and thy residue shall be devoured by the fire.

Ver. 25. And they shall take away thy nose and thine ears.] He seemeth to allude to the custom of the Egyptians, which was to cut off the nose and the ears of the adulteress. {a} John, a certain antipope, was served in like sort by the Romans. {b} Paul II deserved to be so served; of whom it is recorded that he was so proud that he painted his face to please his concubine; and that he was once in a mind to have taken to himself the name of Formosus, but that he thought it was ominous because his predecessor of that name came to so ill an end. {c}

{a} Rhodigin., lib. xxiv. cap. 45.

{b} Pet. Damian, lib. i. cap. 21.

{c} Jacob. Revius, De. Vit, Pont.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eze 23:25-27. I will set my jealousy against thee, &c. — I will be against thee, as a jealous man is against his wife; and they shall deal furiously — And they, as the executioners of my wrath, shall act toward thee as persons provoked to great fury. And they shall take away thy nose, &c. — A punishment of adultery which rage sometimes dictated. As husbands in that case render those women deformed whose beauty hath been too pleasing to strangers, so shall the Chaldeans deface all the glories and ornaments of Jerusalem, and after they have slain and carried captive its inhabitants, shall set the city on fire, and reduce it to a heap of ashes. The mutilations mentioned in this verse were common among the Chaldeans. St. Jerome assures us, that they frequently cut off the nose and the ears of adulterers. And this was practised toward adulteresses in Egypt. They shall also strip thee, &c. — As lewd, disgraced harlots and captives were used chap. Eze 16:39. And take away thy fair jewels — All thy rich, beautiful ornaments, which shall be a prey to the enemy. Thus will I make thy lewdness to cease — “These severe judgments shall effectually deter thee from idolatry, and make thee abhor the least approaches toward it. Accordingly we find that after the captivity the Jews never returned to their former idolatrous practices.” — Lowth. And thy whoredom brought from the land of Egypt — Thy idolatries which thou broughtest with thee from Egypt, where thou didst first learn idolatry, and ever hast had an inclination to it.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

23:25-29 Stripping an adulterous wife naked—to expose in public what she had done in private—was a punishment for adultery (see study note on 16:35-38). The Babylonians similarly stripped Jerusalem and Judah of everything valuable and exposed them to their own shame.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

They shall destroy thy princes and priests with the rest of thy people.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

take away thy nose . . . ears--Adulteresses were punished so among the Egyptians and Chaldeans. Oriental beauties wore ornaments in the ear and nose. How just the retribution, that the features most bejewelled should be mutilated! So, allegorically as to Judah, the spiritual adulteress.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 25. Shall take away thy nose] A punishment frequent among the Persians and Chaldeans, as ancient authors tell. Adulteries were punished in this way; and to this Martial refers: -

Quis tibi persuasit nares abscindere moecho?

"Who has counselled thee to cut off the adulterer's nose?"

Women were thus treated in Egypt. See Calmet.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(25) Take away thy nose and thine ears.—The barbarous custom of mutilating prisoners prevailed in the East from the earliest times; it is here mentioned with especial reference to the destruction of the attractiveness of the adulteress Aholibah, and the particulars of Eze_23:26 have the same purpose. (Comp. Eze_16:39.) In Egypt adultery was punished by cutting off the nose and ears.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

25. “Jealousy” differs little from fury, ch. Eze_16:38.

take away thy nose] Reference is either to the ancient practice (as in Egypt) of mutilating the adulteress, or to the habit of disfiguring the captives, cf. Eze_12:13; Eze_16:40.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And I will set my jealousy against thee, and they shall deal furiously with thee,.... As a jealous husband, enraged against his adulterous wife, falls upon her in his fury, and uses her with great severity; so the Jews having committed spiritual fornication, that is, idolatry, and departed from the Lord, he threatens to stir up the fury of his jealousy, and punish them severely by the Chaldeans, as follows:

they shall take away thy nose and thine ears, and thy remnant shall fall by the sword; as gallants use their harlots when they leave them, or jealous husbands their adulterous wives, disfiguring them, that they may be marked and known what they are, and be despised by others; and as has been the custom in some countries, particularly with the Egyptians, to cut off the noses of adulterous persons; here it is to be understood figuratively: by the "nose", according to Jarchi, Kimchi, and Ben Melech, is meant the king, who is higher than his people, as the nose is the highest part in a man's face; and by the "ears" the priest, who caused a noise to be heard when he entered into the temple with his bells; or rather because it was the priest's office to attend to the word of God, and teach it the people; in general, these denote everything that was excellent among the Jews, their city, temple, king, kingdom, princes, priests, and prophets, which should be demolished and removed; and by the remnant is meant the common people, that should come into the hands of the Chaldeans, and fall by their sword. So the Targum paraphrases it,

"thy princes and thy nobles shall go into captivity, and thy people shall be killed with the sword:''

they shall take thy sons and thy daughters, and thy residue shall be devoured by the fire; take and carry their sons and daughters captive, and burn with fire the city left by them. Thus the Targum,

"they shall carry thy sons and daughters captive, and the beauty of thy land shall be burnt with fire;''

that is, the city of Jerusalem, the temple, the king's palaces, the houses of the great men, and others in it, which were all burnt with fire when taken by the Chaldeans, Jer 52:13.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Take away thy nose and thine ears - Alluding to the barbarous custom of mutilating prisoners in the east Dan 2:5. An Egyptian law prescribed this punishment for an adulteress.

Fire - A mode of capital punishment Jer 29:22; Dan. 3.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Jealousy, the most violent of passions. (Calmet) --- So the Chaldeans are styled, as Assur is the rod, Isaias x. 5. (Worthington) --- Ears, the punishment of adulteresses: both king and priests suffer. (St. Jerome) --- Thus the captives were probably treated. (Calmet) See Seneca, Ira. iii. 20. --- Fire, by Ismahel, chap. xix. 14.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

I will set my jealousy against thee; as a jealous provoked husband, I will be as much against thee as they are, their fury shall avenge my quarrel.

They shall deal furiously with thee; their disposition naturally is to furious wrath, my jealousy shall enkindle it more.

They shall take away thy nose and thine ears; as thou hast prostituted thy beauty like a harlot, so they shall use thee as such, and mar thy beauty, and brand thee for ever, as thou deservest, and that thou mayst be as loathsome in thy deformity as ever thou wast thought lovely in thy beauty. This punishment of adulteresses is known to have been used, and is yet in use.

Thy remnant shall fall by the sword; or else, at last thy latter end shall be to fall by the sword, those that do not live under such reproach shall die by the sword of the enemy.

They shall take thy sons and thy daughters for captives and slaves for work, and somewhat a thousand times worse.

Thy residue; either the people who did hide themselves in vaults and cellars, and came not out; or else what remains of that the Chaldeans cannot carry away; all this shall be devoured by fire, as when the city was burnt.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

25. I will set my jealousy against thee — See note Eze_5:13.

They shall take away thy nose and thine ears — So Babylonian captives were often mutilated (for example, Zedekiah, Jer_52:11). It was also the practice among some ancient peoples to mutilate the adulteress.

Thy remnant… thy residue — The same word in both cases. The picture of the adulteress gives way for a moment to the picture of Jerusalem in flames and her inhabitants falling by the sword (compare 5-7).

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

They shall take away thy nose and thine ears, etc. (For instances of this or like mutilation, in the case of prisoners of war, see the case of Zedekiah. (Jer_52:11; Herod., 3:69, 154.) Possibly it may have been known to Ezekiel as a punishment for the adulterer or adulteress in Egypt and other countries, and if so, he might have selected it as specially appropriate to his parable (Martial, "Epigr.," 2:83; 3:85). Thy residue shall be consumed with fire. The Hebrew word for "residue" (not that usually so translated) is the same as that previously translated "remnant." In the first clause it clearly points to the men of Jerusalem who are left after the capture. In the second its meaning is determined by the fact that it follows after the deportation of the sons and daughters. All that was left in the parable, of the mutilated trunk of the adulteress, in the history, of the devastated city, sc. the empty houses should be destroyed by fire.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I will set my jealousy - As a jealous provoked husband, I will be as much against thee as they are. Thy residue - Either the people, who hid themselves in vaults and cellars, or what the Chaldeans cannot carry away, all this shall be devoured by fire.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

your nose and your ears They are the beauty of the countenance, and to them he compared the priesthood and the kingship.

and your survivors The rest of the people.

and your residue will be consumed by fire And the best of your land, which is the security upon which to rely for a livelihood.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.