Ezekiel 21:30

30 Return [it] to its sheath! I will judge you^[a] in the place where you were created, in the land of your origin.

Ezekiel 21:30 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 21:30

Shall I cause it to return into his sheath?
&c.] The drawn and furbished sword of the Chaldeans? no, I will not; it shall never return or be put up until the Ammonites are utterly consumed. Some read these words in the imperative, as the Targum,

``return the sword to its sheath;''

so the Vulgate Latin version, "return to thy sheath"; and so may be considered as a direction to the Ammonites to put up their swords, and not stand in their own defence, since it would be to no purpose; though Jerom, and Grotius after him, take the words to be an apostrophe to the drawn sword of the Chaldeans to sheath itself, having done its work upon the Jews and Ammonites; or to the Chaldeans to return to Babylon, and where they also should be punished; and so interpret all that follows of the destruction of the Babylonians by the Medes and Persians; but the first sense is best: I will judge thee in the place where thou wast created, in the land of
thy nativity;
not in the place where their father Ammon was born, which was at Zoar; but where they first became a kingdom and state, a body politic; or where the present generation of them were born; they should not be carried out of their own land, but destroyed in it.

Ezekiel 21:30 In-Context

28 "Now prophesy, son of man, and say: This is what the Lord God says concerning the Ammonites and their contempt. You are to proclaim: Sword, sword! [You are] drawn for slaughter, polished to consume, to flash like lightning.

29 While they offer false visions and lying divinations about you, [the time] has come to put you to the necks of the profane wicked ones; the day has come for your punishment.

30 Return [it] to its sheath! I will judge you in the place where you were created, in the land of your origin.

31 I will pour out My indignation on you; I will blow the fire of My fury on you. I will hand you over to brutal men, skilled at destruction.

32 You will be fuel for the fire. Your blood will be [spilled] in the land. You will not be remembered, for I, the Lord, have spoken."

Footnotes

• [a]. the Ammonites