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Ezekiel 5: What the Passage Says

76 claims across 17 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Ezekiel 5 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

God tells Ezekiel to shave his head and beard with a sword, weigh the hair, and divide it into three parts, each destroyed in a different way, as a sign of what will happen to the people of Jerusalem. God then explains the sign: because Jerusalem has rejected his laws and defiled his sanctuary, he will carry out judgments among her in full view of the surrounding nations. A third of her people will die by plague and hunger, a third by the sword, and a third will be scattered; fathers and sons will eat each other during the siege. The chapter continues the acted-out signs begun in chapter 4.

Claim by Claim

  1. 5:1
    • God addresses the prophet as son of man.
    • God commands him to take a sharp sword for himself.
    • God commands him to use it as a barber's razor.
    • God commands him to pass it over his head and over his beard.
    • God commands him to take scales for weighing.
    • God commands him to divide the hair into parts.
  2. 5:2
    • He is to burn a third part of the hair with fire inside the city.
    • He is to burn it when the days of the siege are completed.
    • He is to take another third and strike it with the sword all around the city.
    • He is to scatter a third part to the wind.
    • God says he will draw out a sword after them.
  3. 5:3
    • He is to take from there a few strands, small in number.
    • He is to bind them into the folds of his garment.
  4. 5:4
    • He is to take some of those again.
    • He is to throw them into the middle of the fire.
    • He is to burn them in the fire.
    • From it a fire will go out to all the house of Israel.
  5. 5:5
    • This is what the Lord GOD says.
    • God says that this is Jerusalem.
    • God says he has set her in the midst of the nations.
    • God says there are countries all around her.
  6. 5:6
    • She has rebelled against God's judgments into wickedness more than the nations.
    • She has rebelled against God's statutes more than the countries around her.
    • They have rejected God's judgments.
    • They have not walked in God's statutes.
  7. 5:7
    • This is what the Lord GOD says.
    • The reason given is the people's excess relative to the nations around them, stated ambiguously as either their being more turbulent or their being more numerous than those nations.
    • They have not walked in God's statutes.
    • They have not carried out God's judgments.
    • They have not even acted according to the ordinances of the nations around them.
  8. 5:8
    • This is what the Lord GOD says.
    • God says he himself is against her.
    • God says he will execute judgments in her midst.
    • God says he will do this in the sight of the nations.
  9. 5:9
    • God says he will do in her what he has not done before.
    • God says he will never again do anything like it.
    • God says this is because of all her abominations.
  10. 5:10
    • Fathers will eat their sons in her midst.
    • Sons will eat their fathers.
    • God will execute judgments in her.
    • God will scatter her entire remnant to every wind.
  11. 5:11
    • God swears by his own life.
    • This is the declaration of the Lord GOD.
    • The reason given is that she has defiled God's sanctuary with all her detestable things.
    • The reason given is that she has defiled it with all her abominations.
    • God says he will himself diminish her, the term meaning either to cut her down or to withdraw from her.
    • God says his eye will not spare.
    • God says he will not have pity.
  12. 5:12
    • A third of her people will die by pestilence.
    • They will be consumed by famine inside her.
    • A third will fall by the sword around her.
    • God will scatter a third to every wind.
    • God will draw out a sword after them.
  13. 5:13
    • God's anger will be brought to completion.
    • God will cause his fury to rest upon them.
    • God will be appeased.
    • They will know that the LORD has spoken in his zeal.
    • This knowledge comes when God has spent his fury on them.
  14. 5:14
    • God will make her a ruin.
    • God will make her a reproach among the nations around her.
    • This will be in the sight of everyone who passes by.
  15. 5:15
    • She will be a reproach and a taunt to the nations around her.
    • She will be a warning and an object of horror to the nations around her.
    • This happens when God executes judgments in her in anger and in fury and in furious rebukes.
    • The LORD says he has spoken it.
  16. 5:16
    • God will send against them the deadly arrows of famine.
    • Those arrows are for destruction.
    • God says he will send them to destroy them.
    • God will increase the famine against them.
    • God will break their staff of bread.
  17. 5:17
    • God will send famine against them.
    • God will send wild beasts against them.
    • The beasts will leave her bereaved of children.
    • Pestilence and blood will pass through her.
    • God will bring the sword upon her.
    • The LORD says he has spoken it.

Words Worth Explaining

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

5:1
"Son of man" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning simply "human being" or "mortal"; it is how God addresses Ezekiel throughout this book. What follows is a sign-act, prophecy performed rather than spoken, continuing the model siege of Jerusalem that Ezekiel laid out on a clay brick in the previous chapter. For an Israelite man, a shaved head and beard signaled mourning or public humiliation; prisoners of war were shaved, and priests, which Ezekiel was by birth, were forbidden to shave head or beard at all. The scales are a merchant's balances: the hair is to be divided by exact weight, the way silver or grain would be.
5:2
"The city" is the model of Jerusalem drawn on the brick, not the real city; the hair is burned and struck at the model. "Chase after them with a drawn sword" translates an idiom for pulling a sword from its sheath and pursuing, the ones who escape are still hunted.
5:3
Ancient robes had no pockets. The loose fold of cloth at the chest, or the hem gathered up, served as a pouch for carrying things. The hem of a man's garment also carried weight in Israelite custom as a mark of his identity and of the protection he extended.
5:4
The text does not say who the few saved-then-burned hairs stand for, and it is left deliberately open: a remnant is set aside, and even part of that remnant goes into the fire.
5:5
Where this text prints "LORD" in capitals, it stands for the personal name of Israel's God, written in Hebrew with four consonants (YHWH) and read aloud as "the Lord"; "Lord GOD" renders the Hebrew pair meaning "my Lord YHWH." "In the middle of the nations" is a way of describing Jerusalem as set at the center of the surrounding peoples, in plain view of them all.
5:6
"Rulings" and "laws" (KJV "judgments" and "statutes") are the two standard Hebrew terms for legal material: decisions handed down case by case, and standing decrees. They are named as a pair throughout this chapter.
5:7
The Hebrew of this verse is difficult and disputed. The word KJV renders "multiplied" comes from a root for noise, tumult and unruliness (hence "more turbulent" or "more insubordinate." The final clause is also uncertain: many Hebrew manuscripts and ancient translations lack the word "not," giving "you have acted according to the rules of the nations around you") that is, copied them, rather than "you have not even kept" them. Both readings are old.
5:9
"Detestable practices" (KJV "abominations") translates a Hebrew word for what is repulsive and out of place in worship, used above all for idol worship and the rites that went with it.
5:10
Parents eating their children is a fixed phrase in the curses attached to Israel's covenant (Leviticus 26:29; Deuteronomy 28:53–57), and it describes what did in fact happen in long sieges once a walled city's food ran out.
5:11
"As surely as I live" is an oath formula: the speaker swears by his own life, the strongest guarantee available. "My holy house" is the temple in Jerusalem. "Cut you back" renders a KJV "diminish" whose Hebrew verb means to shear away, trim off or withdraw, a word at home in the shaving imagery of verse 1, not to lower in status.
5:12
Plague, famine and the sword are a fixed trio in Hebrew prophecy for the ways a besieged population dies: disease and starvation inside the walls, weapons outside them.
5:13
KJV's "I will be comforted" uses "comfort" in its older sense of being appeased or satisfied, anger spent, not consoled. "Zeal" translates a word meaning jealous passion: the fierce, possessive protectiveness of a husband or a king over what belongs to him.
5:14
A "reproach" is an object of open scorn, something people point at and insult. Jerusalem sat near major trade routes, so its ruins would be seen by travelers and merchants passing through for generations.
5:15
KJV's "an instruction and an astonishment" uses both words in senses now lost: "instruction" means a warning example, a lesson others draw from someone else's punishment, and "astonishment" means stunned horror, not admiration.
5:16
"Cut off your supply of bread" renders the Hebrew idiom "break your staff of bread": bread is pictured as the walking staff that holds a person upright, so breaking it means removing the support life depends on. Famine and disease were also commonly pictured in the ancient Near East as arrows shot by a god.
5:17
"Bereave thee" means take your children away from you. Wild animals were a real danger, because when war emptied the towns, lions, bears and wolves moved back into the empty land.

Read Ezekiel 5