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Ezekiel 9:3  (American Standard Version)
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<< Ezekiel 9:2   Ezekiel 9:4 >>


Ezekiel 9:1-8

Ezekiel's blood must have run cold when he heard God's judgment, which appears in the last verse of the previous chapter: "Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will not spare nor will I have pity; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them."

Continuing the vision in Ezekiel 9, it relates a partial execution of that judgment. It is important to note here that the prophet witnesses God actually leaving His portable throne (described in detail in Ezekiel 1). At this point, "the glory of the God of Israel" actually demounts from it and removes, as verse 3 records, "to the threshold of the temple." So He has taken His place in the Temple, but not on the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies. He is, in effect, in the gate, a place of judgment.

And this is a momentous judgment. In verses 5-6, God commands some of the angels, "Go . . . through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have pity. Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women." This is a summary judgment on the entire populace of Jerusalem!

When Ezekiel heard this command, how did he respond? Certainly not in a self-righteous, I-told-you-so manner. When he is alone with God, the angels having left on their mission, he falls on his face in apparent anguish, crying out: "Ah, Lord GOD! Will You destroy all the remnant of Israel in pouring out Your fury on Jerusalem?" (verse 8).

This is a vital question. Ezekiel is concerned about the people and about the scope of God's judgment. Like Lot, he lived in his own kind of Sodom, in his own type of Gomorrah, and he felt anguish over the sin that he saw and heard and over its consequences—as it were, tormented by what was happening around him. Ezekiel was emotionally and spiritually tormented or tortured, not by what the pagans were doing around him, but by what the leaders and the people of Israel were doing in his immediate environment—and even in the Temple! Their wickedness and what they were about to suffer for it are what tormented this righteous man. In vision, he must have witnessed a terrible slaughter, and the trauma and shock of that vision affected him most acutely. Indeed, a prophet of God has no pretty job.

Charles Whitaker
The Torment of the Godly (Part One)



Ezekiel 9:3-4

If the angel in Ezekiel's vision were to visit us today, would he find anybody "sighing and crying" because of the abominations? How many would qualify to receive this life-saving mark—like Passover blood on the doorposts—on their foreheads? Would you qualify?

These individuals receive the angel's mark, not because they merely disagree with the abominations, but because they are in deep mental and emotional anguish. The "sigh" signifies an inward grief, and the "cry" is an outward expression of it. These people do more than just shake their heads in disgust and then go on about their merry way. They receive this mark because they are enough like God in their character and disposition that the abomination affects them in the same way it affects God! They have internalized God's instruction to such a degree that the flipside of Romans 8:7 is also established: These people are spiritually minded, they love God, they are subject to His law, and they have a very real enmity toward the transgression of it. They recognize that the absence of law is not freedom but anarchy. It can only produce death.

The "sighing" also implies recognition of futility—there is almost nothing the individual can do to directly change the course of this downward spiral. The "crying" is not shouting from the rooftops, or public protests, or "civil disobedience." Our King tells us our citizenship is in heaven, and that His followers do not resist the governments of this world—except where their commands contravene the law of God—until He returns. But at the very least, we can cry out to God and take these abominations before His throne.

In addition, we can cry out silently to our neighbors through our personal witness—making sure our own houses are in order, and by being prepared to show by our lives (and marriages, where applicable) that God's way is the only way that leads to happiness. But this takes more than just agreeing that one way is better than another. This takes a hardening of the will and resolution to do the right. We may not be able to directly combat the abominations of this land, but we can certainly give an answer to them by living as lights to this ever-darkening culture.

This nation has appropriated the name of God but is now bearing it in vain for all the world to see, if not blatantly through celebrating an abomination—for which homosexuality certainly qualifies (Leviticus 18:22-30; Romans 1:26-32; I Corinthians 6:9)—then through an apathetic response to it. We are busy waxing our new cars—or figuring out how to pay for them. We are busy with the entertainments of this world, and following the entertainers who endorse a deviant lifestyle. We may be irritated at the current price of gasoline, but we are still busy enjoying the good life—much too busy to mourn for the decay of the land.

The rest of Ezekiel's prophecy details the fate of those who may be opposed to the abominations but whose will is really unaffected. Notice that God begins the judgment at "[His] sanctuary"—the place where He is supposed to dwell, His church:

To the others He said in my hearing, "Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity. Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark; and begin at My sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were before the temple. Then He said to them, "Defile the temple, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out!" And they went out and killed in the city. . . . Then He said to me, "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great, and the land is full of bloodshed, and the city full of perversity. . . . My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense their deeds on their own head." (Ezekiel 9:5-7, 9-10)

David C. Grabbe
The Will of the People



Ezekiel 9:1-6

One of the spirit beings who had "charge over the city" (verse 1) carried, not a battle-axe like his fellows, but a writer's inkhorn (verse 2), and he was also dressed differently, in linen. His is a different purpose. God charges him to go ahead of his fellows, saying in verse 4: "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it."

The others follow him, obeying God's command to go through the city killing and not having pity (verse 5), but in verse 6, God warns, "Do not come near anyone on whom is the mark."

Those people who sighed and cried somehow found a place of safety from the conflagration and the terror. They had God's mark on them, protecting them from His judgment. Sighing and crying over the abominations and the sins of the larger society, then, must be enormously important to us, too, as we also stand on the brink of similar tribulation.

Charles Whitaker
The Torment of the Godly (Part One)




Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing Ezekiel 9:3:

Ezekiel 3:14-15
Habakkuk 1:2-4
Matthew 5:4

 

<< Ezekiel 9:2   Ezekiel 9:4 >>



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