Ezekiel 23:25 - Exposition

They shall take away thy nose and thine ears , etc. Possibly it may have been known to Ezekiel as a punishment for the adulterer or adulteress in Egypt and other countries, and if so, he might have selected it as specially appropriate to his parable (Martial, 'Epigr.,' 2.83; 3.85). Thy residue shall be consumed with fire . The Hebrew word for "residue" (not that usually so translated) is the same as that previously translated "remnant." In the first clause it clearly points to the men of Jerusalem who are left after the capture. In the second its meaning is determined by the fact that it follows after the deportation of the sons and daughters. All that was left—in the parable, of the mutilated trunk of the adulteress, in the history, of the devastated city, sc . the empty houses—should be destroyed by fire.