God appoints Ezekiel as a watchman
33
Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2 📚“Son of man, speak to the children of your people, and say to them, When I bring the sword on a land, if the people of the land take one of their countrymen and make him their watchman, 3 📚if he blows the trumpet when he sees the sword come on the land, and warns the people, 4 📚then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet, and does not take warning, if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood 📖 will be on his own head. 5 📚He heard the sound of the trumpet, and did not take warning. The responsibility for his blood will be on him. But he who takes warning will save his life. 6 📚But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned, if the sword comes, and takes a person from among them, he is taken away in his guilt; but I will require his blood at the watchman’s hand.7 📚“So, son of man, I have made you a watchman 📖 for the house of Israel. Therefore you shall hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. 8 📚When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die’, if you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man will die in his guilt 📖, but I will require his blood at your hand. 9 📚But if you warn the wicked about his way to turn him from it, if he does not turn from his way, he will die in his guilt, but you will have saved your life.
10 📚“Therefore, son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what you are saying, if our transgressions and our sins are on us, and we pine away in them, how then can we live?’
33:10 At last the people are beginning to confess their sins and to see that their sufferings are a result of them.⚜
11 📚Say to them, ‘As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turns from his way and lives 📖. Turn! Turn 📖 from your evil ways! For why will you die, O house of Israel?’
12 📚“Therefore, son of man, say to the children of your people, The righteousness of the righteous will not deliver him in the day of his transgression. As for the wickedness of the wicked, he will not fall because of it in the day that he turns from his wickedness; nor will the righteous be able to live because of his righteousness in the day that he sins. 13 📚When I say of the righteous that he will surely live, if he trusts in his own righteousness, and does evil, none of his acts of righteousness will be remembered, and he will die for the evil which he has committed. 14 📚Again, when I say to the wicked, ‘You will surely die’, if he turns from his sin, and does what is lawful and right, 15 📚if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has stolen, walks in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity, he will surely live; he will not die.
16 📚None of the sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has done what is lawful and right; he will surely live.
17 📚“Yet the children of your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But it is their way which is not just. 18 📚When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does evil, he will die because of it. 19 📚But if the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is lawful and right, he will live because of it. 20 📚Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, I will judge each one of you in accordance with his ways”.
33:1-20 This section, like chapter 18, emphasizes individual responsibility. God gives a general example in vs 2-6 and applies it to Ezekiel in vs 7-9. In vs 10-20 we have the words Ezekiel was to speak as a watchman to Israel.⚜
21 📚And it came about in the twelfth year of our captivity, in the tenth month, on the fifth day 📖 of the month, that someone who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me, saying, “The city has been taken”. 22 📚Now before the arrival of the one who had escaped, the hand of the LORD was on me in the evening, and had opened my mouth. So when he came to me in the morning, my mouth had been opened, and I was no longer mute.
23 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 24 📚“Son of man, those who are living in those ruins of the land of Israel speak and say, ‘Abraham was one man, and he inherited the land. But we are many; the land has been given to us as an inheritance.’
33:24 The people who remained in the land of Israel after the final collapse of Jerusalem still did not understand what God was doing and they did not turn from their sins.⚜
25 📚Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord God: You eat meat with the blood, and lift up your eyes to your idols 📖, and shed blood 📖, and will you possess the land? 26 📚You depend on your sword, you commit abominations, and each one of you defiles his neighbour’s wife; and will you possess the land?’
33:26 It was not people like this that God wanted in possession of His land – or wants now in His Church.⚜
27 📚“Say this to them, Thus says the Lord God: As I live, surely those who are in the ruins will fall by the sword, and I will give those in the open field to the beasts as food, and those who are in the strongholds and in the caves will die of the plague. 28 📚For I will make the land a desolate waste, and her proud strength will come to an end, and the mountains of Israel will be desolate, so that no one will pass through. 29 📚Then they will know that I am the LORD, when I have made the land a desolate waste because of all the abominations which they have committed.
33:27-29 These spiritually blind and unrepentant sinners would get just what they deserved.⚜
30 📚“Also, son of man, the children of your people are still talking against you by the walls and in the doors of the houses, speaking to one another, each one to his brother, saying, ‘Please come and hear whatever word comes from the LORD.’
33:30 The people in exile now recognized more clearly than before that Ezekiel was God’s prophet.⚜
31 📚And they come to you as people will come, and they sit before you like my people, and they hear your words, but they will not do them. For with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their selfish profit. 32 📚And, see, to them you are like a very lovely song of someone who has a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them.
33:31-32 How like many Christians today who willingly hear godly preachers deliver sermons, but will not put into practice what they say. They are like the second son of Matt 21:28-32 and the man of Jam 1:22-24. Blessing comes by obeying God’s word, not simply by hearing it.⚜
33 📚“And when this comes to pass (see, it will happen), then they will know that a prophet has been among them”.