Ezekiel 24

Ezekiel 24:1-27

Section 5 (Ezekiel 24:1-27).The judgment reached. In the last chapter of this series, which comes evidently as an appendix to what has gone before, we find the judgment now reached. The king of Babylon has drawn near to Jerusalem, and with this, when fully ascertained, prophetic communications cease for the present. The events speak for themselves, and to God’s voice in them they have now to listen. There are two parts in the chapter. The first announces, before the people could have any message of it to reach them, that the siege has begun while the second shows us what is implied in this -the divine sundering of the tie between Jehovah and the people, as figured in the death of the prophet’s wife. These two parts are in a certain sense, and in a most touching manner, in contrast with one another, as we shall see when we examine them.

1. We are now in the second year from the last communication, and in the ninth year of Jehoiachin’s captivity. The number speaks of divine manifestation, God manifesting Himself now, alas, in the very cloud which hides Him from the people but the cloud is that which their sins have raised, and God is manifest in necessary judgment. Thus also the tenth month the tenth day of the month, speaks. The word of Jehovah conies to Ezekiel on that day, bidding him to write down the name of the day, with the assurance that the king of Babylon has drawn near to Jerusalem on that self-same day. And now the taunt about the caldron is to be answered in the event. Jerusalem is indeed to be their caldron in which they are to be subjected to the fire of divine wrath: “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Set on the caldron, set it on, and also pour water into it. Gather the pieces thereof into it, every good piece, the thigh and the shoulder fill it with the choice bones. Take the choice of the flock, and make also a pile of bones underneath it. Make it boil well yea, let the bones thereof be boiled in the midst of it.” This then was to be the issue of every controversy with God, of which there was ample necessity. The city itself was a caldron whose rust was in it, and could not be scoured out.

The whole, therefore, is visited. No lot has fallen upon it for the sparing of any. She had taken life -that life which God had ordained to be sacred, even where rightly taken, when the blood was to be poured out to Him. It had not been poured out it remained to defile her nay, she had set it upon the bare rock in open view: “She poured it not upon the ground to cover it with dust.” Thus it cried openly for vengeance, and God had set her blood upon the bare rock, in His turn, that it should not be covered. The very city emptied of its inhabitants must go down in the fire of His anger: “Set it empty upon the coals thereof, that it may be hot, and the brass thereof may burn, that the filthiness thereof may be molten in it and its rust may cease. It has exhausted labor, yet its great rust goeth not forth out of it.

Let its rust be in the fire.” Thus after all possible pains taken with her, such pains as God Himself might take, she was not cleansed. Here then was the only possible end inexorable, unsparing judgment was alone sufficient for such a case: “According to thy ways and according to thy doings shall they judge thee, saith the Lord Jehovah.” 2. We have now a parable of another nature, which seems to bear a double significance; one open, and one hidden. Jerusalem is gone in judgment. The city is gone, and the sanctuary with it -the sanctuary so necessary for the nation as a whole, where alone the blood of sacrifice could be offered to God. Thus the destruction of the sanctuary was the end of all relationship. What could remain between a holy God and a people for whose sins no atonement could be made?

This is the overwhelming calamity which, as to the people, might well make every other of comparatively small account. The voice of lamentation itself was hushed in this silence of despair. “And the word of Jehovah came unto me saying, Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke, yet thou shalt not mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down.” It is not that grief is forbidden, but the expression of it. He is to be in this expressionless grief a sign to the people: “Sigh in silence, make no mourning for the dead, bind thy turban upon thee, and put thy sandals upon thy feet, and cover not the beard, and eat not the bread of men. And I spake unto the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded.” In contrast with the loud lamentation customary in such cases, for which they even hired mourners, this conduct calls for explanation: “The people said unto me, Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us which thou doest? Then I said unto them, The word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Say unto the house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I profane my sanctuary, the pride of your power, the desire of your eyes and the pity of your soul, and your sons and your daughters whom ye have left behind shall fall by the sword.” It is the mourning for these last that is to cease in view of the mourning which can have no sufficient expression. Yet, after all, it is not they who can feel these things according to the divine account of them. They might be overwhelmed by the calamity, but were to pine away in iniquities yet unrepented of. This is why, as it seems, the full meaning as to what Ezekiel is called to do does not come out. The loss of their sons and daughters, with all its severity, cannot answer to this breaking of a marriage-tie under which Ezekiel suffers. For that, we have to think of the sanctuary itself gone, which was the pledge and seal of the tie, which spoke of the Lord’s presence with them, and gave the people access to Himself; that tie being broken, it might well swallow up all others. But this does not put the prophet’s parabolic action in its full meaning before us. Ezekiel himself is plainly here, as elsewhere, the representative of God to the people, as the prophet in fact always was. It is to be noted that the stroke falls not upon the people, but upon the prophet himself. Nor is it inflicted as a judgment, as far as he is concerned. With the prophet there is no divorce from God by it; on the contrary, just at this time he stands before the people fully as the representative of God Himself, speaking and acting in His name. We have to take the prophet here as really representing the One for whom he stands.

Thus it is not obscurely intimated that the prophet’s sorrow is the sorrow of God Himself. The affliction is on His part, not on man’s side. Yet it is an affliction which can find no expression in the midst of a people obdurate as these are. It is their sin which has wrought their calamity. It is their sin in which they still pine away; feeling, no doubt, certain effects of it, but not the iniquity itself. He who has inflicted it is He who feels what He has inflicted.

It is the sundering of His own relationship with a people whom He had taken up to manifest His love to them and to bring them near to Himself in such a way as all their history indicates. Yet He has been compelled to give them up. The tie, in fact, is broken, for we are not thinking here of purposes to be fulfilled in the end, but of present relationship, and these ended for the nation as such. Yet He who in all their affliction has ever been afflicted, can give no expression to it. It is the shadow of judgment which is necessarily over them all and which hinders this expression. Yet how wonderful in its pathos is this unexpressed, inexpressible sorrow with which all this part of the prophecy closes! God will not, as it were, permit it all to end in judgment merely, without bringing us to His side in this matter, if we have heart for it, and showing us how truly His heart remains unchanged, and how thoroughly the divorce which He has given, as He says in Hosea, is not on His side but on theirs. Nothing can divorce His heart from the objects of His love, and if He has to act in a way apparently most contradictory to this, faith may yet penetrate the disguise and realize the love unchangeable throughout it all. This is what seems to be the meaning here -the meaning upon His side; the worthy end to which we have been looking. The prophetic communication to the people closes here for the time. The last act of the judgment which is now about to take place is to be waited for until the message shall come which speaks of its full accomplishment. For nearly a year and a half the siege lasted, and then came the message that the city was taken. In that day, when at last all was over, and no false hope could any longer be maintained, the prophet’s mouth would be opened. He would speak, and no more be dumb. This we shall find accordingly in the third division of these prophecies. When judgment has had its way, and God’s holiness is fully vindicated, the prophet’s mouth is to be opened, not in judgment once more, but in the announcement of blessing to come of blessing which, in God’s unrepenting goodness, is still reserved for them, however much their persistent iniquity has delayed the fulfilment of it.