Ezekielchapter 12
28 verses · BSBEzekiel book hub →
Speaks with:Ezekiel 12×6Ezekiel 6×4Ezekiel 24×3Ezekiel 17×3Jeremiah 39×3Ezekiel 37×2
Summary
Chapter summary
The prophet packs an exile's baggage and carries it out in the sight of the people, digging through the wall at evening with his face covered, the exact fate of Zedekiah, who will be brought to Babylon yet never see it, since his eyes are put out on the way. 'I will spread my net upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare.' Then Ezekiel eats his bread with quaking and drinks his water with trembling. Two proverbs of delay are answered: 'The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth' is replaced with 'the days are at hand, and the fulfilment of every vision.' No word of Jehovah shall be deferred any more.
Context
Prophecy · Ezekiel — Ezekiel overview
- A. 1–16 Digging through the wall with a captive's baggage
- B. 17–20 Eating bread with trembling, drinking water with dread
- C. 21–28 No more delayed visions — the word will be done
The outline
A.Digging through the wall with a captive's baggagevv. 1 to 16
Read vv. 1 to 16 →B.Eating bread with trembling, drinking water with dreadvv. 17 to 20
Read vv. 17 to 20 →C.No more delayed visions — the word will be donevv. 21 to 28
Read vv. 21 to 28 →
The world behind this chapter
Ezekiel 12The history
An exile's baggage is a specific and pitiful thing: what a person can carry on their own back for months. Bedding, a cooking pot, a water skin, a change of clothes. Ezekiel brings his out in broad daylight so that everyone can see him pack, then leaves at dusk, which is when a man leaves who does not want to be seen.
Digging through the wall is not clumsy tunnelling. Houses were built of sun-dried mud brick, sometimes on a low stone footing, and the walls could be broken through with hands and a tool — which is why the Law and the Gospels both speak of a thief digging through a house. Getting out through a hole in the wall rather than the door is the image of a man escaping his own city.
The prince who covers his face and does not see the land came true in awful detail five years later. When the Babylonians breached Jerusalem in 586 BC, Zedekiah slipped out at night through a gate between two walls, was overtaken on the plains of Jericho, and taken to Nebuchadnezzar at Riblah in Syria. There his sons were killed in front of him, and then his eyes were put out. He was carried to Babylon in chains and died there — a country he was taken to and never saw.
The chapter also quotes two street sayings the exiles were repeating: the days grow long and every vision comes to nothing, and the vision he sees is for many years from now. Delay had turned prophecy into background noise.
What it meant to them
The audience were connoisseurs of exile. They had made this exact walk with these exact bundles. Watching their prophet do it again told them the first deportation had not been the end of it.
Against the proverbs about postponement, God puts a flat sentence: none of my words will be delayed any longer. For hearers who had learned to treat prophecy as safely distant, the message was that the distance had run out.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- The Babylonian Chronicle (ABC 5), recording Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns against Judah
- C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 12. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.