Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 13:20

Wherefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I [am] against your pillows, wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make [them] fly, and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, [even] the souls that ye hunt to make [them] fly.

Verse 20. The souls that ye hunt to make them fly.] lephorechoth, into the flower gardens, says Parkhurst. These false prophetesses decoyed men into these gardens, where probably some impure rites of worship were performed, as in that of Asherah or Venus. See Parkhurst under .

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

I am against (the same phrase Eze 13:8)

your pillows; the rite, and its signification too.

There hunt the souls; either at Jerusalem, or wherever you give out answers.

To make them fly: in this sense the word is no where else used, and thus used here renders the interpretation obscure. Elsewhere it is, to bud, as Num 17:8; Eze 7:10; to blossom, Isa 27:6; to spring up as a flower or vine, Psa 92:7; Son 6:11; to grow, as Hos 14:8. Thus the sense is obvious; by these lying ceremonies thus applied you promise a flourishing, growing state to all inquirers, and this is, the net with which you hunt souls. It is possible these prophetesses might bring their deceived ones into pleasant gardens, and (if well paid for it) entertain with all the pleasures of flowers and fruits; and might not these prophetesses be the priests of Flora, and seduce young, fair, wanton ones to the idolatry and brutish pleasures of the Floralia?

I will tear them, with some violence and suddenness, that may express an indignation; as, 2Ki 5:7, when the king of Israel rent his clothes at the hearing the letter of Benhadad king of Syria, so in wrath will God suddenly tear your enchanting and divining habits.

From your arms; either from the arms of such as put them on when they consulted with these seducers; or may be the seducers might ordinarily wear them, to be known what they were.

Will let the souls go: you held the souls of those that heard you as captives, or as bewitched with your enchantments and pleasures; but I will set them free, some I will enlighten to discover your frauds, others I will undeceive by sending them into captivity.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

20. I am against your pillowsthatis, against your lying ceremonial tricks by which ye cheat thepeople.

to make them flynamely,into their snares, as fowlers disturb birds so as to be suddenlycaught in the net spread for them. “Fly” is peculiarlyappropriate as to those lofty spiritual flights to which theypretended to raise their dupes when they veiled their heads withkerchiefs and made them rest on luxurious arm-cushions (Eze13:18).

let . . . souls go“Yemake them fly” in order to destroy them; “I will let themgo” in order to save them (Psa 91:3;Pro 6:5; Hos 9:8).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Wherefore thus saith the Lord God, behold, I [am] against your pillows,…. Not only had an abhorrence of them, but was determined to destroy them, detect their fallacies, and expose the folly of such actions, and them to shame and contempt:

wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make [them] fly; to the places where they prophesied; into the toils and nets they spread for them, in order to catch them with their divinations and prophecies, and make a gain of them: or, “into the gardens”, or “groves” o; there to commit idolatry, Isa 65:3;

and I will tear them from your arms; by which it seems that those pillows were not only put under the arms of those that came to inquire of these female prophets or fortune tellers; but they put them under their own arms, and lay upon them as if they were asleep, and in a trance or ecstasy; and so the kerchiefs or veils were upon their heads, which covered their faces, to show that they were quite retired from the world, and wholly attentive to the visions and revelations they pretended were made them by the Lord; and which they gave out, in this superstitious way, to the credulous people that flocked about them:

and will let the souls go, [even] the souls that ye hunt to make [them] fly; which were captivated with their superstitions; drawn into their nets and snares; decoyed into the gardens, where they were prevailed upon to sacrifice to idols, and were taken with their soothsaying and lying divinations; these the Lord promises to break the snare for them, and set them at liberty, and preserve them from that ruin and destruction they were ready to come into; see Ps 124:7.

o “in floralia”, Junius Tremellius, Polanus, Starckius “in floridis hortis”, Piscator.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Punishment of the False Prophetesses

Eze 13:20. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will deal with your coverings with which ye catch, I will let the souls fly; and I will tear them away from your arms, and set the souls free, which ye catch, the souls to fly. Eze 13:21. And I will tear your caps in pieces, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall no more become a prey in your hands; and ye shall learn that I am Jehovah. Eze 13:22. Because ye grieve the heart of the righteous with lying, when I have not pained him; and strengthen the hands of the wicked, so that he does not turn from his evil way, to preserve his life. Eze 13:23. Therefore ye shall no more see vanity, and no longer practise soothsaying: and I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye shall learn that I am Jehovah. – The threat of judgment is closely connected with the reproof of their sins. Eze 13:20 and Eze 13:21 correspond to the reproof in Eze 13:18, and Eze 13:22 and Eze 13:23 to that in Eze 13:19. In the first place, the Lord will tear in pieces the coverings and caps, i.e., the tissue of lies woven by the false prophetesses, and rescue the people from their snares (Eze 13:20 and Eze 13:21); and, secondly, He will entirely put an end to the pernicious conduct of the persons addressed (Eze 13:22 and Eze 13:23). The words from to ( Eze 13:20), when taken as one clause, as they generally are, offer insuperable difficulties, since it is impossible to get any satisfactory meaning from , and will not fit in. Whether we understand by k e sathoth coverings or cushions, the connection of with ( where ye catch the souls), which the majority of commentators prefer, is untenable; for coverings and cushions were not the places where the souls were caught, but could only be the means employed for catching them. Instead of we should expect or ; and Hitzig proposes to amend it in this way. Still less admissible is the proposal to take as referring to Jerusalem (“wherewith ye catch souls there ”); as would not only contain a perfectly superfluous definition of locality, but would introduce a limitation altogether at variance with the context. It is not affirmed either of the prophets or of the prophetesses that they lived and prophesied in Jerusalem alone. In Eze 13:2 and Eze 13:17 reference is made in the most general terms to the prophets of Israel and the daughters of thy people; and in Eze 13:16 it is simply stated that the false prophets prophesied peace to Jerusalem when there was no peace at all. Consequently we must regard the attempt to find in an allusion to Jerusalem (cf. Eze 13:16) as a mere loophole, which betrays an utter inability to get any satisfactory sense for the word. Moreover, if we construe the words in this manner, is also incomprehensible. Commentators have for the most part admitted that taht is used here in the Aramaean sense of volare, to fly. In the second half of the verse there is no doubt about its having this meaning. For is used in Deu 22:7 for liberating a bird, or letting it fly; and the combination is supported by the expression in Exo 21:26, while the comparison of souls to birds is sustained by Psa 11:1 and Psa 124:7. Hence the true meaning of the whole passage … is, I send away (set free) the souls, which ye have caught, as flying ones, i.e., so that they shall be able to fly away at liberty. And in the first half also we must not adopt a different rendering for , since is also connected with it there.

But if the words in question are combined into one clause in the first hemistich, they will give us a sense which is obviously wrong, viz., “wherewith ye catch the souls to let them fly.” As the impossibility of adopting this rendering has been clearly seen, the attempt has been made to cloak over the difficulty by means of paraphrases. Ewald, for example, renders in both cases “as if they were birds of passage;” but in the first instance he applies it to birds of passage, for which nets are spread for the purpose of catching them; and in the second, to birds of passage which are set at liberty. Thus, strictly speaking, he understands the first as signifying the catching of birds; and the second, letting them fly: an explanation which refutes itself, as parach , to fly, cannot mean “to catch” as well. The rendering adopted by Kimchi, Rosenmller, and others, who translate ut advolent ad vos in the first hemistich, and ut avolent in the second, is no better. And the difficulty is not removed by resorting to the dialects, as Hvernick, for the purpose of forcing upon the meaning dissoluteness of licentiousness, for which there is no authority in the Hebrew language itself. If, therefore, it is impossible to obtain any satisfactory meaning from the existing text, it cannot be correct; and no other course is open to us than to alter the unsuitable into , and divide the words from to into two clauses, as we have done in our translation above. There is no necessity to supply anything to the relative , as is construed with a double accusative (e.g., Mic 7:2, , to catch with a net), and the object to , viz., the souls, can easily be supplied from the next clause. , as a participle, can either be connected with , “behold, I make,” or taken as introducing an explanatory clause: “making the souls into flying ones,” i.e., so that they are able to fly ( , Gen 12:2, etc.). The two clauses of the first hemistich would then exactly correspond to the two clauses of the second half of the verse. is explanatory of , I will tear off the coverings from their arms. These words do not require the assumption that the prophetesses wore the on their arms, but may be fully explained from the supposition that the persons in question prepared them with their own hands. ‘ corresponds to ‘ ; and is governed by . The insertion of is to be accounted for from the copious nature of Ezekiel’s style; at the same time, it is not merely a repetition of , which is separated from by the relative clause ‘ , but as the unusual plural form shows, is intended as a practical explanation of the fact, that the souls, while compared to birds, are regarded as living beings, which is the meaning borne by in other passages. The omission of the article after may be explained, however, from the fact that the souls had been more precisely defined just before; just as, for example, in 1Sa 24:6; 2Sa 18:18, where the more precise definition follows immediately afterwards (cf. Ewald, 277 a, p. 683). – The same thing is said in Eze 13:21, with regard to the caps, as has already been said of the coverings in Eze 13:20. God will tear these in pieces also, to deliver His people from the power of the lying prophetesses. In what way God will do this is explained in Eze 13:22 and Eze 13:23, namely, not only by putting their lying prophecies to shame through His judgment, but by putting an end to soothsaying altogether, and exterminating the false prophetesses by making them an object of ridicule and shame. The reason for this threat is given in Eze 13:22, where a further description is given of the disgraceful conduct of these persons; and here the disgracefulness of their conduct is exhibited in literal terms and without any figure. They do harm to the righteous and good, and strengthen the hands of the wicked. , Hiphil of , in Syriac, to use harshly or depress; so here in the Hiphil, connected with , to afflict the heart. is used adverbially: with lying, or in a lying manner; namely, by predicting misfortune and divine punishments, with which they threatened the godly, who would not acquiesce in their conduct; whereas, on the contrary, they predicted prosperity and peace to the ungodly, who were willing to be ensnared by them, and thus strengthened them in their evil ways. For this God would put them to shame through His judgments, which would make their deceptions manifest, and their soothsaying loathsome.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

Here Ezekiel begins to threaten those women with what would shortly happen, namely, that God would not only render them contemptible, but also ridiculous, before the whole people, that their delusions and impostures might sufficiently appear. This is the Prophet’s intention, as we shall afterwards see; but the Prophet is verbose in this denunciation. God therefore says, that he is an enemy to those cushions, that is, to those false ceremonies which were like cloaks to deceive miserable men: hence he says, that those souls were a prey. He uses the comparison from hunting: ye have hunted, says he, the souls of my people. And this is the meaning of the word used immediately afterwards for flying. This word פרח, pherech, signifies also “to flourish;” but I here willingly subscribe to the opinion of all who interpret it to fly: unless the paraphrast is right in translating it “to perish;” for he thought the Prophet was speaking metaphorically, as if he meant that those souls were ensnared, and so vanished away. But I do not think this quite suitable, since it is more probable that the Prophet is speaking of their lofty speculations. For we know that false prophets boasted in this artifice, when they either raise, or pretend they raise, men’s minds aloft, and curious men desire this only; and hence it happens that the doctrines of the Law and the Gospel are insipid to them, because subtleties alone delight them. And we see at this day how many embrace the follies of Dionysius (27) about the celestial hierarchy, who treat all the prophets, and even Christ himself, as of no value. Hence the Prophet says, that these women hunted the souls of the people, because they had snares prepared in which they entangled all who were subject to their impostures and fallacies. Yet, in my opinion, he also alludes to birds. When, therefore, he has said that all impostures were Satan’s method of hunting souls, he now adds obliquely another simile, that all false prophecies are so many allurements to catch birds. The sense of the passage now appears clear. Behold, therefore, says he, God will arise against your cushions, by which you have hunted birds to make them fly; that is, when you promised wonderful revelations those wretched dupes whom their own curiosity urged on were deceived by such enticements. Afterwards he adds, I will free them from your arms, and I will let go the souls which you have hunted to make them fly, says he. He repeats again what we have already said about deep speculations, by the sweetness of which false prophets are accustomed to entice all fools who cannot be content with true doctrine, nor be wise with sobriety. Meanwhile it is by no means doubtful that God here speaks peculiarly of his elect, who were left among the people. For although they were but few, God was unwilling for them to perish: and for this reason he announces that he would be their avenger, and undeceive them, whether they had been already entrapped, or were just surrounded by these allurements. Since, then, he uses the same word, we gather from this that the phrase cannot be used indiscriminately. For God suffers many to perish, as he says by the Prophet Zechariah, “Let what perishes perish,” (Zec 9:9); but meanwhile he rescued a small number as the remnant of his choice, as Paul says. (Rom 11:5.)

(27) Dionysius was a Carthusian, a philosopher imbued with the mystic doctrines of Plato, on whose ‘writings he wrote an elaborate comment. Calvin refers to his attempt to combine the scholastic theology of his day with the mystical fancies of Platonism. He was commonly called a Ryckel, and wrote A.D. 1471. See Gieseler’s Eccl. Hist., edited in English by Francis Cuningham, volume 3

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

20. To make them fly Rather, as birds (Gesenius, Smend). The figure of the net is still being carried out.

That ye hunt to make them fly This passage is very corrupt, but by a slight change the text may read, “that ye hunt go free” (Cornill, Driver).

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

“Wherefore thus says the Lord Yahweh, ‘Behold I am against your armbands (wristbands) with which you hunt the people (nephesh – living person) as birds (or ‘as becoming flying ones’), and I will tear them from your arms, and I will let the people go, even the people that you hunt as birds. Your shrouds will I also tear, and deliver my people out of your hand, and they will no more be in your hand to be hunted, and you will know that I am Yahweh.”

It is clear from this that the armbands and shrouds were seen as binding people by spells, not because of their own power but because of the power given by the superstitions of the people who believed their lies. The hunting as birds again suggests astral travel, or something similar. Thus when God’s judgment came their armbands and shrouds would be torn from them. They would no longer be able to harm others. God’s people would no longer be in their hands or subject to their suggestive powers. Thus would all see that Yahweh was triumphant over them. The fact of Yahweh’s all-powerful nature would be revealed.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Eze 13:20 Wherefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I [am] against your pillows, wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make [them] fly, and I will tear them from your arms, and will let the souls go, [even] the souls that ye hunt to make [them] fly.

Ver. 20. Behold, I am against your pillows. ] God’s hatred against sin is such that he hateth anything that is made use of about it. The serpent was cursed because he had been abused by the devil.

To make them fly. ] High pitches, : as our high attainers, with their new truths and strange speculations, do now pretend to do. Such were the Swenkfeldians – Stinkfeldians, Luther called them, for their ill savour. Swenkfeldius himself bewitched many with those lofty terms, which were much in his mouth, of illumination, revelation, deification, the inward and spiritual man, &c. a

a Scultet. Annal.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)