Ezekiel 22:9

9 Men backbiters were in thee, to shed out blood, and eat on hills in thee (and to eat on thy hills); they wrought great trespass in the midst of thee.

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 They punished with wrongs [the] father and (the) mother in thee, they challenged falsely a comeling in the midst of thee, they made sorry a fatherless child, and a widow at thee. (They treated wrongfully the father and the mother there with thee, they oppressed a newcomer in the midst of thee, they made sorrowful a fatherless child, and a widow there with thee.)
8 Ye despised my saintuaries, and ye defouled my sabbaths. (Ye despised my sanctuaries, and ye defiled my sabbaths.)
9 Men backbiters were in thee, to shed out blood, and eat on hills in thee (and to eat on thy hills); they wrought great trespass in the midst of thee.
10 They uncovered the shamefuller things of the father[s] in thee, they made low in thee the uncleanness of a woman in unclean blood.
11 And each man wrought abomination against the wife of his neighbour, and the father of the husband defouled his son's wife unleavefully; a brother oppressed in thee his sister, the daughter of his father. (And each man did abomination with his neighbour's wife, and the father of the husband lewdly defiled his son's wife; a brother in thee oppressed his sister, his father's daughter.)
Copyright © 2001 by Terence P. Noble. For personal use only.