Ezekiel 21 explained: The Sword of Babylon Is Coming

The sword against Jerusalem (vv. 1-5)

The forest fire picture at the end of the previous chapter is now explained: it is a sword, meaning Babylon's army, sent by the LORD against Jerusalem, its temple and the whole land. It will strike the righteous and the wicked alike, a blunt picture of how war catches everyone, even though Ezekiel elsewhere insists each person answers for their own wrongs.

The prophet groans (vv. 6-7)

Ezekiel must groan openly, doubled over like someone in deep pain, so that people ask him why. His answer is the coming news of the city's fall, which will leave everyone paralyzed with terror.

The song of the sword (vv. 8-17)

A grim poem pictures the sword being sharpened and polished until it flashes like lightning, then slashing right and left at every gate, against ordinary people and leaders alike. Some lines are very hard to translate, especially those about the scepter or rod of 'my son' (vv. 10, 13), and scholars are unsure of them, but they probably mean Judah's royal line will offer no protection.

Babylon's king at the crossroads (vv. 18-23)

Ezekiel maps a fork in the road where Babylon's king decides whether to attack Rabbah, capital of Ammon, or Jerusalem, using common ways of seeking omens: shaking marked arrows, consulting household idols and reading a sacrificed animal's liver. The lot falls on Jerusalem, and its people's trust in their treaty with him is empty, since they had already broken their sworn oath to Babylon.

The king loses his crown (vv. 24-27)

The prince of Israel here is Zedekiah, Jerusalem's last king, who will lose his turban and crown as the high are brought low and the low lifted up. The crown is to stay in ruins until the one with the right to it comes, which Christians have often read as pointing to Jesus, while others take it to mean Babylon's king, handed the task of judgment.

The sword turns on Ammon (vv. 28-32)

Ammon, which mocked Judah's downfall, gets its own sword poem, and its fortune tellers' comforting messages prove false. It will be judged in its own homeland by brutal invaders and, the text says, remembered no more.

Key verse: Ezekiel 21:3

Something to think about

When disaster falls on decent and guilty people alike, how do you make sense of it, if you can at all?