Ezekiel 7:21

Ezekiel was among the captives taken to Babylon in 597 BC, and he spoke these words to the exiles there while Jerusalem was still standing. Many of them still hoped that the city and its Temple could never fall. Chapter 7 answers that hope with the word “end”. It opens by declaring that the end has come (Ezekiel 7:2–3) and says it again and again (Ezekiel 7:6). It follows the signs and visions of chapters 4 and 5 and the prophecy against the mountains of Israel in chapter 6, and it gathers all of that into one account of the judgment that would come through Babylon.

The earlier verses of Ezekiel 7 speak of God’s fury poured out and of his eye that will show no pity. These verses show what that fury looks like when it arrives, and this chapter, unlike many of Ezekiel’s prophecies, holds out no call to repent and no promise of restoration. The city fell to Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC (2 Kings 25).

In Israel’s wars the trumpet, the ram’s horn shofar or the metal chatzozerah, rallied the troops and gave the signal for battle. The verb for “blown”, tâqaʻ, means to clatter or clang an instrument, to blow, clap or strike, and it is also used for driving a nail or pitching a tent. In verse 14 the horn is sounded and everything is made ready, the soldiers armed and the ranks drawn up. Then comes the shock: “but none goeth to the battle.” The verb hâlak is the ordinary word for walking, coming and going, and here it describes an army that stays where it is. “None” sweeps over the whole people, so that the will to fight has failed everywhere at once.

The verse gives the reason in God’s own words: “for my wrath is upon all the multitude thereof.” The word for wrath, chârôwn, means a burning of anger, anger kindled like a fire. The people have prepared and the call has gone out, and still they stay, because the LORD himself is against them. Jeremiah heard the same from God, who said he would fight against Jerusalem himself (Jeremiah 21:5). Babylon is the army at the gates, and God is the one acting through it. When he has decided to judge, strength, plans and weapons all count for nothing.

Scripture gives the same picture in other places. Isaiah sees people hiding from the terror of the LORD (Isaiah 2:19), and in Revelation the great men of the earth hide from the wrath of the Lamb (Revelation 6:15–17). Proverbs warns that “Pride goeth before destruction” (Proverbs 16:18).

Verse 15 shuts every door. “The sword is without”: chûwts means outside, here the open country beyond the walls, and chereb is a sword, a word that can also mean a knife, a battering-ram, or war itself. It stands for the Babylonian army, which will cut down anyone caught in the field, whether working the land or trying to flee. “And the pestilence and the famine within”: the word for within is built on bayith, house, and here it means inside the city. Deber is pestilence or plague, and raʻâb is hunger or famine. Both were the familiar companions of a siege. Once a city was surrounded, food stopped coming in, and disease spread through the crowded streets.

“He that is in the field shall die with the sword; and he that is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him.” Field and city together cover the whole land, so there is nowhere left to hide. The verb ʼâkal means to eat, and figuratively to devour or consume, so famine and plague are pictured as beasts eating their prey.

Sword, famine and pestilence are three judgments the prophets name together. The LORD names them when he refuses to hear Judah’s prayers in Jeremiah 14:12, and the pale horse of Revelation 6:8 carries the same kind of judgment into the last book of the Bible. They are among the curses that the law of Moses set before Israel for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15), so God was doing exactly what he had said he would do.

Verse 16 turns to the few who get away. “They that escape of them shall escape” uses one root twice over in Hebrew, the verb pâlaṭ and the noun pâlîyṭ for a person who escapes. The repetition makes it certain that some will survive, and the rest of the verse shows that survival brings them only into a new sorrow.

They flee to the mountains, har, the high places people ran to in time of war, and there they are “like doves of the valleys”. Yôwnâh is a dove or pigeon. Doves live in the valleys and lowlands, and when they are disturbed they fly up into the crags, where their mournful cooing carries. So the survivors are driven up out of their homes, frightened and without comfort, and their grief can be heard across the hills.

“All of them mourning”: the verb hâmâh means to make a loud sound, to be in commotion, and it is used of moaning, roaring and uproar. Here it is the loud moaning of grief. Each one mourns “for his iniquity”. ʻÂvôn means perversity, fault or sin, and it can also mean the punishment that sin brings. Each survivor knows that his own sin has brought him to this place, as Isaiah told Judah that their iniquities had separated them from their God (Isaiah 59:1–2).

This is a remnant of sorrow. Isaiah speaks of a remnant that will return to the mighty God (Isaiah 10:20–21), and this remnant sits grieving on the hilltops. Its grief is personal, “every one for his iniquity”, like the psalmist who confesses his iniquity and is sorry for his sin (Psalm 38:17–18).

“All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water.” The hand, yâd, stands for power, means and the ability to act, work or fight. Râphâh, “feeble”, means to slacken, to let go, to fail or lose heart. The knee, berek, a noun Strong’s derives from the verb “to bless”, is what lets a person stand, walk, run or kneel. When the knees turn to water, the body can neither stand nor flee nor resist, and water, which has no firmness at all, makes the point vividly.

“All” comes in both halves of the verse, so every person is included, whatever his rank or strength. The verse describes the collapse of courage and will as much as of the body. A people who had grown slack toward God’s law now find their own strength gone slack.

The prophets use the same pictures of terror for other days of judgment. Isaiah says that hands will grow limp (Isaiah 13:7). Jeremiah tells of anguish taking hold of the people (Jeremiah 6:24) and of every face turned pale (Jeremiah 30:6), and Nahum of hearts melting and knees trembling (Nahum 2:10). In Psalm 22:14 the sufferer’s heart melts like wax within him, another picture of a person whose strength has dissolved.

Verse 18 shows the outward marks of the disaster. “They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth.” Châgar means to gird on, the way a belt or armour is put on. Sackcloth, saq, was a coarse cloth, often of goat’s hair, worn against the skin in grief, self-abasement and repentance, and Isaiah tells of a day when the LORD called his people to weeping and mourning (Isaiah 22:12).

“And horror shall cover them.” Pallâtsûwth, from a root meaning to frighten, is fearfulness, horror or trembling, and the verb kâçâh, cover, wraps them in it like a garment. “And shame shall be upon all faces”: bûwshâh is shame, the disgrace of a people whose sin is now exposed for everyone to see. “And baldness upon all their heads”: qorchâh is baldness made by shaving or plucking out the hair, a public sign of great grief. The priests were forbidden to make themselves bald in mourning for the dead (Leviticus 21:5), and for everyone else it was a common sign of lament, as when Micah tells Judah to shave their heads for their children (Micah 1:16).

Amos foretold that the LORD would turn Israel’s feasts into mourning (Amos 8:10), and Jeremiah speaks of the shame Judah brought on itself by its idols (Jeremiah 7:19). Two chapters earlier God had charged his people with defiling his sanctuary with their detestable things (Ezekiel 5:11). Now the city that trusted in itself wears the clothes of mourning.

This mourning is forced on them by disaster. The grief God asks for is the willing kind, which Joel describes: “rend your heart, and not your garments” (Joel 2:12–13).

“They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed.” Silver and gold were money, and they were also signs of power, status and national strength. Judah, and its leading families most of all, had piled them up for generations through trade and tribute, often by unjust means. Now the metal lies in the street, because in a siege it buys neither food nor safety. “Shall be removed” may mean that the invaders seize the gold, or that the people throw it away themselves. Zâhâb, gold, comes from a root meaning to shimmer, and the shining metal lies there worthless.

“Their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD.” The verb nâtsal is to snatch away or rescue. ʻEbrâh is an outburst of anger or rage, and here it is the wrath of the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh. Proverbs says the same of riches in the day of wrath (Proverbs 11:4), and Jesus warns his hearers against covetousness (Luke 12:15).

“They shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels.” The soul here is the inner self with its appetite, and the bowels are the belly. In a famine gold buys no bread, and it never could give peace or contentment.

“As for the beauty of his ornament, he set it in majesty.” The ornament is the Temple in Jerusalem, God’s adornment, ʻădîy, a word for ornament or finery. Tsᵉbîy, beauty, comes from a root meaning to be prominent, and it means splendour or glory. Gâʼôwn can mean pride or pomp, and here it has its good sense of majesty and excellence. God himself set (sûwm, to put or place) the house in honour as the place of his glorious presence among his people. The ESV reads “their beautiful ornament”.

“But they made the images of their abominations and of their detestable things therein.” ʻÂsâh is the everyday verb to do or make, and tselem is an image. Tôwʻêbah is an abomination, something utterly detestable, and also an idol. Shiqqûwts is a disgusting thing, and above all an idol. King Manasseh had set up altars and an image in the Temple itself (2 Kings 21:4–7), and the cleansing under Josiah later on was short-lived. In the next chapter Ezekiel is carried in vision to Jerusalem and shown what is done in the Temple courts: carvings of creeping things and abominable beasts, women weeping for Tammuz, and more besides (Ezekiel 8:5–18). The people also served Baal and Asherah and worshipped the sun, moon and stars, and child sacrifice, though usually practised outside the Temple, belonged to the same idolatry that provoked God.

“Therefore have I set it far from them.” The phrase joins nâthan, to give or set, with niddâh, and God declares that the house they defiled will be put out of their reach. He withdraws his protecting presence and favour and leaves it to be destroyed. Jeremiah’s sermon at the Temple gave the same warning against trusting the building while living in idolatry and injustice, and pointed to what God had done at Shiloh (Jeremiah 7:1–15). The covenant had promised blessing for faithfulness and curses for rebellion, and the curses were now coming. God’s presence among his people called them to purity and obedience, and his house was never a charm against judgment.

“And I will give it into the hands of the strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil.” “It” is the land, the city, and above all the Temple and its treasures. Nâthan, give, is a verb with a very wide range (put, set, make, deliver), and with God as the speaker it is God himself who hands them over. The strangers, zûwr, from a root meaning to turn aside, are foreigners outside the covenant people, and the word can also carry the sense of profane. They are the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, whom God calls his servant (Jeremiah 25:9–11). Baz, prey, is plunder taken by force, and shâlâl, spoil, is loot, two words for one thing that make the loss complete. “The wicked of the earth” are the same invaders as God sees them, people who do not acknowledge him and are still instruments in his hand. God used Assyria in the same way (Isaiah 10:5–7). He rules over the kingdoms of men (Daniel 2:21), and Amos says plainly that calamity in a city comes from the LORD (Amos 3:6).

“And they shall pollute it.” Châlal means to profane, to treat a holy thing as common and strip it of its holiness, and Strong’s gives its first sense as to bore or wound. The same verb stands behind both “pollute” and “defile” in verse 22. The invaders’ profaning of the Temple mirrors what Israel had already done to it with their idols.

“My face will I turn also from them.” Pânîym is the face, and its senses reach out to the front of a thing and to presence. When God’s face is toward his people, he is with them in favour and protection, and the priestly blessing asks that the LORD make his face shine on them and lift up his countenance on them (Numbers 6:25–26). Here he turns it away, a judicial act that leaves them exposed to their enemies.

“And they shall pollute my secret place.” The words behind “secret place” come from tsâphan, to hide by covering over, to hoard or reserve. It is the Holy of Holies, the innermost room of the Temple, called the Debir, hidden from public view, where the Ark of the Covenant stood and where only the high priest could enter, once a year on the Day of Atonement. “For the robbers shall enter into it, and defile it.” The robbers, pᵉrîyts, are violent men, tyrants or destroyers, the Babylonian armies, and they walk into the room where only the high priest could go.

The law had warned of all this (Leviticus 26:30–33), and God had done it once before, when he forsook Shiloh and gave up the ark (Psalm 78:58–61). Ezekiel goes on to see the glory of the LORD leave the Temple (Ezekiel 10:18–19), and the chapter goes on to a land full of bloodshed (Ezekiel 7:23).

The people in these verses could not stand in their own defence, and neither can we. Everyone stands under God’s just wrath against sin, and our strength, preparations and good deeds can no more save us than Judah’s trumpet could. The New Testament tells us that God’s wrath fell on his own Son at the cross. Paul writes that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” and that we shall be “saved from wrath through him” (Romans 5:8–11). Jesus delivers us from “the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10), and those who were enemies he has reconciled to God through his death (Colossians 1:21–22). Isaiah foretold that the Servant would be pierced for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5–6), and John the Baptist called Jesus “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The wages of sin is death, and God’s gift is eternal life (Romans 6:23). God made him to be sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21), and now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

Each part of these verses finds its answer in him. The famine that devoured the city and the gold that could not fill a stomach are answered by Jesus, the bread of life (John 6:35) and the giver of living water (John 4:14). The riches that cannot be stolen are treasures laid up in heaven (Matthew 6:20). Wealth became Judah’s stumblingblock, and Christ is himself a stone of stumbling to those who reject him and the precious cornerstone to those who believe (1 Peter 2:7). The public shame “upon all faces” he took on himself when the passers-by mocked him on the cross (Matthew 27:39–44), and he “endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). God is “the God of all comfort” to those who grieve (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). The mourning of verse 16 becomes, in Christ, the “godly sorrow” that works repentance to salvation (2 Corinthians 7:10), and God promises to remember our sins no more (Hebrews 8:12).

Jesus also met a defiled Temple. He drove out the traders, saying, “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves” (Matthew 21:13). He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” and he spoke of his body (John 2:19–21). In him all the fullness of God dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9), and through his own blood he entered once into the holy place and obtained eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:11–14). When he died the veil of the Temple was torn (Matthew 27:51), and the way into God’s presence was opened. Now God’s people are his temple (1 Corinthians 3:16), each believer’s body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and the church is built together into a holy temple and a dwelling place of God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:21–22), made of living stones (1 Peter 2:5). God set his house in Jerusalem far from a rebellious people, and in Christ he has drawn near to us for ever.

These verses show a God who means what he says. He warned Israel for generations, and when the day came he did what he had warned. He is holy, and he will not share his house with idols. He sees through every refuge people build for themselves, whether trumpets and armies, city walls, or silver and gold, and on the day of his wrath none of them holds.

They also show where safety lies. The face that God turned away from Jerusalem is the face that shines on all who come to him through his Son. The strength that drained out of Judah’s hands is given to his people in Christ, so that Paul could write, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13). And the God who would not have his house defiled has made his people his dwelling place, and he calls them to be holy as he is holy (1 Peter 1:15–16).