And thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear; for they are rebellious.
In Ezekiel 2 God sends a prophet to people He Himself calls rebellious. He gives no promise that a single word will land. The verse settles the one thing the prophet controls: he must speak, and the words he speaks must be God's.
The prophet does not compose the message. He carries it. Commentators read this verse as the Lord's own testimony that the prophet's words came from Him.
With Jeremiah and Ezekiel we have the Lord's own testimony that their predictions were inspired. To Jeremiah God said, "Behold, I have put My words in your mouth" (Jer. 1:9), so he would speak God's words. To Ezekiel the Lord declared, "And you shall speak My words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house" (Ezek. 2:7).
God does not hide the outcome from His servant. He announces their response in advance. He puts the prophet's encouragement somewhere other than in visible results.
Now we have the charge given to the prophet. As we see at once, he is to speak to a people who will not hear. We can only hope that here and there some ears may be open to receive it. There is no encouraging hope about the success of the message. Yet whether they listened or refused to listen, they would know that a prophet had been among them. All the more, if he is not to have the encouragement of visible success, he is to find it in knowing that the Lord is with him — and Israel, in rejecting His messenger, would be rejecting Him.
Suppose the hearers' reaction decided the worth of the message. Then a refusal would cancel it. Darby uses this verse to show the opposite. God's word carries its own weight, and in the end it judges the one who refuses it.
The word itself establishes this. "And you shall speak My words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house," Ezek. 2:7... "He who believes has the witness in himself": this is the inward power of the testimony. "He who does not believe has made God a liar": here is the guilt of the one who does not believe. So the authority of testimony from God does not depend on the judgment man may pass on it. The testimony will itself judge man.
He presses further. Refusal does not make the word powerless.
The word of God cannot be useful if it is not received, but it still has all authority, because it is the word of God... unbelief does not destroy the authority of the word, for the rebellion of man does not destroy the authority of God.
Israel's privileges had not made them different from the nations around them. That makes the prophet's daily life dangerous. Yet one sight takes away his fear of man.
The prophet lives among such a people. Briars and thorns wound and entangle anyone who touches them, and scorpions carry poison in their sting. Yet the man who has been allowed to see the glory of Jehovah need not be afraid among them. How out of place any fear of man would be in such a man! How poorly he would represent the majesty of the One they had to deal with!
Alongside the command not to fear stands the positive charge, which is the heart of the verse.
The prophet was commanded (verses 6, 7) not to fear them, or their words, or their looks, however rebellious they might be, but rather to speak Jehovah's words to them, whether they might hear or forbear, for they were rebellious (or most rebellious).
The same split of work holds for anyone who carries God's word to others. One part is the speaker's. The rest was never his.
So preach, in season and out of season, as a faithful servant, but God must give the increase. No preacher is responsible to convert anybody, but he is responsible to deliver his Master's message, in his Master's spirit. The preacher can do no more, but he can know that God will bless His own declared word, whether the preacher sees that result or not. Nothing gives a preacher more sense of power in his work, or more earnestness, than this simple looking to God, first for His message, and then to God alone for fruit.
- Words — The prophet speaks God's words, not his own. The verse stands as direct testimony to inspiration.
- Whether — God sends him to people who will not listen. God names the response in advance, so it never rests on the prophet.
- Weight — The word keeps its authority whether people take it or not. Rebellion cannot cancel it. In the end the testimony judges the one who refuses it.
- Wounds — Life among briars, thorns and scorpions calls for no fear. The messenger has seen the glory of the One who sends him.
- Work — The servant delivers the message in his Master's spirit. God alone gives the increase. Looking to Him for both message and fruit is what makes a servant earnest.
And thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee; be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee.
God has just sent Ezekiel to a rebellious people. Now the message turns back on the messenger himself. Before he can carry God's word to rebels, he must not be a rebel himself. So God tells him to open his mouth and take in what he is given.
One writer traces the steps from the warning to the scroll that Ezekiel is then shown.
God warns Ezekiel too not to be rebellious like them, but to open his mouth and eat what He gives him. Then a hand reached out, holding a scroll. He spread it open before the prophet. It was written on the front and on the back, full and overflowing. Written in it were lamentations, mourning, and woe. That was the character of his earlier testimony. We shall see how grace triumphs to God's glory in the end.
Eating here is a symbol. One writer explains what the act means, and compares it with Jeremiah eating God's words.
The prophet eating the book is no harder to understand than Jeremiah eating the words of the Lord. To eat is to make the thing one's own, to take it into one's own being. John eating the roll, and finding it both sweet and bitter, reminds us of a similar symbolic act by Ezekiel.
The command rules out treating the Bible as material to collect and relay. One writer shows what the other way looks like in practice.
The Bible — and this widens the application — is not a book of information to gather and then repeat. It is the voice of God to the soul that reads it. So each of us must hear it for ourselves before we can rightly pass on what we have heard. A well-known servant of the Lord once said that he never read a chapter in the Bible in order to speak from it. When someone asked why he read it, he replied that it was for his own profit and building up. In other words, his habit was to eat and digest the Word before he preached it… we are not qualified to be the living channels of divine truth until we have made it our own.
God's command does not stop at the mouth. Ezekiel must fill himself with the roll, and it is that second stage that does the real work in him.
Even eating — making the Word our own — is not enough. We must also digest what we have taken in… So there is a great difference between the two things mentioned in Ezekiel: holding the roll in his mouth and enjoying its sweetness, and eating it with his belly and filling himself with it. For the second we need to be alone in the presence of God. There we learn that His Word is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. Then the mind of God is truly given to us. Taken in deep within, it shapes and controls us, so that our character is formed according to what He has revealed to our souls.
This order is not unique to Ezekiel. One writer sets him beside Elijah, Jeremiah and John to show a pattern running through God's servants.
When one stands before the Lord, then like Jeremiah, one hungers for His word; one eats it. Then one can pass it on to others: "You shall be as my mouth." In Revelation 10:10 John cannot prophesy until he has taken the little book and eaten it. Ezekiel speaks out God's words when he has eaten the roll.
The scroll is full of grief, yet the word given to Ezekiel is still sweet. The reason lies in who gave it.
The Lord sends him to a rebellious people to say, the Lord has spoken, whether they would hear or not. The judgment would make it known that a prophet had been among them. His first testimony is made up of lamentations, mourning, and woe. Still, God's word always comes full of sweetness, seen as a revelation from Him and as something passing between God and man.
Taking truth in is not a painless process, and the alternative — handing out what has never been absorbed — carries a warning.
Notice the thought underneath. Whatever the servant of God gives out as prophecy or teaching, he must first eat it, digest it, and take it in himself. Nothing does more spiritual damage than parading our knowledge of truth we have not yet made our own in meditation, in prayer, in experience. Gaining fresh truth is sweet and thrilling as honey. But once it is digested and absorbed, it always pushes out flesh and self and the world, and that is a bitter process.
- Eat first. God's word goes into the messenger before it goes out of him; Ezekiel cannot carry a scroll he has not swallowed.
- Eat means own. To eat is to make the thing one's own, to take it into one's being — the same act as Jeremiah's and John's.
- Eat, then digest. The roll in the mouth is sweet. Filling yourself with it happens alone with God, and there His mind is truly given.
- Digest, then speak. We are not fit channels of divine truth until we have made it our own; only then can we rightly pass on what we have heard.
- Eat, or be ruined. Parading truth we have never made our own in meditation, prayer and experience does real spiritual damage.