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Impending Disaster

The word of the L ord came to me: ²You, O mortal, thus says the Lord G od to the land of Israel:

An end! The end has come

upon the four corners of the land.

Now the end is upon you,

I will let loose my anger upon you;

I will judge you according to your ways,

I will punish you for all your abominations.

My eye will not spare you, I will have no pity.

I will punish you for your ways,

while your abominations are among you.

Then you shall know that I am the L ord.

⁵ Thus says the Lord G od:

Disaster after disaster! See, it comes.

An end has come, the end has come.

It has awakened against you; see, it comes!

Your doom has come to you,

O inhabitant of the land.

The time has come, the day is near—

of tumult, not of reveling on the mountains.

Soon now I will pour out my wrath upon you;

I will spend my anger against you.

I will judge you according to your ways,

and punish you for all your abominations.

My eye will not spare; I will have no pity.

I will punish you according to your ways,

while your abominations are among you.

Then you shall know that it is I the L ord who strike.

See, the day! See, it comes!

Your doom has gone out.

The rod has blossomed, pride has budded.

Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness.

None of them shall remain,

not their abundance, not their wealth;

no pre-eminence among them.

The time has come, the day draws near;

let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn,

for wrath is upon all their multitude.

¹³ For the sellers shall not return to what has been sold as long as they remain alive. For the vision concerns all their multitude; it shall not be revoked. Because of their iniquity, they cannot maintain their lives.

They have blown the horn and made everything ready;

but no one goes to battle,

for my wrath is upon all their multitude.

The sword is outside, pestilence and famine are inside;

those in the field die by the sword;

those in the city—famine and pestilence devour them.

If any survivors escape,

they shall be found on the mountains

like doves of the valleys,

all of them moaning over their iniquity.

All hands shall grow feeble,

all knees turn to water.

They shall put on sackcloth,

horror shall cover them.

Shame shall be on all faces,

baldness on all their heads.

They shall fling their silver into the streets,

their gold shall be treated as unclean.

Their silver and gold cannot save them on the day of the wrath of the L ord. They shall not satisfy their hunger or fill their stomachs with it. For it was the stumbling block of their iniquity. ²⁰From their beautiful ornament, in which they took pride, they made their abominable images, their detestable things; therefore I will make of it an unclean thing to them.

I will hand it over to strangers as booty,

to the wicked of the earth as plunder;

they shall profane it.

I will avert my face from them,

so that they may profane my treasured place;

the violent shall enter it,

they shall profane it.

Make a chain!

For the land is full of bloody crimes;

the city is full of violence.

I will bring the worst of the nations

to take possession of their houses.

I will put an end to the arrogance of the strong,

and their holy places shall be profaned.

When anguish comes, they will seek peace,

but there shall be none.

Disaster comes upon disaster,

rumor follows rumor;

they shall keep seeking a vision from the prophet;

instruction shall perish from the priest,

and counsel from the elders.

The king shall mourn,

the prince shall be wrapped in despair,

and the hands of the people of the land shall tremble.

According to their way I will deal with them;

according to their own judgments I will judge them.

And they shall know that I am the L ord.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Now Ezekiel uses another figure, but to the same purpose. He repeats what he had said before: the day is come, and he adds another part, that the morning had advanced But we said that the impious, when God connives at their sins, exult as it were in darkness without shame or fear. Since therefore they were as wanton as if they had obtained the license of night, the Prophet denounces that morning is at hand, because God would suddenly bring to light what they thought would be always hidden. Since therefore, when God retired, they supposed themselves in complete darkness, the Prophet recalls them to the consideration of the daily order of things: for light emerges immediately from the dawn. Thus he laughs at their folly, because they thought that God had his eyes shut, when for the time he dissembles. This therefore is the reason, as was fully explained yesterday, why the Prophet calls the sudden change morning Therefore the morning has arisen, afterwards, the rod has blossomed, pride has flourished It is not doubtful that he means Nebuchadnezzar by the rod, but interpreters vary on the context; for many refer the following verse to the king of Babylon: but others, in my judgment rightly, take it of the Israelites themselves. As to his saying the rod has blossomed, it refers to God’s forbearance. For when the Israelites had sinned a long while with impunity, they thought, as I said yesterday, that their peace with God would be perpetual. But here Ezekiel pronounces in opposition to this, that God had as it were a hidden root; as he who plants a tree waits for the time, till it rises to a just magnitude. Hence he compares Nebuchadnezzar to a rod which was growing. God could indeed without man’s assistance destroy the Israelites, and could also compel others to obey him: for all creatures are at hand to fulfill his commands; but here Ezekiel commends God’s forbearance, though he had planted the tree, from which the rod was to spring up with which he would smite the Israelites. So he reproves their sloth, because they did not reflect upon the time of their visitation, which God had determined in his secret counsel.

On the whole, in saying the rod has flourished, he refers to those steps which God takes in executing his judgments. For he does not act hastily after the manner of men, but just as a husbandman in sowing and planting. Hence God provides for his own use ministers of vengeance, and permits them to increase and to arrive at maturity. If therefore God does not hasten as we wish, we may know that he still has rods prepared, and if they are not yet grown to maturity, it is because the time which the Almighty has previously fixed is not yet arrived. Now it follows, that pride has budded I have just said that some referred this to the Babylonians, but I rather understand it of the Israelites. Hence God shows how the staff grew in Chaldea by which the Israelites were to be struck, and yet the root was among themselves. For here the noun “pride” is to be taken as usual in a bad sense: it does not denote simply haughtiness or arrogance, but that licentiousness which springs from a contempt of God. But this does not suit the Babylonians as far as God governed them with his hand, when he wished to take vengeance on the Israelites. But in this sense there is nothing forced, that the staff with which the Israelites were to be struck had increased, and yet it had no other origin than their sins, and hence that no other root need be sought for than this. Hence it flourished, but whence did it spring? from pride The seed therefore of this staff was the pride of the Israelites. But this pride is akin to impiety, and we know that they were blinded by their confidence when they despised God, and treated all his threats as vain. Hence the Prophet points out pride as the fountain of all evils. A clearer explanation follows —