Bible Strands
Ezekiel 5:17
I will send famine and wild beasts against you, and they will leave you childless. Plague and bloodshed will sweep through you, and I will bring a sword against you. I, the LORD, have spoken.”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — YHWH delivers this declaration to Israel through the prophet Ezekiel, immediately following the description of famine arrows in the preceding verse. The moment marks the formal pronouncement of covenant judgment against the nation.
The words — רָעָב (ra.'Av) translates literally to famine, denoting the severe food shortage. וְ/שִכְּלֻ֔/ךְ (ve./shi.ke.Lu/kh) means they will make you childless, indicating the complete loss of offspring through the coming judgments.
The thread — The judgment components appear across the supplied texts as partial matches: Leviticus 26:22 cites wild animals and loss of children, Deuteronomy 32:24 pairs hunger with pestilence and wild beasts, and Ezekiel 38:22 links plague with bloodshed. No single cited verse contains all four elements together.
Why it lands — The text states that famine, wild beasts, plague, bloodshed, and sword will sequentially strike the audience, ending with the divine assertion "I, the LORD, have spoken." It requires the reader to recognize the certainty and totality of the stated judgment without minimizing its severity.
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
So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee. I the Lord have spoken it.
Cross-references
- Ezekiel 38:22 I will execute judgment upon him with plague and bloodshed. I will pour out torrents of rain, hailstones, fire, and sulfur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him.
- Leviticus 26:22 I will send wild animals against you to rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and reduce your numbers, until your roads lie desolate.
- Deuteronomy 32:24 They will be wasted from hunger and ravaged by pestilence and bitter plague; I will send the fangs of wild beasts against them, with the venom of vipers that slither in the dust.
- 2 Kings 17:25 Now when the settlers first lived there, they did not worship the LORD, so He sent lions among them, which killed some of them.
- Ezekiel 14:15 Or if I send wild beasts through the land to leave it childless and desolate, with no man passing through it for fear of the beasts,
- Ezekiel 14:21 For this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘How much worse will it be when I send against Jerusalem My four dire judgments—sword, famine, wild beasts, and plague—in order to cut off from it both man and beast?
- Ezekiel 33:27 Tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘As surely as I live, those in the ruins will fall by the sword, those in the open field I will give to be devoured by wild animals, and those in the strongholds and caves will die by plague.
- Exodus 23:29 I will not drive them out before you in a single year; otherwise the land would become desolate and wild animals would multiply against you.
- Jeremiah 15:3 I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the LORD: the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, and the birds of the air and beasts of the earth to devour and destroy.
- Ezekiel 5:12 A third of your people will die by plague or be consumed by famine within you, a third will fall by the sword outside your walls, and a third I will scatter to every wind and unleash a sword behind them.