Ezekiel 3 Study Notes

3:17 In order to give a timely warning of approaching danger, lookouts or watchmen were posted on high places such as the roofs of gatehouses (2Sm 18:24) or towers (2Kg 9:17). God gave his commandments for the people’s good (Dt 5:28-33; 6:25; 10:12-13). If they were obedient to the stipulations, they would experience God’s blessing (Lv 26:1-13; Dt 16:20; 28:1-14; Mal 3:10-12). If the people disobeyed these ordinances, the Lord promised that he would bring curses upon them. These statutes were designed to lead them to repentance (Lv 26:14-39; Dt 28:15-68).

3:18-19 Ezekiel’s failure to deliver God’s message would render him guilty of murder (I will hold you responsible for his blood) and thus subject to capital punishment (Gn 9:5-6). Thus, whether Ezekiel lived or died depended on his “righteousness”—his faithfulness to the holy commission he had received. Ezekiel’s commission as son of man/Adam can be compared to the first Adam and to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gn 2:17). If Ezekiel was obedient he would live and would bring the possibility of life to those who heard him; but if he failed, he and his hearers would “surely die” (Ezk 3:18; Gn 2:17; 2Sm 4:11-12; Ac 18:6).

3:20 To lay a stumbling block before a person was to expose him to danger (Jr 6:21).

3:21 On warn the righteous person, see a similar warning in 1Co 10:12. Those who responded faithfully to the watchman’s proclamation would live. This signified not just physical life but the fullness of fellowship with the Lord that flows from obedience.

3:22-23 Ezekiel had his second encounter with the Lord in the plain.

3:24-25 Being shut in the house illustrates the siege of Jerusalem. This does not mean that Ezekiel was literally never to leave his house (cp. 5:2; 12:3); instead, he was to refrain from open fellowship with others. Leaders often came to him at his house to receive God’s word (8:1; 14:1; 20:1). General confinement to his home is reflected in all the locations of prophesying mentioned in the book (8:1; 14:1; 20:1; 33:30).

Other languages do not show this root meaning warn, and debate exists whether zahar, warn, is identical with zahar, shine (Dn 12:3). An Arabic word “be clear” relates to zahar, shine. Warning does makes something clear. Zahar occurs mostly in Ezk 3:17-21; 33:3-9. As watchmen warned cities against attack (2Kg 6:10), so Ezekiel was a prophetic watchman warning about divine judgment against sin. Zahar once means instruct (Ex 18:20), perhaps as “enjoin.” Judges warned litigants to avoid guilt before God over the law (2Ch 19:10); so Moses’s instruction (Ex 18:20) may have warned about the law’s implications. The passive-reflexive of zahar denotes objectively being warned (Ezk 33:6) but also subjectively taking warning (Ezk 33:5), that is, listening to (Ezk 3:21) and paying attention to warnings (Ec 4:13). The negative is ignoring warning (Ezk 33:4). The root in Aramaic involves warning against negligence in obeying orders (Ezr 4:22).

3:26 The expression tongue stick to the roof of your mouth is an idiomatic way of saying that a person cannot talk (Jb 29:10; Ps 137:6). Ezekiel’s speechlessness lasted seven years (Ezk 33:21-22). He remained silent, except when God instructed him to deliver a message. There may be a correlation between the seven days that Ezekiel sat among his fellow exiles (3:15), and his seven-year speechlessness: one year of divinely imposed speechlessness for each day of hardened resistance.

3:27 Ezekiel remained unable to speak in the intervals between God’s addresses. These lapses into muteness finally stopped when it was announced that Jerusalem had fallen.