Ezekiel 9:2

One man among them was clothed with linen. — He was among them, but not of them. There were six with weapons, and this one without a weapon formed the seventh, thus making up the mystical number so often used in Scripture. He was “clothed in linen,” the ordinary priestly garment, and the special garment of the high priest at the ceremonies on the great Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16); yet also used by others, and on other occasions, simply as a garment of purity and of distinction (comp. Daniel 10:5), so that there is no need here to suppose a priestly character attached to this one. He carried in his girdle the “inkhorn,” i.e., the little case, containing pens, knife, and ink, commonly worn by the Oriental scribe. There is no occasion to understand this person either, on the one hand, as a representation of the Babylonian god Nebo, “the scribe of heaven,” nor, on the other, as is done by many commentators, of our Lord. There is nothing mentioned which can give him any special identification. He is simply a necessity of the vision, an angelic messenger, to mark out those whose faithfulness to God amid the surrounding evil exempts them from the common doom (comp. Revelation 7:3). This party are seen coming “from the way of the higher gate.” The courts of the Temple were built in stages, the innermost the highest. This, then, was the gate of the inner court, and was on the north, both as the place where the prophet had been shown the idolatries, and as the quarter from which the Chaldæan destruction was poured out upon the nation. They took their station “beside the brazen altar,” as the central point at once of the true worship of Israel and of the present profanation of that worship.