Ezekiel 32:4

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

I will leave you on the land, I will cast you forth on the open field, and will cause all the birds of the sky to settle on you, and I will satisfy the animals of the whole earth with you.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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Word by word

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אֲטִילֶ֑ךָ

ṭûwl

H2904

“to hurl · you”

Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular + Suffix, Personal, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular

Appears 14× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at 1 Samuel 18:11

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 797

to hurl, cast - (Pilpel) to throw away, carry away, hurl - (Hiphil) to throw, cast, cast out - (Hophal) - to be hurled, hurled down - to be cast, be thrown, be cast out, be thrown down

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

16: words
13: distinct lemmas
Prophets: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is אֲטִילֶ֑ךָ to hurl H2904 — appearing just 14 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

אֲטִילֶ֑ךָ to hurl H2904 occurs in 14 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

4 verbs
9 nouns
3 prepositions

Verb forms

וּנְטַשְׁתִּ֣יךָ Qal · Sequential Perfect
אֲטִילֶ֑ךָ Hiphil · Imperfect
וְהִשְׁכַּנְתִּ֤י Hiphil · Sequential Perfect
וְהִשְׂבַּעְתִּ֥י Hiphil · Sequential Perfect

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

בָאָ֔רֶץ land H776 ×2
עַל upon H5921 ×2
כָּל all H3605 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 41 words from the Hebrew and 42 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 16 Hebrew tokens and 29 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Ezekiel 32:4 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Isaiah 18:6 They shall be left together to the ravenous birds of the mountains, and to the animals of the earth; and the ravenous birds shall summer on them, and all the animals of the earth shall winter on them.
Ezekiel 29:5 I will cast you forth into the wilderness, you and all the fish of your rivers: you shall fall on the open field; you shall not be brought together, nor gathered; I have given you for food to the animals of the earth and to the birds of the sky.
Ezekiel 31:12–13 Strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him: on the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the watercourses of the land; and all the peoples of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him.
1 Samuel 17:44–46 The Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky, and to the animals of the field.
Psalms 63:10 They shall be given over to the power of the sword. They shall be jackal food.
Psalms 74:14 You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces. You gave him as food to people and desert creatures.
Psalms 79:2–3 They have given the dead bodies of your servants to be food for the birds of the sky, The flesh of your saints to the animals of the earth.
Psalms 83:9–10 Do to them as you did to Midian, As to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the river Kishon;

Psalms 110:5–6 The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings in the day of his wrath.
Isaiah 14:19 But you are cast forth away from your tomb like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, who are thrust through with the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit; as a dead body trodden under foot.
Isaiah 34:2–7 For Yahweh has indignation against all the nations, and wrath against all their host: he has utterly destroyed them, he has delivered them to the slaughter.
Isaiah 66:24 They shall go forth, and look on the dead bodies of the men who have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring to all flesh.
Jeremiah 8:2 and they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of the sky, which they have loved, and which they have served, and after which they have walked, and which they have sought, and which they have worshiped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried, they shall be for dung on the surface of the earth.
Jeremiah 25:33 The slain of Yahweh shall be at that day from one end of the earth even to the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung on the surface of the ground.
Ezekiel 39:4–5 You shall fall on the mountains of Israel, you, and all your hordes, and the peoples who are with you: I will give you to the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the animals of the field to be devoured.
Ezekiel 39:17–20 You, son of man, thus says the Lord Yahweh: Speak to the birds of every sort, and to every animal of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel, that you may eat flesh and drink blood.

Joel 3:19 Egypt will be a desolation, And Edom will be a desolate wilderness, For the violence done to the children of Judah, Because they have shed innocent blood in their land.
Revelation 19:17–18 I saw an angel standing in the sun. He cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the sky, "Come! Be gathered together to the great supper of God,

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Ezekiel 32:4 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וּנְטַשְׁתִּ֣יךָ בָאָ֔רֶץ עַל פְּנֵ֥י הַשָּׂדֶ֖ה אֲטִילֶ֑ךָ וְהִשְׁכַּנְתִּ֤י עָלֶ֨יךָ֙ כָּל ע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וְהִשְׂבַּעְתִּ֥י מִמְּךָ֖ חַיַּ֥ת כָּל הָאָֽרֶץ

I will leave you on the land, I will cast you forth on the open field, and will cause all the birds of the sky to settle on you, and I will satisfy the animals of the whole earth with you.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Ezekiel 32:4 Septuagint · lemma form

καί ἐκτείνω σύ ἐπί ὁ γῆ πεδίον πίμπλημι σύ καί ἐπι καταἵζω ἐπί σύ πᾶς ὁ πετεινόν ὁ οὐρανός καί ἐνπίμπλημι ἐκ σύ πᾶς ὁ θηρίον πᾶς ὁ γῆ

and I will stretch you upon the earth: the fields shall be covered with you, and I will cause all the birds of the sky to settle upon you, and I will fill with you all the wild beasts of the earth.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וַאֲרַטְשִׁינָךְ בְּאַרְעָא עַל אַפֵּי בָּרָא אֶרְמֵי נְבֵילְתָּךְ וְאַשְׁרֵי עֲלָךְ כָּל עוֹפָא דִשְׁמַיָא וְאַסְבַּע מִנָךְ חַיַת כָּל אַרְעָא:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Ezekiel 32:4 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Eze 32:4 Then will I leave thee upon the land, I will cast thee forth upon the open field, and will cause all the fowls of the heaven to remain upon thee, and I will fill the beasts of the whole earth with thee.

Ver. 4. Then will I leave thee upon the land.] As whales are sometimes left by an ebb, while they pursue lesser fishes. There was one so taken near Greenwich lately, {a} a piece of whose flesh was showed unto me.

{a} In June 1658.

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.

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

32:4-6 hills . . . valleys . . . mountains . . . ravines: In Hebrew, this literary device (merism) indicates both the boundaries and everything within them; here, it portrays the totality of God’s judgment. The carnage is described using hyperbole to communicate the complete destruction of Egypt.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

leave thee upon the land--as a fish drawn out of the water loses all its strength, so Pharaoh (in Eze 32:3, compared to a water monster) shall be (Eze 29:5).

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

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

4. will leave thee] Will cast thee down; cf. Eze_29:5. See Eze_31:13, Eze_39:17 seq.

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.

John Gill's Exposition

Then will I leave thee upon the land,.... Like a fish that is drawn out of the waters with a net or hook, and laid on dry land, and left gasping and expiring, where it cannot long live:

I will cast thee forth on the open field; the same in different words, signifying that his army should fall in battle by the sword of the Cyreneans, or Chaldeans, or both, and be left on the surface of the earth unburied:

and will cause all the fowls of the heavens to remain upon thee, and I will fill the beasts of the whole earth with thee; which may be understood either literally of the fowls of the air, that should light upon the slain carcasses, and rest on them till they had satisfied themselves with their flesh; and of the beasts of the field that should gather about them from all parts, and fill themselves with them; see Rev 19:17 or figuratively of the soldiers of the enemy's army, that should plunder them, and enrich themselves with the spoil.

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

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

Leave thee upon the land; thy beaten army shall be slain: see Eze 29:5; it was literally fulfilled in the deserts of Libya, where the slain of Hophra’s army were left to be devoured by fowls and beasts. Metaphorically it is gathering a mixture of people, soldiers, like ravenous birds and beasts. from all parts to spoil Egypt.

To remain upon thee; they should not be removed till filled with the spoils of Egypt.

The beasts of the whole earth; the foreign and mercenary soldiers shall be enriched by the slaughter and plunder of the Egyptians.

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

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

4, 5. Compare Eze_29:5; Eze_31:12-13. The vultures and jackals feed on the carcass, the foulness of which fills the whole land. For A.V. height the Peshito reads “worms.”

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

The Pulpit Commentary

The picture is carried out to its completion. The carcass of the crocodile becomes the prey of unclean birds and beasts. The carcass of the Egyptian greatness was to satiate the appetite of the invading hosts. Were the words of Psa_74:14, as to leviathan being "given for meat to the people in the wilderness" floating in Ezekiel"s mind (compare the strange reference to leviathan in RAPC 2Est 6:49, 52, and in later Jewish traditions)? Greek writers describe the ichthyophagi of Africa as feeding on the flesh of sea-monsters (Died. Sic, 3:14; Herod., 2:69; Strabo, p. 773), and the word may possibly include the crocodile.

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

John Wesley's Explanatory Notes

Leave thee - This was literally fulfilled in the deserts of Lybia, where the slain of Hophra's army, were left to be devoured by fowls and beasts.

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

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Ezekiel, in the Prophets, opens this verse with 16 words (13 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ṭûwl (“to hurl”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “to hurl” (ṭûwl) contribute to the verse as a whole?
1 Samuel 18:11 shares the word «to hurl» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
“land” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
The verb «וּנְטַשְׁתִּ֣יךָ» is Qal Sequential Perfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Tyndale Open Study Notes read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 16 Hebrew ↔ 29 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 24 words in this verse.
“land” occurs 2× in this single verse.
13 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 16 words in this verse.