Ezekiel 2

Ezekiel 2:1-3

Section 2 (Ezekiel 2:1-10; Ezekiel 3:1-11.)God’s words to be spoken to those who would not hear. We have now the charge given to the prophet, which, as we see at once, is to speak to a people who will not hear, of whom it can only be hoped that here and there ears may be open to receive it. There is no encouraging hope with regard to the success of the message; yet, whether they would hear or whether they would forbear, they should know that there had been a prophet among them. All the more if there is not to be the encouragement of conscious success, is he to find it in the consciousness of the Lord with him, whom Israel would reject in rejecting His messenger. He is addressed at once by the title which we have already seen to be characteristic of his prophecy: “Son of man,” says the Voice, “stand upon thy feet, and I will speak with thee.” The title given him is itself a proof that the people to whom he goes have lost their special distinctive place with God, but at the same time that if Israel will not hear, grace will not be thwarted in its object. The message will only go out the more widely, and indeed, with a deeper, sweeter, fuller message, as we abundantly prove today. This title is in itself the foreshadow of One who when standing in the midst of Israel in a day which was then future, would adopt it for His own. The Son of Man would be the Seeker of men, and Himself a man in all the conditions of humanity -Himself the perfect, because unfallen, Man. The Lord’s adoption of this title is, however, distinct in its significance from the use of it by God in His address to the prophet. God never addresses Christ as the Son of Man, but as His own Son; man indeed, but as it is said in Zechariah: “The Man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 13:7).

But the Lord’s adoption of it for Himself is peculiar, and characteristic of the uniqueness of His personality. Who but Himself could say, “I the Son of man?” No mere man could claim distinctively to be what all men are.

Man indeed He is thoroughly, nor only man, but Son of man, entering into manhood by the door ordained, by its lowliness, to hide pride from man. To the weakness of infancy He is no stranger. He grows and learns as other men, His kinship with whom this name discloses; yet while it discloses this, it distinguishes Him none the less from all else among men -distinctive even because of its universality; for who could distinguish himself by a title that was not distinctive? He was thus Son of man in some sense peculiar to Himself -Son of man, while much more than this. With Ezekiel the term speaks, on the other hand, simply of his identification with men. He is not the son of man, but reminded of the lowliness of his condition, while at the same time this only magnifies the grace which has taken him up; and thus also there is in him a peculiar suitability to convey the message with which he is charged -not an angel, but with human sympathies, and a human intelligence acquired and exercised amid human conditions; himself thus the proof of the heart of God behind the hand of Him who is love and cannot change His nature, even when He is executing judgment. The feebleness of the instrument is recognized, and thus calls forth Jehovah’s might to sustain it. We see this at the outset here: “Son of man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak with thee.” And not only so, but the Spirit enters into him to make him stand. He cannot even listen to the message in that prostrate condition which, while it may rightly express the nothingness of the creature in the presence of God, at the same time cannot suitably express the divine grace towards him. We see this everywhere in the history of the prophets, as notably in the prophet Daniel, and as again also in the case of John the beloved. God cannot utter His thoughts to one prostrate in the dust before Him. This does not suit the blessed Speaker; and this is already the foretaste of that which enables us to say we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, “Abba, Father.” That cry is not yet come in Ezekiel’s case, belonging as he does to a previous dispensation, but none the less the spirit of fear is bidden to depart, in order that the divine communications may have their suited character; for if God is enwrapping Himself in the cloud of judgment, nevertheless there is, as we have seen, the manifestation of One to whom judgment is a strange work, and those iris hues of promise are about the cloud. The messenger must in his spirit reflect this, that he may be fit as a messenger; and whether they hear or whether they forbear, the prophet must be witness in his own person that if “justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne,” “mercy and truth” yet “go before His face.” But Israel have, in fact, already thoroughly proved themselves, and are no other (except in the privileges which they have perverted) than the nations around. Thus the divine Speaker marks them here: “I send thee to the children of Israel,” He says -to Gentiles -for they are none other than these. They are but “the rebellious who have rebelled against Me. They and their fathers have transgressed against Me unto this very day.” Thus they are children as “impudent of face” as “hard of heart.” Their heart spoke in their faces in such a way that there could be no more concealment, and God sends to them in the full recognition of this, putting against their blasphemous words the speech of the Unchangeable whom they have refused. Thus they shall know, if it be learned by the judgment executed, that there has been a prophet among them. Among such a people does the prophet dwell as briars and thorns wound and entangle those who come in contact with them, as scorpions poisonous in their sting yet he who has been admitted to see the glory of Jehovah need not be afraid among them.

How unseemly indeed would be any fear of man on the part of such an one, and how ill would he represent the majesty of Him with whom they had to do! How ill, alas, do we represent Him if in any wise we manifest this, into whose mouths God has put a sweeter message, and to whom the glory of the Lord has been more wondrously revealed than even as Ezekiel saw it here! And now the prophet is instructed to make thoroughly his own that which he is commissioned to proclaim amongst them. The vision character of what is here, one would think, ought to be plain to us, and an indication of the character of much that is to follow in the prophecy. “I looked,” he says, “and behold a hand was put forth toward me, and lo a roll of a book therein: and he spread it before me, and it was written within and without, and there were written in it lamentations and mournings and woe. And he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest. Eat this roll, and go, speak unto the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat this roll.” The meaning is perfectly clear, which any literal construction would rather obscure than add any force to. Again we are reminded of the visions of the Apocalypse.

The roll of the book is written within and without, which does not simply speak of the fulness of its contents, as it is taken, but rather, one would say, speaks of things outward and manifest as well as of things of a deeper and more hidden nature. That which is manifest is needed by a condition of soul that can see nothing except that which is external while, on the other hand, there are things within, which for those who have hearts to realize, are beyond all this.

Even so for the prophet himself there is something that answers to this; for while what was manifest was simply matter for “lamentations and mournings and woe,” yet in the mouth of the prophet there was as the taste of honey for sweetness, and this corresponds with what we have already seen throughout the vision, where the judgment does not stand alone, but the glory of the Lord is revealed in it, and in result, the accomplishment of counsels which are in His heart and which display His heart. Alas, the message might seem such as if it must be addressed to peoples of obscure language and difficult speech, to men of foreign tongues, strangers such as those among whom they were already being scattered. No, these were strangers in heart alone, all the more terrible in their enmity and misconception of the words of God, which above all should have been familiar. The difficulty of foreign speech might have been overcome, but here was a difficulty which no words that the prophet could utter would overcome. “But the house of Israel will not hearken unto thee, for none of them will hearken unto Me.” There was the stubbornness of a condition upon which mercy itself could wait no longer, and the prophet’s brow must be made hard against their brazen front, and his face against their faces. Already, the wrath to be poured out was foreshown in their condition, captives as they were to the heathen around them, who were themselves more capable of hearing the words of God, had they been addressed to them, than those who had been nursed up with them. It is the solemn lesson which we are constantly receiving, that not the lack of opportunity condemns men to judgment, but the fearful mystery of hearts that depart from the living God, who themselves invite the unwilling judgment, and can be constrained by nothing but the doom which in their case is the last touch of mercy which they are capable of receiving.