Nevertheless my eye spared them: The Hebrew waw conjunction rendered Nevertheless (“But then” in Good News Translation) introduces an unexpected response of God. Even though the Israelites disobeyed God, he had compassion on them. For the Hebrew idiom rendered my eye spared them, see the comments on 7.4. Good News Translation renders it well with “I took pity on them,” and so does Contemporary English Version with “I felt sorry for them.”

And I did not destroy them or make a full end of them in the wilderness: The Hebrew verb for destroy means “kill” (Good News Translation) here, and the verb phrase for make a full end of has a similar meaning but implies killing every single one of the people, so that no one was left. The Hebrew noun rendered full end comes from the same root translated “spend” in verse 8 and “make a full end of” in verse 13, so there is wordplay here.

One way to render this verse is:

• But I took pity on them, and so did not kill them. I did not kill them there in the desert until none were left.

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 .