Historia

1 Then I heard him call out in a loud voice, "Bring the guards of the city here, each with a weapon in his hand." 2 And I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with a deadly weapon in his hand. With them was a man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side. They came in and stood beside the bronze altar.

3 Now the glory of the God of Israel went up from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple. Then the Lord called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side 4 and said to him, "Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it."

5 As I listened, he said to the others, "Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. 6 Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple.

7 Then he said to them, "Defile the temple and fill the courts with the slain. Go!" So they went out and began killing throughout the city.

8 While they were killing and I was left alone, I fell facedown, crying out, "Ah, Sovereign Lord! Are you going to destroy the entire remnant of Israel in this outpouring of your wrath on Jerusalem?"

9 He answered me, "The sin of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of injustice. They say, ‘The Lord has forsaken the land; the Lord does not see.’

10 So I will not look on them with pity or spare them, but I will bring down on their own heads what they have done."

11 Then the man in linen with the writing kit at his side brought back word, saying, "I have done as you commanded."

The creatures that are called “the guards of the city” are obviously not the human watchmen that guard the city gates; they are celestial beings. Their original duty had been to protect the city; here they are summoned to destroy it. The Revised Standard Version calls them “executioners of the city.” But the Hebrew word pequddah means primarily “visitation.” The first time the word occurs in Scripture is in the verse “The chief leader of the Levites was Eleazar son of Aaron, the priest. He was appointed over those who were responsible for the care of the sanctuary.” The New Living Translation calls them: “the men appointed to punish the city!” The word “weapon” is the translation of the two Hebrew words keliy mashcheth, literally “implement of destruction.” A different word is used in the following verse, keliy mappats, which means “an implement to smite to pieces.”

The whole group consists of seven individuals, but one of them is a secretary. He is described as “a man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side.” The white clothing of the secretary singles him out from the others. He was probably dressed like a priest or a Levite. “Writing kit,” or “inkhorn” as The King James Version calls it, is the rendering of the Hebrew qeceth. Ezekiel is the only one who uses the word and it is only found in this chapter.

The Wycliffe Bible Commentary comments: “The word seems to be a loan-word from Egyptian. This was a case for

reed pens, with an ink container attached, and was carried in the girdle or sash.”

The group gathers at the bronze altar, the place where the bloody sacrifices were made. We could say that they gathered at the foot of the cross. What follows is rife with symbolism. First of all, the glory of the Lord begins to move “from above the cherubim,” from above the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, toward the exit of the temple. The glory of the Lord was leaving the temple, as the spirit leaving the body. From that point on the temple would be like a dead body. The scene reminds us of Jesus’ conversation with the Jews, when He said: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” And John comments: “The temple he had spoken of was his body.”1 Jesus spoke of His death and resurrection. What we see here prefigures the death of Christ, and the beginning of the destruction of the body of Jesus. It seemed like the end of all, but actually it was the beginning of all.

Then the One who sits on the throne gives instructions to the secretary to put a mark on the foreheads of “those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in” the city of Jerusalem. John B. Taylor, in

Ezekiel, remarks about this: “The mark which is to be put on men’s foreheads is the tâw, the final letter of the Hebrew

alphabet. 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 (as in Jb. 31:35) or an asterisk in the margin of a book (as the Qumran scribes annotated some Messianic passages in one of their Isaiah scrolls). But many Christians would echo Ellison’s verdict that ‘this is one of the many examples where the Hebrew prophets spoke better than they knew.’ It is worth noting that the procedure for inflicting God’s punishment was selective, in keeping with the principle of 18:4, ‘The soul that sins shall die.’ The basis for exemption from the slaughter was the individual’s deep concern (who sighs and groan, 4) over the city’s apostasy. This was what Amos had looked for among the luxury-loving revelers of Jerusalem and Samaria whom he castigated with his tongue. Their most guilty sin was that they ‘did not grieve over the ruin of Joseph’ (Am. 6:6). In both cases the criterion that was needed was not strictly a religious quality, like faith, or an outward act, like sacrifice, but an affair of the heart – a passionate concern for God and for His people. Failing that, there was no mark, and judgment followed just as surely as it had done for those households that lacked the blood on the doorposts on the night of the first Passover. There was no other exemption: age and sex did not enter into it (6): only the mark would save. The judgment began, as it always must (cf. I Pet. 4:17), with the household of God. The first to be slain by the six executioners were the elders who were before the house, probably the twenty-five priestly sun-worshippers of 8:16. Their slaughter meant defilement of the holy place (7), but that was a small price to pay for the vindication of God’s name.”

As The Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary points out, the Hebrew words for “grieve and lament” are very expressive, consisting of similarly-sounding verbs, articulating the prolonged sound of their grief:

hane’anaachiym wahane’anaaqiym.

Ezekiel’s reaction to the scene of slaughter is very moving. He falls down on his face and begins a prayer of intercession, similar to Abraham’s prayer for Sodom and Gomorrah. In the case of the latter, most Bible versions read: “but Abraham remained standing before the Lord.”1 The NIV states in a footnote: “Masoretic Text; an ancient Hebrew scribal tradition ‘but the Lord remained standing before Abraham.’” Having told Abraham what was about to happen with the sinful cities, by lingering before Abraham, God wanted to show how this affected Him and He wanted to see how this information would affect Abraham. We find here a similar case in which the Almighty shares His pain with Ezekiel and the prophet responds by crying out in a prayer of intercession for his people. The essence of intercessory prayer is always the sharing of God’s burden.

We do not read that Ezekiel follows Abraham’s pattern of prayer, but it is obvious from God’s answer that there was no remnant of ten righteous men in Jerusalem that could have saved the city. Those who were marked by the angelic secretary must have been very few in number.