So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died: The fulfillment of God’s prophecy came quickly—before the next day ended Ezekiel’s wife died. The Hebrew word for evening refers to the time around sunset when it is getting dark, and the early hours of the night (see 12.4). This verse implies that God spoke to Ezekiel during the night before his wife died, and Ezekiel spoke to the people in the morning of the next day. We do not know if he told his fellow exiles what God had told him, but the fact that they were later surprised at the way he acted suggests that he did not tell them. Some translations explicitly say that he did; for example, New Living Translation has “I proclaimed this to the people the next morning” (similarly Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible, Moffatt). Others imply that he was talking about other things; for example, Contemporary English Version has “One morning, I was talking with the people as usual” (similarly Good News Translation). Still others think that he did not speak to the people at all between the time God spoke to him and his wife’s death, and they move this clause to the end of the verse (for example, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh renders verses 18-19a as “In the evening my wife died, and in the morning I did as I had been commanded. And when I spoke to the people that morning, 19 the people asked me…”) or to the end of verse 19 (for example, New American Bible translates verse 19 as “Then the people asked me, ‘Will you not tell us what all these things that you are doing mean for us?’ I therefore spoke to the people that morning” [similarly Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch]). Although moving the position of this clause helps the story to flow easily, it is better to retain the text as it stands, even though some questions may remain about what Ezekiel said to the people in the morning. There are some languages where the translators will need to supply a topic that Ezekiel was speaking about to the people, that is, the verb spoke will require an object. If so, translators may render this whole sentence as “So in the morning I was speaking to the people about the messages God had given me. That evening my wife died.”

And on the next morning I did as I was commanded: Ezekiel carried out the commands God gave him in verses 16-17. It may be necessary to make this explicit by saying “On the next morning I did as God commanded me and did not follow the usual customs for mourning.”

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 .