John Calvin Commentary Ezekiel 5:16

"when I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, that are for destruction, which I will send to destroy you: and I will increase the famine upon you, and will break your staff of bread;" — Ezekiel 5:16 (ASV)

He illustrates the sentiment which we have seen, but not in the manner of rhetoricians, who aim for splendor and ornate speech. Instead, his only purpose was to penetrate the minds of the people, as if they were stones or iron. This, then, is the reason why he uses such variety here and adorns his teaching with various figures of speech.

For he now compares God to an archer, who aims His arrows at them. But he speaks metaphorically about the arrows of God, for he calls them arrows of famine and evil—that is, deadly and death-bringing. Since, then, I will hurl evil arrows against them, they will cause their destruction, He says; that is, they will not escape death, because they will be struck with mortal wounds.

A person might be struck by the blow of an arrow and yet recover; but God pronounces the arrows of which He speaks deadly, so that whoever is struck by them has no hope of safety remaining. Furthermore, by arrows of famine we can understand such barrenness of soil when flies, locusts, and other scourges of God cause destruction—at one time scorching heat, at another mildew dries up the grain field; now rains make the wheat rot, now heat burns it up. Just as these are many sources of corruption and pestilence for the crops, so too are the arrows of God that pierce people’s hearts, and that with a deadly wound.

If such a subtle explanation does not satisfy someone, they are free to interpret it differently. Yet if anyone pays proper attention, they will confess that God shoots His own arrows whenever He causes famine or deprives people of sustenance. He adds, which will become corruption. He confirms what we said was indicated by the epithet הרעים, hergnim. He says, therefore, that these arrows would be destructive, because they would be for perdition and destruction. Another confirmation follows: which I will send, He says, against them to destroy them. Here God distinctly affirms that He would shoot forth those arrows, and He repeats again what we saw before, and that in the same verse.

But we have explained to you why the Prophet insists, with many words, on a matter that is by no means obscure. He adds, and I will multiply famine against them. Here God signifies that He is armed with different weapons, so that if people perceive themselves to have fallen, they may realize that God has other hidden weapons, which He has not yet brought into use.

By the word multiply, the Prophet expresses what we have already seen regarding arrows, for he uses the plural. However, the ungodly restrict God’s power as much as they can. “If God wills,” they say, “He can indeed ruin the grain fields with continual rain; He can also burn them up with too much heat. If we have escaped the frost and the hail, the storm, the rain, and the drought, it will have already gone well with us.” Thus the ungodly harden themselves in their security.

And why? Because they limit God’s arrows to a fixed and certain number. This is the reason why He says, I will multiply famine upon them; that is, when they think their yearly produce is safe because they have escaped drought, rain, mildew, storm, and hail, “I will find,” He says, “other ways unknown to them by which I will bring famine upon them.”

And He expresses one way of doing so: “I will break the staff of bread,” about which figure of speech we have spoken previously. I do not agree with the opinion of those who say that the staff of bread is broken when God sends a shortage of grain. For even in the greatest abundance, the staff of bread is broken, as we saw in Moses, when God takes away the nourishing quality of bread and makes it vanish (Deuteronomy 8:3), because man lives not by bread alone, but by that secret inspiration which God has implanted in the bread. Therefore, we may eat more than four times the usual quantity and yet not be satisfied, as this figure of speech, which they take from Moses, often occurs with the Prophets. “You shall eat, and not be satisfied,” they say (Leviticus 26:26; Isaiah 9:20; Ezekiel 7; Hosea 4:10; Micah 6:14). So also here the Prophet repeats what we saw in the last chapter—that God breaks the staff of bread, that is, takes away its nourishing quality, so that whoever feeds upon it does not feel that they have recovered new strength.