Bible Strands
Ezekiel 12:19
Then tell the people of the land that this is what the Lord GOD says about those living in Jerusalem and in the land of Israel: ‘They will eat their bread with anxiety and drink their water in dread, for their land will be stripped of everything in it because of the violence of all who dwell in it.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The Lord GOD speaks through Ezekiel to the exiled prophet, commanding him to deliver a warning to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the land of Israel. This declaration follows immediate instructions about eating and drinking with trembling, situating the message within a sequence of enacted prophecies about coming judgment.
The words — The formula כֹּה אָמַר אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה (koh 'amar 'Adonai Yahweh) translates literally as "thus says the Lord Yahweh," functioning as a formal marker of divine speech. This phrasing anchors the subsequent description of stripped sustenance and dread in authoritative proclamation rather than human observation.
The thread — The pattern of land desolation and stripped territory appears in Ezekiel 6:6, Ezekiel 6:14, and Zechariah 7:14, where ruined cities and scattered populations follow covenant violation. These passages trace a consistent prophetic motif linking national violence to environmental and social collapse.
Why it lands — The text requires readers to recognize that systemic violence directly removes the material foundations of daily survival. It demands accountability by showing that moral decay produces immediate, measurable deprivation rather than abstract spiritual loss.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And say unto the people of the land, Thus saith the Lord God of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and of the land of Israel; They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein.
Cross-references
- Zechariah 7:14 But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known, and the land was left desolate behind them so that no one could come or go. Thus they turned the pleasant land into a desolation.”
- Ezekiel 6:6 Wherever you live, the cities will be laid waste and the high places will be demolished, so that your altars will be laid waste and desecrated, your idols smashed and obliterated, your incense altars cut down, and your works blotted out.
- Ezekiel 6:14 I will stretch out My hand against them, and wherever they live I will make the land a desolate waste, from the wilderness to Diblah. Then they will know that I am the LORD.’”
- Micah 7:13 Then the earth will become desolate because of its inhabitants, as the fruit of their deeds.
- Jeremiah 10:22 Listen! The sound of a report is coming—a great commotion from the land to the north. It will make the cities of Judah a desolation, a haunt for jackals.
- Ezekiel 7:23 Forge the chain, for the land is full of crimes of bloodshed, and the city is full of violence.
- 1 Corinthians 10:28 But if someone tells you, “This food was offered to idols,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who told you and for the sake of conscience—
- Genesis 6:11 Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and full of violence.
- 1 Kings 17:10 So Elijah got up and went to Zarephath. When he arrived at the city gate, there was a widow gathering sticks. Elijah called to her and said, “Please bring me a little water in a cup, so that I may drink.”
- Psalms 24:1 A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof, the world and all who dwell therein.