11/08/2025 – Week 2 of 13 – Ezekiel study – Chapters 4 – 7 / Nov 1st thru Jan 24th / Introduction – See 10/14/2025 post / Week 1 – Post 1 of 2 – Commentary/ Link attached – bottom – Read of 10 prophecies fulfilled through the miracle of 1948!
Our Lesson 2 today, Chapter Two in Wiersbe’s “Be Reverent – OT Commentary – Ezekiel” is titled “The Death of a Great City, running from page # 31 Through page # 48. In post 2, to be completed by the e.o.d. tomorrow will have a few questions for our group discussion.
If you search on Day 167 – you will get post 4 posts dated 10/31/2020 covering Chapters 1 – 6. Chapters 4 through 6 commentary will come from “Halley’s Bible Handbook” and “The Matthew Henry Commentary”
My commentary today for week 2 will come from the following two sources that will be identified as:
(*A) – “Wiersbe’s book noted above, which will probably be a predominant source throughout our thirteen Saturdays.
(*B) – The Apologetics Study Bible / ISBN 978-1-58640-024-8
Other sources that might embellish our Book of Ezekiel discussions even more would be, the following two recommendations: John MacArthur / iSBN 978-0310123842 & J. Vernon McGee / iSBN 978-0785205258.
Let’s get started with excerpts from Wiersbe’s book:
(*A):
- The Sign Messages: The Siege of Jerusalem (Chapters 4 – 5)
“These two chapters “record four ‘action sermons’ that conveyed startling news to the Jewish people in Babylon.
- The siege of Jerusalem (4: 1-3) / (2) The judgment of Judah 4:4-8) / (3) The famine in the city (4: 9-17) / (4) The destiny of the people (5:1-17)
Here are excerpts from #2 above, pgs 33& 34:
(*A):
‘At specified times each day (v 10 NIV), Ezekiel was commanded to lie on the ground, facing the model he constructed of the siege of Jerusalem. He was to be bound (v. 8), his arm was to be bared, and he had to eat the meager food described in verses 9-17. He was to lie on his left side for 390 days and then on his right side for forty day. The symbolic act told the Jewish exiles why the Lord was allowing their Holy City to be ravaged and ruined: The nation had sinned and their sins had caught up with them… The Lord explained to Ezekiel that each day represented a year in the sinful history of the Jewish nation, and somehow he conveyed this fact to the people who watched him each day. But why did the Lord choose the numbers 390 AND 40? … The forty years probably represented Israel’s rebellion during their forty year journey from Egypt to the Promised Land… It’s likely that the 390 year peoiod begins with Solomon’ son Rehoboam , who became king in 930 (1 Kings 14:21 ff.) When you add the years of the reigns of the kings of Judah from Rehoboam to Zedekiah as recorded in 1 and 2 Kings, you have a total of 394 years. Since during three of these years of his reign Rehoboam walked with God (2 Chronicles 11:16-17), we end up with a number very close to Ezekiel’s 390 years.”
#3 above:
(*B):
“4:9 Ezekiel was told to mix six grains to make bread. This was unusual but did not violate any dietary laws. The resulting flour would be inferior to pure wheat or barley flour; it signaled a desperate circumstance that called for austere measures. Under conditions of siege, the people would be forced to mix anything edible due to the scarcity of food.”
(*A):
“4: 9-17 … The people would eat almost anything, including one another (Deuteronomy 28: 49-57). God had warned them of this judgment in His covenant, so they shouldn’t have been shocked…
#4 above:
(*B)
“5:10 This was unthinkable for any Israelite to practice cannibalism; that this should occur would be the enactment of the curses that sanctioned the Lord’s covenant (Leviticus 26:29; Deuteronomy 28: 53-55; see Jeremiah 19: 8-9). Priests and Nazirites were not even allowed to touch a corpse (Leviticus 21: 1-2; Numbers 6:7). Ezekiel’s prophecy underscores the severity of the crisis conditions predicted for the fall of Jerusalem. These same conditions predicted for the fall of Jerusalem. These same conditions were encountered at the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6: 24-33, especially v. 29).
(*A)
“5: 12-17 The Lord explains again the awfulness of the judgment coming to the people left in the city and the land. Pestilence and famine will take one-third of them; another one-third will be killed by the Babylonian army; the remainder will be scattered. Why? Because God was ‘spending His wrath’ and ‘accomplishing His fury’ upon His sinful people. God’s anger against sin is a holy anger, not a temper tantrum, for He is a holy God. ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ (Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29).
There could be no doubt that these great judgments would come, because it was the Lord Himself who had spoken (Ezekiel 5:13). The whole land would be devastated and people would perish from famine and the pestilence that often accompanies famine, as well as blood shed from enemy soldiers and hungry wild beasts. But as terrible as these judgments were, perhaps the greatest tragedy was that Israel would cease to bring glory to Jehovah God (v. 14) and would become a shameful reproach among the nations (Deuteronomy 28:37; Jeremiah 18: 15-17; 48:27; 2 Chronicles 7: 19-22).
… Throughout Old Testament history, the presence of a ‘faithful remnant’ in Israel was important to the fulfillment of God’s plan. The entire nation of Israel accepted God’s covenant at Mount Sinai (Exodus 24:3-8), but most of them failed to obey the Lord and died in the wilderness. In the years that followed the nation’s entrance into the Promised Land, the people gradually declined spiritually, and it was the remnant that prayed, obeyed God’s Word,a nd remained faithful to the Lord. it is this remnant that will play an important role in the future of Israel (Isaiah 1:9; 10: 20-23; 11:11,16; 37:31; Joel 2:32; Micah 2:12; 5:7; Zephaniah 2: 4-7; Zechariah 8: 1-8; Malachi 3:16; Romans 9:27; 11:5). According to the letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor, three is a faithful remnant in the professing church today (Revelation 2:24; 3:4-6; and note our Lord’s words to the ‘overcomers’.
(*B)
“6: 1-3. At God’s command, the prophet turned his face against the mountains and preached a sermon against them. These mountains were centers for idolatrous worship in shrines and groves of trees in the high places. Such shrines were dedicated to Canaanite gods. Elijah (1 Kings 18: 1-40), Hosea (HS 4: 12-13) and Amos (Amos 7:9) all condemned them. These high places called bamot, consisted of an altar for offering sacrifices, a wooden pole to represent the female goddess Ashram, a stone pillar called a masseba to represent the male deity, a small incense altar and tent for use in eating sacral meals and practicing sacred prostitution (1 Kings 14:24; 2 Kings 21:3; Isaiah 57: 3-12). They were popular places of worship in the last days of both Israel and Judah.
“6:4 Josiah, the last good king of Judah (640 – 609 B.C.), led a revival of Israelite faith that was a valiant attempt to eradicate idolatry and restore true worship (2 Kings 23:4-23; 2 Ch 34:3-34). The revival began when Hilkiah, the high priest, found the Book of the Law in the temple where they had been forgotten and neglected. Because neither the priests nor people cooperated, Josiah’s reforms were largely superficial. Pharaoh Neco killed him in 609 B.C. on his way to confront the Babylonians. After Josiah died, the people openly returned to idolatry.
Ezekiel’s favorite word for idols is gillulim, which means ‘dung pellets.’ The term is first used in chapter 6 where it appears five times (vv. 4,5,6,9,13) and it recurs 39 times in the rest of the prophecy (insert – verses not listed – chapters 8 thru 44). The extensive evidence of idolatry was a somber testimony of how firmly it was entrenched, despite Josiah’s best efforts.”
(*A)
“At least sixty times, Ezekiel wrote, ‘And they shall know that I am the LORD’ (Ezekiel 6:14).
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Chapter 7:
(*B)
“7: 1-4 “Using emphatic language, Ezekiel announced the impending ‘day’ of Yahweh’s judgment (vv. 1-2, 7-10, 19; cp. Amos 5:18; 8:3). He also used a grammatical device called the ‘prophetic perfect’ (of the verb bo’), speaking of a future event as though it already occurred. In this way he declared the absolute certainty of his prophecy against the ‘four corners of the land,’ which included the entire nation (Ezekiel 7:2)
“7:5-7,10 Repetition of the phrase ‘the end has come’ (vv. 5-6; cp. ‘the time has come,’ v. 7; ‘the day is coming,’ very soon. 10) emphatically underscored certain judgment and indicated the prophet’s highly agitated state of mind in making this announcement. His sad duty was to inform the when judgment came; they would know it was the Lord ‘who strikes’ (v. 9).”
“7: 23-27 How did the Judea’s regard the news of the fall of Jerusalem? It was not a welcome thought. The Judea’s considered Jerusalem to be inviolable, for theological reasons. It was beyond belief to think that the city and temple could be destroyed, and the temple treasures displayed in a pagan temple in Babylon”
(*A)
There are four word pictures in this capture to arouse the people’s attention and to “perhaps reach their hearts.” These pictures with verses :
#1: the budding rod. (7: 10-11), “an image from nature. God had been long-suffering as His people disobeyed His law and defied His prophets, but now their sins had ‘ripened,’ and the nation would have to reap what they sowed.” (Ezekiel notes that Isaiah had used the image of a “rod” in His hand , describing the Assyrian invasion of the land (Isaiah 10:5)
#2: “The second picture is taken from the business world (Ezekiel 7: 12-13), with the Jewish ‘Year of Jubilee” as the background (Leviticus 25). Every seventh years was set apart as a sabbatical year, during which the land lay fallow and debts were cancelled (vv. 1-7; Deuteronomy 15:1-6). After seven of these sabbatical years, the fiftieth year was set apart as a Year of Jubilee, when the land lay fallow, debts were cancelled, servants were set free, and the land was returned to the original owners… The vision of coming judgment would ‘not be reversed’ (Ezekiel 7:13 NIV); instead, the whole economic pattern would be reversed. Had the Jews obeyed God’s law, the slaves would have been freed and the ownership of the land would have been protected, but now the surviving Jews would be enslaved and their land taken from them. The people had not obeyed the laws concerning the sabbaths of the land, so the Lord took the land from them until those sabbaths were fulfilled (2 Chronicles 36: 14-21). What we selfishly keep for ourselves, we eventually lose, but what we give to the Lord, we keep forever.“
#3: “The third picture is that of the watchman (Ezekiel 7: 14-15). God had made Ezekiel a watchman (3: 17-21, and it was his responsibility to warn the people when danger was at hand.”
#4: “In his fourth picture, Ezekiel compared the fugitives who escape to mourning doves (7: 16-18) frightened and alone in the mountains. It it is from this group that the Lord would form His remnant, so they were important to Him. Instead of rejoicing at their escape, these people were mourning over their sins (Isaiah 59:11), wearing a sackcloth and shaving their heads in sorrow and repentance, a fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy in Ezekiel 6: 9-10. They will be too weak and frightened to fight the enemy; all they can do is throw themselves on the mercy of the Lord.”
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“Not only would there be religious chaos, but the political system would fall apart (Ezekiel 7:27)… The leadership in Judah began to collapse when the kings refused to listen to Jeremiah’s messages from the Lord, admonishing them to surrender to Babylon and thus save the city and the temple. Whenever leaders of the Jewish nations depended on politics rather than the prophetic word, they gradually moved into compromise and confusion (Isaiah 8:20). Judah sought alliances with Egypt and tried to negotiate a way to peace (Ezekiel 7:25), but the Lord had determined that His people should be chastened and not political power can overrule the sovereign will of God.
The Lord brings counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the people of no effect. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations” (Psalm 33: 10-11 NKJV).”
Next weekend, we will look at Chapter Three – “The Glory Has Departed (Ezekiel 8-11). Stick with it, for I think we will see new insights how we share with the remnant of the covenant people, past and present. Should that be a surprise to us? Are we not one body in Christ? (Romans – Chapter 11 – “Israel’s Rejection Not Total”). 1948! – The prophecy is fulfilled through the messenger, Isaiah, 2500 years roughly after the fact. Isaiah “spoke of Israel being reborn in one day”. In the link, check out the fulfillment of nine other prophecies from this miracle!
https://watchmanbiblestudy.com/articles/1948PropheciesFulfilled.html
Soli Deo Gloria!