And say, Thus says the Lord GOD to Jerusalem: God tells Ezekiel to pass on his message to the people of Jerusalem. The message begins with the traditional prophetic formula Thus says the Lord GOD. Lord renders the Hebrew word ʾadonai, and GOD renders “Yahweh” (YHWH in Hebrew), the name of God. Ezekiel must give God’s message to Jerusalem, that is, to the people of Judah who live in Jerusalem.

Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite: Picturing the nation of Judah as a woman, God first looks at where she came from and who her parents were. Your origin renders an obscure Hebrew word that may refer either to the place where the woman came from (so Revised Standard Version) or to her ancestors (so New International Version). Your birth is the place where she was born. Some translations do not distinguish between these two expressions; for example, for Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites, Good News Translation says simply “You were born in the land of Canaan” (similarly Contemporary English Version). However, most translators use two expressions, such as “You are from the land of the Canaanites where you were born.” The Canaanites were the people who lived in the Promised Land before the Israelites invaded their land in the time of Joshua and defeated them. Amorite is a general term for the people who lived west of the Euphrates River, including the area of Canaan. The Hittite people were a nation that controlled an empire north of Israel between the time of Abraham and the time of Moses. As the Good News Translation footnote states, the Israelites regarded all these people as immoral and idolatrous. More significantly, the Canaanites, the Amorites, and the Hittites did not worship Yahweh as their god. If necessary, translators may make this explicit by adding the following sentence at the end of this verse: “They did not believe in Yahweh, the true God.” However, it is better to put this information in a footnote. This verse shows that Judah came from a pagan origin.

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .