Ezekiel 5:5 - Meaning and Application

Here is the meaning of the earlier picture: “This is Jerusalem.” In Scripture, it is common to give the name of the thing shown to the sign itself, as when Christ said, “This is my body.” The prophet’s head, which was to be shaved, stood for Jerusalem, which God’s judgments were about to strip of all beauty and glory. It would be emptied of its people and left bare, like a head shaved with a hired razor (Isaiah 7:20).

The head of a priest, a prophet, a holy man, was the best picture of Jerusalem, the holy city. What follows in these verses is much the same as we often find in the prophets. First, there are the privileges Jerusalem had been given (Ezekiel 5:5). God had placed it in the center of the nations and countries around it, and those were famous and important nations.

Jerusalem was not hidden away in some far-off corner of the world. It stood among kingdoms that were crowded, cultured, and civilized, known for learning, arts, and wisdom. Yet there is more here than a simple note about location. Jerusalem was honored above the neighboring nations and their cities, set among them as the city that surpassed them all. God’s holy mountain was lifted up above the hills (Isaiah 2:2). “Why do you leap, you high hills? This is the hill God chose to live in” (Psalm 68:16). Jerusalem was a city on a hill, plain to see and bright to all around it.

Jerusalem was also meant to influence the nations around it for good. It was set among them like a lamp on a stand, shining out the light of God’s truth to the dark places nearby, and from there to the ends of the earth. It was meant to be like the heart in the body, giving life to a dead world and light to a dark one. It was to be an example of everything good.

The nations that watched Jerusalem were meant to see its wise laws and judgments and say it was a wise and understanding people (Deuteronomy 4:6). In Solomon’s time, they could have looked to Jerusalem for counsel like an oracle (1 Kings 4:34). If Jerusalem had kept that reputation and used it well, it would have been a great blessing to the nations around it. But since it failed, God reserved the full success of that purpose for later days, when the gospel law and the word of the Lord Jesus went out from Zion and Jerusalem. There repentance and forgiveness began to be preached, and from there the preachers went out to all nations. After that, Jerusalem was brought low.

The lesson is clear: when people or places are made great, it is so they may do good, and those around them may benefit from them. Their light is meant to shine before people.

Second, there are Jerusalem’s sins. A serious charge is brought against the city, and it fully justified God in removing its privileges and bringing judgment on it. Jerusalem had not walked in God’s statutes or kept his judgments (Ezekiel 5:7). In fact, the people had refused them (Ezekiel 5:6). They did not merely fail in their duty, they would not do it. They despised the laws their neighbors admired, and they threw away what they should have kept before them. A low view of God’s word and law opens the door to every kind of evil. God’s statutes are the terms on which he deals with people, and those who reject his terms cannot expect his favor.

Jerusalem had also turned God’s judgments into wickedness (Ezekiel 5:6). This is a very serious charge. The people had not only broken God’s laws, they had twisted and abused them so badly that they used them as a cover for sin. They brought in the hateful customs of the nations instead of God’s own orders. That was turning the truth of God into a lie (Romans 1:25) and the glory of God into shame (Psalm 4:2). Those who have had a good religious upbringing and then live badly give God the greatest insult possible, as if he supported sin and his judgments had become wickedness.

Jerusalem was worse than the nearby nations, who should have been learning from her example. She changed God’s judgments through idolatry and false worship more than the nations around her (Ezekiel 5:6). She multiplied idols and altars, and multiplied the things that should have been kept one, because their unity was their honor. Israel’s God is one, and his name is one, and his altar is one. But they were not satisfied with one God. They multiplied their gods until their number matched their cities, and their altars were like heaps in a plowed field. In this way they went beyond all their neighbors in having many gods and many lords.

They also corrupted revealed religion more than the Gentiles had corrupted the religion known from nature. The lesson is sobering: when people who have had religious instruction and a godly upbringing turn away from it, they often become more corrupt and sinful than those who never made such a profession. They become like someone with seven other spirits, each more wicked than the first.

Jerusalem also failed in comparison with the nations in another way. It did not act according to the judgments of the nations (Ezekiel 5:7). Israel did not treat their God as faithfully as the nations treated their false gods. They were not as careful with him, nor as steady in their loyalty. Has any nation changed its gods or treated them with such contempt as Israel did? (Jeremiah 2:11). Or this may refer to their morals: instead of improving their neighbors, they fell below them. Some uncircumcised people kept the law’s right standards better than those who had the sign of circumcision (Romans 2:26-27). Those who had the light of Scripture did not live as well as many who had only the light of nature. There are people called Christians who, on the great day, will be condemned by the better character and life of serious unbelievers.

The specific charge against Jerusalem was the defiling of holy things, which it had been trusted with and honored by God to keep (Ezekiel 5:11). “You have defiled my sanctuary with all your disgusting things, with your idols and idol worship.” The images of their false gods and the groves set up for them were brought into the temple. The customs used in idol worship were brought into the worship of God. In this way, everything sacred was polluted. Idols are disgusting anywhere, but they are especially hateful in the sanctuary.

Third, there are the punishments Jerusalem would suffer for these sins. Should God not punish such things? Without question, he would.

The sentence passed on Jerusalem here is very dreadful, and the way it is spoken makes it even more so. The judgments are many, and the warnings are repeated again and again, so that we may well ask, who can stand in God’s sight when he is angry? God will take this punishment into his own hands, and who knows the power of his anger, or how fearful it is to fall into his hands?

Notice the strong emphasis in Ezekiel 5:8: “I, even I, am against you.” God had once been for Jerusalem, to protect and save it. But its case is hopeless when he turns against it and fights against it. If God is against us, all creation is against us too, and nothing can truly help us. The people may think only the Chaldean army is against them, but that army is only God’s tool. It is God himself who is against them, not only speaking against them through the prophets, but acting against them in providence, his ordering of events. He will execute judgments in them, in the middle of the city and in the heart of the land. Those who will not hear the judgments from God’s mouth will not escape the judgments of his hand.

God himself undertakes to carry out his judgments, according to their full meaning. Whatever human agents are involved, he is the chief actor. These punishments also come from his displeasure. For the people as a whole, this will not be discipline in love, but judgment in anger, fury, and fierce rebukes (Ezekiel 5:15). These are striking words from the God who says that fury is not in him and who describes himself as gracious, merciful, and slow to anger. Yet they are meant to show how evil sin is, and how deeply it offends the holy God.

Sin must be very serious if it stirs such anger, especially against his own people, who had once been so favored by him and who had once brought him such joy (Ezekiel 5:13). His anger, long held back, will now be fulfilled. He will make his fury rest on them. It will not just touch them, but settle on them and remain there, like a vessel filled up by its own wickedness for destruction. And when justice is honored in this way, God says he will be comforted, fully satisfied with what he has done.

Just as God is said to be grieved when people dishonor him by their sins (Psalm 95:10), so he is said to be comforted when he is honored by their destruction. The struggle between mercy and judgment is over, and judgment wins completely. Mercy, after being so long abused, is silent now and has nothing more to say for such an ungrateful, stubborn people. “My eye will not spare, and I will have no pity” (Ezekiel 5:11). God’s compassion can delay punishment, lessen it, support people under it, or shorten it. But here there is judgment without mercy, and wrath without any softening of pity.

These words are sharpened and heightened, perhaps to point ahead to eternal fire, which some Old Testament judgments foreshadowed, especially the destruction of Jerusalem. Surely nowhere short of hell do we see these words fully carried out: “My eye will not spare, but I will make my fury rest.” Those who live and die unrepentant will perish forever without pity. A day is coming when the Lord will not spare.

These punishments will also be public and open: “I will execute these judgments in the sight of the nations” (Ezekiel 5:8). The judgments themselves will be so striking that all the nations near and far will notice them. They will become the talk of that whole region, especially because of the public place and people on whom they fall. Public sins call for public rebukes, and if those do not work, they call for public judgments. God strikes them openly before others (Job 34:26), so that he may maintain and defend the honor of his rule. Why should he allow people to say, “Look at the wicked lives of those who claim to worship the only true God”?

Because the judgments are public, they also make the punishment heavier. Jerusalem, once made a waste, becomes a shame among the nations and before all who pass by (Ezekiel 5:14). The more famous and favored people have been in prosperity, the greater their disgrace when they fall. Jerusalem had once been a praise on the earth, and now it becomes a reproach and a taunt (Ezekiel 5:15). She had been warned of this from the time her glory began (1 Kings 9:8), and it was mourned when it fell into the dust (Lamentations 2:15).

These judgments also teach the nations to fear the God of Israel, when they see how jealous he is and how severely he punishes sin, even in those closest to him. It will be an instruction to the nations (Ezekiel 5:15). Jerusalem should have taught her neighbors by her godliness and virtue, but since she did not, God will teach them by her ruin. They will have reason to ask, if this is done to the green tree, what will be done to the dry? If judgment begins at the house of God, where will it end? If those are punished like this who had only some idolaters among them, what will become of those who are all idolaters? The destruction of some is meant to warn and teach others. Criminals are punished publicly so that others may take warning.

These punishments will also be very severe in their kind. They will be unlike anything before them. Since their sins were more provoking than those of others, the judgments on them would be unusual too (Ezekiel 5:9). God says, “I will do in you what I have not done before, and what I have not done in any other city.” Jerusalem’s punishment is said to be greater than Sodom’s, which was already more dreadful than what had come before it (Lamentations 4:6). It is also described as something unlike any other city has experienced, except for the later destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. This is a strong way of speaking about the most terrible judgments, like saying there was no one like Hezekiah, either before or after him.

These judgments would force people to break the strongest bonds of natural love. That would be a just punishment for their willful breaking of their duty to God (Ezekiel 5:10). Fathers would eat their sons, and sons would eat their fathers, either because famine became extreme or because cruel conquerors forced them to do it.

There would also be many kinds of judgment together. Each one would already be dreadful and enough to ruin a city, but what would happen when they all came at once, in full force? Some would die of plague (Ezekiel 5:12). The pestilence would pass through them, sweeping away lives like the destroying angel (Ezekiel 5:17). Others would be worn out by hunger and slowly waste away, like people with a wasting disease (Ezekiel 5:12). This is said again in Ezekiel 5:16: “I will send on them the evil arrows of famine.” Hunger would make them grow weak and would pierce them to the heart, as if poisoned arrows had been shot into them.

God has many evil arrows in his quiver. When he sends some, he still has more left. He says, “I will increase the famine upon you.” In a land that has been emptied by war, famine may lessen as crops begin to grow again. But in a city under siege, famine only grows worse. Yet God speaks of it as his own act. He will increase it and break the staff of bread, meaning he will take away the support that life depends on, so there is no cure except ruin. Human life is weak and fragile. If it does not have daily bread to lean on, it cannot stand, and once that support is broken, it soon falls.

Others would fall by the sword around Jerusalem when they rushed out against the attackers. It is a sword that God himself would bring (Ezekiel 5:17). The sword of the Lord, which had once been drawn to defend Jerusalem, would now be drawn against it. Others would be killed by wild animals, which would prey on those who fled to deserts and mountains for safety. They would meet destruction where they expected refuge, because no one can escape God’s judgments (Ezekiel 5:17).

At last, those who survived would be scattered to every part of the world, to all the winds, as the text says (Ezekiel 5:10, Ezekiel 5:12). This shows that they would not only be spread out, but driven and tossed about like chaff before the wind. Even Cain’s curse, to be a wanderer and fugitive, would not be the worst of it. Their restless lives would end in violent death. God says, “I will draw a sword after them,” meaning that wherever they went, death would still follow. Evil follows sinners, and the curse comes upon them and overtakes them.

These punishments would destroy them little by little. They would be diminished (Ezekiel 5:11), and their strength and honor would keep shrinking. They would be bereaved and emptied of everything that had been their joy and confidence (Ezekiel 5:17). God sent these judgments to destroy them (Ezekiel 5:16). The arrows were not sent, as Jonathan’s arrows were, to give direction, but to bring ruin. God would carry out his wrath upon them (Ezekiel 5:13). The time for patience was over, and the disaster could not be reversed.

This prophecy was soon fulfilled in Jerusalem’s destruction by the Chaldeans, that is, the Babylonians. Yet because the executioners are not named here, only the guilty city, “this is Jerusalem,” it may also point ahead to the final destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. In that later judgment, God brought an end to the Jewish nation and let his wrath rest on them.

All of this is confirmed by God’s own authority and truth: “I, the Lord, have spoken it” (Ezekiel 5:15, Ezekiel 5:17). The sentence comes from the Judge of heaven and earth, whose judgments are true and whose actions match his words. He has spoken it, and he is able to do it, because nothing is impossible for him. He has spoken it, and he will do it, because he is not a man who lies. He has spoken it, and we are bound to hear and obey, because his own word demands the most serious attention and humble agreement. “And they shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it” (Ezekiel 5:13). Some thought the prophet was only speaking in a fit of excitement, but God would make them know, by bringing it to pass, that he had spoken in his zeal. Sooner or later, God’s word proves itself true.