The Barber of Judgment Text: Ezekiel 5:1-4
Introduction: When God Gets Graphic
We live in a soft age. We prefer a soft Jesus, a soft gospel, and a soft God. Our sensibilities are delicate, and we like our religion to be the same. We want a God who is endlessly affirming, who would never dream of offending us, and whose prophets would certainly never do anything... weird. We want our preachers to be respectable, our worship to be tasteful, and our God to be tame.
But the God of the Bible is not tame. He is a consuming fire. And when His covenant people decide to play the harlot with every passing pagan deity, He does not send them a politely worded letter expressing His disappointment. He sends prophets like Ezekiel. And He commands them to do things that are shocking, visceral, and deeply offensive to the respectable rebels of the day. He tells Ezekiel to lay on his side for over a year, to bake his bread over dung, and here, in our text, to take up a barber’s razor and shave his head and beard, turning his own body into a stage for the coming judgment of God.
This is not street theater for the sake of shock value. This is a covenant lawsuit, and God is using his prophet as Exhibit A. Ezekiel is in exile in Babylon, part of the first wave of deportees. But the people back in Jerusalem are still clinging to their delusions. They believe the Temple of the Lord guarantees their safety. They think they can continue in their idolatry, their child sacrifice, and their gross immorality, and that God will simply look the other way because they are His chosen people. They have forgotten that covenant privilege brings covenant responsibility, and that judgment begins at the house of God.
So God gives them a sign they cannot ignore. It is a graphic, physical sermon. It is a prophecy that you don't just hear; you see it, you feel it in your gut. God is about to give His darling city, Jerusalem, a haircut. And it will be a severe one. This passage is a warning that God takes His holiness and His covenant seriously. And when His people treat His covenant with contempt, His judgment will be meticulous, severe, and public.
The Text
"Now as for you, son of man, take a sharp sword; take and use it as a barber’s razor on your head and beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair. One-third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city when the days of the siege are fulfilled. Then you shall take one-third and strike it with the sword all around the city, and one-third you shall scatter to the wind; and I will unsheathe a sword behind them. You shall also take a few in number from them and bind them in the edges of your robes. Take again some of them and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire; from it a fire will spread to all the house of Israel."
(Ezekiel 5:1-4 LSB)
The Humiliating Sign (v. 1)
We begin with the Lord's bizarre and startling command to his prophet.
"Now as for you, son of man, take a sharp sword; take and use it as a barber’s razor on your head and beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair." (Ezekiel 5:1)
God calls Ezekiel "son of man," a title used over ninety times in this book. It emphasizes his humanity, his creatureliness, in the face of the overwhelming glory of God. But it also looks forward to the ultimate Son of Man, Jesus Christ, who would be the final prophet before the ultimate judgment on Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
The command is to take a sharp sword and use it as a razor. This is already jarring. A sword is an instrument of war and death, not grooming. God is deliberately blending the categories of the mundane and the violent to make a point: the coming judgment will be an act of personal, intimate, and violent shearing by the hand of God. For a priest like Ezekiel, his hair was a sign of his consecration to God. For a Hebrew man, his beard was a sign of his masculine dignity and honor. To have it shaved was a mark of profound shame, humiliation, and mourning (cf. 2 Sam. 10:4-5). God is commanding His prophet to embody the coming shame of the nation.
Jerusalem thought she was beautiful, adorned with God's blessings. But she had become a filthy prostitute. God was now going to strip her of her glory, shave her head, and expose her to public shame. This is not arbitrary cruelty. This is the righteous judgment of a holy God against covenant unfaithfulness. The glory of Israel, her special status before God, is about to be publicly shaved off.
And notice the precision. He is to take scales and divide the hair. God’s judgment is not a chaotic, blind rage. It is measured. It is meticulous. Every hair is accounted for. God is not sloppy. He is a God of order, even in his wrath. He weighs the hair, which means He weighs the people. He knows exactly who is who and what is what. No one will escape His notice.
The Tripartite Judgment (v. 2)
Verse 2 explains what is to be done with the meticulously divided hair, representing the people of Jerusalem.
"One-third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city when the days of the siege are fulfilled. Then you shall take one-third and strike it with the sword all around the city, and one-third you shall scatter to the wind; and I will unsheathe a sword behind them." (Ezekiel 5:2 LSB)
The judgment is threefold, a picture of total and comprehensive destruction. The first third is to be burned with fire in the center of the city. This points to the horrors that will happen inside Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege. This is death by pestilence, famine, and the fires that will eventually consume the city. The people will be trapped, and their own city will become their crematorium. This is the fate of those who remain inside the walls, trusting in their fortifications instead of their God.
The second third is to be struck with the sword "all around the city." This represents those who try to flee the siege. They will not escape. The Babylonian army will cut them down outside the walls. There is no escape by running from God's judgment. Whether you stay in the city or try to flee, the sentence will be executed. The sword of the Babylonians is the sword of the Lord.
The final third is to be scattered to the wind. This is exile. This is the portion of the people who will be carried off to Babylon and other nations, scattered like dust. But notice, their troubles are not over. God says, "I will unsheathe a sword behind them." Even in exile, the judgment of God will pursue them. There is no peace for the wicked, not in Jerusalem, not in the fields around it, and not in a foreign land. God's judgment is relentless because their idolatry was relentless.
The Remnant of a Remnant (v. 3-4)
But in the midst of this terrifying and total judgment, God always preserves a remnant. Verses 3 and 4 introduce this crucial theme.
"You shall also take a few in number from them and bind them in the edges of your robes. Take again some of them and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire; from it a fire will spread to all the house of Israel." (Ezekiel 5:3-4 LSB)
From all that shaved hair, Ezekiel is to take just "a few in number" and bind them in the hem of his garment. This is a picture of the remnant. It is a very small number, a few hairs plucked from the pile. God, in His sovereign grace, will preserve a small group through the judgment. He binds them to Himself, represented by the prophet's robe. They are precious to Him, kept safe through the fire and the sword and the scattering. This is the promise that God will not utterly destroy His people. A seed will remain, through whom He will fulfill His ultimate promises.
But the text immediately gives us a warning within a warning. Even the remnant is not entirely safe. From that small, protected bundle, Ezekiel is to take some of them and throw them back into the fire. This is a terrifying thought. Even among the chosen remnant, there will be a further purging. There will be those who go into exile but do not have a true heart for God, and the fire of trial and judgment will consume them as well. The process of purification is severe.
And from this final act of judgment, a fire will "spread to all the house of Israel." This is a summary statement. The judgment that begins with the remnant in the fire will be a lesson and a warning to all the scattered people of Israel. The holiness of God and the severity of His discipline will be demonstrated for all to see. No one can say they were not warned. The sign is complete, and the message is clear: rebellion against a holy God leads to utter ruin.
The Gospel According to the Razor
It is easy for us to read a passage like this and thank God that we are not like first-century Jerusalem. We look at their idolatry and rebellion and feel comfortably superior. But we must not miss the point. This is not just a historical record of what God did to them. This is a permanent revelation of who God is.
He is a God who demands total loyalty from His covenant people. And when the visible church becomes apostate, when she makes alliances with the world, when she adopts pagan ideologies, when she loves money and power and relevance more than Christ, she should not expect a pass. Judgment still begins at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). The principle Ezekiel embodies is a permanent one. God will not tolerate a faithless bride forever.
But the ultimate fulfillment of this prophetic sign is found in the one Ezekiel prefigured, the true Son of Man. Jesus Christ came to a Jerusalem that was just as corrupt and apostate as Ezekiel's Jerusalem. He pronounced woes upon it. He prophesied its total destruction, a judgment that came in A.D. 70 when the Roman armies, God's razor, came and leveled the city. That event was a coming of the Son of Man in judgment.
But there is a greater story here. On the cross, Jesus Christ embodied the judgment of Ezekiel 5 for us. He was the one who was shorn of His glory. He was stripped, shamed, and humiliated. He endured the fire of God's wrath for our sin. He was struck by the sword of divine justice. He was scattered, in a sense, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He took the full force of the tripartite judgment upon Himself.
And why? So that we could become the remnant. By faith in Him, we are the few hairs tucked safely into the hem of His robe. We are bound up in His righteousness, protected from the fire and the sword. He was judged so that we could be saved. He was shamed so that we could be glorified. He was cut off so that we could be gathered in.
Therefore, do not trifle with the grace of God. This passage should strike a holy fear into our hearts. It should cause us to examine ourselves, to repent of our cultural idolatries and our comfortable compromises. And it should drive us to cling to Christ, the one who absorbed the full, sharp edge of God's judgment so that we, the true Israel of God, might be saved to the uttermost.