Sermon Tone Analysis

Slowing down

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…

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:

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,

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:

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: