THE WORD OF THE LORD came to me: 2“Son of man, this is what the Sovereign LORD says to the land of Israel: The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land. 3The end is now upon you and I will unleash my anger against you. I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices. 4I will not look on you with pity or spare you; I will surely repay you for your conduct and the detestable practices among you. Then you will know that I am the LORD.
5“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Disaster! An unheard-of disaster is coming. 6The end has come! The end has come! It has roused itself against you. It has come! 7Doom has come upon you—you who dwell in the land. The time has come, the day is near; there is panic, not joy, upon the mountains. 8I am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you; I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices. 9I will not look on you with pity or spare you; I will repay you in accordance with your conduct and the detestable practices among you. Then you will know that it is I the LORD who strikes the blow.
10“The day is here! It has come! Doom has burst forth, the rod has budded, arrogance has blossomed! 11Violence has grown into a rod to punish wickedness; none of the people will be left, none of that crowd—no wealth, nothing of value. 12The time has come, the day has arrived. Let not the buyer rejoice nor the seller grieve, for wrath is upon the whole crowd. 13The seller will not recover the land he has sold as long as both of them live, for the vision concerning the whole crowd will not be reversed. Because of their sins, not one of them will preserve his life. 14Though they blow the trumpet and get everything ready, no one will go into battle, for my wrath is upon the whole crowd.
15“Outside is the sword, inside are plague and famine; those in the country will die by the sword, and those in the city will be devoured by famine and plague. 16All who survive and escape will be in the mountains, moaning like doves of the valleys, each because of his sins. 17Every hand will go limp, and every knee will become as weak as water. 18They will put on sackcloth and be clothed with terror. Their faces will be covered with shame and their heads will be shaved. 19They will throw their silver into the streets, and their gold will be an unclean thing. Their silver and gold will not be able to save them in the day of the LORD’s wrath. They will not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it, for it has made them stumble into sin. 20They were proud of their beautiful jewelry and used it to make their detestable idols and vile images. Therefore I will turn these into an unclean thing for them. 21I will hand it all over as plunder to foreigners and as loot to the wicked of the earth, and they will defile it. 22I will turn my face away from them, and they will desecrate my treasured place; robbers will enter it and desecrate it.
23“Prepare chains, because the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of violence. 24I will bring the most wicked of the nations to take possession of their houses; I will put an end to the pride of the mighty, and their sanctuaries will be desecrated. 25When terror comes, they will seek peace, but there will be none. 26Calamity upon calamity will come, and rumor upon rumor. They will try to get a vision from the prophet; the teaching of the law by the priest will be lost, as will the counsel of the elders. 27The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with despair, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. I will deal with them according to their conduct, and by their own standards I will judge them. Then they will know that I am the LORD.”
Original Meaning
MANY PEOPLE THINK of the message of the prophets as, “Repent, the end is near.” Ezekiel’s message in this chapter, however, is: “It’s too late to repent; the end has come.” Just as in the days of Noah’s Flood (Gen. 6), the sins of the people have reached such a pitch that it is time to wipe the land clean of them.
There is a twofold expansion in Ezekiel 7 in the scope of the judgment from that described in his previous messages. (1) It is once more expanded geographically. Just as Ezekiel began with the city of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 5 and moved on to the heartland of Judah, the mountains of Israel, in Ezekiel 6, so now he widens his scope of attention to include judgment on the whole “land of Israel” (7:2). Indeed, judgment has come upon the “four corners of the land [world].” The global language may be applied to a judgment that affects “only” Judah since, as Greenberg puts it, “from the prophet’s viewpoint, the doom of his people is tantamount to the end of the world.”1
The phrase “land of Israel” (ʾadmat-yiśrāʾēl) is unique to Ezekiel. ʾ adāmâ (“land,” “ground”) has a substantial semantic overlap with ʾereṣ (“land,” “earth”), and in some contexts the former term may be chosen simply to provide a contrast with the latter. Thus in 11:17 the “land of Israel” (ʾadmat-yiśrāʾēl) contrasts with “the lands where you have been scattered.” Yet the physical and agricultural overtones that ʾ adāmâ contains may still be present, especially on the lips of an exile, denoting the land of promise as a place intended for fruitfulness and blessing (see, e.g., its repeated use in the covenant blessings of Deut. 28). However, as Ezekiel 7 unfolds, it emerges that what has been growing in this fertile soil has been something other than what God intended.
(2) Ezekiel insists repeatedly that doom is not merely imminent but has actually arrived. Whereas the previous oracle spoke of a certain judgment to come at an unspecified time in the future, here we see a certain judgment now present. Thus verses 3 and 8 in Hebrew both start with the word “now,” while verse 7 announces (lit.): “The time has come, the day has arrived.” Further, in this chapter for the first time there is not even a glimmer of the light at the end of the tunnel, no mention of a possible remnant. The focus is entirely on the darkness of the descending gloom that is now falling over the land.
The language that Ezekiel adopts is influenced heavily by the traditional language of the Day of the Lord. This “Day” was frequently longed for during times of difficulty as the day when the Lord would come to judge the nations; however, the prophets had pointed out that it was also the time when God would judge his own people Israel (cf. Amos 5:18–20). The outcome of that Day of Judgment was likely to be far from positive. Thus Amos was shown a vision of ripe summer fruit (qāyiṣ, Amos 8:1), a vision that leads into an oracle of Israel’s end (qēṣ, 8:2). Likewise, in Genesis 6:13, God had told Noah that he was about to bring an end (qēṣ) to all people, and the result was the Flood. So here, when Ezekiel speaks repeatedly of the coming of an end (qēṣ) on the people, what Judah is being threatened with is nothing less than complete and immediate annihilation.2 What Amos had foreseen concerning the northern kingdom is now happening in parallel fashion to the southern kingdom.
Ezekiel 7 opens with a brief oracle that summarizes the themes of the chapter (vv. 1–4). The prophesied end is coming on the whole land of Israel (v. 2), and it is coming now (v. 3). That devastating event is nothing less than the personal “sending” (šālaḥ) of the Lord’s anger against them, just as earlier he had threatened to “send” his arrows of famine against them (5:16). But the Lord’s action in destroying them is neither arbitrary nor unfair; it is simply judging them according to their conduct and repaying them for all their detestable practices. Measure for measure, they will receive what they deserve for their abominations (7:3), without favoritism or pity, resulting in an understanding of the Lord’s power and holiness.
The second oracle (7:5–9) picks up from the first oracle the theme of the personal nature of divine judgment on the people’s sin. All of the first person verbs from the first oracle expressing the outpouring of the Lord’s wrath recur, along with a significantly modified version of the recognition formula, “Then you will know that it is I the LORD who strikes the blow” (7:9). No longer does the Lord reveal himself to his people as “the LORD, who heals you,” as he did during the wanderings in the desert (Ex. 15:26); rather, he has now become “the LORD who strikes.”
The third oracle (Ezek. 7:10–27) unfolds the theme of the comprehensiveness of judgment from the first oracle. It begins with a brief introduction (vv. 10–11), which draws out the organic connection between Judah’s sin and her punishment. This was already prepared for by the agricultural background of the language of the “end” (qēṣ); the “end” is the time for harvesting ripe fruit. Now the sin of Judah has reached full ripeness and it is time for the harvest of God’s judgment. According to verses 10–11, Israel’s “doom[?]3 has burst forth, the rod has budded, arrogance has blossomed! Violence has grown into a rod to punish wickedness.” Alongside Israel’s blossoming pride and violence, however, the rod of God’s judgment has been growing, namely, Babylon. It will mete out punishment corresponding to the crime until there is nothing left. The people who filled the city with violence (7:23) will themselves be attacked by violent men (7:22; NIV “robbers”); the wicked will be turned over to “the wicked of the earth” (7:21); the arrogant will be humbled (7:24).
Suitably to its theme of comprehensive judgment, the oracle is itself massive and wide-ranging, consisting of two parallel cycles of judgment scenes that move from the general to the particular.4 These may be broken down as follows:
A: the futility of commercial transactions (vv. 12–13)
B: the announcement and arrival of war and devastation (vv. 14–16)
C: universal ineffectiveness, terror, and mourning (vv. 17–18)
A′: the futility of gold and silver (vv. 19–20)
B′: dispossession, looting, and desecration (vv. 21–24)
C′: ineffectiveness, terror, and mourning by all classes (vv. 25–27)
When the threatened judgment falls, commercial transactions will lose their meaning; there will be no such thing as a good deal or a bad deal, whether for the buyer or the seller (Ezek. 7:12). The use of the traditional pairings of opposites (“buyer/seller,” “rejoice/grieve”) underlines once more the comprehensiveness of the disaster, while the following verse underlines the lasting nature of the disaster: “The seller will not recover the land he has sold as long as both of them live” (7:13). Even gold and silver will be worthless, able neither to save their owners nor to satisfy them (7:19). Indeed, these precious metals will be worse than worthless; they will not simply be regarded as trash, to be carelessly disposed of, but as something ritually unclean, contaminated in itself and with the power to contaminate anyone whom it touches (7:19). The reason for that loathing is because gold and silver furnished the materials for the people’s idolatry (7:20), “for it has made them stumble into sin” (v. 19); it was the iniquity that caused their downfall.5
The nature of the disaster is the focus of the next section in the cycle: Though preparations are made for war, no battle will be joined, for God’s wrath is on all her masses (hamônāh, Ezek. 7:14; NIV “crowd”).6 Judah will be given over into the hand of her enemies, and all her possessions will be handed over as plunder (7:22). This is a reversal of the normal themes of holy war, whereby no battle would be necessary for the Israelites because the Lord would fight on their behalf, giving their enemies into their hand as plunder (cf. 2 Chron. 20). Now, however, the Lord will turn away his face (Ezek. 7:22), allowing the wicked of the earth to pollute the land and even to desecrate “my treasured place” (ṣepûnî; v. 22).
That change of attitude toward Judah meant that even the temple, where David had earlier expressed confidence that God would hide him (ṣāpan; Ps. 27:5), is no longer a safe place. It would be defiled along with their other (pagan) sanctuaries (Ezek. 7:24). Since Israel failed to distinguish between true and false places of worship and did not destroy the high places, now God’s judgment will be similarly nondiscriminatory, destroying not only the pagan sanctuaries but his own temple.
In the face of this disaster, no coherent policy will be formulated or implemented. All hands will hang passively by their sides. Paralyzing fear will result in loss of control of bodily functions (Ezek. 7:17).7 The people will put on a show of mourning by means of their clothes and their shaven heads (7:18), yet no mercy or forgiveness will be found there, as God already announced (7:4). The people will seek peace and not find it (7:25), whether they seek it through the channel of religious leadership or political leadership. There will be no effective guidance through the religious leadership, whether the prophet (from whom a vision might be sought), the priest (from whom Torah, or instruction from the priestly law, might be sought), or the elders (from whom wisdom and counsel might be expected). Nor will there be effective leadership in the political realm. Not a “king” or a “prince” or any of the “people of the land”8 will act decisively to save the day (7:27).9 Rather, they too will be judged “by their own standards.”
Bridging Contexts
A DAY OF RECKONING. The immediacy and comprehensiveness of the judgment of which Ezekiel speaks may, at first sight, seem to distance his situation from ours. We live in a world where immediate, comprehensive justice is not poured out on nations that transgress God’s laws. However, judgment delayed is not justice denied. The fact remains that there will be a day of reckoning for all sin and for all sinners, when comprehensive justice will be done. Thus the writer to the Hebrews tells us: “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Heb. 9:27), while Jude writes: “The Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly” (Jude 14–15). Though this judgment may not be immediate, it will surely be comprehensive and also entirely fair: The just desserts (“wages,” in Paul’s terminology) of a life of rebellion against God is eternal death, exclusion from the presence of the one who is himself Life (Rom. 6:23). Those wages will have to be collected, sooner or later.
Notwithstanding that final judgment, there are also situations here on earth where our sins catch up with us. In Romans 1, Paul speaks of sinners who have “received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion” (Rom. 1:27). Because the world is God’s world, to sin is to act in violation of the basic structure of the universe and thus to call down on oneself the consequences of one’s action. Because of God’s mercy and common grace, we do not immediately receive the full consequences of all of our actions; otherwise each of our lives would be short and pain-filled. Yet God’s mercy is not to be presumed upon and his judgments are not to be ignored.
If we presume on God’s mercy, we assume that “of course God will forgive me; it is his job.”10 To the contrary, Ezekiel asserts that sometimes God reaches the point where he will not look on us with pity or spare us, but instead will repay us for our sins (Ezek. 7:4). Instead, the kindness of God is intended to bring us to repentance while there is yet time (Rom. 2:4). Nor are we to ignore his judgments on us, for they too can have the gracious effect of breaking our stubborn attachment to our sins. Yet to remain stubborn and unrepentant in the face of all of God’s patience is nothing less than “storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed” (Rom. 2:5).
The agents of justice. It is not hard to envisage the perfect meting out of judgment on the last day by the Judge of all the earth, the One “to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid.”11 The agents of God’s justice here on earth, however, are often less than just themselves. In fact, in Ezekiel’s situation the agents of divine wrath are themselves termed “the wicked of the earth” (Ezek. 7:21). But how can justice be done by the wicked? And how can God use the wicked to achieve his purposes without becoming tainted by them? There is an element of mystery here, as Calvin freely admits: “God works through them in such a way that he nevertheless has nothing in common with them. They are borne along by a depraved disposition, but God has a wonderful plan, incomprehensible to us, according to which he impels the wicked here and there—without becoming involved in their guilt.”12
God is able to write straight with a crooked pencil and to achieve his perfect ends through the use of less than perfect instruments, without himself being tainted or hampered by their imperfection. Indeed, it must necessarily be so if God is to do anything through the agency of human beings in this world, since “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). The statement that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (8:28) applies just as much to the wicked persecutions of the Roman emperor Nero and the genocides of the contemporary world as it does to the “impersonal” forces of nature. That is why it is not simply famine and danger that cannot separate us from the love of God but even persecution and the sword (8:35).
What is more, God’s power is demonstrated not merely in restraining such outbreaks of wickedness, but even in harnessing them. Do we find that surprising? Perhaps the fact that we are astonished that God can achieve his purposes through someone like Nero or Hitler, while at the same time being unsurprised at God’s achieving anything through us, shows how shallow an understanding we really have of the depths of our own sin and defilement. In truth, it is really no more of a miracle that God accomplishes his purposes through the sin-tainted acts of Pol Pot or Stalin than that he does so through your sin-tainted acts or mine.
Contemporary Significance
THE ISSUE OF BLAME. Passing the buck for sin is an intrinsic part of present-day human nature. As the contemporary saying goes, “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you place the blame.” Whenever something goes wrong, we seek to find someone else who is responsible. When we sin, we seek to pass the buck for our sin by saying, “It wasn’t my fault; it’s just the way that I was made”; or, “It’s my parent’s fault, or my family’s fault, or my environment’s fault.” Interestingly, animals never do this. My dog can, and frequently does, do wrong. When you find him with his head in the garbage (again!), he can look as guilty as can be. He knows that he should not do it. But he never points the paw at someone else and says, “It was all his fault. He made me do it.” Only humans do that.
This is, of course, not merely a modern condition; it goes back all the way to the Fall. When God confronted the first man and woman with their sin, immediately the excuses began to flow (Gen. 3:12–13). The man said: “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” In the Hebrew, the word order is revealing: Adam starts off blaming God (“The woman you gave to be with me”), then he moves on to the woman (the feminine pronoun is emphatic, “she gave it to me”); only with the last word of the sentence do we get to anything close to a confession (“and I ate,” which is a single word in Hebrew).
Then God turns to the woman: “What is this you have done?” She, in turn, starts her list (lit., “The serpent, he deceived me”), and then with the final word of the sentence the single word confession (“and I ate”). God’s judgment, however, falls on them all—in spite of their excuses—for all have sinned. So it is with contemporary men and women. All of our excuses will not save us from the judgment to come because that judgment is truly comprehensive: All will stand before God to give an account of their lives.
Appearing before the judgment seat. The reality and certainty of the coming Day of Judgment is what exposes the futility of all the idolatries to which we give ourselves. Is your idol your career? Do you really expect your position in the company to impress anyone on that day? Is your idol your possessions? Your Cadillac and your mansion in Beverly Hills will not be with you on that day. Is your idol your children? Will they be able to gain you preferential treatment on that day? Is your idol your church? There will be no “fast track” for those who have belonged to the “correct” denomination on that day, or for those who have filled respected positions such as pastors, elders, and deacons. Gold and silver will be of no value either, nor will connections—all the things in which we have trusted will turn to dust. On that day, the separation between the sheep and the goats will simply be based on the presence or absence of a living relationship with the Living God, through Jesus Christ.
But if that is the end of all things, why do we live in the meantime as if the present reality is what is really important? Why do we strive so hard to accumulate possessions that will not last and to gain influence and power that will not ultimately benefit us? The reason is that we have given ourselves over to our various idolatries and have forgotten our inescapable accountability to the one true God. Even believers will have to give an account for their actions, as the apostle Paul reminds us: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). We need to learn to see the end from the beginning, to envisage the future vividly here and now and to let that vision dominate our lives.
Living in the light of the future. Have you never wondered why the Bible gives us such vivid depictions of heaven and hell? Do you ever sit down and imagine yourself joining in the praise and worship with a full heart of thanksgiving for what Jesus Christ has done for you? Do you imagine yourself hearing the Lord saying to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21)? Do you see yourself walking down the streets of gold, meeting and sharing fellowship with loved ones who have gone before and with the great Christians of the past?
And do you also hold before your eyes the awesome reality of the eternal damnation of the lost? Part of our problem is that this world seems very real and solid, and the other world shady and unreal. Thus, we think to ourselves, “Yes, I would like the Lord to return . . . but not before I get married, or before I finish this project at work, or before I go on this trip.” But of course, it is really the other way about. It is heaven that is real and solid and substantial, while this world is shadowy and unsubstantial.
In his book The Great Divorce,13 C. S. Lewis pictures a group from hell on a day trip to heaven. One of the things they find bothersome is that everything there is far more real than they are. Even the grass is more substantial than they are and so it does not bend under their weight, making it painful for them to walk. In just the same way, the things that are so real and substantial to us in this world are unreal and unsubstantial when compared to the world to come.
Have you ever had a powerful experience of God’s presence and closeness, perhaps in prayer or in a worship service? That is nothing compared to the presence of God that we will experience in glory. Or have you experienced the frustration of a single night without sleep, even in a comfortable bed, or weeks and months of unrelenting pain? That is nothing when set beside the fearsome reality of eternal separation from God, eternal torment, and frustration. As you replay over and over in your mind the videotape of the scriptural presentation of eternity, it becomes more real and substantial in your thinking. For Christians, that should mean a growing longing for that day; for those that are not Christians, repeated exposure to the truth of eternity should mean a growing (and appropriate) fear of the prospect. For that reason, heaven and hell should feature prominently in the preaching of our churches.14
It is striking that those for whom the present world holds least attraction are most passionate in their desire for the new world. Those experiencing persecution for their faith die witnessing to their expectation of immediately being present with the Lord. Those whose bodies are worn out or broken down look with eagerness to being free of their shackles, even as they may fear the pain of the process or lament leaving the ones they love. I have preached on the Beatitudes several times in different churches but never with such power as when I spoke to a congregation traumatized by the recent discovery of a recurrence of breast cancer in the wife of a beloved elder. In that pain, the proclamation of the reality and nearness of heaven became infinitely precious to those who were there.
Experiencing God’s grace in the here and now. Some, however, will experience greater consequences here and now for their sin, just as the generation of Ezekiel’s day found the ax of God’s judgment descending on them. Pride, while it may precede a fall, is rarely fatal. Sexual immorality, on the other hand, may lead to contracting AIDS, with all of its deadly consequences. That does not mean that sexual immorality is a worse sin than pride, or that all those who have AIDS are under God’s wrath. The present judgments of God (those times when we do receive in this life the consequences of our sin) and the present mercies of God (all those times when we do not receive the consequences of our sin) are both intended to lead us to repentance. If God were never gracious to us, we would have little reason to expect forgiveness from him; but if God never judged sin, we would be likely to consider it a matter of little importance to him. The balance in the world is intended to reinforce the biblical teaching that God is a God of holiness and mercy, of justice and grace.
What specifically do the present judgments of God achieve in our lives? In the first place, as mentioned above, they act as a demonstration of his justice and a restraining influence on the spread of sin. When someone abandons a spouse and children and runs off with someone else, and then lives to regret the pain he or she has caused to all concerned, that may deter others from committing the same sin. But in addition, when the judgment of God falls upon us in the present, it exposes the nature of all the false hiding places to which we run.
Judah was warned they would find no hiding place in their wealth, for the whole commercial endeavor would be undermined (Ezek. 7:12, 19). They had turned their wealth into idolatry—in their case literally, by constructing idols out of their silver and gold. But in the day of distress, it would be evident that their idols could do nothing for them. If God does not intervene, they may never discover how empty of lasting value their lives are. But if God causes them to lose the objects of their idolatry, it becomes clear that the blessings their idol offered were empty, unable to fill the yawning void in the soul. As a precursor of the final judgment, a present judgment may become the means for turning a life around. The pain of the lives we have shattered, including our own, may cause us to be humbled and return to our heavenly Father.
Or it may not. There are plenty of people whose idol has been shattered by God’s intervention, yet they have not turned to God. Their wealth may be gone, yet they cling to the hope that someday it will return. Their health may be broken, yet they may simply become embittered and despairing. Their long-term friendships may be destroyed, yet rather than listen to the appeals of those friends they turn in on themselves. There is nothing automatic about repentance. Only under the sovereign grace of God do his judgments produce the fruit of changed lives.
We must, therefore, take God’s grace seriously while it is offered to us. It is possible for a society to reach a point of hardness where God removes his witnesses from it, leaving it to its fate. The countries of Asia Minor, where many of the first churches were established, have been in many cases virtually without a gospel witness for centuries. We cannot presume that our case as a nation will be different. Nor can we as individuals assume that the offer of the gospel will be forever open to us. Even if our lives are spared, yet it is possible to become hardened to the gospel to such a point that there is no return. We become so inured in our pride that we are deaf to the only good news that can save us. God’s only word to us is then imminent and comprehensive doom.