So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee. I the LORD have spoken it.
So will I send upon you ... beasts - perhaps meaning destructive conquerors (as Nebuchadnezzar, compared to a "lion" with "eagle's wings," Daniel 7:4). Rather, literal "beasts," which infest desolated regions, such as Judea was to become (cf. Ezekiel 34:28; Exo. 33:29; Deuteronomy 32:24, "I will ... send the teeth of beasts upon them." So "lions" were sent among the pagan settlers planted by Assyria in Samaria; 2 Kings 17:25). The same threat repeated in manifold forms, to awaken the careless.
I will bring the sword upon thee - civil war.
Remarks:
(1) The shaving off of Ezekiel's hair in symbolical action intimated prophetically that God, by means of the enemy as His cutting razor, purposed to cut off the reprobates, both priests and people.
(2) Yet nothing was to be done at random. The balances (Ezekiel 5:1) implied that the persons to be punished, as well as also the kind of punishment about to be inflicted, were all accurately determined beforehand. The hairs represented the Jews. A third portion was to be burnt in the midst of the city-that is, was to perish by pestilence and famine; a third was to be smitten with the sword; and of the remaining third the majority was to be scattered in the wind-that is, was to be dispersed among all nations, and a sword to be drawn out after them. Only a small part of the third and remaining portion was to be found in Ezekiel's skirts, to signify the preservation of an elect remnant amidst the consuming judgments on the great mass of the nation; and even of this elect few some were to be cast into the fiery ordeal again.
(3) Hence, we learn how great is God's wrath against sin, when even the nation of His choice was so sorely chastised for transgression. Let the sinner go where he will, God draws sword after him (Ezekiel 5:2; Ezekiel 5:12). We also see that there is no chance in the seeming confusion of this world's affairs. They are all, in the very minutest particular, ordered and overruled by sovereign wisdom and justice. The divine goodness, too, is strikingly manifested in His preservation of the elect, so that not a hair of their head can be jured (Daniel 3:27; Matthew 10:30).
(4) Jerusalem was designed by her heavenly King to be a religious light "in the midst of the nations and countries round about her" (Ezekiel 5:5). Her physical position in the center of the oldest and most civilized nations-Egypt, Ethiopia, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, her proximity to the Phoenicians, the great maritime people of antiquity, on the one side, and to the Ishmaelites, the great inland traders, on the other-gave her a geographical facility for this purpose such as scarcely any other country or city possessed Then God had given her, in His moral law and statutes, the spiritual light which other nations had not, but which she was to be the instrument of imparting to them. But, instead of fulfilling her high mission, and raising the pagan nations up to the high standard given to her, she sunk down to the low level of their corruptions and idolatries (Ezekiel 5:6); and so she became worse than they-for the greater the light the greater is the guilt of those who turn their beck on it. The Jews imitated the pagan in all that was bad; but in the only feature wherein it would have been good for them to have followed the pagan-namely, in unchanging faithfulness to their religion-they did not imitate them, but "changed God's judgments into wickedness" (Ezekiel 5:6), and were "more abundantly outrageous an sin" (note, Ezekiel 5:7) than the nations round about.
(5) As therefore they did not do what was natural for them to have done, and what the very pagan did, in zealously clinging to the worship handed down by their fathers, behold, God, Yahweh, even God Himself (Ezekiel 5:8), declares that He also will do that which He has not done, and whereunto He will not do anymore the like (Ezekiel 5:9-10). The horrors to be inflicted on the Jews were to he without a parallel in history, in proportion as their privileges and their guilt were without a parallel. Because they had crowned their guilt by diminishing from the sanctity of God's own temple with all their detestable things. God also would "diminish" them, not pitying or sparing any (Ezekiel 5:11). As they have withdrawn their regard from Him, so would He "withdraw His eye" from them (note, Ezekiel 5:11).
(6) Many regard God as only a God of love, and refuse to believe that He is a God whose justice is only to be satisfied by the punishment of sin. But here God plainly declares that it is not until His "anger has been accomplished," and He has "caused His fury to rest upon" the guilty, that He will be "comforted" (Ezekiel 5:13). Men forget that God is jealous for His own honour, and that He has holy satisfaction in the vindication of His justice by His righteous judgments. Blessed be God, we have in the Gospel way of salvation a full satisfaction provided by the Father in Christ for God's justice, as well as an open channel wherein God's love may freely flow to us sinners: so that God, having caused all His fury to rest upon Christ, is now comforted, and speaks comfort to all who come to Him through the Saviour.
(7) How just retribution it was, that as Israel had brought a reproach on the name of God among the nations, so her name should be a reproach, a taunt, and an instructive warning to all nations (Ezekiel 5:14-15) of the fatal consequences of abuse of high privileges, and of apostasy from God. The pagan, to gain whose favour Israel had sacrificed the favour of God, so far from comforting her, only taunted her as having received just what she deserved (Ezekiel 5:14-15). When we forsake our God for the world, the very world shall be made instrumental in our punishment. The friendship of the ungodly is like the reed which, when leant on, snaps asunder, and pierces the hand that relied on it. Let us, with our higher Gospel privileges, remember that the greater in proportion are our responsibilities. May we never, for the sake of the world's favour, bring reproach on our Master's name, and forget the friendship of Him who saith, "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you"! (John 15:14.)