16 May 2017 *Navigate up to Scripture index: index-passages**
It has weared [me? with] toil [?], and its great corrosion [?] has not been removed. [Throw its ?] corrosion into the fire!
This is a tricky verse. Take first teunim helat, “It has weared [me? with] toil.” The word translated toil is in Hebrew teunim, which appears only in this verse. That by itself makes the meaning difficult.
The verse is talking about a pot, a pot which symbolically represents Jerusalem. Ezekiel has been burning stuff in a pot. Then the pot wearies (itself? God?) with teunim.
Given the rarity of teunim, and given the other issues in the verse, we should be at least a little suspicious that something has gone wrong in transmission. And it should make us suspicious of anyone who claims to know the meaning of the word.
BDB gives the reading “toil,” although BDB does not discuss what it might mean for a pot to “weary with toil.” Henderson’s commentary (ICC) apparently emends the phase teunim hel’at (it wearies with rust) to teunim chel’at, which Henderson interprets as “the rust is wearinesses, i.e. it is ingrained, that much labor is required in removing it, and all bestowed in vain. The process was no longer to be carried on, but justice was to effect its purpose at once.”
So the meaning of the phrase is by no means obvious, and the notes to the NET indicate that the confusion continues to exist to the present day.
The Septuagint (NET) does not have any translation of teunim hel’at. Either the manuscript used for the translation did not contain the phrase (BDB suggest the possibility that dittography is at play here) or else the Septuagint translators simply couldn’t translate and left it out.