God has
Ezekiel perform another sign-act, where he cuts off his hair, burns one third,
cuts one third with a sword, and then scatters one third to the wind. As Block,
argues, these are not just the means by which God will discipline Israel, but “the
cumulative effect of these three actions is to emphasize the totality of the
impending judgment.”[1]
Ezekiel here
represents Israel and his hairs represent the individual people. Most are
destroyed by these three actions of fire, representing plague and famine,
sword, representing death in war or by execution, and scattering to the wind,
representing their being driven out from the land. These actions then
communicate, not that Israel will just endure a trial and remain God’s people,
but that “they will be lost forever to the history of the people of God.”[2]
However, a few hairs are wrapped up or put into Ezekiel’s pocket or folds of
his garment which communicates that God will save a remnant of His people so
that they will not be completely wiped away.
In 5:7, God
argues that they did not follow His decrees nor did they even follow the
decrees of the surrounding nations. The surrounding nations had laws that
paralleled the Mosaic law code in many ways, although they were inferior in
that they did not include any worship of the true God, and their justice wasn’t
always what it should have been. God argues that Israel had become worse than
even the pagan nations in that they were not even righteous in accordance with
the wicked world’s standards.
Christians
can be worse than the world when they have a false view of grace and
forgiveness that leads to their dismissiveness toward the consequences of sin.
Yet, Ezekiel shows us that the consequences remain and can be even worse for
the covenant community than for the unbeliever.
Therefore,
in vv. 8-9. God steps forward as a challenge to fight Israel. Block notes that
the challenger and opponent are identified as YHWH and Jerusalem. The duel
formula is verified by the language used.[3]
God now says
that He will judge them in front of the nations as an example to them in a way
that He has never done before nor will ever do again. Israel was to be an
example of God’s holiness to the nations by reflecting that holiness, but now
they will be an example as a display of His wrath upon that which is not holy.
Hence, His holiness will still be displayed but it will spell destruction
rather than life for Israel.
5:13, 6:12,
and 7:5 discuss how God will not be holding back. He will unleash His full
wrath upon the people. There will be no mercy for those who fall under it.
7:3-4 relate the same idea.
God’s
jealousy will be brought up throughout the book as it is here in v. 13. It is
not envy or a coveting of something that does not belong to God but a zeal to
take hold of what rightfully belongs to God and is being claimed by someone
else. In this regard, God’s people are being claimed by the demonic through
false religion and immoral practices, and so God acts to remove agents of chaos
among His people, that end up being the majority centered in Jerusalem, in
order to preserve the minority who remain His people. Jealously should not be
understood in emotional terms, therefore, but in God’s resolve to destroy the
wicked in order to save the righteous remnant who belong to Him.
Likewise, His
wrath should not be taken as some irrational emotion, but as God’s, as the
Creator, rational disfavor upon chaos, and decision to act against it in order
to bring order to disorder among His people. Hence, Block notes:
For the
modern reader, who perceives God only from one side, the image presented here
is difficult to comprehend, if not entirely objectionable. One is tempted to
intpret this furious outpouring of wrath as arbitrary and impulsive, or as a
sign of emotional instability. That it is none of these is made clear by the
purpose statement: they will know that I
am Yahweh. This recognition formula transforms the oracle from a mere
announcement of an event into an announcement of Yahweh’s historical
self-manifestation. Like Yahweh’s mighty acts of deliverance centuries earlier,
his acts of judgment on a rebellious people are intentionally designed to bring
them to an acknowledgment of his presence, character, and claims on their
lives.[4]
6:10 relates
the idea that God’s threats are not empty. He is not playing a game with the
people or bluffing. He was patient, but no more. He carries out this judgment
upon the people and it is a horror that displays His anger toward idolatry and
chaotic practices.
In 6:13, By referring to every high hill…all the
mountaintops…under every green tree and every leafy oak Ezekiel may be
expanding on the phraseology of Deut 12:2 (see 1 Kgs 14:23; 2 Kgs
16:4; 17:10; Jer
2:20; 3:6, 13;
2 Chr 28:4).
The high places are the compromise of Israel, where they
often kept the temple pure from false religion (although they had often defiled
that as well throughout their history and even as Ezekiel speaks), they
remained idolaters because they did not abandon their secret practices, their
secret idolatries, the idolatry of their everyday living. It would be much like
not practicing idolatry at church, but then going back to your neighborhood
where everyone worshiped an idol there. Or to put it in more modern terms, it
may be like worshiping God at church and then worshiping the devil the rest of
the week by what one believes and/or does in his daily life.
Chapter 7 is made up of three alarming announcements of
Israel’s end, and the chapter brilliantly communicates them through the mess
that is the Hebrew text in 7. It is chaos and so therefore is the way it is
communicated in “redundancies, confusion of gender, omitted articles, missing
verbs, obscure allusions, incomplete and garbled statements (v. 11), as well as
words, forms, and constructions unheard of elsewhere.”[5]
The most alarming element, however, is the constant disturbing repetition of
disaster. The Chapter is meant to evoke an emotional response in the reader of
horror.
Texts like this are smelling-salts that cause us to awaken
from our dazed slumber that our sin and idolatry have placed us in. The true
horror of brutal death and destruction, however, is only a shadow and a picture
of the horror of losing our positive relationship with God who is the source of
all life and well-being, for all eternity. The real horror then is not that God
judges so violently and absolutely, but that He does so of His own people who
are called by His name.
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