Up to this point, the punishment of Zedekiah has been at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army, but in verses 19-21 God himself is the one who will punish him. This change is introduced by the traditional prophetic formula Therefore thus says the Lord GOD (see Ezek 17.3). God refers to himself in the third person in this formula, so some languages may prefer to use the first person for God by saying “Therefore I, the Lord Yahweh, say,” or they omit the formula altogether (so Contemporary English Version). It may be even better to render this formula as a quote frame that introduces a new speech of God, provided the previous speech has been closed off at the end of verse 18 (so Good News Translation).

As I live: See verse 16.

Surely my oath which he despised, and my covenant which he broke: See verse 16, but here both the oath and the covenant are described as my, that is, God’s. When Zedekiah disobeyed Nebuchadnezzar, he also disobeyed God.

I will requite upon his head means God will punish Zedekiah in an appropriate way for his disobedience (see the comments on 9.10). Good News Translation and New Living Translation say simply “I will punish him.”

A model for this verse is:

• Therefore the Lord Yahweh says, “As surely as I am living, I will punish him for not taking seriously the promise I made to punish him and for breaking the treaty I made with him.

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 .