Ezekiel 33:1

PART III

(Ezekiel 33-39)

HE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW ISRAEL;

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE ENCOURAGEMENT OF THE CAPTIVES;

FORGIVENESS AND RESTORATION;

THINGS PERTAINING TO THE MESSIANIC KINGDOM;

SALVATION FOR ISRAEL ANNOUNCED

(Note: All of these titles have been proposed by various authors for this third section of Ezekiel).

"The destruction of the old sinful Israel was not the end of God's dealings with his people. The old order would be followed by a new and perfect kingdom. The destruction of the sinful foreign nations would prepare the way for this. The exiles would be returned to Palestine; and a new kingdom would be set up under totally new conditions of worship and fellowship with God. The remainder of Ezekiel falls into two parts: (1) the first deals with the restoration from captivity (Ezekiel 33-39), and (2) the second deals with the new arrangement and laws of the future kingdom (Ezekiel 40-48).[1]

EZEKIEL'S CALL TO HIS NEW MISSION; STRESSING THE OLD RULES

It was a discouraging situation that confronted Ezekiel. Israel was not yet a united entity.

(1) There was the arrogant and conceited remnant that remained in Judea, the few left behind by the Babylonians, the few groups of stragglers rounded up by Gedaliah, and a few that had escaped and were in hiding in the remote caves and inaccessible places on the road down to Jericho.

The immoral character and the conceited self-assurance of this group made it absolutely impossible for God to find a place for them in his eternal purpose. They were claiming, that since they were "the seed of Abraham," then they were the heirs of Palestine and all the other blessings of the Abrahamic covenant. This, of course, was the old conceit of the Pharisees of Jesus' day who claimed to be the "seed of Abraham," but were actually the children of the devil (John 8:44). Ezekiel would deal with both this group and the second one in this chapter.

(2) This group were those who indeed recognized the sin and apostasy of the nation and the justice of God's punishment sent upon them, resulting in a depression and discouragement that raised the question among them, "How can we live (v. 10)?"

Before proceeding to deal with these two groups, Ezekiel would turn the thoughts of the people away from their conception that God was going to bless Israel as a nation, to the truth that God's blessings, all of them, were reserved to individuals who were committed and faithful to God's Word. It is still a very hurtful and prevalent error in the world that God, some way or other, is going to bless Israel, as a nation. We have never been able to find a single word in the whole Bible that supports such an error. On the contrary, the great Apostle to the Gentiles laid that old error to rest forever in his words of 2 Corinthians 5:10, "That each one may receive the things done in the body."

From this it is easy to see that the first twenty verses here constitute an introduction to this whole final section of Ezekiel.[2]

For that reason, the date of the chapter will not appear until Ezekiel 33:21.

THE TIMELESS PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY (Ezekiel 33:1-9)

Ezekiel 33:1-6

"And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, Speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them, and set him for their watchman; if, when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning, if the sword come and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him; whereas if he had taken warning, he would have delivered his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned, and the sword come, and take any person from among them; he is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand."

Individual responsibility is the blunt message here. Even if the watchman does not warn, that cannot excuse the victim. However, there is something else here; and that is the double responsibility of the watchman. Ezekiel indeed had been a faithful watchman to warn God's people. This was by no means a new principle. Ezekiel had devoted the whole 18th chapter of this prophecy to the same subject. However, there the teaching was stressed to show that the children of Israel were not being punished for their fathers' sin, but for their own. Here the purpose of showing Ezekiel's generation of the exiles that it made no difference at all what "all Israel" had done in the past, the important thing turned upon the question of what each individual was doing.

"In these verses, Ezekiel compares himself to an ordinary watchman, to show that it is his duty in that current crisis to care for and warn individual souls."[3] As Bunn noted, "All prophets (and also New Testament teachers) stand in double jeopardy, because they are responsible both to God and to man."[4]