When Mercy Pleads and Justice Answers Text: Ezekiel 9:8-10
Introduction: The Necessary Severity of God
We live in an age that has manufactured a god in its own image, a god who is little more than a celestial therapist, a divine affirmation machine. Our generation wants a god who is always nice, never severe; always affirming, never judging. This god of modern imagination is a sentimental deity who would never, ever do what we see Yahweh doing here in the ninth chapter of Ezekiel. And because modern evangelicals are frequently embarrassed by the God of the Old Testament, they either ignore such passages or they try to explain them away with a series of nervous coughs and theological shuffling.
But the God of the prophet Ezekiel is the one true God, and He does not change. What we are witnessing in this chapter is not some primitive tribal deity having a bad day. We are witnessing the inevitable collision between absolute holiness and high-handed, unrepentant sin. In the previous chapter, Ezekiel was given a tour of the Temple, God's own house, and what he saw was a chamber of horrors. He saw the leaders of Israel, the elders, worshipping creepy-crawly things in the dark, women weeping for a pagan god named Tammuz, and men with their backs to the altar of God, worshipping the sun. This was not mere syncretism; this was a deliberate, contemptuous rebellion, happening in the very place God had set His name.
And so, in our chapter, the executioners are summoned. Six angelic beings with battle-axes are commanded to go through the city and slaughter without pity, beginning at the sanctuary of God. Judgment begins at the house of God. But first, a man in linen with a writer's inkhorn is sent to put a mark on the foreheads of all who sigh and groan over the abominations being done. Those with the mark are to be spared. Everyone else, old men, young men, virgins, little children, and women, are to be cut down. This is what Ezekiel is witnessing when we come to our text. It is a vision of unmitigated, holy wrath. And the prophet, the man of God, is undone by it.
His reaction is understandable. Our reaction should be the same. We should tremble. But we must not stop there. We must listen to the divine reply. For in this terrible exchange between the pleading prophet and the just God, we learn the nature of sin, the necessity of judgment, and the only ground upon which any mercy can possibly be found.
The Text
Now it happened as they were striking the people and I alone remained, that I fell on my face and cried out and said, “Alas, Lord Yahweh! Are You destroying the whole remnant of Israel by pouring out Your wrath on Jerusalem?”
Then He said to me, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is very, very great, and the land is filled with bloodshed, and the city is full of perversion; for they say, ‘Yahweh has forsaken the land, and Yahweh does not see!’
But as for Me, My eye will have no pity, nor will I spare, but I will put their way upon their heads.”
(Ezekiel 9:8-10 LSB)
The Prophet's Anguish (v. 8)
We begin with Ezekiel's desperate intercession.
"Now it happened as they were striking the people and I alone remained, that I fell on my face and cried out and said, “Alas, Lord Yahweh! Are You destroying the whole remnant of Israel by pouring out Your wrath on Jerusalem?”" (Ezekiel 9:8)
Ezekiel's response is entirely appropriate. He sees the judgment of God unleashed, and it is terrifying. He doesn't stand aloof, stroking his beard and saying, "Well, they had it coming." No, he falls on his face. This is the posture of humility, of desperation, of a man who knows he is in the presence of overwhelming power and holiness. He cries out. This is not a polite inquiry; it is a raw, agonized plea from the depths of his soul.
His question is a covenantal one. He is not questioning God's right to judge. He is questioning the extent of it. "Are you destroying the whole remnant of Israel?" The ten northern tribes were already gone, scattered by the Assyrians. Judah and Jerusalem were all that was left of the visible covenant people. For Ezekiel, it looked like God was about to extinguish the line of promise altogether. If everyone is destroyed, what happens to the promises made to Abraham? What happens to the promise of a Messiah? This is the same spirit we see in Moses after the golden calf incident, when he pleads with God not to destroy the people, for the sake of His own name and promises (Exodus 32). Ezekiel is a faithful shepherd of Israel, and even in the face of their grotesque sin, his heart breaks for them.
This is a righteous and compassionate plea. It is right to be horrified by the outworking of God's wrath. A man who can watch judgment fall without flinching is a man whose heart has grown cold. Ezekiel's horror is a testament to his own godliness. And yet, his perspective, born of human compassion, is about to be corrected by the divine perspective, born of absolute holiness.
The Divine Indictment (v. 9)
God's answer is not an apology. It is an indictment. He provides the legal basis for the severity of the sentence.
"Then He said to me, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is very, very great, and the land is filled with bloodshed, and the city is full of perversion; for they say, ‘Yahweh has forsaken the land, and Yahweh does not see!’" (Ezekiel 9:9 LSB)
God begins by stating the magnitude of the crime. The iniquity is "very, very great." This is not a collection of minor infractions. This is a mountain of high treason against the heavenly King. God is a just judge; He does not hand down capital punishment for misdemeanors. The punishment fits the crime, and the crime here is cosmic in its scope.
He then specifies the nature of the crime. First, "the land is filled with bloodshed." This refers to both judicial murder, where the innocent were condemned, and outright violence. They had violated the sixth commandment on an industrial scale. Second, "the city is full of perversion." The word here means a distortion of justice. The courts were corrupt, the rulers were crooked, and the entire social fabric had been warped by their sin. They had polluted the very land God had given them.
But then God goes to the root of the problem. Why did they do all this? What was the foundational sin that gave rise to the bloodshed and perversion? It was their theology. "For they say, ‘Yahweh has forsaken the land, and Yahweh does not see!’" This is the creed of the practical atheist. They had convinced themselves that God was either impotent or indifferent. He had either abandoned them, or He was blind to their behavior. This is the primordial lie of the serpent in the garden: "You will not surely die." God doesn't see. God doesn't care. God won't act.
This is the central lie of our own secular age. People live as though God is not there, as though there is no eye that sees, no record being kept, and no day of accounting. When a culture believes that God is blind, its men will inevitably become brutal and its courts will become corrupt. Bad theology always, always leads to a polluted land. God is telling Ezekiel that this judgment is not just a punishment; it is a refutation. It is the definitive answer to their blasphemous claim. He is proving, in terrifying fashion, that He has not forsaken the land and that He most certainly does see.
The Unflinching Verdict (v. 10)
Having stated the crime, God now pronounces the sentence, and it is chilling in its resolve.
"But as for Me, My eye will have no pity, nor will I spare, but I will put their way upon their heads.”" (Ezekiel 9:10 LSB)
This is one of the hardest statements in Scripture for our sentimental age to swallow. "My eye will have no pity, nor will I spare." God is setting aside His attribute of mercy in order to fully execute His attribute of justice. There comes a point, after long patience, after many warnings, after generations of rebellion, when the time for mercy is over and the time for judgment has fully come. God's patience is not infinite. To demand that God be endlessly merciful to the unrepentant is to demand that He cease to be just. A judge who always pardons every criminal, no matter how heinous the crime, is not a good judge; he is a corrupt one.
The final phrase explains the principle of the judgment: "I will put their way upon their heads." This is the principle of recompense. It is perfect, symmetrical justice. God is simply giving them the full and logical consequence of their own choices. He is letting their sin come home to roost. They filled the land with bloodshed, and now their own blood will be shed. They perverted justice, and now they will face a justice that cannot be perverted. They acted as though God did not see, and now they will be judged by the one from whom nothing is hidden.
This is not God being capricious or cruel. This is God being righteous. He is honoring the moral structure of the universe that He Himself created. Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. They sowed the wind of idolatry and violence, and they are now reaping the whirlwind of divine judgment.
The Cross as God's Answer
So where does this leave us? We see the prophet's righteous plea for mercy, and we see God's righteous execution of justice. How can these two be reconciled? Is there no hope? If this is how God deals with His covenant people, what hope is there for us Gentiles, who are sinners from head to toe?
The answer to Ezekiel's plea is not found in Ezekiel 9. The answer is found at a place called Golgotha. All of the principles we see at work here, the horror of sin, the necessity of judgment, the unflinching nature of God's justice, all of it converges on the cross of Jesus Christ.
At the cross, God poured out His wrath on sin. At the cross, God's eye had no pity, nor did He spare. But He did not spare His own Son. All the bloodshed, all the perversion, all the blasphemous theology of all His people for all time, was gathered up and put upon the head of Jesus Christ. He received the recompense. He had their way put upon His head. God answered the charge that He "does not see" by looking straight at His Son, who became sin for us, and crushing Him.
The plea of Ezekiel, "Will you destroy the whole remnant?" is answered with a resounding "No." A remnant will be saved. But they are not saved because God simply waves away their sin. They are saved because their sin has been fully and righteously punished in the person of their substitute. The mark of the man with the inkhorn in Ezekiel is a foreshadowing of the seal of the Holy Spirit, which is placed on all who are in Christ.
Therefore, we must not read this passage and conclude that God is a monster. We must read it and conclude that our sin is monstrous. We must read it and understand that if God did not spare His own covenant nation from judgment, He will certainly not spare a rebellious world. And we must read it and flee to the only place of safety, which is the cross of Christ. For there, and only there, divine mercy and divine justice meet and kiss. There, God can be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. He sees our sin, yes, but for those who are in Christ, He sees it laid on another. He sees the mark.