Ezekiel 3: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God tells Ezekiel to eat the scroll he was given, and it tastes sweet as honey. God sends him to speak to the people of Israel, warning that they will refuse to listen, and promising to make Ezekiel as hard and unyielding as they are. The Spirit carries him to the exiles at Tel-abib, where he sits stunned for seven days, and God then appoints him a watchman who is held responsible for warning the wicked and the righteous. Finally God tells him to shut himself in his house, where he will be bound and made silent until God opens his mouth to speak.

Claim by Claim

1. 3:1
   • A voice said to Ezekiel, calling him son of man, to eat what he found
   • The voice told him to eat the scroll
   • The voice told him to go and speak to the house of Israel
2. 3:2
   • Ezekiel opened his mouth
   • The one speaking caused him to eat the scroll
3. 3:3
   • The voice said to Ezekiel, calling him son of man, to feed his belly and fill his bowels with the scroll
   • The voice said the scroll was one he was giving to Ezekiel
   • Ezekiel ate the scroll
   • The scroll was in his mouth as sweet as honey
4. 3:4
   • The voice said to Ezekiel, calling him son of man, to go to the house of Israel
   • The voice told him to speak God's words to them
5. 3:5
   • Ezekiel was not being sent to a people of obscure speech and difficult language
   • Ezekiel was being sent to the house of Israel
6. 3:6
   • Ezekiel was not being sent to many peoples of obscure speech and difficult language
   • Ezekiel could not understand the words of those peoples
   • God said that if he had sent Ezekiel to those peoples, they would have listened to him
7. 3:7
   • The house of Israel will not be willing to listen to Ezekiel
   • The reason is that they are not willing to listen to God
   • All the house of Israel are hard of forehead and hard of heart
8. 3:8
   • God has made Ezekiel's face hard against their faces
   • God has made Ezekiel's forehead hard against their foreheads
9. 3:9
   • God has made Ezekiel's forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint
   • God told Ezekiel not to fear them
   • God told Ezekiel not to be dismayed at them
   • They are a rebellious house
10. 3:10
    • The voice said to Ezekiel, calling him son of man, to receive in his heart all the words God would speak to him
    • The voice told him to hear those words with his ears
11. 3:11
    • God told Ezekiel to go to the exiles, the children of his people
    • God told him to speak to them
    • God told him to say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD
    • This is to be done whether they listen or whether they refuse
12. 3:12
    • A spirit lifted Ezekiel up
    • He heard behind him the sound of a great rushing noise
    • The sound said, Blessed be the glory of the LORD from his place
13. 3:13
    • He heard the sound of the wings of the living creatures touching one another
    • He heard the sound of the wheels alongside them
    • He heard the sound of a great rushing noise
14. 3:14
    • A spirit lifted Ezekiel up and took him away
    • He went in bitterness, in the heat of his spirit
    • The hand of the LORD was strong upon him
15. 3:15
    • Ezekiel came to the exiles at Tel Abib
    • Those exiles dwelt by the river Chebar
    • He sat where they were dwelling
    • He remained there among them seven days, stunned
16. 3:16
    • At the end of seven days the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel
17. 3:17
    • God said to Ezekiel, calling him son of man, that he had made him a watchman for the house of Israel
    • Ezekiel is to hear the word from God's mouth
    • Ezekiel is to give them warning from God
18. 3:18
    • God speaks of saying to the wicked man, You shall surely die
    • The case is that Ezekiel does not warn him
    • The case is that Ezekiel does not speak to warn the wicked man from his wicked way to save his life
    • In that case the wicked man shall die in his iniquity
    • In that case God will require the wicked man's blood at Ezekiel's hand
19. 3:19
    • If Ezekiel warns the wicked man and the man does not turn from his wickedness and from his wicked way, the man shall die in his iniquity
    • In that case Ezekiel has delivered his own soul
20. 3:20
    • The case is a righteous man turning from his righteousness and committing iniquity
    • God says he will lay a stumbling block before such a man
    • Such a man shall die
    • Because Ezekiel did not warn him, he shall die in his sin
    • The righteous deeds he has done shall not be remembered
    • God will require his blood at Ezekiel's hand
21. 3:21
    • If Ezekiel warns the righteous man not to sin, and the righteous man does not sin, he shall surely live
    • He lives because he was warned
    • In that case Ezekiel has delivered his own soul
22. 3:22
    • The hand of the LORD was upon Ezekiel there
    • God told him to arise and go out to the plain
    • God said he would speak with him there
23. 3:23
    • Ezekiel arose and went out to the plain
    • The glory of the LORD was standing there
    • That glory was like the glory he had seen by the river Chebar
    • Ezekiel fell on his face
24. 3:24
    • A spirit entered into Ezekiel
    • The spirit set him on his feet
    • God spoke with him
    • God told him to go and shut himself inside his house
25. 3:25
    • God addressed Ezekiel as son of man
    • God said they would put ropes on him
    • God said they would bind him with the ropes
    • God said Ezekiel would not go out among them
26. 3:26
    • God said he would make Ezekiel's tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth
    • God said Ezekiel would be mute
    • God said Ezekiel would not be a reprover to them
    • They are a rebellious house
27. 3:27
    • God said that when he speaks with Ezekiel he will open his mouth
    • God said Ezekiel is then to say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD
    • God said the one who hears, let him hear
    • God said the one who refuses, let him refuse
    • They are a rebellious house

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

3:1

"Son of man" translates a Hebrew phrase that means simply "human being" or "mortal"; it marks Ezekiel out as an ordinary man over against the one speaking to him, and it is how God addresses him more than ninety times in this book. A scroll was the book of the period: a long sheet of papyrus or prepared animal skin, written on and rolled up. The previous chapter described this one as written on both sides (unusual, since scrolls were normally written on one) and filled with words of lament and mourning.

3:3

The KJV "fill thy bowels" means fill your insides. Hebrew located thought and feeling in the gut rather than the head, so swallowing the scroll is an image of taking the message in until it is part of him and not just words he has been handed. Honey was the sweetest thing most people ever tasted, so it was the standard comparison for sweetness.

3:5

The King James word "strange" here means foreign, not odd. Ezekiel would not have to learn a new language, because these were his own people.

3:6

"Hearken" in the King James means to listen with the intention of obeying, not just to hear a sound. The point of these two verses is that the barrier is not language: foreigners who could not even understand his words would have responded better than his own people, who understand him perfectly.

3:7

The Hebrew reads literally "hard of forehead and hard of heart." In Hebrew usage the heart is the seat of thinking, memory and will, nearer to "mind" than to "feelings", so a hard heart means a fixed, unpersuadable judgment rather than an absence of emotion. "Hard forehead" is the brazen face that will not show shame; the King James "impudent" carried that stronger sense of shamelessness in 1611.

3:8

A hard face and a hard forehead do not mean stone skin. They mean a person who will not give in or back down.

3:9

The King James "adamant" is an old name for an exceptionally hard stone or gem, not a specific mineral. Flint is the stone ancient toolmakers chipped into knives and arrowheads, and it stood proverbially for the hardest thing known.

3:10

When the Bible says heart, it usually means the place where a person thinks and decides, not just where feelings live.

3:11

The exiles are Judeans deported to Babylonia after Babylon captured Jerusalem in 597 BC and carried off the king, the court, and thousands of leading citizens, craftsmen and priests. Ezekiel, a priest, was among them. Jerusalem itself was still standing at this point and would not be destroyed for about another ten years. Where the text prints LORD or GOD in capitals, it stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants often written YHWH, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud; "Lord GOD" here renders a double form, roughly "my Master, YHWH."

3:12

The Hebrew word translated "Blessed" (barukh) differs by a single letter from a word meaning "when it rose" (berum). Many readers take the line not as a shout of praise but as describing the sound made as the glory of the LORD rose from its place. The written consonants allow either reading, and the ambiguity is genuine.

3:13

The living creatures and the wheels are from the vision Ezekiel describes in chapter 1: four winged figures, each with a wheel beside it, supporting the throne-like appearance of God's glory.

3:14

"The hand of the LORD" upon a prophet is a standard idiom for being seized and driven by divine power, pressure and compulsion, not comfort or protection. "The heat of my spirit" is the ordinary Hebrew idiom for hot anger.

3:15

Tel-abib was one of the settlements where the deportees from Judah were placed in Babylonia; the name appears to come from an Akkadian phrase meaning "mound of the flood," that is, a ruin-heap left by flooding. The Kebar was not a natural river but one of the great irrigation canals branching off the Euphrates, near the city of Nippur. Seven days was the customary period of mourning for the dead, and sitting silent among mourners for seven days was a recognized ritual of grief, not merely a pause.

3:17

A watchman was the sentry posted on the city wall or in a tower to spot an approaching army or messenger and sound the alarm. He was held answerable if he saw the danger and failed to give the signal. The verses that follow work out that specific legal liability.

3:18

"I will hold you responsible for his death" renders a legal formula, literally "his blood I will require from your hand." It is the language of bloodguilt in Israelite law: the person named is treated as liable for a death and can be required to answer for it with his own life.

3:19

"Thou hast delivered thy soul" means you have saved your own life. "Soul" in the King James usually translates a Hebrew word meaning a living person or a life, not an immortal part of someone separate from the body.

3:20

The Hebrew word behind "something in his path that trips him up" is an ordinary physical obstacle (a stone or block left where someone will stumble on it) used here as an image. The text does not say what the obstacle is.

3:22

The Hebrew word is biq'ah, a broad flat stretch of open ground lying lower than the land around it; older translations render it "plain," newer ones "valley." It means level open country outside the settlement, not a narrow ravine.

3:23

Falling face down on the ground was the normal physical response to overwhelming authority or terror, the posture used before a king as well as before God.

3:24

The Hebrew word ruach covers wind, breath and spirit alike; it is the same word used for whatever lifted Ezekiel up in verses 12 and 14.

3:25

Whether the ropes are literal, neighbors physically restraining him, or a figure for a constraint laid on him by God has been argued over for a long time. The Hebrew simply states it, without explaining who "they" are or why.

3:26

The King James "reprover" is the person who states the case against wrongdoing in public, the role played in a legal dispute at the town gate. Being struck mute removes Ezekiel from that role: he cannot bring the charge. Verse 27 makes the silence selective rather than total.

3:27

"He that forbeareth, let him forbear" means whoever refuses to listen can go on refusing. Ezekiel's task is to deliver the message accurately; the response is not counted as his responsibility.