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LXX Ezekiel

Septuagint

About this book
Chapter 32

1 And it happened in the eleventh year, in the twelfth month, on the first day of the month, that the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 2 Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him, You have become like a lion of the nations, and as a serpent that is in the sea: and you made assaults with your rivers, and disturbed the water with your feet, and trampled your rivers. 3 Thus says the Lord; I will also cast over you the nets of many nations, and will bring you up with my hook: 4 and I will stretch you upon the earth: the fields shall be covered with you, and I will cause all the birds of the sky to settle upon you, and I will fill with you all the wild beasts of all the earth. 5 And I will cast your flesh upon the mountains, and will saturate them with your blood. 6 And the land shall be drenched with your dung, because of your multitude upon the mountains: I will fill the valleys with you. 7 And I will veil the heavens when you are extinguished, and will darken its stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. 8 All the bodies that give light in the sky, shall be darkened over you, and I will bring darkness upon your land, says the Lord God. 9 And I will provoke to anger the heart of many people, when I shall lead you captive among the nations, to a land which you have not known. 10 And many nations shall mourn over you, and their kings shall be utterly amazed, when my sword flies in their faces, as they wait for their own fall from the day of your fall. 11 For thus says the Lord God; The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon you, 12 with the swords of mighty men; and I will cast down your strength: they are all destroying ones from the nations, and they shall destroy the pride of Egypt, and all her strength shall be crushed. 13 And I will destroy all her cattle from beside the great water; and the foot of man shall not trouble it any more, and the step of cattle shall no more trample it. 14 Thus shall their waters then be at rest, and their rivers shall flow like oil, says the Lord, 15 when I shall give up Egypt to destruction, and the land shall be made desolate with its fullness; when I shall scatter all that dwell in it, and they shall know that I am the Lord. 16 There is a lamentation, and you shall utter it; and the daughters of the nations shall utter it, even for Egypt, and they shall mourn for it over all its strength, says the Lord God. 17 And it happened in the twelfth year, in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 18 Son of man, lament over the strength of Egypt, for the nations shall bring down her daughters dead to the depth of the earth, to those who go down to the pit. 19  20 They shall fall with him in the midst of those who are killed with the sword, and all his strength shall lie down. 21 And the giants shall say to you, Be in the depth of the pit: to whom are you superior? Go down, and lie with the uncircumcised, in the midst of those who are killed with the sword. 22 There are Assyria and all his company: all his people who were killed have been laid there: and their burial is in the depth of the pit, and his company are set all around his tomb: all those killed that fell by the sword, 23 who had caused the fear of them to be upon the land of the living. 24 There is Elam and all his host all around his tomb: all those killed that fell by the sword, and the uncircumcised that go down to the deep of the earth, who caused their fear to be upon the land of the living: and they have received their punishment with those who go down to the pit, 25 in the midst of those killed. 26 There were laid Meshech, and Tubal, and all their strength all around his tomb: all his men who were killed, all the uncircumcised, killed with the sword, who caused their fear to be in the land of the living. 27 And they are laid with the giants that fell of old, who went down to Hades with their weapons of war:⁠ and they laid their swords under their heads, but their iniquities were upon their bones, because they terrified giants in the land of the living. 28 And you shall lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with those who have been killed by the sword. 29 There are laid the princes of Assyria, who yielded their strength to a wound of the sword: these are laid with those killed, with those who go down to the pit. 30 There are the princes of the north, even all the captains of Assyria, who go down to Hades after being killed: they lie uncircumcised among those killed with the sword together with their terror and their strength, and they have received their punishment with those who go down to the pit. 31 King Pharaoh shall see them, and shall be comforted over all their force, says the Lord God. 32 For I have caused his fear to be upon the land of the living, yet he shall lie in the midst of the uncircumcised with those who are killed with the sword, even Pharaoh, and all his multitude with him, says the Lord God.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Ezekiel 32:27 and 2 Peter 2:4

Septuagint · New Testament

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Summary

2 Peter and the Greek Septuagint translation of Ezekiel incorporate Greek mythology through their references to Tartarus and Hades. Ezekiel shows giant figures sent to Hades, and 2 Peter describes angels imprisoned in Tartarus for their rebellion.

Passages

LXX Ezekiel 32:27

Septuagint
26 There were laid Meshech, and Tubal, and all their strength all around his tomb: all his men who were killed, all the uncircumcised, killed with the sword, who caused their fear to be in the land of the living. 27 And they are laid with the giants that fell of old, who went down to Hades with their weapons of war: and they laid their swords under their heads, but their iniquities were upon their bones, because they terrified giants in the land of the living. 28 And you shall lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with those who have been killed by the sword.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Ezekiel

2 Peter 2:4

New Testament
3 And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation pronounced long ago is not sitting idly by; their destruction is not asleep. 4 For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but threw them into Tartarus16 and locked them up in chains in utter darkness, to be kept until the judgment, 5 and if he did not spare the ancient world, but did protect Noah, a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when God brought a flood on an ungodly world,
120–130 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 2 Peter

References

"... The verbs “to cast into Tartarus,” and were almost always used with reference to the early Greek theogonic myths, in which the ancient giants, the Cyclopes and Titans, were imprisoned in Tartarus, the lowest part of the underworld, by Uranos, Kronos and Zeus. They are not used in the Greek version of 1 Enoch; though τάρταρος (“Tartarus”) is used of the place of divine punishment in 1 Enoch 20:2, as elsewhere in Jewish Greek literature (LXX Job 40:20; 41:24; Proverbs 30:16; Sibylline Oracles 4:186; Philo, Life of Moses 2.433). But Hellenistic Jews were aware that the Greek myth of the Titans had some similarity to the fall of the Watchers (though Philo, Gig. 58, rejects any comparison). Sometimes the Watchers’ sons, the giants (the Nephilim), were compared with the Titans (Josephus, Antiquities 1.73; compare LXX Ezekiel 32:27; Sirach 16:7) but in Judith 16:6 (and also the Christian passage Sibylline Oracles 2:231) the Watchers themselves seem to be called τιτᾶνες (“Titans”). Thus in using a term reminiscent of the Greek myth of the Titans the author of 2 Peter follows Hellenistic Jewish practice ..."
Richard Bauckham, Word Biblical Commentary: Jude-2 Peter (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), 249–250.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Ezekiel 32:27 and 2 Peter 2:4

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