Remember from yesterday's reading God commanded Ezekiel to build a toy-sized model of Jerusalem under siege. Now he gives him a further instruction--take a sword and with it shave his hair and beard. The hair he is to divide in thirds. One third is to be burned inside the model city "when the days of siege are completed" (5:2)—a symbol of those who will die in the city. One third he is to "take and strike with the sword all around the city"—to symbolize those who will perish in the country. And one third he is to scatter to the wind--to represent those who will be dispersed among the nations. Then he is to take a few hairs and "bind them in the skirts of [his] robe" (5:3)—these last to represent the remnant of the people who will survive--and of these he is to throw some into the fire and burn them up.
This is a visual parable representing the fate of Jerusalem, which has come under judgment because of her "abominations" (5:8-9). Because she has made the Lord jealous with her unfaithfulness, she will experience the full horror of siege—"Parents shall eat their children in [her] midst, and children shall eat their parents" (5:10). The LORD will "execute judgments" on her for her apostasy, and any of the people who survive the siege he "will scatter on every wind." God is a jealous lover, demanding absolute loyalty from his people—they will understand that when he spends his fury upon them (5:13).
The pagan rites celebrated in competition with the worship of God often took place on hills and mountains. So the prophet is commanded to proclaim doom in the direction of the mountains, foretelling that the groves and altars on them will be laid waste and their idols broken. God will "lay the corpses of the people of Israel in front of [their] idols" and scatter their bones around their altars (6:5), defiling them forever. Those inhabitants who are spared will "be scattered through the countries" (6:8); there they will remember their abominations and know that the LORD "did not threaten in vain to bring this disaster upon them" (6:10). They will at last grasp the fact that the LORD is a jealous God and he suffers no rivals.
Chapter 7 is given over to a description of the "end" (7:1), the Day of the LORD (7:10) when all this will happen. In a sense "the Day' is the end of the world. It will be a last judgment when the people will be punished for their abominations (7:9). The powers of destruction and chaos will be loosed upon Jerusalem. "The sword is outside, pestilence and famine are inside," the prophet predicts. "Those in the field die by the sword; those in the city—famine and pestilence will devour them" (7:15). God will even allow his temple to be profaned and destroyed—"I will avert my face from them, so that they may profane my treasured place"—the temple—"the violent shall enter it, and they shall profane it" (7:22). On that Day "disaster comes upon the disaster" (7:26), foresight shall fail the prophet and "instruction shall perish from the priest" (7:26). They shall all be judged and know that the LORD is God" (7:27).
Ezekiel is, of course, far from Jerusalem, sitting among the exiles in Babylon. But there he has a vision in which a "figure that looked like a human being" (8:2)—a heavenly guide--who takes hold of him by "the lock of [his] head, and the spirit [lifts him] up between earth and heaven, and [brings him] in visions of God to Jerusalem" (8:3). There is sees for himself why the Day of Judgment must come. In the inner court of temple he sees "the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy" –this is a pagan idol. This "abomination" is what has driven the LORD far from his sanctuary (8:6). He cannot abide a rival. Then the spirit guide tells the prophet to burrow through a wall into a hidden room in the temple where he sees elders of the house of Israel burning incense and worshiping images, secure in the belief that the LORD cannot see them hidden there (8:12). On a porch of the temple he discovers a woman "weeping for Tammuz," a
dying and rising fertility god worshipped widely by many names throughout the ancient world (8:14). There priests have turned their backs—literally—upon the LORD and are bowing down in adoration to the rising sun (8:16)—worshiping the creation, not the Creator.
The best way to read these chapters is to try to picture in our minds the visions contained in them. The words of the prophet are being made concrete and visible for us. He sees six executioners each with "his destroying weapon" and a scribe clothed in linen with his writing equipment enter the temple. The LORD commands the scribe to mark upon the forehead any "who sign and groan over all the abominations that are committed in [Jerusalem]" (9:5). And the executioners are told to kill "and not spare" who do not bear the mark. It does not say that any at all are marked—no one grieves for the idolatry and perversity into which Jerusalem has fallen or hungers for righteousness. So God commands them to "begin with the sanctuary" (9:6) and to "define the house, and fill the courts with the slain. Go!" (9:7) So the executioners commence their gruesome task, slaying old men and young, women and little children until the scribe is able to
return and report—"I have done as you commanded me" (9:11).
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