When the sticks on which you write are in your hand before their eyes: Revised Standard Version takes this verse as a temporal clause (so also New Revised Standard Version, English Standard Version, Revised English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible), but most translations take it as another command from God; for example, Contemporary English Version has “Hold these two sticks where they can be seen by everyone” (similarly Good News Translation, New International Version, New International Reader’s Version, New Living Translation, New Century Version, Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, Moffatt, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). It is best to take it as a command. Before their eyes may be rendered “so the people can see them” (New Century Version). New International Reader’s Version provides a helpful model for this verse, saying “Show them the sticks you wrote on.”

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 .