Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed against me: This idiom of “throwing away sins” is not to be taken literally; it means to stop sinning. Contemporary English Version says “Give up your evil ways,” and New Century Version has “Get rid of all the sins you have done.” Revised Standard Version changes the Hebrew text here by adding against me, that is, against God, but the evidence for doing so is so weak that it is best to omit this phrase.

And get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit is literally “and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit” (similarly King James Version, New American Standard Bible, Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch), but a literal rendering can be misleading if it gives the impression of building something with the hands. For a new heart and a new spirit, see 11.19. As there, it may be better to remove the imagery by rendering this clause as “Start thinking in new ways. Begin desiring different things.”

Why will you die, O house of Israel?: This is a final plea for the Israelites to deal with the seriousness of their situation—if they continue to sin, they will be punished and die. The questions Why will you die…? and “Why do you … want to die?” (Good News Translation) may be misleading because obviously the people are hoping not to die. In some languages it may be necessary to expand the question to make the sense clear; for example, one possible model is “Otherwise [or, If you do not do this], you will die. Is that what you Israelites want?”

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 .