Bring near those appointed over the city Bring near the appointees whom I appointed to destroy the city.

six men Our Rabbis explained them in Tractate Shabbath (55a) as Anger, Wrath, Fury, Destroyer, Breaker, Annihilator.

his sledgehammer Heb. כְּלִי מַפַּצוֹ, which smashes everything, as in (Ps. 137: 9): “and dash (וְנִפֵּץ) your infants.”

with a scribe’s tablet [Synonymous with] פִּנְקַס. These are wax- covered tablets upon which they engrave with a stylus.

beside the copper altar This was the stone altar erected by Solomon instead of the copper altar that Moses had made in the desert.

from upon the cherub which was on the Ark cover, for the Shechinah had been resting there until then, and it began to withdraw and to go outside little by little in ten steps, and this is the first stepfrom the cherub to the threshold of the Holy of Holies.

and you shall mark a sign You shall mark a sign.

on the foreheads of the [righteous] men in order to be for a sign that the destroyers should not strike them.

And to these, He said in my ears To these six destroyers.

and you shall commence from My sanctuary From those standing before My sanctuary. Our Rabbis said: Do not read וּמִמִִִּקְדָשִּׁי, and from My sanctuary, but וּמִמְּקֻדָשַּׁי, and from My sanctified ones, from those sanctified to Me. They are the ones marked with the sign, whom He had warned [them] not to hurt. [Now] He reneged and commanded [the angels] to destroy [even] them because the Divine standard of justice contended before Him, “Why are these different from those? Is it not so that they did not protest?” As is stated in Tractate Shabbath (55a).

that I remained Heb. וְנֵאשֲּׁאַר, and I remained.

full of perversion Crooked judgments.