Ezekiel 22:9

9 Among you are slanderous men bent on bloodshed; within you are those who eat on the mountain shrines and commit acts of indecency.

Ezekiel 22:9 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 22:9

In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood
Innocent blood, as the Targum; such who go from house to house, as pedlars do, with their wares or spices, as the word F1 signifies; hence the Syriac version renders it "merchants"; and carry tales and lies of innocent persons, and stir up others against them to wrath and revenge, and shed their blood; or that go to the courts of judicature, and there accuse innocent persons, and bear false witness against them, to the taking away of their lives. The Septuagint and Arabic versions render it "thieves": who commonly are murderers: and in thee they eat upon the mountains; that is, there were such in Jerusalem who used to go to the mountains where idols were worshipped, and eat the things that were sacrificed to them; or partook of the feast made to the honour of them. So the Targum,

``in thee they served idols on the mountains:''
in the midst of thee they commit lewdness;
a general word for all manner of uncleanness, as adultery, fornication, incest of which some particulars follow.
FOOTNOTES:

F1 (lykr yvna) "homines mercaturae, [vel] aromatis"; so Ben Melech observes.

Ezekiel 22:9 In-Context

7 Father and mother are treated with contempt. Within your walls the foreign resident is exploited, the fatherless and the widow are oppressed.
8 You have despised My holy things and profaned My Sabbaths.
9 Among you are slanderous men bent on bloodshed; within you are those who eat on the mountain shrines and commit acts of indecency.
10 In you they have uncovered the nakedness of their fathers; in you they violate women during their menstrual impurity.
11 One man commits an abomination with his neighbor’s wife; another wickedly defiles his daughter-in-law; and yet another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter.
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