Ezekiel Is Once Again To Be Able To Speak Freely Once Jerusalem Is Destroyed.
“And you son of man, will it not be that in the day when I take from them their strength, the joy of their glory, the desire of their eyes, and the yearning of their soul, their sons and their daughters, that in that day he who escapes (‘the fugitive') will come to you to cause you to hear it with your ears. In that day your mouth will be opened to him who has escaped, and you will speak and no more be dumb. So will you be a sign to them, and they will know that I am Yahweh.”
Here ‘the day' is being used in the same way as in the phrase ‘the day of Yahweh'. It signifies ‘that time when', so covering a period of time. So we do not have to see everything as occurring on the same literal day. (Although if we do wish to take it literally it need not all be on the same day. The first two references could be to the day of final destruction, when the messenger begins his ‘coming' to Ezekiel, while the third could refer to that day when the messenger finishes his journey. But it is far more sensible, and in accord with the biblical use of yom (day), to see it as signifying a certain period of time of unspecific length in which things happen, like the ‘day' in which Yahweh God made earth and heaven - Genesis 2:4).
These verses signal a very important moment in the ministry of Ezekiel. Ever since Ezekiel 3:26 Ezekiel had only spoken to Israel when he had a word from Yahweh, otherwise he had been dumb. But now that the siege of Jerusalem had begun, and the date of it written down, there would be no further word from Yahweh until its destruction was communicated to Ezekiel. at which point he would be free to speak to Israel again with a new message as pastor to his people. Until then he was to be silent towards them.
‘That day' which is coming will firstly be the time when God ‘takes from them their strength, the joy of their glory, the desire of their eyes, and the yearning of their soul, their sons and their daughters.' The day when they lose everything.
This can be taken in two ways. RSV adds ‘and' before ‘your sons and your daughters' to parallel Ezekiel 24:21. Thus it interprets the first phrases as referring again to the temple, with the sons and daughters an added extra. This is possible.
But the Hebrew has no conjunction and it may be that the inference is that it is their sons and daughters who were now to be seen as their strength, the joy of their glory, the desire of their eyes, and the yearning of their soul, because the temple had been profaned. But they too would be taken away.
Either way the point is the same. All that they looked to, and that they treasured, was being taken away from them.
But at that time (‘in that day') a messenger will escape from the disastrous situation and make his way to the exiles and to Ezekiel, and will give Ezekiel eyewitness confirmation of the situation. And that will then give him a new beginning and a new message for his people.
But he will not be wholly silent meanwhile. There would yet be three years before the final end. Meanwhile he will have prophecies to give to the nations, and as he proclaims them in the direction of the various countries his awed watchers will hear and understand. They will understand firstly that there was now no word of Yahweh for Jerusalem. All that could be said had been said, and God had no further message for them. It would be a pregnant silence. But they would also receive a hint of hope. For the fact that God was acting against those countries that took advantage of Israel's misfortune would demonstrate that God was not totally finished with Israel and had not totally forgotten them. Thus the silence was both pregnant and awesome, but it was not final.
This demonstrates that the messages to the nations have not just been fitted in here in order to find a place for them. Rather they are an essential indication of the fact that while there was no further word for Israel, in the midst of their current misfortunes they had not just been forgotten. He was still watching over their concerns. God's judgment may be severe, and would be final for Jerusalem, but it was not to be final for the whole of Israel. God still had further purposes towards them, which the remainder of the book will deal with.
‘In that day your mouth will be opened to him who has escaped, and you will speak and no more be dumb. So will you be a sign to them, and they will know that I am Yahweh.' That is, ‘at that time', or ‘in that day' of the messenger's arrival. Then will Ezekiel's mouth be once more open to speak freely. His enforced silence, except when Yahweh spoke through him, will be over, and he will be able to speak with the messenger. This will be a sign to all, for they will recognise that his dumbness had been of Yahweh, and thus that his prophecies too had been of Yahweh, and as the destruction of Jerusalem will have confirmed, they will recognise how truly he had spoken. Now indeed would they be willing to listen to what he had to say.