Ezekiel 5:10
A plain-spoken deep dive on this verse. Read the chapter →
As a result, fathers among you will eat their sons, and sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments against you and scatter all your remnant to every wind.’
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
In this chapter we have a further, and no less terrible, denunciation of the judgments of God, which were coming with all speed and force upon the Jewish nation, which would utterly ruin it; for when God judges he will overcome. This destruction of Judah and Jerusalem is here, I. Represented by a sign, the cutting, and burning, and scattering of hair (Eze 5:1-4). II. That sign is expounded, and applied to Jerusalem. 1. Sin is charged upon Jerusalem as the cause of this desolation - contempt of God's law (Eze 5:5-7) and profanation of his sanctuary (Eze 5:11). 2 Wrath is threatened, great wrath (Eze 5:8-10), a variety of miseries (Eze 5:12, Eze 5:16, Eze 5:17), such as should be their reproach and ruin (Eze 5:13-15).
Open source ↗5:10 Parents will eat their own children: This horrific prospect was an anticipated consequence of famine (see 2 Kgs 6:26-30), and one of the curses of disobedience (see Lev 26:29).
Open source ↗Original language
The Hebrew and Greek words behind this passage, with Strong's numbers — from openscriptures (CC BY-SA).
Cross-references
Other passages the community most often connects to this one. Tap to read.
“Get up! Get up! Flee from the land of the north,” declares the LORD, “for I have scattered you like the four winds of heaven,” declares the LORD.
Then the LORD will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.
You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.
I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and distress inflicted on them by their enemies who seek their lives.’
And I will scatter to every wind all the attendants around him and all his troops, and I will draw a sword to chase after them.
When the days of the siege have ended, you are to burn up a third of the hair inside the city; you are also to take a third and slash it with the sword all around the city; and you are to scatter a third to the wind. For I will unleash a sword behind them.
I dispersed them among the nations, and they were scattered throughout the lands. I judged them according to their ways and deeds.
You have given us up as sheep to be devoured; You have scattered us among the nations.
Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?
I will disperse you among the nations and scatter you throughout the lands; I will purge your uncleanness.