Daily Devotions
Ezekiel
"I will execute judgments among you"
Text: Ezekiel 5:10
SEVERE JUDGMENTS FOREWARNED
The LORD had to use very strong language to help Jerusalem to understand the dire circumstances they were in. These were words that were first spoken by Moses. They were brought back into the perspective of the disasters that would befall Jerusalem shortly.
“Therefore fathers shall eat their sons in your midst,
and sons shall eat their fathers;
and I will execute judgments among you,
and all of you who remain I will scatter to all the winds.”
Ezekiel 5:10
1. Cannibalism
a) Fathers would eat their own sons.
b) Similarly, sons would eat their own fathers.
2. Moses word of warning.
“They shall besiege you at all your gates
until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust,
come down throughout all your land;
and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land
which the LORD your God has given you.
You shall eat the fruit of your own body,
the flesh of your sons and your daughters
whom the LORD your God has given you,
in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you.”
Deuteronomy 28:52-53
a) A siege from a powerful enemy was forewarned.
b) The people will be in desperate straits.
c) They will eat “the fruit of their own body”
i) Their sons would be eaten.
ii) Their daughters too.
d) The people would become no better than animals in a prolonged siege.
3. Executing judgments.
a) These judgments were not elaborated upon.
b) But the LORD declared that He would punish the evildoers.
c) Because of corruption, the rich and powerful managed to escape the arm of the law.
d) But God would make sure that this corruption would cease.
e) The guilty would be penalised for their wrong-doing.
4. All those who survived the war.
a) They may survive.
b) But they would become prisoners of war.
c) They would be scattered throughout the Babylonian empire.
d) Ezekiel was brought to Babylon to live out his life in exile.