Ezekiel Chapter 5 verse 3 Holy Bible
And thou shalt take thereof a few in number, and bind them in thy skirts.
read chapter 5 in ASV
And take from them a small number of hairs, folding them in your skirts.
read chapter 5 in BBE
And thou shalt take thereof a few in number, and bind them in thy skirts;
read chapter 5 in DARBY
Thou shalt also take thereof a few in number, and bind them in thy skirts.
read chapter 5 in KJV
read chapter 5 in WBT
You shall take of it a few in number, and bind them in your skirts.
read chapter 5 in WEB
And thou hast taken thence a few in number -- and hast bound them in thy skirts;
read chapter 5 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerses 3, 4. - Thou shalt also take, etc. The words may point (1) either to those in Jerusalem who had escaped the famine and the sword, and were left in the land (2 Kings 25:22; Jeremiah 40:6; Jeremiah 40:6); or (2) to those who should go into exile, and yet even there suffer from the "fire" of God's chastening judgments. They were, if saved at all, to be saved "so as by fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15), to be as "brands plucked from the burning" (Amos 4:11; Zechariah 3:2). Isaiah's thought of the "remnant" (Isaiah 10:20-22; Isaiah 11:11-16) seems hardly to come in here. The whole utterance is one of denunciation. The act of "binding in the skirts" implies only a limited protection. Omit "for," and for "thereof" read "therefrom," s.c. from the fire (Revised Version).
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(3) A few in number, and bind them in thy skirts.--A small remnant of the people was still left in the land after the great captivity (2Kings 25:22); but even of these some were to perish by violence ("cast them into the midst of the fire") in the disorders which arose, and from this "shall a fire come forth into all the house of Israel." (See Jeremiah 40, 41) The ultimate result was the expatriation of all that remained in Judaea, and the entire emptying of the land of the chosen people.At this point the use of symbolism ceases for a while, and the prophet now, for the first time, begins to utter his prophecies in plain language. Accordingly, he changes his style from prose to the more ordinary form of prophetic utterance in parallelisms, which constitute the distinctive feature of Hebrew poetry, and this continues until another vision begins with Ezekiel 8.
