Ezekiel 21:30

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

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 As for you, mortal, prophesy, and say, Thus says the Lord God concerning the Ammonites, and concerning their reproach; say: A sword, a sword! Drawn for slaughter, polished to consume, to flash like lightning.

29 Offering false visions for you, divining lies for you, they place you over the necks of the vile, wicked ones— those whose day has come, the time of final punishment.

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

31 I will pour out my indignation upon you, with the fire of my wrath I will blow upon you. I will deliver you into brutish hands, those skillful to destroy.

32 You shall be fuel for the fire, your blood shall enter the earth; you shall be remembered no more, for I the Lord have spoken.