And you shall eat fat till you are filled: This clause and the next one are based again on the picture of an ordinary sacrificial feast in which people ate meat and drank wine in celebration of God. The fat refers to the best parts of the sacrifice (see 34.3). Till you are filled means the birds and wild animals can eat as much of it as they like, until they can eat no more, until they are “completely full” (New International Reader’s Version).

And drink blood till you are drunk: If people drank too much wine at a sacrificial feast, they would become drunk. In the same way God says the birds and animals will drink a large amount of blood, and this will cause them to act in a strange way as if they were drunk. If it does not make sense in a language to make drinking blood the cause drunkenness, it is acceptable to focus on the resulting actions of the birds and animals by saying “and you will drink so much blood that you will stagger around as if you were drunk.”

At the sacrificial feast which I am preparing for you: See verse 17. In some languages it will be more natural to move this clause to the beginning of the verse (so Good News Translation). A model for this verse that does this is:

• When I kill these people like sacrifices to prepare for your feast, you will eat the best meat until you are completely full and you will drink their blood until you are drunk.

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 .