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Ezekiel 14:17

“Or if I bring a sword on that land, and say, ‘Sword, go through the land; so that I cut off from it man and animal;’

World English Bible · Public Domain

Parallel Translations

  • WEB World English Bible

    “Or if I bring a sword on that land, and say, ‘Sword, go through the land; so that I cut off from it man and animal;’

  • KJV King James Version

    Or if I bring a sword upon that land, and say, Sword, go through the land; so that I cut off man and beast from it:

  • JPS JPS Tanakh (1917)

    Or if I bring a sword upon that land, and say: Let the sword go through the land, so that I cut off from it man and beast;

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Cross-references (14)

Passages linked to Ezekiel 14:17 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.

  • Leviticus 26:25 I will bring a sword upon you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant. You will be gathered together within your cities, and I will send the pestilence among you. You will be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
  • Ezekiel 21:3-4 Tell the land of Israel, ‘Yahweh says: “Behold, I am against you, and will draw my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off from you the righteous and the wicked. Seeing then that I will cut off from you the righteous and the wicked, therefore my sword will go out of its sheath against all flesh from the south to the north.
  • Ezekiel 5:12 A third part of you will die with the pestilence, and they will be consumed with famine within you. A third part will fall by the sword around you. A third part I will scatter to all the winds, and will draw out a sword after them.
  • Zephaniah 1:3 I will sweep away man and animal. I will sweep away the birds of the sky, the fish of the sea, and the heaps of rubble with the wicked. I will cut off man from the surface of the earth, says Yahweh.
  • Jeremiah 47:6 “ ‘You sword of Yahweh, how long will it be before you are quiet? Put yourself back into your scabbard; rest, and be still.’
  • Ezekiel 14:13 “Son of man, when a land sins against me by committing a trespass, and I stretch out my hand on it, and break the staff of its bread, and send famine on it, and cut off from it man and animal;
  • Ezekiel 25:13 therefore the Lord Yahweh says, “I will stretch out my hand on Edom, and will cut off man and animal from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman. They will fall by the sword even to Dedan.
  • Jeremiah 25:9 behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,” says Yahweh, “and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against its inhabitants, and against all these nations around. I will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and a hissing, and perpetual desolations.
  • Jeremiah 33:12 Yahweh of Armies says: “Yet again there will be in this place, which is waste, without man and without animal, and in all its cities, a habitation of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down.
  • Ezekiel 5:17 I will send on you famine and evil animals, and they will bereave you. Pestilence and blood will pass through you. I will bring the sword on you. I, Yahweh, have spoken it.’ ”
  • Ezekiel 21:9-15 “Son of man, prophesy, and say, ‘Yahweh says: “A sword! A sword! It is sharpened, and also polished. It is sharpened that it may make a slaughter. It is polished that it may be as lightning. Should we then make mirth? The rod of my son condemns every tree. It is given to be polished, that it may be handled. The sword is sharpened. Yes, it is polished to give it into the hand of the killer.” ’ Cry and wail, son of man; for it is on my people. It is on all the princes of Israel. They are delivered over to the sword with my people. Therefore beat your thigh. “For there is a trial. What if even the rod that condemns will be no more?” says the Lord Yahweh. “You therefore, son of man, prophesy, and strike your hands together. Let the sword be doubled the third time, the sword of the fatally wounded. It is the sword of the great one who is fatally wounded, which enters into their rooms. I have set the threatening sword against all their gates, that their heart may melt, and their stumblings be multiplied. Ah! It is made as lightning. It is pointed for slaughter.
  • Ezekiel 29:8 “ ‘Therefore the Lord Yahweh says: “Behold, I will bring a sword on you, and will cut off man and animal from you.
  • Ezekiel 38:21-22 I will call for a sword against him to all my mountains,” says the Lord Yahweh. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother. I will enter into judgment with him with pestilence and with blood. I will rain on him, and on his hordes, and on the many peoples who are with him, an overflowing shower, with great hailstones, fire, and sulfur.
  • Hosea 4:3 Therefore the land will mourn, and everyone who dwells in it will waste away, with all living things in her, even the animals of the field and the birds of the sky, yes, the fish of the sea also die.

Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)

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Explain this verse (8 sources)

Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.

John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain The Prophet now descends to the third kind of…

The Prophet now descends to the third kind of punishment. Hence God says, if he send a sword upon a land, he cannot be entreated so as not to consume it utterly, neither will he admit any man’s intercession, although the most holy dwell there, namely, Job, Noah, and Daniel. But the phrase used must be marked: if I shall say to the sword, pass through to exterminate and blot out the whole land, or cut off from it, both man and beast, because we here gather the great power of God’s secret government. For we think that wars are stirred up at random: and as men are in agitation, so also we imagine war to be nothing but confusion and turbulence. But God governs even wars by his inestimable wisdom, and also men and their swords: men are enraged, their swords fly about in their hands, and they seem to go hither and thither at random by blind impulse. But God here announces that he permits swords to pass through a land, and to destroy both men and cattle. If he had said, after the language used in many places, that he would arm men, it would not have been very wonderful: for everywhere throughout the Prophets he calls the Chaldaeans and Assyrians executors of his judgment. Hence that sentence of Jeremiah, Cursed is he who has done God’s work negligently. (Jeremiah 48:10.) But that work of God was the slaughter at Jerusalem. So also Nebuchadnezzar is called God’s servant and minister when he laid waste Egypt, and God promises him the reward of his labor. (Ezekiel 29:20.) So here Ezekiel proceeds further, not only that the hands of men are directed as God wishes, but also that their swords listen to his secret command, so that they neither pass by nor strike any man or animal except as far as God pleases. But if God so commands the swords, let us know that whenever men rise up against us, that our patience is exercised and our sins chastised in this way: and that the impious are God’s agents: and let us determine that we shall never profit by noise and resistance, since there is but one remedy, to humble ourselves under God’s strong hand. Now the fourth kind of punishment follows —

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Eze 14:17 Or [if] I bring a sword upon…
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain He is Lord of hosts, and hath the militia…
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Though these three men were in it,.... Before mentioned:
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain That land - What land soever it be.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 17-19. See Eze_5:12-17; Eze_21:3; Eze_38:21-22; Lev_26:22-26.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 17. say, Sword, go through] This rendering assumes a…
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 if I bring a sword against that land

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