Ezekiel 21:30

30 “ ‘Let the sword return to its sheath. In the place where you were created, in the land of your ancestry, I will judge you.

Ezekiel 21:30 in Other Translations

30 Shall I cause it to return into his sheath? I will judge thee in the place where thou wast created, in the land of thy nativity.

30 Return it to its sheath. In the place where you were created, in the land of your origin, I will judge you.

30 “Now return the sword to its sheath, for in your own country, the land of your birth, I will pass judgment upon you.

30 Return the sword to the sheath! I'll judge you in your home country, in the land where you grew up.

30 Return [it] to its sheath! I will judge you in the place where you were created, in the land of your origin.

Ezekiel 21:30 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 21:30

Shall I cause it to return into his sheath?
&c.] The drawn and furbished sword of the Chaldeans? no, I will not; it shall never return or be put up until the Ammonites are utterly consumed. Some read these words in the imperative, as the Targum,

``return the sword to its sheath;''

so the Vulgate Latin version, "return to thy sheath"; and so may be considered as a direction to the Ammonites to put up their swords, and not stand in their own defence, since it would be to no purpose; though Jerom, and Grotius after him, take the words to be an apostrophe to the drawn sword of the Chaldeans to sheath itself, having done its work upon the Jews and Ammonites; or to the Chaldeans to return to Babylon, and where they also should be punished; and so interpret all that follows of the destruction of the Babylonians by the Medes and Persians; but the first sense is best: I will judge thee in the place where thou wast created, in the land of
thy nativity;
not in the place where their father Ammon was born, which was at Zoar; but where they first became a kingdom and state, a body politic; or where the present generation of them were born; they should not be carried out of their own land, but destroyed in it.

Ezekiel 21:30 In-Context

28 “And you, son of man, prophesy and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says about the Ammonites and their insults: “ ‘A sword, a sword, drawn for the slaughter, polished to consume and to flash like lightning!

29 Despite false visions concerning you and lying divinations about you, it will be laid on the necks of the wicked who are to be slain, whose day has come, whose time of punishment has reached its climax.

30 “ ‘Let the sword return to its sheath. In the place where you were created, in the land of your ancestry, I will judge you.

31 I will pour out my wrath on you and breathe out my fiery anger against you; I will deliver you into the hands of brutal men, men skilled in destruction.

32 You will be fuel for the fire, your blood will be shed in your land, you will be remembered no more; for I the LORD have spoken.’ ”

Cross References

• 1. ver 5; Jeremiah 47:6
• 2. S Ezekiel 16:3