Ezekiel 7:5
This is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Disaster! An unprecedented disaster—behold, it is coming!
BSB
ASV
Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: An evil, an only evil; behold, it cometh.
KJV
Thus saith the Lord God; An evil, an only evil, behold, is come.
(Verse 5, 6) This is what the Lord God says: A single affliction, behold, is coming: the end is coming, the end is coming. He has awakened against you, behold, he is coming. Constriction is coming upon you, you who dwell in the land. These are not found in the Septuagint, but they have been added in their edition of Theodotion's translation under asterisks. However, we will follow the Hebrew.
Thus saith the Lord God,.... Here should be a stop, a colon, requiring attention to what follows, it being something awful and terrible: an evil, an only evil, behold, it cometh; meaning the destruction of the city and temple; which, though but one, was such an one as was never known before nor was there any like it. The Targum is, "evil after evil, lo, it cometh;'' one evil after another; when one evil is gone, another comes, as in Eze 7:26. The Syriac version is, "behold, evil for evil comes"; the evil of punishment for the evil of sin.
It is to the impenitent an evil, an only evil; it hardens their hearts and irritates their corruptions, whereas there were those to whom it was sanctified by the grace of God and made a means of much good; they were sent into Babylon for their good, Jer. xxiv. The wicked have the dregs of that cup to drink which to the righteous is full of mixtures of mercy, Ps. lxxv.
An evil, an only evil - The great, the sovereign, the last exterminating evil, is come: the sword, the pestilence, the famine, and the captivity. Many MSS. read אחר achar, after. So evil cometh after evil; one instantly succeeds another.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Nahum 1:9Whatever you plot against the LORD, He will bring to an end. Affliction will not rise up a second time.
leads to
Though they intend You harm, the schemes they devise will not prevail.
There is no wisdom, no understanding, no counsel that can prevail against the LORD.
The LORD frustrates the plans of the nations; He thwarts the devices of the peoples.
We tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God; and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
Through
Amos 3:2“Only you have I known from all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”
leads to
For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His prized possession out of all peoples on the face of…
Now if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, you will be My treasured possession out of all the nations—for the whole earth is Mine.
Yet the LORD has set His affection on your fathers and loved them. And He has chosen you, their descendants after them, above all the peoples, even to this day.