Ezekiel 9 explained: Marked for Mercy in Jerusalem

Six executioners and a scribe (vv. 1-2)

Six armed figures come from the north gate, where Ezekiel had just seen an idol in chapter 8 and the direction Babylon's army would come from. With them is a man in linen, the fabric priests wore, carrying a scribe's writing case, and they wait by the bronze altar where sacrifices were offered.

God's presence moves out (vv. 3-4)

The glory of God, the shining sign of his presence above the cherubim (winged figures in the temple's inner room), moves to the doorway, a first step in God leaving the temple. The scribe is told to mark the foreheads of everyone who grieves over the city's wrongs, and while the Hebrew word for 'mark' is also the name of a letter once written like an X, scholars disagree whether that letter is meant.

The killing begins (vv. 5-7)

The others are ordered to kill everyone without pity, old and young, women and children, except those with the mark, starting at the temple with the elders standing there. The bodies make the temple ritually unclean, a brutal picture of what Babylon's conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC would soon bring.

Ezekiel protests (v. 8)

Left alone among the dead, Ezekiel throws himself facedown and cries out. He asks whether God will wipe out every last survivor of Israel.

God's answer (vv. 9-11)

God says the land is full of bloodshed and injustice, and because the people claim the LORD has left and cannot see, he will now repay what they have done. He does not directly answer Ezekiel's question, though the scribe's report that the marking is finished suggests some were spared.

Key verse: Ezekiel 9:4

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on how to understand a vision in which God orders the killing of children, some reading it as a true picture of divine judgment on great evil and others as the prophet's way of making sense of Babylon's real destruction of the city.

Something to think about

Does grieving over wrongs you have no power to fix count for anything, and why or why not?