The Spent Wrath of a Zealous God Text: Ezekiel 5:13-17
Introduction: A Therapeutic Age Confronts a Terrible God
We live in a soft age. Our generation has been swaddled in therapeutic language from the cradle, taught to prioritize feelings above facts, and encouraged to believe that the highest virtue is a non-judgmental affirmation of everything and everyone. The god of this age is a celestial therapist, a divine butler, whose job is to affirm our choices, soothe our anxieties, and never, under any circumstances, to get angry. He is a god made in our own squishy, sentimental image.
And then we come to a text like this one in Ezekiel. This is not a tame passage. This is not a God who is "nice." This is a God of holy, terrifying wrath. This is a God who speaks of His anger being spent, His fury being at rest, and of sending deadly arrows of famine, wild beasts, plague, and the sword. This is the kind of passage that makes modern evangelicals blush and stammer. They want to skip over it, to apologize for it, to explain it away as some unfortunate Old Testament business that Jesus came to clean up. But this is a profound and damnable error.
The God of Ezekiel 5 is the same God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The wrath described here is not the petty, peevish anger of a pagan deity. It is the settled, holy, righteous opposition of a covenant-keeping God to the high-handed treachery of His own people. To strip God of His wrath is to strip Him of His holiness. A god who is never angry at sin is a god who does not love righteousness. A god who will not judge evil is not a good god. He is a moral jellyfish, an indifferent spectator to cosmic treason. The god of modern sensibilities is a fiction, an idol carved out of our own desire to be unaccountable.
This passage is hard medicine, but it is necessary medicine. For in understanding the terrifying reality of God's covenant wrath, we come to understand three crucial things: the staggering evil of our sin, the glorious satisfaction of the cross, and the urgent necessity of repentance and faith. God is not speaking here to the Canaanites or the Babylonians; He is speaking to Jerusalem, to His own covenant people who had prostituted themselves to idols. This is a warning against trifling with a holy God. And it is a warning that echoes down to us today. We who are the people of God by faith in Christ must not think that we can sin with impunity. God is a consuming fire, and we must serve Him with reverence and awe.
The Text
‘Thus My anger will be spent, and I will cause My wrath against them to be at rest, and I will be appeased; then they will know that I, Yahweh, have spoken in My zeal when I have spent My wrath upon them. Moreover, I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations which are all around you, in the sight of all who pass by. So it will be a reproach, a reviling, a chastisement, and a desecration to the nations who are all around you when I execute judgments against you in anger, wrath, and wrathful reproofs. I, Yahweh, have spoken. When I send against them the deadly arrows of famine which were for the destruction of those whom I will send to destroy you, then I will also intensify the famine upon you and break the staff of bread. Moreover, I will send on you famine and wild beasts, and they will bereave you of children; plague and bloodshed also will pass through you, and I will bring the sword on you. I, Yahweh, have spoken.’
(Ezekiel 5:13-17 LSB)
The Divine Satisfaction (v. 13)
We begin with the purpose and end of God's judgment.
"‘Thus My anger will be spent, and I will cause My wrath against them to be at rest, and I will be appeased; then they will know that I, Yahweh, have spoken in My zeal when I have spent My wrath upon them." (Ezekiel 5:13)
This is a staggering verse. God’s wrath is not an endless, irrational rage. It has a goal. It has a telos. It is "spent." It comes to a point of rest. It is appeased. This is the language of satisfaction. God’s perfect justice must be satisfied. His people had broken His covenant, defiled His temple, and whored after other gods. This created a debt, a moral outrage in the fabric of the universe that must be addressed. God's holiness demands it. His wrath is the active, personal, and just response to this rebellion.
Notice the word "zeal." The Hebrew word here is also translated as "jealousy." God is a jealous God, which is not the petty, insecure jealousy of a fallen man. It is the righteous, protective zeal of a husband for his adulterous wife. Israel was married to Yahweh in covenant. Her idolatry was not just a mistake; it was adultery. It was cosmic treason. God’s zeal is His passionate, holy love for His own name and for His people's exclusive devotion. His wrath flows from His zeal. Because He loves His own glory so intensely, He must act when it is profaned.
And what is the ultimate goal of this terrible judgment? "...then they will know that I, Yahweh, have spoken." This is a refrain that echoes throughout the book of Ezekiel. The purpose of judgment is revelation. God acts in history, in wrath and in mercy, so that men will know who He is. He is not an abstract principle. He is Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God who is holy, just, and sovereign. The apostate Israelites had forgotten who their God was. They thought He was just another tribal deity they could manipulate. Through the horrors of the Babylonian exile, God was going to reintroduce Himself. He was going to strip away all their false securities so that they would know, in the rubble of their city and the grief of their exile, that Yahweh is Lord and that His word is true.
Public Shame and Divine Vindication (v. 14-15)
The judgment is not a private affair. It is a public spectacle designed to vindicate God's name among the nations.
"Moreover, I will make you a ruin and a reproach among the nations which are all around you, in the sight of all who pass by. So it will be a reproach, a reviling, a chastisement, and a desecration to the nations who are all around you when I execute judgments against you in anger, wrath, and wrathful reproofs. I, Yahweh, have spoken." (Ezekiel 5:14-15 LSB)
Israel was called to be a light to the nations, a city on a hill. They were meant to display the wisdom and righteousness of Yahweh to the pagan world. But through their sin, they had profaned God's name. The pagans looked at Israel's idolatry and concluded that Yahweh was either powerless or no different from their own pathetic gods. So now, God says, He will vindicate His name through their destruction. If they would not make His name glorious through their obedience, He would make it glorious through their judgment.
The judgment would make them a "reproach" and a "reviling." The very nations they had sinfully tried to imitate would now mock them in their downfall. This is a profound irony. In seeking to be like the nations, they became an object of the nations' contempt. This is always the end result of compromise. When the church cozies up to the world, it does not win the world's respect; it earns its scorn. The world knows a fraud when it sees one.
But this public shaming is also a "chastisement" and a warning. The nations would see the severity of God's judgment on His own people and would be forced to conclude something about the character of Israel's God. They would see that He is a God who does not tolerate sin, even among His favorites. This is the "fear of God" that is the beginning of wisdom. The judgment on Jerusalem was a sermon preached in fire and blood to the entire ancient world. And God signs His name to it twice: "I, Yahweh, have spoken." This is not a possibility. It is a divine decree. It is as certain as God Himself.
The Four Severe Judgments (v. 16-17)
God now details the instruments of His wrath, what are elsewhere called His "four severe judgments."
"When I send against them the deadly arrows of famine which were for the destruction of those whom I will send to destroy you, then I will also intensify the famine upon you and break the staff of bread. Moreover, I will send on you famine and wild beasts, and they will bereave you of children; plague and bloodshed also will pass through you, and I will bring the sword on you. I, Yahweh, have spoken.’" (Ezekiel 5:16-17 LSB)
These are the curses of the covenant, laid out centuries before in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. God is not being arbitrary. He is being faithful to His own warnings. He is keeping His word, the bad parts as well as the good. The "deadly arrows of famine" is a terrifying metaphor. Famine is not a random agricultural event; it is a weapon sent by God.
He says He will "break the staff of bread." Bread is the staff of life, the basic means of support. To break this staff is to remove the most fundamental provision, to create a society-wide weakness and desperation. This is a total judgment, affecting every household. It is not just scarcity; it is a calculated removal of the very thing that sustains life.
Then He lists the full quartet of devastation: famine, wild beasts, plague and bloodshed, and the sword. Famine weakens from within. The sword (the Babylonians) attacks from without. Plague and disease would run rampant in a besieged, starving city. And with the breakdown of society, wild beasts would encroach upon the land, bereaving them of their children. This is a picture of complete societal collapse, a total de-creation. It is the undoing of all the blessings of order and fruitfulness that God had promised for obedience. And for a third time in this short passage, He signs His name to the verdict: "I, Yahweh, have spoken." There is no appeal. The sentence is passed.
The Spent Wrath at Calvary
This is a terrifying passage. And if the story ended here, we would be left in utter despair. For we, like Israel, have been unfaithful. We have all prostituted our hearts to idols, whether they are made of wood and stone or of money, sex, and power. We have all profaned the name of God by our hypocrisy. We all deserve the full measure of His spent wrath. If God was this zealous for His holiness under the Old Covenant, do we imagine He has become less holy under the New?
But the story does not end here. This entire passage, in all its terror, points us to the cross of Jesus Christ. The language here is the language of propitiation, of satisfaction. God’s wrath must be "spent." His justice must be "appeased." And at the cross, it was. At Calvary, God the Father took all the holy, righteous, zealous wrath that was stored up against us for our cosmic treason, and He poured it out onto His own Son.
On the cross, Jesus was made a ruin and a reproach in the sight of all who passed by. He was mocked and reviled. He bore the ultimate public shame. On the cross, God sent the "deadly arrows" of His judgment, and they found their mark in the body of Christ. God broke the true "staff of bread," the Bread of Life, for our sakes. All four judgments converged on Him. The sword of Roman and Jewish hatred pierced Him. The plague of our sin was laid upon Him. He was bereft of His Father, crying out in the darkness. He endured the famine of God's favor.
The Father’s anger was spent. His wrath came to rest. His justice was fully appeased. Not because He overlooked our sin, but because He judged it fully and completely in the person of His Son. When Jesus cried out, "It is finished," He was declaring that the debt was paid in full. The wrath of God was exhausted.
Therefore, for those who are in Christ, there is no condemnation. The arrows have all been spent. The wrath is at rest. But for those who are outside of Christ, for those who reject His sacrifice and stand on their own record, the warnings of Ezekiel 5 remain in full force. If you will not have God's wrath spent on a substitute, it must be spent on you. And that is a judgment that will never end. The only sane response to this text is to flee from the wrath to come and take refuge in the crucified and risen Son, in whom the zealous God of Ezekiel is fully and finally satisfied.