Ezekiel 5:17

Eze 5:17 So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee. I the LORD have spoken [it].

Ver. 17. Evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee.] Rob thee of thy children, destroy thy cattle, make thee few in number, and thy highway desolate, as was long before threatened. {Lev 26:22 2Ki 17:25}

I the Lord have spoken it.] I Jehovah, who will give being to my menaces as well as to my promises.

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.

beasts--perhaps meaning destructive conquerors (Dan 7:4). Rather, literal "beasts," which infest desolated regions such as Judea was to become (compare Eze 34:28; Exo 23:29; Deu 32:24; Kg2 17:25). The same threat is repeated in manifold forms to awaken the careless.

sword--civil war.

Next: Ezekiel Chapter 6

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 17. So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee] Wild beasts always multiply in depopulated countries. In England, wolves abounded when the country was thinly peopled, it is now full of inhabitants, and there is not one wolf in the land. Nebuchadnezzar and his Chaldeans may be called here evil beasts. He is often compared to a lion, Jer 4:7; Da 7:14; on account of the ravages made by him and his Chaldean armies.

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

Here God speaks generally concerning certain adversities — I will send evil upon them, he says, but immediately afterwards he adds the kind of evil, of which he had not yet spoken. Hence, under the name of evil he embraces all adversities, as if he had said that he intended to exact the penalty from the wicked, not in one or two ways only, but by those numberless troubles which surround us, and to which we are subject; so that there would be no bounds to his wrath, unless men should cease to provoke his anger. This is the reason, then, why he now speaks generally concerning evil; but as I have said he adds the kind of evil — An evil beast shall come upon thee, and so I will bereave thee Although only one form of evil is expressed, yet it is by no means doubtful that for the sake of example God mentions this, that they might understand that all injuries are in his hand. And these are numberless. If we look upwards, how many deaths hang over us from that direction? If we look at the earth, how many poisons? how many wild and fierce beasts, how many serpents, swords, pitfalls, stumbling-blocks, precipices, falls of houses, throwings of stones and darts? In short, we cannot stir a step without ten deaths meeting us. So God here speaks of wild beasts only for the purpose of showing that they were at hand, and that by them he would execute his judgments. Now, therefore, we understand why Ezekiel first spoke of the genus, and afterwards came to the species.

And at length he adds, I will bereave or deprive them, namely, that he will deprive fathers of their sons, and sons of their fathers; and he will do that, not only by cruel and savage beasts, but by various other ways. Again he repeats — pestilence and blood shall pass over thee. He had not spoken of blood before, unless under the name of the sword, which he repeats again: but he heaps together, as I have said, various forms of speech, so that those should be at length awakened who had been too slow, and were afterwards turning themselves willingly away from all sense of the wrath of God. Hence he says, pestilence and blood shall pass through thee. Then, I will bring a sword, says he, upon thee When he spoke of blood, he really intended a sword, but, as I have already said, this did not cause either the Israelites or Jews instantly to tremble at such threats. What, therefore, was in itself sufficiently clear and easy, ought to be impressed in various ways. With this view he adds again, I Jehovah have spoken For he turns away the Jews and Israelites from looking at himself, and shows them that he was not the author of the threats, but that he faithfully delivers what he had received from God’s hand, and what he was commanded to utter against them.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

17. evil beasts] The three great plagues often specified are, famine, pestilence and sword (ch. Eze_14:13; Eze_14:17; Eze_14:19), to which a fourth is sometimes added, evil beasts (ch. Eze_14:15; Eze_14:21, Eze_33:27, Eze_34:25; Lev_26:22; Deu_32:24).

In the above verses the cumulative expressions are often wanting in LXX. e.g. Eze_5:11 the words “and with all thine abominations.” Differences of this kind do not affect the sense, and it is unnecessary to notice them in detail.

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.

So will I send upon you famine, and evil beasts,.... Famine is repeated for the further confirmation of it; and "evil beasts" are added, by whom are meant, not the Chaldeans, comparable to such; but literally lions, wolves, hears, &c. which are threatened the Jews, in case of disobedience, Lev 26:22; and which sometimes were sent, Kg2 17:24;

and they shall bereave thee; that is, of her children, whom the evil beasts should destroy; they not being able to defend themselves against them, as men can:

and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee, and I will bring the sword upon thee; the pestilence, famine, sword, which is meant by blood, and evil beasts, are the Lord's four sore judgments; see Eze 14:21.

I the Lord have spoken it: who was able to perform it, and did, both at the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and by Titus.

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

CHAPTER V.

Beasts. They usually take possession of abandoned countries. (St. Jerome) --- The Chaldeans may also be meant, chap. xvii. 3.

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).

Evil beasts; Heb. evil beast: either the king of Babylon, which, like a ravenous and insatiable beast, tore and devoured all. Or, literally, lions, bears, &c., which are one of his four sore judgments, Eze 14:21.

Bereave thee, of your children, friends, and your own life; when you flee to mountains and caves, for fear of the Chaldees, where you seek your safety you shall find your death, and be torn to pieces. Thy land shall be the common road and highway for pestilence and blood, as the Hebrew denotes, and they shall lodge in thy cities, in Jerusalem, as if they were the appointed receptacles for these guests. Here are the four sore plagues which God wastes nations with, all sent out against the Jews, and their commission signed from heaven with a witness, Ourself. I have spoken it, saith the Lord.

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

17. Evil beasts — With the famine of the siege and the blood of slaughter comes the plague of evil beasts (Eze_14:15; Eze_14:21; Eze_33:27; Eze_34:25). This shows the desolation of the land. The people have been carried away and their valleys have become the home of jackals and lions (2Ki_17:25).

I the Lord have spoken it — This is not, as some modern critics maintain, the utterance of an angry prophet. Ezekiel, dumb in the presence of these awful calamities, is only able to picture them in his sign language to the people, because the hand of the Lord is upon him and he has fed upon the word of the Lord (Eze_3:3; Eze_3:14).

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

Evil beasts, etc. These appear in like connection in Ezekiel"s favourite textbooks. (comp. Lev_26:6, Lev_26:22; Deu_32:24) They reappear in Eze_14:15, Eze_14:21. Historically, we have an example of the suffering thus caused in the lions of 2Ki_17:25, when towns and villages were deserted, and the unburied carcases of those who had died by famine, or pestilence, or the sword, were everywhere to attract them from afar. This was, of course, the natural and inevitable result. Pestilence and blood, etc. As this is followed by the work of the sword, "blood" probably points to some special form of plague, possibly dysentery, (Act_28:8, Revised Version) or carbuncles, like Hezekiah"s. (Isa_38:21) The same combination appears in Eze_14:19 Eze_28:23.

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

Bereave thee - Of your children, friends, and your own life. Pestilence and blood - Thy land shall be the common road for pestilence and blood. Tho' this prophecy was to be accomplished presently, in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans; yet it may well be supposed to look forward, to the final destruction of it by the Romans, when God made a full end of the Jewish nation, and caused his fury to rest upon them.

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