You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth: This sacrificial feast will be no ordinary feast with ordinary food to eat. The food will be the bodies of the greatest and best human beings. Flesh may be rendered “meat” or “bodies.” The mighty refers to the many great soldiers in Gog’s army. For the Hebrew word rendered mighty, see 32.12. It may be translated “warriors” (Contemporary English Version, Revised English Bible, New American Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh) or “heroes” (Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible, Christian Community Bible, Moffatt). The princes of the earth refers to the rulers that accompanied Gog and were part of his army. This phrase may be rendered “the rulers of the earth” (Good News Translation, New Century Version, Revised English Bible) or “foreign rulers” (Contemporary English Version). Again, flesh and blood can refer to the corpses as a whole, so a possible model for this whole sentence is “You will eat the bodies of heroic soldiers and chiefs from many parts of the world.”

Of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bulls, all of them fatlings of Bashan: Here God returns to the picture of an ordinary sacrifice. Normally the animals that were killed in a sacrifice were rams, that is, mature “male sheep” (New Century Version), lambs, that is, young male sheep, goats, that is, male goats, and bulls, that is, male cattle.

Bashan was an area of very fertile country on the east side of the Jordan River and north of the Yarmuk Wadi (see 27.6). It was famous for producing fat, healthy animals. Fatlings are healthy, well-fed animals. So fatlings of Bashan refer to the best animals in the land of Israel. God is not suggesting that his sacrificial feast will include the animals in this list, or that the birds and wild animals will eat the meat of them. Rather, he uses these animals as a picture of the men in Gog’s army. Only the best animals were offered in sacrifices, and this list stresses that those in Gog’s army are among the best specimens of humanity. Translators need to make clear the metaphorical nature of this list of animals; for example, New Century Version has “as if they were fat animals from Bashan: male sheep, lambs, goats and bulls.”

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 .