Yehezkiel 24:21

24:21 Say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says: Realize I am about to desecrate my sanctuary – the source of your confident pride, ¹  the object in which your eyes delight, ²  and your life’s passion. ³  Your very own sons and daughters whom you have left behind will die ⁴  by the sword.

Mazmur 84:2

84:2 I desperately want to be ⁵ 

in the courts of the Lord’s temple. ⁶ 

My heart and my entire being ⁷  shout for joy

to the living God.

Ratapan 2:4

ד (Dalet)

2:4 He prepared his bow ⁸  like an enemy;

his right hand was ready to shoot. ⁹ 

Like a foe he killed everyone,

even our strong young men; ¹⁰ 

he has poured out his anger like fire

on the tent ¹¹  of Daughter Zion.

[24:21]  ¹ tn Heb “the pride of your strength” means “your strong pride.”

[24:21]  ² sn Heb “the delight of your eyes.” Just as Ezekiel was deprived of his beloved wife (v. 16, the “desire” of his “eyes”) so the Lord would be forced to remove the object of his devotion, the temple, which symbolized his close relationship to his covenant people.

[24:21]  ³ tn Heb “the object of compassion of your soul.” The accentuation in the traditional Hebrew text indicates that the descriptive phrases (“the source of your confident pride, the object in which your eyes delight, and your life’s passion”) modify the preceding “my sanctuary.”

[24:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “fall.”

[84:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “my soul longs, it even pines for.”

[84:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “the courts of the Lord” (see Ps 65:4).

[84:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “my flesh,” which stands for his whole person and being.

[2:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “bent His bow.” When the verb דָּרַךְ (darakh) is used with the noun קֶשֶׁת (qeshet, “archer-bow”), it means “to bend [a bow]” to string it in preparation for shooting arrows (1 Chr 5:18; 8:40; 2 Chr 14:7; Jer 50:14, 29; 51:3). This idiom is used figuratively to describe the assaults of the wicked (Pss 11:2; 37:14) and the judgments of the Lord (Ps 7:13; Lam 2:4; 3:12) (BDB 202 s.v. דָּרַךְ 4). The translation “he prepared his bow” is the slightly more general modern English idiomatic equivalent of the ancient Hebrew idiom “he bent his bow” – both refer to preparations to get ready to shoot arrows.

[2:4]  ⁹ tn Heb “His right hand is stationed.”

[2:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the ones who were pleasing to the eye.”

[2:4]  ¹¹ tn The singular noun אֹהֶל (’ohel, “tent”) may function as a collective, referring to all tents in Judah. A parallel expression occurs in verse 2 using the plural: “all the dwellings of Jacob” (כָּל־נְאוֹת יַעֲקֹב, kol-nÿ’ot ya’aqov). The singular “tent” matches the image of “Daughter Zion.” On the other hand, the singular “the tent of Daughter Zion” might be a hyperbolic synecdoche of container (= tent) for contents (= inhabitants of Zion).