Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish and all its villages will say to you: Sheba and Dedan were towns in the Arabian Peninsula south of Israel (see the comments on 27.20, 22)), and Tarshish was a city in Spain (see the comments on 27.12). All three of these places were important trading centers for goods coming into Israel from the southeast and the west, so they had an interest in what was going to happen in Israel. If it is not natural for towns to speak, translators may render Sheba and Dedan as “the people of Sheba and Dedan.” Merchants are traders who travel around buying and selling goods, either in markets or to local shopkeepers (see the introductory comments on 27.12-25a). All its villages refers to the other trading centers on the coast of Spain, which were closely allied to Tarshish. However, this reading is taken from the Septuagint and depends on a slight change to the Hebrew. Instead of villages, the Hebrew text has “young lions” (King James Version / New King James Version, Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible). Many translations have taken “young lions” to refer to the “leading merchants” (Revised English Bible) or “leaders” (English Standard Version; similarly New Jerusalem Bible, New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh) of Tarshish. This is the preferable reading, but since the change to the Hebrew text is very small (just affecting one vowel sign), the traditional reading villages is also acceptable.

Have you come to seize spoil? Have you assembled your hosts to carry off plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to seize great spoil?: God pictures the merchants and leading citizens of these three important trading towns speaking to Gog and asking him questions, just as Gog talked to himself about his plans. Their questions reflect the same interests as in verse 12, some of which are Gog’s own thoughts (see the comments on that verse regarding seize spoil, carry off plunder, and cattle and goods). For assembled your hosts, see verse 7; for silver and gold, see 7.19. Most translations render these questions as genuine questions. For those languages that need to distinguish between real and rhetorical questions, they are probably rhetorical questions that expect the answer “Yes.” Since they are rhetorical questions, they may be rendered as statements; for example, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch says “Aha, you have your eye on booty! You have summoned your huge army to take away gold and silver and livestock and everything that is worth something! You will get a great haul [of booty]!”

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 .