Then he said to me: Since Ja-azaniah has just been mentioned, Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version have “God” instead of the pronoun he to make it clear that God is the speaker in this verse.

For Son of man, see Ezek 8.5.

Have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark…?: Having just shown Ezekiel what the Israelite leaders were doing, God reinforces the vision with this question. Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version use the present tense for the first verb in this question, saying “do you see…?” This tense is not as good here as the past tense, which gives the impression of “have you seen everything and fully understood…?” This question may also be translated as an indignant exclamation, for example, “Look at…!” The phrase have you seen in fact forms a little refrain through this chapter. It comes at the end of each abomination that Ezekiel saw (see also verses 15 and 17; Ezek 8.6 is similar but not exactly the same). In each case except verse 17, the refrain also contains the words “You will see still greater abominations” (see verses 6, 13, and 15). The leaders were practicing their false worship in the dark. This does not mean that they were only worshiping at night. Rather, it shows that they were doing it “in secret” (Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch), probably inside a closed room where the light of day did not penetrate.

Every man in his room of pictures: Consistent with what can happen in a vision, the scene seems to change slightly here. Instead of a single room where Ja-azaniah and the seventy leaders were gathered together for their secret worship, Ezekiel now saw many rooms, with each man in his own room (the Hebrew word for room is plural). Each room had pictures of the unclean animals and idols engraved on the walls. Since it was a vision, there could easily be some inconsistency in Ezekiel’s description, but most likely, the “rooms” were individual cubicles around the walls of the room Ezekiel had entered, which served as the personal shrines of each of the leaders.

For they say, ‘The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land’: The connector For introduces why the Israelites leaders were practicing false worship. It is because they believed Yahweh had abandoned them and did not see them anymore. Their speech here is what they were saying to one another or to themselves. They did not say The LORD does not see us because they were in a dark, closed room but because the LORD has forsaken the land. They believed the Babylonians had been able to defeat the Israelites because God had left Israel and no longer protected it. They were worshiping other gods because Yahweh, their protector, had gone, and they needed other gods to protect them. The LORD renders “Yahweh,” the name of God. The land refers to the land of Israel. Translators may need to say “the land of Israel,” “our land” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch), or “our country” (Good News Translation). Some languages will retain the direct speech of the Israelite leaders, but others will find it more natural to use indirect speech, for example, “They say that I, the LORD, do not see them anymore because I have abandoned their land.”

A model for this verse is:

• Then God said to me, “Mortal man, look at what the leaders of the people of Israel are doing in secret, each man worshiping in his own room of images. They do this because they say, ‘Yahweh doesn’t see us anymore and he has abandoned our land.’ ”

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 .