Ezekiel 5 explained: A Shaved Head and Jerusalem's Fate

Shaving and weighing the hair (vv. 1-2)

Ezekiel, a priest living in exile in Babylon, shaves his head and beard with a sword, an act linked to mourning and disgrace that priests were normally forbidden. He weighs the hair into thirds to show what will happen to Jerusalem's people when Babylon's siege ends: some burned in the city, some cut down around it, some blown away into exile.

A few hairs saved (vv. 3-4)

A few hairs tucked into the fold of his robe likely stand for a small group of survivors. Yet even some of these are thrown into the fire, which many link to the violence that followed the city's fall, though the exact reference is uncertain.

Jerusalem at the center (vv. 5-7)

God says the sign is about Jerusalem, placed at the center of the nations and meant to show them God's ways. Instead it rebelled more than its neighbors, possibly meaning they at least stayed loyal to their own gods while Jerusalem abandoned its own.

God against the city (vv. 8-10)

God declares that he himself is against Jerusalem, and the siege famine will be so extreme that parents and children will eat one another. This echoes old warnings in Israel's law (Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28), and the book of Lamentations describes such horrors happening during the siege.

The temple defiled (vv. 11-12)

The heaviest charge is that idols and pagan rites were brought into God's temple, so God swears by his own life to judge without pity. The thirds of hair are now spelled out: plague and famine inside the walls, the sword outside, and scattering into exile with danger following.

A warning to the nations (vv. 13-17)

God's anger will run its full course and then come to rest, and the ruined city will become a byword and a warning to everyone watching. Famine pictured as arrows, wild animals roaming the emptied land, plague and war pile up, and the passage stresses three times that the LORD has spoken (vv. 13, 15, 17).

Key verse: Ezekiel 5:5

Where Christians differ

Most Christians read this as about Babylon's destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, while some also see it pointing to later destructions of the city or to events at the end of the age.

Something to think about

Is it fairer to judge someone more harshly for failing a standard they were raised with than for failing one they never knew?