420 Alejandro F. Botta fathers find in Me that they abandoned Me (yl;[;me Wqjr) and went after delusion }: and were deluded?” The claim to the land by the inhabitants of Jerusalem is based on the accusation that the exiles have abandoned Yahweh (the exile was the punishment) and, therefore, have lost any right to the land. What the inhabitants of Jerusalem said to the exiles in Ezek 11,15 should be translated as: “they (the exiles) abandoned the Lord” (14). This is the same meaning that should be applied to the third text cited by Cross, Ezek 44,10: “But the Levites who forsook Me (yl;[;me Wqj}r:) when Israel went astray — straying from Me to follow their fetishes — shall suffer their punishment”. It seems, therefore, that none of the three texts adduced by Cross use qjr in the legal sense of the Elephantine documents, i.e. renunciation of rights, but rather in a simple, lay meaning of the people distancing themselves from God and God from his sanctuary, that has no legal connotation whatsoever. Perkins School of Theology Alejandro F. BOTTA Southern Methodist University Dallas, Texas. USA SUMMARY This article revaluates a proposed legal interpretation of the qjr in Ezek 8,6; 11,15-17; and 44,10 arguing that the use of qjr in those texts in no way resembles the use of qjr in the legal formulae of the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine. (14) Following most commentators, Cross reads Wqj}r: as a perfect form, not as a Qal imperative with the Masoretic pointing. CROSS, “Papyrus”, 320, n. 37.