Then he said to me: At this point God speaks to Ezekiel, presumably from the Temple area where Ezekiel has just seen the glorious vision of God. In many languages it will be helpful to render the pronoun he as “God” (Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version) to make it clear who is speaking.

Son of man may be rendered “Human being” (International Children’s Bible) or “Mortal man” (Good News Translation).

Lift up your eyes now in the direction of the north: God tells Ezekiel to look toward the north. To do this, Ezekiel had to turn around, because in verse 4 he was looking south through the gate toward the Temple. Lift up your eyes renders a Hebrew idiom that simply means “look” (Good News Translation) in this context. Now translates a Hebrew particle of entreaty. Many versions omit it (so Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version).

So I lifted up my eyes toward the north: Ezekiel did what God told him to do.

And behold, north of the altar gate, in the entrance, was this image of jealousy: Behold introduces another surprising thing for Ezekiel (see the comments on Ezek 8.4). There is a problem in this clause because the altar gate is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible. Although most of the traditional translations render the Hebrew phrase here in the same way as Revised Standard Version, some of the more recent translations take it differently; for example, Contemporary English Version says “the altar near the gate” (similarly Good News Translation, International Children’s Bible, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). A good model for this whole clause is “North of the entrance to the gate, I saw the altar of this statue that makes God very angry.” This rendering involves no change at all in the consonantal text of the Hebrew. In languages where there is no word for altar, translators may say “place [or, platform] for sacrifice” (see the comments on 6.4). The precise meaning of the Hebrew expression rendered in the entrance is not clear, because this is the only time the word for entrance is used in the Old Testament. Probably it means “at the entrance to the gateway” or “on the path leading to the gateway.” This image of jealousy was a statue of the goddess Asherah, as noted in verse 3. All the people who entered the inner courtyard of the Temple through the north gate had to pass close to this idol and its altar.

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 .