Ezekiel 3:1 - Meaning and Application

Some translators connect these verses closely with the previous chapter, since they continue the same vision. The prophets received God’s word so they could pass it on to God’s people. They were filled first, so they could then fill others with the knowledge of God’s mind and will.

Here the prophet is taught, first, how he must receive God’s revelation for himself (Ezekiel 3:1). Christ, the one Ezekiel had seen on the throne (Ezekiel 1:26), told him, “Son of man, eat this scroll.” That means he was to take the revelation into his mind, understand it rightly, take it into his heart, and be deeply moved by it. He was to think on it again and again, as a person chews food, until it became his inner nourishment and strength.

This is how ministers should approach God’s word in study and meditation. Before they speak it to others, they must take it in for themselves. “Your words were found, and I ate them” (Jeremiah 15:16). Those who speak for God must know his things well and feel them deeply, so they can speak clearly and with warmth.

Notice how often this command is repeated. In the previous chapter, he was told, “Eat what I give you.” Here he is told, “Eat what you find” (Ezekiel 3:1). Whatever God sets before us in Scripture, we must receive without arguing. We are also told, “Fill your stomach with this scroll” (Ezekiel 3:3). He must not take it in and then reject it, as if it were harmful. He must keep it, like good food, until it fully feeds him. We should do the same with God’s word, making room in our hearts by pushing out worldly things.

The command is also explained further in Ezekiel 3:10. “All my words that I speak to you” were to be received in his heart as well as heard with his ears. He was to love them and meditate on them, giving himself completely to them (1 Timothy 4:15). Christ asked for the prophet’s full attention, not just to what he said that moment, but to everything he would say later too.

The prophet obeyed in the vision. He opened his mouth, and Christ made him eat the scroll (Ezekiel 3:2). If we truly want to receive God’s word into our hearts, Christ will, by his Spirit, make it dwell in us richly. If he did not open our understanding and give us wisdom, we would remain strangers to it.

The prophet likely feared the scroll would taste unpleasant. Instead, it was sweet like honey in his mouth. When we obey even hard commands, we often find that the comfort that follows more than makes up for the trouble. Even though the scroll was full of lamentation, mourning, and woe, it was still sweet to him. Grace can make a believer receive truths that strike fear in wicked people with real delight. John had a similar experience when he took the little book and ate it, and it was sweet in his mouth, though bitter in his stomach (Revelation 10:9-10). Ezekiel later felt that bitterness too (Ezekiel 3:14).

Second, he must pass on the revelation he had received (Ezekiel 3:1). He was to eat the scroll, and then go speak to the house of Israel. He was not to preach until he understood the message himself. But once he had received it fully, he was to speak boldly and faithfully for the good of others. We must not hide the words of the Holy One (Job 6:10), as if we were burying the gift given to us to use.

He was sent to the house of Israel because they had the privilege of hearing God’s statutes and judgments made known to them. As the law came to them through the “lively oracles,” so prophecy, the living oracles, also belonged to them. He was not sent to the Babylonians to rebuke them for their sins, but to Israel, God’s own people, to rebuke them for theirs. A father disciplines his own child when needed, not the child of a stranger.

The instructions for speaking to them are much the same as in the previous chapter. He must speak only what God speaks to him, and he must speak it in God’s own words as nearly as possible (Ezekiel 3:4). Paul, though gifted in speech, still used the words taught by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:13). Scripture truth is best expressed in Scripture language, its natural dress. What better way is there to speak God’s mind than with God’s words?

He also had to remember who these people were, the house of Israel, God’s house and his own people. That meant he should care for them in a special way, with both faithfulness and tenderness. They were not strangers to him. He was their countryman and their companion in trouble. They had shared the same painful journey from Judea to Babylon, and their shared grief had bound their hearts together. It was good for the people that their prophet knew from experience how to sympathize with them and feel their weakness. It was also good for the prophet that he dealt with his own nation, not with people of strange speech and a hard language, impossible to understand and difficult to speak with.

Every foreign language feels deep and hard to us. God was telling Ezekiel, “You are not being sent to people whose speech you cannot understand or answer except through an interpreter.” The apostles were sent to many people who spoke other languages, but they could do no good among them without the gift of tongues. Ezekiel, however, was sent only to one people, a small nation of his own people, among whom he already had some familiarity and might hope for acceptance.

He also needed to remember what God had already said about the people he was being sent to. If he met with discouragement and failure, he should not be surprised or offended. They were stubborn and hard-hearted (Ezekiel 3:7). No warning about sin would make them ashamed, and no warning of judgment would make them tremble. Their stubbornness was made worse in two ways.

First, they were more stubborn than other nations would have been if God had sent the prophet to them. If God had sent him to strangers, even if they spoke another language, surely they would have listened. At the least, they would have heard him patiently and shown him the respect his own countrymen would not show. The people of Nineveh were moved by Jonah’s preaching, while the house of Israel, surrounded by so many prophets, remained unhumble and unchanged. Yet we must leave this with God’s sovereign will. The means of grace are given to some who will not use them, and withheld from others who would have used them well. We must say, “Lord, your judgments are a great deep.”

Second, they were stubborn against God himself. “They will not listen to you,” God says, “and no wonder, for they will not listen to me.” They refuse the prophet’s word because they refuse God’s rod of correction, through which the Lord’s voice calls in the city. If they do not believe God speaking through a minister, they would not believe even if he spoke from heaven. In fact, they reject the prophet’s word because it comes from God, whom the sinful mind is set against. They already dislike God’s law, and that is why they shut their ears to the prophets, whose work is to press that law on them.

Ezekiel also had to be ready for courage, and Christ promised to strengthen him (Ezekiel 3:8, Ezekiel 3:9). He was being sent to people who were shameless and hard-hearted, people who would not be moved by kindness or by severity. They would even take pride in insulting God’s messenger and resisting his message. It would be a difficult task to know how to deal with them. Still, God would help him stand firm.

God says, “I have made your face strong against their faces.” That is, God would give him the firmness and boldness the task required. Ezekiel may have been naturally shy and timid, but if God did not find him fit, God would make him fit by his grace. When wicked people oppose religion boldly, God’s people should stand up just as openly and firmly for it. Let the innocent stir himself against the hypocrite (Job 17:8). When vice is bold, virtue should not be timid. When God has work to do, he gives people the strength they need for that very day. If needed, God can make the foreheads of faithful ministers like adamant, so that the strongest threats cannot shame them. “The Lord God will help me, therefore I have set my face like flint” (Isaiah 50:7).

So Ezekiel is told to take courage and go on with holy confidence, without being ruled by the insults or threats of his enemies. “Do not fear them, and do not be dismayed by their looks.” The angry faces of their weak malice should not shake him or put a stumbling block in his way. Bold sinners need bold reprovers. Harmful people must be rebuked sharply (Titus 1:12, Titus 1:13), and some must be saved with fear (Jude 1:23). Those who stay close to God’s service can be sure of God’s favor, and then they need not be troubled by proud human looks. A harsh face that can silence a backbiting tongue should not stop a faithful rebuking tongue.

He must also keep preaching steadily, whatever results he sees (Ezekiel 3:11). He is to go to the people in exile, who, because they are suffering, may be more willing to learn. He should think of them as his own people’s children, closely related to him, and therefore deserving of tender concern, as Paul felt for his own people (Romans 9:3). And he must tell them not only what the Lord says, but that the Lord himself says it. He must speak in God’s name and back up his message with God’s authority: “Thus says the Lord God.” He is to say it whether they listen or refuse.

We should not think it does not matter whether our ministry has success. It does matter. But whatever the outcome, we must keep doing our duty and leave the result to God. We must not say, “These people are so good that we do not need to speak to them,” or, “These are so bad that speaking to them is useless.” Whatever the case, deliver the message faithfully. Tell them, “The Lord God says this,” and let them reject it at their own peril.

With the prophet fully instructed for his calling, we are then told how this mission was welcomed by the holy angels. They were glad to see one of a lower nature than theirs so honorably employed and entrusted. Ezekiel heard a sound like a great rushing, as if the angels were crowding together to witness the ordaining of a prophet (Ezekiel 3:12). Through the church, that is, by watching God’s work in the church, even angels learn the many-sided wisdom of God (Ephesians 3:10). They seemed to press close, eager to see this great sight.

He also heard the noise of their wings touching, or, more exactly, kissing one another. That points to the angels’ mutual love and helpfulness. He heard the sound of the wheels of providence moving in harmony with the angels. All of this was meant to hold his attention and to show him that the God who sent him had such a glorious train of attendants that he surely had enough power to support him in his work. Yet all that noise ended in praise. He heard them say, “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place.”

This praise comes from heaven, his place above, from which his glory was now, in the vision, descending, or perhaps returning there again. Let the countless angels above join with those in the vision in saying, “Blessed be the glory of the Lord.” Praise the Lord from the heavens. Praise him, all his angels (Psalm 148:1, Psalm 148:2). It also comes from the temple, his place on earth, from which his glory was now leaving. They mourn the departure of the glory, but they still honor God’s righteousness in it. However it happens, God is blessed and glorious, and he always will be.

The prophet Isaiah heard God praised in this way when he received his call to ministry (Isaiah 6:3). That is a comfort to all faithful servants of God. When they see how much God is dishonored in this world, they can remember how much he is admired and glorified in heaven. God’s glory receives many insults among us, but it receives many praises in his own place.

Ezekiel was also brought into his work with a strong inner struggle, yet by the powerful help of God’s Spirit. The grace given to him was not wasted. The Spirit led him with a strong hand. God told him to go, but he did not move until the Spirit lifted him up. The same Spirit that was in the living creatures and the wheels was also in the prophet. It first lifted him so he could hear the angels’ praises more clearly (Ezekiel 3:12), and later it lifted him and carried him to his work (Ezekiel 3:14). He was reluctant, because he did not want to bring trouble on himself or announce coming judgment to his people. He would gladly have been excused, but he had to say, as another prophet did, “You were stronger than I, and you prevailed” (Jeremiah 20:7). Ezekiel would have kept all he had heard and seen to himself, so that it would go no farther, but the Lord’s hand was strong on him and overpowered him. He was carried along against his own wishes by the prophetic impulse, so that he could not keep from speaking what he had heard and seen, as the apostles did (Acts 4:20). Those whom God calls to ministry, he not only equips in mind, he also bends their hearts to it.

He followed, but with a sad heart. “The Spirit took me away,” he says, “and then I went, but I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit.” He may have seen how hard Jeremiah’s ministry was in Jerusalem, how much labor he faced, how much resistance he met, and how badly people treated him with both words and actions, all to no effect. Ezekiel may have wondered, “Must I be made a target like him?” Life as a captive was hard enough. What would it be like to be a prophet in captivity? So he went troubled and deeply unsettled. Even so, there can be a real struggle in a believer’s heart, even where grace is clearly stronger.

He did go, and he was not refusing God’s call like Jonah. But he went in bitterness, not at all pleased with the task. When he received God’s message for himself, it was sweet as honey to him (Ezekiel 3:3). He could have spent all his days delighting in it. But when he had to preach it to others, and knew they would harden themselves and grow angry, making their guilt worse, then he went in bitterness. Faithful ministers are deeply grieved when people resist correction and hate being changed.

He went in the heat of his spirit because he expected discouragement. Yet the Lord’s hand was strong upon him, not only to drive him into the work, but also to fit him for it, carry him through it, and steady him against the hardship ahead. When he found that strength, he was better settled in his calling and set himself to the task. Then he came to the exiles by the river, to a place where many of them were gathered, and sat where they sat, working, reading, or talking, and stayed among them for seven days to learn what they said and observe what they did. During all that time, he waited for the word of the Lord to come to him.

Those who want to speak well and helpfully about the state of people’s souls must get to know them and their situation. They must do as Ezekiel did, sit where they sit, speak plainly with them about the things of God, and put themselves as far as possible into their condition, even if they are sitting by the rivers of Babylon. Still, he was there stunned, overwhelmed by sorrow for his people’s sins and suffering, and also overwhelmed by the splendor of the vision he had seen. Some read it as meaning he was left desolate. God gave him no new visions, and people gave him no visits. In that way, he was left alone to work through his grief and come into a better frame of mind before the word of the Lord came to him. Those whom God means to lift up and enlarge, he often first humbles and narrows for a time.