For Son of man, see Ezek 20.3.
Set your face toward the south, preach against the south, and prophesy against the forest land in the Negeb: For set your face toward, see 6.2. Here this phrase may be rendered “look toward” (Good News Translation) or “turn in the direction of” (similarly Contemporary English Version, New Jerusalem Bible). The Hebrew verb rendered preach is a technical term for prophetic preaching. The word for prophesy means to give a message from God. Some translations combine the verbs preach and prophesy; for example, Contemporary English Version renders this verse simply as “Ezekiel, son of man, turn toward the south and warn the forests.”
There is disagreement about the focus of verses 46-48. Some translations understand the two Hebrew terms rendered the south as place names; for example, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh renders verse 46 as “O mortal, set your face toward Teman, and proclaim to Darom, and prophesy against the brushland of the Negeb” (compare New American Standard Bible and New English Bible, which include “Teman” but not “Darom”). Teman was a city in Edom, south of the Dead Sea, the Negeb is the dry area in southern Israel, but there is no record of a place called Darom. However, the places mentioned have very little significance for Ezekiel’s audience, so most scholars believe that Jerusalem is the actual focus of the prophecy. In fact, some claim that this prophecy is in the form a riddle, and the explanation of the riddle is given in the next prophecy in 21.1-6. Instead of being place names, the two Hebrew words for south and the word for Negeb are often used simply as directional indicators, meaning “south.” It is best to translate them all in this way, which Good News Translation does by saying “look toward the south. Speak against the south and prophesy against the forest of the south.” This rendering fits the context of Ezekiel’s audience, because a person traveling from Babylonia always approached Jerusalem from the north. In some languages it may be peculiar to talk about preaching to the south. If so, translators may say “the land of the south” or “the places in the south.”
The forest land in the Negeb is an unusual phrase because the Negeb (often spelled “Negev” [New Living Translation]) is a wilderness area that never had forests or thick bush. Most scholars believe the Negeb refers to Jerusalem and that the forest land refers to the houses of Jerusalem that will be burned in the coming judgment (compare Jer 21.14). Nevertheless, translators need to use a word like forest, bush or scrub to render forest land.
The three things that God tells Ezekiel to do are expressed as parallel clauses. Set your face toward, preach against, and prophesy against mean very much the same thing but demonstrate some progression from “turn your attention to” to “deliver God’s word of condemnation or judgment” to “give a message of God against.” Similarly, there is progression from the general (land to) the south to the more specific forest land in the Negeb (Desert). In some languages this parallelism will seem very unnatural, and since the clauses are not significantly different in meaning, translators may well collapse the ideas as Contemporary English Version has done. But if they can find a way to retain all three expressions and thereby retain the form, then we recommend they do this.
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 .