Ezekielchapter 25
17 verses · Ezekiel · 593 to 571 BC · The Prophets
I will make Rabbah a pasture for camels, and Ammon a resting place for sheep. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’
Introduction
Ezekiel, The Prophets, Ezekiel Overview.
Ezekiel was a priest living among the exiles in Babylonia when news came of how Judah's neighbours had behaved at her fall. This chapter opens the long section of the book that speaks to the nations, and it begins with the four peoples closest to home. They were kin by blood and neighbours by border, and each had a reaction of its own to the ruin of Jerusalem. Listen for the one charge each is given and the matching sentence that answers it. Listen too for the refrain that closes every oracle, because it tells the reader what all of God's judgments are for.
Context
- Who
- Exiles who had just learned how their cousins and neighbours reacted to the disaster
- What
- Four short oracles against Ammon, Moab, Edom and Philistia, each naming a sin against Judah and the judgment that answers it.
- Where
- Spoken in the exile settlement at Tel Abib in Babylonia and aimed at the four lands bordering Judah to the east, the south and the west.
- When
- About 587 to 585 BC, around the fall of Jerusalem, in the Babylonian exile.
- Why
- To show the exiles that God saw how their neighbours treated Judah in her fall and that every nation stands under His rule.
Historical context
These four were not distant empires. They were the countries over the next ridge, all within a few days' walk of Jerusalem, and Israel had been trading, fighting and intermarrying with them for six hundred years. Ammon and Moab were reckoned in Genesis as descendants of Lot, Abraham's nephew, family, in the long memory of that world.
Show the rest of the historical context, 3 more paragraphs
Ammon's capital was Rabbah, on the edge of the eastern desert where the farmland runs out. The threat that it will become a pasture for camels and a resting place for flocks is precise geography: when a caravan city loses its wall and its trade, the desert tribes graze it. Those men of the east are the nomadic groups who moved between the settled land and the steppe according to the season.
The specific charge against Ammon is a gesture: you clapped your hands and stamped your feet and rejoiced with all the malice of your heart against the land of Israel. Ammon did more than gloat. Jeremiah records that the Ammonite king sponsored the assassination of Gedaliah, the governor Babylon installed after the fall, which destroyed the last chance of an orderly life in the land.
Moab's charge is a sentence, not a gesture: behold, the house of Judah is like all the other nations. That is, there was nothing special about them after all, their God was no different. Edom's is revenge taken personally, and Philistia's is old, settled hatred acted on with an everlasting grudge. Four neighbours, four different ways of kicking a country while it is down.
Significance
For a community that had just lost everything, the reaction of the neighbours was its own wound. This chapter says God heard the clapping.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
It also does something structural that the exiles needed. Judgment did not stop at Jerusalem. The same God who had just used Babylon on His own people is holding every nation on that map to account, which means the world is under one government and not simply under Babylon's.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
The site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for this lane, printed no weekly portion and no Haftarah from this chapter, and no festival reading for the book. That table carries the Haftarah of each of the fifty-four weekly portions and the books read whole at the feasts, and it carries nothing for the special Sabbaths or the fast days. This card therefore names no public reading of the chapter and leaves that question to a source that holds those readings.
The corpus joins the chapter to the weeks of the Torah portions through the works arranged by portion. Under the eleventh verse it carries Midrash Tanchuma, Tetzaveh 1:4. Under the fourteenth verse it carries Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayechi 19 and Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayishlach 47.
How it is read
Rashi is the one commentator on this chapter whose English the corpus carries, quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. Every quotation of it is held to fifty words or fewer because the translation is modern.
The chapter turns from Jerusalem to her neighbours, and Rashi reads each oracle through the joy those peoples took in her fall. The cry of Ammon he calls "An expression of joy" (Rashi on Ezekiel 25:3:1). At the clapping and stamping of the sixth verse he meets a difficulty, since the same gestures stood for mourning at the start of the book. He answers that such gestures serve both, "but the idea behind them is not the same". He gives flutes for a bride and for the dead as the parallel (Rashi on Ezekiel 25:6:1).
Moab's saying that Judah is like all the nations draws the longest note. By the plain sense, the love of the Holy One "has been annulled from them, and they are rejected", given to Nebuchadnezzar like the other nations. Rashi then reports the Midrash Aggadah, citing Lamentations Rabbah, Proem 9. The enemies entered the Temple, peeled off the pictures of the cherubim and carried them out to mock the Jews "who were showing themselves as decent people" (Rashi on Ezekiel 25:8:1). The two readings stand in the one note.
Edom is to be repaid by Israel's own hand, and Rashi reads the people as agents: "They will be My agents to wreak My vengeance" (Rashi on Ezekiel 25:14:1). The Philistines acted "With hatred and with rigor, like a man who wreaks vengeance upon his enemy" (Rashi on Ezekiel 25:15:1). At the Cherethites he sets the Targum's reading, a nation deserving to be cut off, beside his own. Scripture gives the name to the Philistines alone, so "it appears to me that there is a region of Philistia called Chereth". He finds the same name in the raid on Ziklag in 1 Samuel 30:14 (Rashi on Ezekiel 25:16:1).
The corpus carries twelve further notes on this chapter without an English text, each of them marked linked because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. They stand cited and unquoted at Radak on Ezekiel 25:1:1, 25:2:1, 25:4:1, 25:5:1, 25:7:1, 25:8:1, 25:11:1, 25:12:1 and 25:17:1 and at Metzudat David on Ezekiel 25:2:1, 25:5:1 and 25:7:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries thirty-five rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. On the eighth verse it holds Eikhah Rabbah, Petichta 9 and Pesikta DeRav Kahana 19:1. On the tenth verse it holds Bereshit Rabbah 41:3, Eikhah Rabbah 1:38 and Midrash Lekach Tov, Genesis 13:5:1. It also holds Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 70:1 there. On the eleventh verse it holds Midrash Lekach Tov on Lamentations 1:10:1 and Midrash Tanchuma, Tetzaveh 1:4. On the twelfth verse it holds Otzar Midrashim, Midrashim on Missing and Extra Letters 1:39.
On the thirteenth verse it holds Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 9:4, Midrash Sekhel Tov, Shemot 15:12:1 and Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 251:3. On the fourteenth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 2:13, Bereshit Rabbah 6:5 and Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayechi 19. It also holds Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayishlach 47, Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Gittin 5:3 and Ein Yaakov, Gittin 5:6 there. It also holds Gittin 56a:7, Midrash Aggadah, Genesis 22:17:3 and Midrash Lekach Tov, Leviticus 8:36:3 there. It also holds Midrash Lekach Tov, Numbers 24:17:1, Midrash Tehillim 18:28 and Otzar Midrashim, Chapter of Rabbi Yoshiahu 1:5 there. It also holds Otzar Midrashim, Chapter of Rabbi Yoshiahu 1:6 there. It also holds Otzar Midrashim, Midrashim of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Prayer of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 7 there. It also holds Otzar Midrashim, Midrashim on The Messiah, Aggadah on The Messiah 4, Otzar Midrashim, Pesikta, Pesikta Chadata 28 and Pesikta Rabbati 11:1 there. It also holds Ruth Rabbah (Lerner) 5:9:1, Ruth Rabbah 5:9 and Vayikra Rabbah 34:9 there. It also holds Vayikra Rabbah 35:8 there. On the sixteenth verse it holds Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 15:12. On the twenty-first verse it holds Sifra, Bechukotai, Chapter 5 2. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Ezekiel 25:3:1 to 25:16:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Radak, Radak on Ezekiel 25:1:1, 25:2:1, 25:4:1, 25:5:1, 25:7:1, 25:8:1, 25:11:1, 25:12:1 and 25:17:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; Metzudat David, Metzudat David on Ezekiel 25:2:1, 25:5:1 and 25:7:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/ezekiel/25.json, the 35 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for this chapter and printing no weekly portion, no Haftarah and no festival reading.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
Ammon clapped when the sanctuary fell
Ezekiel 25:1-3
the word of the LORD came to me: The Lord sends Ezekiel to face the Ammonites directly, and the charge is glee. They said Aha against the sanctuary when it was profaned, against the land of Israel when it was desolate, and against the house of Judah. Henry reads the sin as malice rejoicing in a neighbor's calamity.
Ezekiel 25:1
“It was a distinct part of scriptural prophecy to address pagan nations. In Isaiah Isa. 13–19, Jeremiah Jer. 46–51, and here Ezek. 25–32, one section is specially devoted to a collection of such prophecies. Every such prediction had the general purpose of exhibiting the conflict ever waging between the servants of God and the powers of the world, the struggle in which the Church of Christ has still to wrestle against her foes Eph 6:12, but in which she will surely prevail. It was a distinct part of scriptural prophecy to address pagan nations.”
set your face against the Ammonites: The Ammonites descended from Lot through his younger daughter, and their land lay east of the Jordan. In chapter 21 the king of Babylon stood at a fork in the road, choosing between Rabbah and Jerusalem. Jerusalem fell first, and Ammon gloated.
Ezekiel 25:2
“Son of man, set thy face against the Ammonites,.... Who were of the posterity of Lot, implacable enemies of the Jews; who hated their religion, and envied their wealth and happiness; against these the prophet is bid to "set his face"; to look that way where they lived, and to put on a frowning countenance, and a menacing aspect: "strengthen thy face", as the Septuagint and Arabic versions render it; look boldly at them: and prophesy against them; deliver out the following prophecy concerning them.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 25:2
“Set thy face against the Ammonites - We have already seen, Eze 21:19, etc., that when Nebuchadnezzar left Babylon he was in doubt whether he should besiege Riblath, the capital of the Ammonites, or Jerusalem, the capital of the Jews, first: and having used his divination. he was determined, by the result, to attack Jerusalem the first. He did so and the Ammonites, seeing the success of his arms, made friends with him, and exulted in the ruin of the Jews. God resents this, and predicts their downfall with that of Edom, Moab, and the Philistines.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
when My sanctuary was profaned: The LORD names His sanctuary first, ahead of the land and the people. Nebuzaradan burned the temple in 586 BC, as 2 Kings 25:9 records, and Ammon's joy fell on the house where the LORD set His name. Gill reads the insult as aimed at God through His people.
Ezekiel 25:3
“In Jehoshaphat's time, when the eighty-third Psalm was written (Ps 83:4, 7, 8, 12, "Ammon . . . holpen the children of Lot," who were, therefore, the leaders of the unholy conspiracy, "Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession"), we see the same profane spirit.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 25:3
“Aha - When thou shouldest have pitied, thou didst proudly insult over my people. The men of the east - The Arabians, associates of Nebuchadnezzar, who recompensed their service, with giving them this country when it was conquered, as it was five years after the desolation of Jerusalem. Rabbah - The royal city, called since Philadelphia from the king of Egypt who built it.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Ezekiel 25:4-5
give you as a possession to the people of the East: The sentence answers the taunt with a reversal: Ammon's land is delivered to the men of the east, likely the Bedouin tribes of the desert. Rabbah, Ammon's capital, becomes a stable for camels. Gill notes the recognition formula closing the sentence, ye shall know that I am the Lord.
Ezekiel 25:4
“Will deliver thee to the men of the east - Probably the Scenite Arabs, Ishmaelites, and people of Kedar, who seized upon the provinces of the vanquished Ammonites, etc. The following description suits this people only, living on fruits, the milk of their flocks, using camels, etc. Some think the people of the east mean the Chaldeans.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Rabbah a pasture for camels: Rabbah stood on the site of modern Amman, the capital of Jordan. Jeremiah 49:2 pronounced the same end on it, a desolate mound with its villages burned. The city of Ammon becomes pasture for camels and sheep.
Ezekiel 25:5
“Rabbah--meaning "the Great," Ammon's metropolis. Under the Ptolemies it was rebuilt under the name Philadelphia; the ruins are called Amman now, but there is no dwelling inhabited.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
you clapped your hands and stomped your feet: The Lord restates the charge in bodily terms, clapped thine hands, and stamped with the feet. Keil reads the repetition as deliberate, the second oracle beat driving home that Ammon's crime was performed before whatever audience was watching. The sentence widens from Rabbah made a stable to national extinction.
Ezekiel 25:6
“He must threaten the Ammonites with utter ruin for this insolence which they were guilty of. God turns away his wrath from Israel against them, as is said, Prov. xxiv. God is jealous for his people's honour, because his own is so nearly interested in it.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 25:7
“Behold, therefore, I will stretch out mine hand upon thee,.... In just retaliation for clapping their hands against his people; and which hand of the Lord they would find to be a heavy one, and which they would not be able either to resist or bear.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 25:7
“I will cause thee to perish - Except in history, the name of the Ammonites does not now exist.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Moab said Judah is like all the other nations
Ezekiel 25:8-11
Moab and Seir join with a leveling claim, the house of Judah is like unto all the heathen. The Lord answers by naming Moab's glory, Beth-jeshimoth, Baal-meon and Kiriathaim. Fairbairn notes the closing line folds Moab into Ammon's sentence, that the Ammonites may not be remembered among the nations.
Ezekiel 25:8
“Moab and Seir do say - Seir means the Idumeans. It appears that both these, with the Ammonites, had made a league with Zedekiah, Jer 27:3, which they did not keep; and it is supposed that they even joined with the Chaldeans.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
expose the flank of Moab: The Hebrew for flank is the word for shoulder, the exposed side of a body. Its frontier cities guarded that side. Keil reads Moab as laid open once Beth-jeshimoth, Baal-meon and Kiriathaim fall, leaving the heart of the land undefended.
no longer be remembered among the nations: The people of the East are the desert tribes who raided Israel alongside Midian in Judges 6:3. One horde receives both kingdoms. Moab and Ammon both descended from Lot, and one sentence takes them together.
Ezekiel 25:10
“Unto the men of the east with the Ammonites, and I will give them in possession,.... Or, "against the Ammonites", as the Targum; that is, way should be made for the same people of the east, the Chaldeans or Arabians, that came against the Ammonites and destroyed them, to enter into the land of Moab and possess it, as they had done the land of Ammon: that the Ammonites may not be remembered among the nations: the name of that people, which is entirely lost; and Moab likewise, which underwent the same fate.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 25:10
“MAURER, as English Version, "with the Ammonites," that is, Moab, "together with the land of Ammon," is to be thrown "open to the men of the east," to enter and take possession (Jer 49:1-39).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
I will execute judgments on Moab: Moab's sentence is short, and it closes on the same recognition as Ammon's, that they will know the LORD. Isaiah 15 and 16 and Jeremiah 48 had already given long laments over Moab. Ezekiel adds one line of judgments to that earlier word.
Ezekiel 25:11
“I will execute judgments upon Moab,.... For though the Chaldeans and Arabians were the instruments of their ruin, their destruction was of the Lord; it was his hand that was upon them, and his vengeance that was executed on them, for their hard sayings against his people; for though he had spoke against them in his providence, and chastised them for their sins, yet he will not suffer others to speak against them: and they shall know that I am the Lord; that takes part with Judah, and will avenge himself of all their enemies.”
Edom's vengeance repaid by Israel's hand
Ezekiel 25:12-14
Edom acted vengefully against the house of Judah: Edom's charge is vengeance carried out, dealt against the house of Judah. The sentence stands apart from the other three: the Lord says he will lay my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people Israel. Henry connects the detail to Israel's subjugation of Edom under the Hasmonean kings.
Ezekiel 25:12
“But the Jews had a divine warrant to reign over the Edomites, for that therefore they ought not to have made reprisals; and it was the more disingenuous for them to retain the old enmity when God had particularly commanded his people to forget it. 7 , Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite. The judgments threatened against them for this sin.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
from Teman to Dedan: Teman was an Edomite district named for a grandson of Esau in Genesis 36:11. Dedan was an Arabian trading town beyond Edom's southeastern border, and Keil reads the pair as the whole extent of the land. Man and beast alike fall.
by the hand of My people Israel: Israel acts here as the LORD's instrument, measured by His anger and wrath. The vengeance belongs to Him, as Deuteronomy 32:35 states. Obadiah 18 pictures the same end, the house of Jacob a fire and the house of Esau stubble.
Ezekiel 25:14
“I will lay my vengeance upon Edom - God will not allow men to insult those whom he has cast down. His judgment is sufficient; to add more is an insult to God. By the hand of may people Israel - This was fulfilled by the Maccabees, who not only defeated them and brought them under complete subjection, but obliged them to receive circumcision, Joseph. Antiq. 50 xiii., c. 17; 1 Maccabees 5:65; 2 Maccabees 10:16.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 25:14
“But besides that there were saviours to come upon Mount Zion, who should judge the mount of Esau ( Obad. 21 ), and Israel's Redeemer comes with dyed garments from Bozrah ( Isa. lxiii. 1 ), this implies a promise that Israel should recover itself again to such a degree as to be in a capacity of curbing the insolence of its neighbours.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The Philistines' old hatred answered
Ezekiel 25:15-17
with malice of soul to destroy Judah with ancient hostility: The Philistines close the set of four with the same charge, revenge and a despiteful heart. The sentence names the Cherethims, a Philistine group elsewhere tied to David's own bodyguard in 2 Samuel 8:18. Clarke reads the chapter's four oracles as one unit closing on the recognition formula.
Ezekiel 25:15
“The Philistines occupying lands to the south of Judah were a Hamite race Gen 10:14, but of a different branch from the Canaanites. They were a powerful people never dispossessed by the Israelites Jos 13:3. They were a thorn in the side of the chosen people throughout, and joined in attacking Jerusalem in the day of her trouble.”
1 more voice on this verse
Ezekiel 25:15
“The "old hatred" refers to their continual enmity to the covenant-people. They lay along Judea on the seacoast at the opposite side from Ammon and Moab.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
cut off the Cherethites: The Hebrew plays on sound: the LORD will cut off the Cherethites, and the verb for cut off is karath while the people are Kerethim. Keil links the name with Crete, the Caphtor of Amos 9:7. The Philistines along the coast came from there.
execute great vengeance against them: Furious reproof pictures punishment delivered in the heat of wrath. Nebuchadnezzar had already sacked the Philistine city of Ashkelon in 604 BC, and the coast lay in Babylon's path. The LORD names the vengeance His own.
Ezekiel 25:17
“And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes,.... By way of retaliation for their vengeance and fury, wrath and malice, against his people; suggesting, that the judgments inflicted on them, for quantity and quality, should be very great: and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them; they shall see the hand of God in it, acknowledge his justice, and confess that their gods were idols, and that the God of Israel is the only true God.”
Keep studying
Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Carl Friedrich Keil; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible; Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel and Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible.