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Ezekiel 21

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God’s Sword of Judgment Against Israel 1–7

1
And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying,
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Son of man, set thy face toward Jerusalem, and drop thy word toward the sanctuaries, and prophesy against the land of Israel; ​
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and say to the land of Israel, Thus saith Jehovah: Behold, I am against thee, and will draw forth my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked. ​
4
Seeing then that I will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked, therefore shall my sword go forth out of its sheath against all flesh from the south to the north: ​
5
and all flesh shall know that I, Jehovah, have drawn forth my sword out of its sheath; it shall not return any more.
6
Sigh therefore, thou son of man; with the breaking of thy loins and with bitterness shalt thou sigh before their eyes. ​
7
And it shall be, when they say unto thee, Wherefore sighest thou? that thou shalt say, Because of the tidings, for it cometh; and every heart shall melt, and all hands shall be feeble, and every spirit shall faint, and all knees shall be weak as water: behold, it cometh, and it shall be done, saith the Lord Jehovah.

The Sharpened Sword of the LORD 8–17

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And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying,
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Son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus saith Jehovah: Say, A sword, a sword, it is sharpened, and also furbished;
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it is sharpened that it may make a slaughter; it is furbished that it may be as lightning: shall we then make mirth? the rod of my son, it contemneth every tree. ​
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And it is given to be furbished, that it may be handled: the sword, it is sharpened, yea, it is furbished, to give it into the hand of the slayer.
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Cry and wail, son of man; for it is upon my people, it is upon all the princes of Israel: they are delivered over to the sword with my people; smite therefore upon thy thigh.
13
For there is a trial; and what if even the rod that contemneth shall be no more? saith the Lord Jehovah. ​
14
Thou therefore, son of man, prophesy, and smite thy hands together; and let the sword be doubled the third time, the sword of the deadly wounded: it is the sword of the great one that is deadly wounded, which entereth into their chambers.
15
I have set the threatening sword against all their gates, that their heart may melt, and their stumblings be multiplied: ah! it is made as lightning, it is pointed for slaughter.
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Gather thee together, go to the right, set thyself in array, go to the left, whithersoever thy face is set.
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I will also smite my hands together, and I will cause my wrath to rest: I, Jehovah, have spoken it.

Nebuchadnezzar at the Crossroads 18–27

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The word of Jehovah came unto me again, saying,
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Also, thou son of man, appoint thee two ways, that the sword of the king of Babylon may come; they twain shall come forth out of one land: and mark out a place, mark it out at the head of the way to the city. ​
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Thou shalt appoint a way for the sword to come to Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and to Judah in Jerusalem the fortified. ​
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For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver. ​
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In his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem, to set battering rams, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to cast up mounds, to build forts.
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And it shall be unto them as a false divination in their sight, who have sworn oaths unto them; but he bringeth iniquity to remembrance, that they may be taken. ​
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Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Because ye have made your iniquity to be remembered, in that your transgressions are uncovered, so that in all your doings your sins do appear; because that ye are come to remembrance, ye shall be taken with the hand.
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And thou, O deadly wounded wicked one, the prince of Israel, whose day is come, in the time of the iniquity of the end, ​
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thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Remove the mitre, and take off the crown; this shall be no more the same; exalt that which is low, and abase that which is high.
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I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: this also shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him. ​

Prophecy Against the Ammonites 28–32

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And thou, son of man, prophesy, and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah concerning the children of Ammon, and concerning their reproach; and say thou, A sword, a sword is drawn, for the slaughter it is furbished, to cause it to devour, that it may be as lightning; ​
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while they see for thee false visions, while they divine lies unto thee, to lay thee upon the necks of the wicked that are deadly wounded, whose day is come in the time of the iniquity of the end.
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Cause it to return into its sheath. In the place where thou wast created, in the land of thy birth, will I judge thee. ​
31
And I will pour out mine indignation upon thee; I will blow upon thee with the fire of my wrath; and I will deliver thee into the hand of brutish men, skilful to destroy.
32
Thou shalt be for fuel to the fire; thy blood shall be in the midst of the land; thou shalt be no more remembered: for I, Jehovah, have spoken it.

Bible text: American Standard Version (1901) · Public domain

Study Notes for Ezekiel 21

Verse 2

set thy face toward Jerusalem — The prophet’s posture, as in 4:7, ‘thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem’. ‘Drop thy word’ is nataph, to fall in drops, the verb of Job’s ‘my speech dropped upon them’ (Job 29:22) and of Amos’ ‘drop not thy word against the house of Isaac’ (Amos 7:16). The ‘holy places’ are the sanctuaries, and the word falls on the land of Israel.

Verse 3

the righteous and the wicked — The sword is the LORD’s own, drawn from ‘his sheath’, with Babylon its instrument (v.19). Both are ‘cut off’ from the land when it falls, while 14:14 says that Noah, Daniel and Job ‘should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness’. Chereb, the sword, is the theme of the whole chapter.

Verse 4

against all flesh from the south to the north — The reach of the sword matches the fire of 20:47, ‘all faces from the south to the north’, so the fire and the sword are one judgment on the land. The purpose is stated in the next verse: ‘That all flesh may know that I the LORD have drawn forth my sword out of his sheath: it shall not return any more’ (v.5).

Verse 6

Sigh… with the breaking of thy loins — The sigh is a sign, explained in v.7: asked ‘Wherefore sighest thou?’, Ezekiel is to answer, ‘For the tidings; because it cometh’. Anach, ‘sigh’, is the verb of the men marked in 9:4 who ‘sigh and that cry for all the abominations’. ‘Much pain is in all loins’ (Nah 2:10) shows the same bodily sign of terror.

Verse 10

it contemneth the rod of my son, as every tree — A hard verse. The ‘rod’ (shebet) is the sceptre of Judah’s kings (19:11, 14), and ‘my son’ is read of Israel, ‘Israel is my son, even my firstborn’ (Ex 4:22), or of its royal line. The sword rejects the sceptre as it would any tree. ‘Sharpened’, ‘furbished’ and ‘glitter’ (baraq) name its polish for slaughter.

Verse 13

Because it is a trial — Bachan, to test, is the verb of Ps 66:10, ‘thou, O God, hast proved us’. The sword is testing even the royal rod, and what is found wanting ‘shall be no more’. That is the sentence which stands until the one ‘whose right it is’ comes (v.27).

Verse 19

appoint thee two ways — Another sign-act, like the tile of 4:1, ‘pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem’. Two roads run out of Babylon’s land and part at a fork, one to Ammon’s capital and one to Jerusalem. ‘Place’ is literally ‘a hand’, a signpost set ‘at the head of the way to the city’, so that the way the sword will take is shown.

Verse 20

Rabbath of the Ammonites — The capital of Ammon, where the iron bedstead of Og was kept (Deut 3:11). One road leads there and the other ‘to Judah in Jerusalem the defenced’, batsar, made inaccessible by fortification. Ammon had a part in the plotting against Babylon when messengers came to Zedekiah (Jer 27:3).

Verse 21

he looked in the liver — The king of Babylon uses three means: arrows made bright, which the Hebrew verb (qalal) suggests were shaken for a sign, ‘images’ (teraphim, household gods, like those Rachel stole in Gen 31:19), and the liver. He stands ‘at the parting of the way’, literally the mother of the way, the fork. Yet ‘the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD’ (Prov 16:33).

Verse 23

as a false divination in their sight — Those who ‘have sworn oaths’ to Babylon (17:13; 2 Chr 36:13) see the omen as false, but the LORD ‘will call to remembrance the iniquity, that they may be taken’. The iniquity is the broken oath: ‘mine oath that he hath despised, and my covenant that he hath broken’ (17:19).

Verse 25

profane wicked prince of Israel — The king is Zedekiah, of whom Jeremiah records that he ‘did that which was evil in the eyes of the LORD’ (Jer 52:2), and who ‘rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God’ (2 Chr 36:13). ‘End’ (qets) recalls 7:2, ‘An end, the end is come upon the four corners of the land’.

Verse 27

until he come whose right it is — The threefold ‘overturn’ (avvah) removes the diadem and crown of v.26, and the kingdom ‘shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him’. It looks to David’s line: ‘I will raise unto David a righteous Branch’ (Jer 23:5), and ‘the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David’ (Luke 1:32).

Verse 28

concerning the Ammonites, and concerning their reproach — The sword turns to Ammon, whose taunt over Jerusalem is recorded in 25:3, ‘Aha, against my sanctuary, when it was profaned’. Zephaniah names the same sin, ‘the revilings of the children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached my people’ (Zeph 2:8). ‘The sword, the sword’ repeats the song of vv.9–10.

Verse 30

I will judge thee in the place where thou wast created — Spoken to Ammon: judgment comes in ‘the land of thy nativity’, in its own country. The sheath of vv.3 and 5 is named again, but the sword is not put back, and v.32 ends, ‘thou shalt be for fuel to the fire… thou shalt be no more remembered’.