Chapter 9
Notes
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Then he cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying, “Bring near the executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand.”
Think about that. Here we have the speaker to Ezekiel is God. Here God cries in his ears with a loud voice. In other words, God screams. He’s angry. He screams…
Then he cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying, “Bring near the executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand.” And behold, six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his weapon for slaughter in his hand, and with them was a man clothed in linen, with a writing case at his waist. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar.
So they go right in to where the image of the creatress is. We have six guys who are executioners. There’s a seventh man clothed in linen. Linen was typical attire for priests, but also for angelic beings. (Daniel 10:5, 12:6-7) This is a description that you’d get of an angelic being. Priests and angels are both involved in divine service—this whole heavenly and earthly priesthood thing.
Block says here:
Whether this person is a priestly figure or an angelic figure really can’t be determined, though his role in the following events seems to argue for the latter.
I would tend to agree, for reasons that we’ll get to in a moment. I think it is an angelic figure. It’s obvious from this person’s equipment that his position in Jerusalem differed from that of the other six men. The other six guys are executioners. This one isn’t. But this one has a writing case with him at his waist. It’s actually, without getting too geeky here, a term that’s borrowed from Egyptian. It refers to a scribe’s writing equipment, sopher ha qeset. It has a pen, ink horn, wax writing tablet, what-not, those sorts of things. And it hearkens back—look at the instructions that he's given. It's going to hearken back to something that I think you'll pick up on. Verse 3:
Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writing case at his waist.
So it's at this point we've covered astral cults, the image of the creatress, a whole assortment of idolatries going on here. We've got these graven unclean things that are being offered incense to. And God calls out the executioners and this guy with the writing case and they position themselves right there at the altar, and then the glory moves. The glory leaves from the cherubim on which it rested to the threshold of the house. So this begins the exit out of the temple area of the glory of God. And he (God—the God, whoever this is—the anthropomorphized God or the Spirit or whoever from chapter 8) called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing case at his waist.
4 And the LORD said to him…
Now he's identified as Yahweh! "The Lord said to him"... isn't that interesting. Take that back to chapter 8, again this mixed language about is it two beings or is it three now. Here we have the Lord specifically mentioned. Yahweh said to him,
And the Lord said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.”
It refers to God keeping a record. In this case you have a scribe brought in (an angelic or heavenly scribe, clothed in linen) the picture. And he's the one who's supposed to know, because he's the scribe, he's kept the records, of those who are grieved by the abominations. Put a mark on them. Because that's going to be like the blood on the Passover. I'll come back to that in a moment, as well. It's going to be like the blood on the doorposts. This is going to mark them to keep them safe from what's going to happen. Mark those who are grieved by all these abominations.
And he has a record, he's a scribe, the heavenly scribe. He knows what people are doing. If you're interested in that subject, you can go back to that episode of the podcast and listen to it. But Taylor has a note here. He says here:
There's some confusion about the actual movements of the glory of the God of Israel in this section here, because at one moment he's represented by the heavenly figure on the chariot-throne while the next he's Ezekiel's personal guide. Too much accuracy is not to be expected in what was, after all, a vision. We shouldn't press it for detailed explanations. There is, however, significance in the description of the glory moving from the cherubim [ in verse 3, the place where the Holy of Holies—where God was thought to reside] to the threshold of the house. This was the preliminary move for the final departure of the Lord from his temple.
It's from this vantage point that he starts giving directions. He says, "Put a mark on anybody who's faithful, who's been faithful." Now the word "mark" there is Hebrew taw. It is the name of the letter "t" or taw in Hebrew alphabet. It's a sign to mark the faithful remnant. It's a sign to keep them alive, to preserve their lives, to save their lives. Of course, the fact that there's even a remnant might be surprising, given what we've just read in Ezekiel 8 and before that, but there is.
Now I don't want to make too much about this sign, but it is kind of interesting. In old Hebrew, not the block Hebrew that you're familiar with seeing today. Block Hebrew the tav looks kind of like a doorway with a little appendage on one leg at the bottom. That's what a tav looks like. In old Hebrew, though, it was an "x," or as people like to say, it was the sign of the cross. That's what it was! You crossed two lines, you made an x. You crossed two lines and that became known in later times as a cross because the lines were crossed. That was just the way you wrote the old Hebrew letter taw, "t." Taylor says here:
Early Christian commentators were quick to notice that in the oldest Hebrew script the letter was written as X, a cross. To the Hebrew reader this meant nothing more than a mark used for a signature…
And there’s a biblical reference for that, believe it or not. In Job 31:35 we read this:
Oh, that I had one to hear me!
(Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!)
Oh, that I had the indictment written by my adversary!
35 Oh, that I had one to hear me!
(Here is my signature! [ In Hebrew it says, “Here is my taw, here is my mark.”] Let the Almighty answer me!)
So to an Israelite, this is like, “sign here,” and you put an x. That's your mark. But again, the shape of it was noticed by early Christians, as obviously maybe this is analogous to what happens at the cross. Now, I don't want to make too much of that, but I also don't want to dismiss it because you have this guy in linen who's the scribe who's keeping track of who's been faithful here, and he's going to mark them with the taw, with the cross, to save their lives, to protect them. You're going to have a term used when the killing starts, when the destruction starts: mashit, destruction. It also could be translated "the destroyer" in certain passages. That is the term used of the death angel at the Passover event.
And so I do think that there is a conceptual analogy here between being marked by the taw, marked by the cross, and the blood being applied so that destruction was avoided, or so that destruction passed over you. And we all know that in New Testament theology there is a direct equation—a direct analogy made between the effect of what Jesus did and the passing over the blood, passing over that house at the Passover because the blood had been applied to that place. And so I do think, again, that this is a case...I'm trying to think of who it is, it's Block or somebody that says, "we don't want to make too much of it, but this might be one of those places where the Old Testament writer kind of wrote something that he may not have been specifically aware of but it's a significant foreshadowing." There's more depth to it. It's typology. There's more typological depth, typological theology going on here than people could have realized at that point. I do think there's something to that here, because of the terminology that follows.
So let's just get into what follows here. So he's commanded to put a mark on these guy, those who are grieved at the abominations. Verse 5, chapter 9:
And to the others he said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark. And begin at my sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were before the house. Then he said to them, “Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out.” So they went out and struck in the city.
You're going to begin with the priests, the state-sponsorship stuff.
So they began with the elders who were before the house. 7 Then he said to them, “Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain. Go out.”
Because, again, that was a defilement of sacred space, a corpse. We studied that in Leviticus.
And while they were striking, and I was left alone, I fell upon my face, and cried, “Ah, Lord God! Will you destroy all the remnant of Israel in the outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem?”
Now on one level, it's pretty plain what's going on here. Ezekiel has this vision. All these people are being destroyed. What's the basis of their destruction? They didn't grieve over the abominations. They were somehow... And you say, "Well, how would they know?" Well, folks, this is a divine scribe. God knows who was grieved over the idolatry and who was not. That's a fundamental point in the passage because that's the basis for the decision. On another level, this reflects—this is an allegory—for what Nebuchadnezzar and his men are going to do and what they actually did do in destroying Jerusalem, destroying the city. Now the question that we have to ask is, is this episode really an indication that all of the righteous (and there apparently weren't a whole lot of them) were spared in Nebuchadnezzar's invasion. Maybe? It's kind of hard to tell. I don't know how far we should press this vision in a one-to-one equation to what actually happened with Nebuchadnezzar. In Ezekiel 6, God says, "I'm going to use the worst of nations to punish you." Can we press this to say that all those people who avoided idolatry were spared? I don't know. Maybe. I wish it were that clear. It could be that case if—again, if—the use of a term like mashkit, which takes us directly mentally, theologically, conceptually back to the Passover event. If that telegraphing is theologically intentional, then you probably could argue that if you were not guilty of idolatry, you were spared in the last wave of Nebuchadnezzar's conquest, Nebuchadnezzar's invasion. Now you might still get deported to Babylon. Lots of Jews were deported in the third wave. Maybe you got left behind, who knows, maybe you were able to hide. Who knows what's going on in real time here? But again, you could make that argument if these analogies are intentional. And I kind of think that they are because I think the use of the linen (it's not just priestly, it's angelic), the whole idea of God knowing who's doing what... I don't think that's a normal priest, I think that's an angelic priest because of all the other passages that deal with God keeping records and using angels to be the divine account system, if you want to use a metaphor like that. Plus the reference to mashkit, the destroying angel. I think some of these things are sufficient to telegraph the point that God in this last invasion spared the faithful. There aren't many of them, but there was a faithful remnant. Now you say, "Well, Ezekiel says here, ' are you going to destroy the whole remnant?'" Remember back in earlier episodes where we talked about the remnant. It can be used of different groups and subgroups, so that's not necessarily an argument against what I'm saying. I'm just telling you where I'm at on the passage. I think you can make that argument.
So to wrap up here, the chapter ends this way:
Then he said to me, “The guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of blood, and the city full of injustice. For they say, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see.’ As for me, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity; I will bring their deeds upon their heads.”
And behold, the man clothed in linen, with the writing case at his waist, brought back word, saying, “I have done as you commanded me.”
We get the full picture here. It's not "feel-good" stuff because, hey, it's Ezekiel and we have judgment. It's going to be judgment up to a certain point and then Ezekiel's going to transition to comforting those who are left. And so it's more of the same as we've been seeing in Ezekiel.
I think the two big takeaways here are that God can and does and has and will decide to judge wickedness. He will decide to judge evil. We can look at these passages and say, "Well, this is just random. It's a willy-nilly capricious deity." It's not capricious! The standard was, "mark those who are in grief over what's going on." You could go, "Well, what about the kids." Go look at the terminology; it doesn't have to refer to infants. You can argue about this until you're blue in the face. There is a measure, a standard for accountability here, and so that's what we need to look at as far as the text. God knows. What better authority would there be? God knows who approved of idolatry. We can argue about the language, you can argue both sides of it, but I think the contextual indications are that God knows who was grieved with what was going on and who wasn't. God is the best judge. He's omniscient. He knows. He's not guessing. And that becomes the basis for what God is going to allow to happen with Nebuchadnezzar in this last wave of the conquest.
And the second takeaway I think is this note about improper worship. They thought, at least some of them… If you're dancing around the Asherah pole it's kind of hard to justify that, even if you say, "That's Yahweh's wife! He wouldn't be mad." Well, yeah, he would because it's not him. He doesn't share his glory with another. So that's a little hard, but you can look at them bowing down to the sun thinking they're worshiping Yahweh. Again, you must ignore other commands about creating graven images, worshiping the creature over the creator, all that sort of stuff. It was idolatry. It's what it is. Even though it was well-intentioned. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was well-intentioned. Even though that could be the case, God was still angry about it. He didn't accept it. It was, by definition, unacceptable. So again, I think we need to keep these things in mind for the way we do things, just to remind ourselves. Look, what we do matters! How we express our loyalty to God matter; who we assign loyalty to. Believing loyalty matters. The way we express that also matters.