Ezekiel 3:1-11

CHAPTER 2:1-3:11.

CALL TO THE PROPHETICAL OFFICE.

Ezekiel 2:1. And he said to me, Son of man, (Hävernick, after many leading commentators, both ancient and modern, still lays stress on this expression, “son of man,” so frequently applied to Ezekiel, and regards it as containing a perpetual admonition to him of his own weakness and frailty. It seems rather strange, however, that this prophet alone should be so often plied with such an admonition, and that it should have been conveyed under so general a form. We are rather disposed to concur with Lightfoot: “This expression is of frequent use in Scripture, in the Hebrew Rabbins, but more especially in the Chaldean and Syrian tongues.... Why Ezekiel and no other prophet should have been so often styled thus, has been ascribed to different reasons by different commentators. To me, at least, who am much inferior to them all, the principal reason appears to be this, that as his prophecy was written during the Babylonish captivity, he naturally made use of the Chaldean phrase, So of man that is, man. The same phrase was also used by Daniel in Chaldea, Daniel 10:16.” Erubim, chap. 4.) stand upon thy feet, and I will speak to thee.

Ezekiel 2:2. And the spirit came into me as he spoke to me, and he set me upon my feet and I heard him speaking to me.

Ezekiel 2:3. And he said to me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to the rebellious peoples, (It is, literally, to peoples, the rebellious ones Israel being not only called peoples (גּוֹיִם, the common epithet of the heathen), but with the additional epithet of the rebellious. They were thus virtually put on a level with the heathen, who might be addressed by God as Loammi, not my people; with the additional aggravation, that they had brought themselves into that condition after having been in covenant with God. The Septuagint, with its characteristic laxity, altogether omits the expression.) who have rebelled against me; they and their fathers have transgressed against me, unto this very day.

Ezekiel 2:4. And they are children of a stiff countenance, and an hard heart. I do send thee unto them, and thou shall say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah.

Ezekiel 2:5. And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear for they are a rebellious house shall yet know that a prophet was among them.

Ezekiel 2:6. And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their words; for nettles (The precise meaning of סָרָבִים is involved in some doubt. The sense of rebellious or refractory has often been ascribed to it, which it bears in the Chaldee; but this would not suit here, being coupled with thorns, and hence that of pricking briers or nettles has been adopted. Gesenius, however, still prefers rebels.) and thorns are with thee, and thou dwellest with scorpions; be not afraid of their words, neither be confounded at their faces, for they are a rebellious house.

Ezekiel 2:7. And thou shalt speak my words to them, whether they shall hear, or whether they shall forbear; for they are rebellious.

Ezekiel 2:8. And thou, son of man, hear what I say to thee; be not thou rebellious like the rebellious house; open thy mouth, and eat what I give thee.

Ezekiel 2:9. And I looked, and behold a hand stretched toward me, and behold in it a book-roll.

Ezekiel 2:10. And he spread it out before me, and it was written within and without; and there was written on it lamentations, and mourning, and woe.

Ezekiel 3:1. And he said to me, Son of man, that which thou findest, eat; eat this roll, and go speak to the house of Israel.

Ezekiel 3:2. And I opened my mouth, and he made me eat that roll.

Ezekiel 3:3. And he said to me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this great roll which I give thee. And I did eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.

Ezekiel 3:4. And he said to me, Son of man, go, get thee to the house of Israel, and speak my words to them.

Ezekiel 3:5. For not to a people of obscure speech and hard language (The expressions are literally, “deep of lip, and heavy of tongue,” which can only mean obscurity of speech, and language hard to be understood a foreign tongue.) art thou sent, to the house of Israel.

Ezekiel 3:6. Not to many nations of obscure speech and hard language, whose words thou dost not understand. Surely, had I sent thee to them, they would have listened to thee.

Ezekiel 3:7. And the house of Israel will not be willing to hearken to thee: for they are not willing to hearken to me; for all the house of Israel are of an hard forehead, and a stiff heart.

Ezekiel 3:8. Behold, I make thy face hard against their faces, and thy forehead hard against their foreheads.

Ezekiel 3:9. As an adamant harder than flint I make thy forehead; thou shalt not be afraid of them, nor be confounded at their looks; for they are a rebellious house.

Ezekiel 3:10. And he said to me, Son of man, all my words that I shall speak to thee receive in thine heart, and hear with thine ears.

Ezekiel 3:11. And get thee away to the captives, to the children of thy people, and speak to them, and say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.

THE most striking thing in this section is the strong delineation that is given of the backslidden state and confirmed degeneracy of the people. Not only are they compared to such noxious productions as briers and scorpions, but with painful and emphatic reiteration they are declared to be altogether infected with the spirit of rebellion, setting their face, with determined and insolent effrontery, against the will and purpose of Heaven. No doubt the description is to be taken with some limitation, as applicable in its full sense to the greater portion of the captives, though not absolutely to the whole. But that such a general description should have been given of them by the God of truth was a clear indication that they were in a most sunk and degraded condition, and that the remnant who were animated by a better spirit must have been comparatively few.

How distinguished a proof of covenant love and faithfulness in God, that he should condescend to deal with such a people, and send a prophet yet again to instruct them! And for that prophet, with an arduous and vexing enterprise, to prosecute among them the business of a faithful ambassador of Heaven!

But to render him more fully alive to what awaited him in this respect, a symbolical action was added. Looking up, he saw a hand stretched out toward him, and in the hand the roll of a book, written within and without, but written only “with lamentations, and mourning, and woe.” This was significant of the heavy tidings which were to form the chief burden of his communications to the people. For, broken and afflicted as they already were in their condition, they were not yet weaned from their false hopes, nor had they reached the darkest period of their history. Troubles and calamities still more disastrous than those which had yet been experienced were needed to crush their proud refractory spirit; and in such a time of spiritual disorder and corruption, it was only through a season of midnight darkness that light could arise to the people of God. Therefore the prophetic roll delivered into the hands of Ezekiel was necessarily much written with the dark forebodings of tribulation and sorrow. And as God's representative at such a time, and to such a people, he must eat it (chap. Ezekiel 3:1-2), not of course literally swallow the roll, but so receive and appropriate its unsavoury contents, that these should infuse themselves, as it were, into his very moisture and blood, and imbue his soul with a feeling of their reality and importance. Hence the bitter as well as the sweet which followed in the experience of the prophet (Ezekiel 3:3; Ezekiel 3:14), “sweet as honey in his mouth,” yet afterwards causing him to go “in bitterness, in the heat of his spirit;” bitter indeed, because he had to announce a message and prosecute a work which was to be peculiarly painful and arduous; but sweet notwithstanding, because it was the Lord's service in which he was to be engaged, and a service which had the full consent and approval of his own mind. It was sweet to be the representative and agent of the Most High, however contrary to flesh and blood might be the special embassy on which he was sent; as Jeremiah also says, Jeremiah 15:16, “I found thy words and ate them; and thy words were to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of Hosts.” “The action denotes that the prophet, being carried in a manner out of himself, entered into the room of God; and divesting himself of carnal affection, rising into the region of pure and spiritual contemplation, whatever the will of God might call him to do for magnifying the justice as well as goodness of God, he was thoroughly to approve in his own mind, and derive pleasure from the words of God, whatever might be the tenor of their announcements.” (Vitringa in Apoc. p. 441, on chap. 10:8-11.) In short, like every true reformer, and every faithful ambassador of Heaven, it must henceforth be his to count God's glory his own highest good, and to make all subordinate to the one end of fulfilling with joy the ministry he had received from above.

And most nobly did this man of God execute his high commission, proving himself to be an Ezekiel indeed a man strengthened with the might of God a most powerful and effective instrument of Divine working. In the resolute and devoted spirit of his pious ancestry, “he said not unto his father and to his mother, I have seen them; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor know his own children, that he might teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law” (Deuteronomy 33:9). How valiantly did his heroic bearing rebuke the general spirit of despondency, and against hope still inspire the hope of better days to come! And even now, when he has so long since rested from his labours, may it not be an instructive and soul-refreshing thing to look back upon the struggle which he so vigorously maintained, to see him lifting his giant form above the deep waters of adversity that were surging around him, and the more the evil prevailed, nerving himself, in God's name, to a more determined and strenuous resistance against it! In such a spiritual hero we recognise a sign of the ever-during strength and perpetual revirescence of the cause of God, which, like its Divine author, carries in its bosom the element of eternity survives all changes amid all death, lives. If this cause should for a season be found to droop and languish, let us never doubt that it shall again clothe itself with freshness and vigour. Its winters are sure to be succeeded by returning springs. And standing, as it pre-eminently does, in the righteous principles which have a witness and an echo in every bosom, there only needs the consecrated energies of courageous hearts and strenuous arms, like those of Ezekiel, to raise it from the most depressed condition, and infuse into it the warmth of a renovated life. Lord God of Ezekiel, imprint the image of this thy faithful and devoted servant deep upon our hearts! Let the thought of his holy daring and triumphant faith put to shame our cowardice and inaction! And do thou find for thyself, in these days of evil, many who shall be willing, like him, to make Heaven's cause their own, and shall count nothing so dear to them as its prosperity and progress!