Charles Ellicott Commentary Ezekiel 9

He cried also ... with a loud voice. —The pronoun refers to the same Being as throughout the previous chapter. His nature is sufficiently shown by the prophet’s address to Him in Ezekiel 9:8: Ah, Lord God! The “loud voice” was to give emphasis to what is said; it is the natural expression of the fierceness of the Divine indignation and wrath.

Those who have charge over the city. —Not earthly officers, but those to whom God has especially entrusted the execution of His will concerning Jerusalem. The word is, no doubt, used often enough of human officers, but such a meaning is necessarily excluded here by the whole circumstances of the vision.

Nor does the phrase “every man” at all indicate that they were human beings, since the same expression is constantly used for angels (Joshua 5:13; Judges 13:11; Daniel 8:16, etc.). Indeed, the representation here is plainly that of angelic executioners of God’s wrath.

They appear only in the light of administrators of vengeance, the description of them being that each had his destroying weapon in his hand. This is repeated in the following verse.

One man among them was clothed with linen. He was among them, but not of them. There were six with weapons, and this one without a weapon formed the seventh, thus making up the mystical number so often used in Scripture.

He was clothed in linen, the ordinary priestly garment and the special garment of the high priest at the ceremonies on the great Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:4). Yet it was also used by others and on other occasions, simply as a garment of purity and distinction , so there is no need here to suppose that a priestly character was attached to this one.

He carried in his girdle the inkhorn, i.e., the little case containing pens, knife, and ink, commonly worn by the Oriental scribe. There is no occasion to understand this person either as a representation of the Babylonian god Nebo, “the scribe of heaven,” or, as many commentators do, of our Lord.

There is nothing mentioned which can give him any special identification. He is simply a necessity of the vision, an angelic messenger, to mark out those whose faithfulness to God amid the surrounding evil exempts them from the common doom .

This group is seen coming from the way of the higher gate. The courts of the Temple were built in stages, the innermost being the highest.

This, then, was the gate of the inner court and was on the north, both as the place where the prophet had been shown the idolatries and as the direction from which the Chaldean destruction was poured out upon the nation. They took their station beside the brazen altar, as the central point of both the true worship of Israel and its present profanation.

The glory ... to the threshold. — In Ezekiel 8:4 the prophet had seen the same vision as he has described in Ezekiel 1, standing at the entrance of the court of the priests, and there it still remained. The word cherub is here used collectively. Now that special glory above the cherubim, which represented the Divine Being Himself, was gone from its place to the threshold of the house, but returned again in Ezekiel 10:1. At the same time, there is also suggested the idea that the ordinary presence of God between the cherubim in the Holy of Holies within the Temple has left its place and come out to the door of the house.

The two ideas are indeed distinct, and yet by no means incapable of being blended in the imagery of a vision. The significance of the former is that the command for judgment proceeds from the very Temple itself to which the Pharisaic Jews looked as the pledge of their safety; while the other would mean that the Lord had already begun to forsake His Temple. Both thoughts are true, and both are emphasized in the course of the vision.

Set a mark upon the foreheads. —The word for mark is literally a Tau, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This letter, in many ancient alphabets, and especially in the one used by the Hebrews until that time and long retained on their coins, was in the form of a cross—X or +. Much stress was laid on this use of the sign of the cross as the mark for divine mercy by older Christian writers, such as Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, and Jerome. This marking was done, it is true, in a vision, but the symbolism is taken from such passages as Genesis 4:15; Exodus 12:7; Exodus 12:13; Exodus 28:36; and it is used several times in the Apocalypse (Ezekiel 7:3; Ezekiel 9:4; Ezekiel 14:1).

Such marks may be necessary for the guidance of the angelic executors of God’s commands, and in any case, the symbolism is of value to the human mind. It is doubtless with reference to such scriptural instances of marking that the Church has provided for the signing of the baptized with the sign of the cross. It should be noted here that the distinction of the marking refers wholly and only to character. No regard is paid to birth or position; they, and only they, are marked who mourned for the prevailing sinfulness and kept themselves apart from it.

Go ye after him.— No interval is allowed. Here, as in the corresponding visions in Revelation referred to above, judgment waits only until those whom mercy will spare have been protected (Compare to the deliverance of Lot, Genesis 19:22–25).

The destruction was to be utter and complete, and was to begin at the sanctuary, where the gross sin of the people had culminated.

This is one of those many important passages in Scripture (Luke 23:30; Revelation 6:16, and others) in which God reveals Himself as one who will ultimately take vengeance without pity upon those who have rejected and insulted His mercy and long-suffering kindness. The revelation of future wrath is no less clear and distinct than that of love to those who trust in Him.