Ezekiel 3:4-15, Hardened and Obstinate

Before there was Angel Studios’ TV series The Chosen, there was Haim Potok’s book The Chosen. Potok tells the story of a Hasidic Jewish family whose son has a photographic memory and who is being groomed for the rabbinate following his father. But the father never speaks to his son unless he is teaching Torah, something the son doesn’t understand. Later, after the son defers from becoming a rabbi, the father reveals to his son’s friend that the reason he didn’t speak to his son was because he wanted to keep his son from being arrogant because of his great mental abilities, causing him to suffer so as to develop compassion for others. Is this the right thing to do? God tells Ezekiel that He will make Ezekiel as hardened and obstinate as the Israelites are so Ezekiel can unflinchingly tell them the hard things Yahweh wants to tell them. Is God doing the same thing to Ezekiel that the rabbi did to his son?

4 He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them. 5 You are not being sent to a people of obscure speech and strange language, but to the people of Israel— 6 not to many peoples of obscure speech and strange language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely if I had sent you to them, they would have listened to you. 7 But the people of Israel are not willing to listen to you because they are not willing to listen to me, for all the Israelites are hardened and obstinate. 8 But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. 9 I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.” (Ezekiel 3:4-9, NIV)

We will see later in Ezekiel’s prophecies that Yahweh tells him not to mourn publicly for his deceased wife, an object lesson to Israel. But the fact that Ezekiel will mourn privately tells us that God has not made his heart hard. He has given Ezekiel a hardness of purpose to tell Israel her sin and its consequences. Israel’s heart is hard. If Ezekiel had told God’s word to foreigners, they would have repented, but not Israel. Yet God is sending Ezekiel to Israel, God’s people.

10 And he said to me, “Son of man, listen carefully and take to heart all the words I speak to you. 11 Go now to your people in exile and speak to them. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says,’ whether they listen or fail to listen.” (Ezekiel 3:10,11)

Ezekiel is sent to the exiles from Jerusalem living in Nippur, a region of Assyria conquered by Babylon, where now they are added to the community there and are still resistant to Yahweh’s message of further judgment on Israel. Ezekiel is addressed as “son of man,” a way of saying he is a mere human through whom God is speaking. This is how Jesus will describe himself some 600 years later, an allusion to both the prophet Ezekiel who must pronounce judgment on his own people, yet calling them to repentance, and to a future ruler described by Daniel in Daniel 7, to whom all Israel and all the world will yield obedience. “Son of man” is a convenient way to obscure to unbelieving Israelites Jesus’ true identity. 

12 Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me a loud rumbling sound as the glory of Yahweh rose from the place where it was standing. 13 It was the sound of the wings of the living creatures brushing against each other and the sound of the wheels beside them, a loud rumbling sound. 14 The Spirit then lifted me up and took me away, and I went in bitterness and in the anger of my spirit, with the strong hand of Yahweh on me. 15 I came to the exiles who lived at Tel Aviv near the Kebar River. And there, where they were living, I sat among them for seven days—deeply distressed. (Ezekiel 3:12-15).

The vision of Yahweh ends, with God transporting Ezekiel to Tel Aviv in Nippur and leaving Ezekiel in great distress. Tel Aviv means ‘mound of the flood,’ likely a description of the havoc left by the “flood” of Babylon’s army very similarly to what they did and will do again to Jerusalem. Ezekiel loves his people and his homeland, hence the deep distress. God is graciously “hardening” Ezekiel for the difficult task ahead.