5
📚“And, son of man, take a sharp knife; take and use it as a barber’s razor on your head and on your beard. Then take scales for weighing, and divide the hair. 5:1 See Isa 7:20; 15:2; 2 Sam 10:4-5. This signified falling into the hands of enemies and the humiliation that would result. Shaving the head was also a sign of mourning (Job 1:20; Jer 7:29; 16:6; Ezek 27:31).⚜
2 📚You shall burn a third of it with fire inside the city, when the days of the siege are ended. And you shall take a third of it, and strike it with the knife all around the city, and you shall scatter a third in the wind. For I will draw out a sword after them.
5:2 Indicated that most of the people of Jerusalem would perish in or around the city (v 12). The hair represented the people, Jerusalem represented the head. Notice God says “I will draw out a sword after them”. In other words God would use Jerusalem’s enemies for its punishment. Compare Isa 10:5; Jer 51:20.⚜
3 📚You shall also take a few hairs from it, and tie them in your garment. 4 📚Again, take some of them and throw them into the middle of the fire, and burn them in the fire. For from there a fire will spread to the whole house of Israel.
5:3-4 Some of the people would escape, but some of those who escaped would also perish. Try to imagine what an effect Ezekiel’s strange behavior would have on those who saw it.⚜
God’s words concerning Jerusalem
5 📚“Thus says the Lord God: This is Jerusalem. I have set it in the midst 📖 of the nations and countries that surround her.
5:5 From this verse to the end of chapter 7 we have God’s message through Ezekiel explaining his symbolic actions.⚜
6 📚And she has rebelled against my ordinances more wickedly than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries that are around her; for they have rejected my ordinances and my statutes. They have not walked in them.
7 📚“Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have multiplied rebellion more than the nations that are around you, and have not walked in my statutes, or kept my ordinances, or even acted according to the ordinances of the nations around you,
8 📚“Therefore thus says the Lord God: See, I, I myself, am against you and will execute judgments among you in the sight of the nations.
5:6-8 Jerusalem utterly failed in what she should have been. Because that city had far more of God’s light and truth than other nations its wickedness was even greater than others because it turned away from light and truth. Because it had been given much, much was required of it. Compare Matt 11:20-24; Luke 12:48. So God would make that city an object lesson to all the world. See the terrible words of v 8 – “I am against you”. If God is against us who can be for us?⚜
9 📚And, because of all your abominations, I will do in you what I have not done, and the like of which I will not do again.
5:9 Verse 11. Idolatry was one of the chief reasons for God’s terrible anger against Jerusalem (Ezek 6:3-10).⚜
10 📚Therefore the fathers will eat the sons in your midst, and the sons will eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in you, and I will scatter all the rest of you to all the winds. 11 📚Therefore, as I live, says the Lord God, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things, and with all your abominations, therefore surely I will also withdraw and my eye will have no pity 📖, and I will not spare. 12 📚A third of you will die from the plague, and will be consumed by famine in your midst; and a third part will fall by the sword around you; and I will scatter a third part to all the winds, and draw out a sword after them.
5:12 Verse 2.⚜
13 📚“Thus my anger will be spent, and I will cause my fury to rest on them, and I will be appeased; and when my fury against them is spent, they will know that I, the LORD, have spoken 📖 it in my zeal.
14 📚“Moreover I will make you a wasteland, and an object of reproach among the nations that are around you, in the sight of all who pass by. 15 📚So it will be a reproach and a taunt, a warning and an object of astonishment to the nations that are around you, when I execute judgments in you in anger and in fury and in furious rebukes. I, the LORD, have spoken it. 16 📚When I send on them the disastrous arrows of famine, which will destroy them, I will send them to destroy you (then I will increase the famine among you, and will break your staff of bread). 17 📚So I will send on you famine and evil beasts, and they will bereave you; and plague and bloodshed will pass through you; and I will bring the sword on you. I, the LORD, have spoken it”.
5:16-17 Here are the four means of destruction God sometimes used when He rose against evil cities and lands – famine, wild beasts, plague, and sword (Jer 15:2-3; 24:10). For something similar in the future see Rev 6:8. Observe that in times of judgment “arrows of famine” are sent by God Himself.⚜