On that day your mouth will be opened to the fugitive, and you shall speak and be no longer mute. So you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the LORD.”
Ezekiel had been struck dumb toward his own people. Here God fixes the day his voice returns — the day a survivor arrives from the fallen city — and says what it is for: that they will know the LORD.
The silence ends when judgment lands
The prophet's silence had an end point, and God set it. He would stay silent toward Israel until God's sentence on Jerusalem fell.
J. N. DarbyOnce judgment had been carried out, the prophet's mouth would open. The word of the LORD would then go openly to the remnant, so that they would know the LORD.
While any hope of escape survived, false confidence could feed on the prophet's words.
Numerical Bible NotesThe prophetic message to the people closes here for a time. They must wait for the last act of the judgment now about to happen, until the message comes announcing that it is fully accomplished. The siege lasted for nearly a year and a half, and then came the news that the city was taken. On that day, when at last it was all over and no one could keep up a false hope any longer, the prophet's mouth would open. He would speak, and be dumb no longer.
What the dumbness was saying
A prophet who cannot speak is himself a message. God withdrew His words from Israel, and the silence announced what was coming.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThis dumbness was not complete or constant. In the end it stopped altogether. That was after Jerusalem had fallen (33:21-22). The dumbness was a sign to the nation — the sign of God's displeasure and of the coming judgment on Jerusalem (24:27).
Silent about Israel, not about everything
The silence had a subject. Ezekiel keeps speaking in the chapters that follow, but he addresses not one word of them to his own nation.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinClearly this dumbness does not mean he was silent all the time, never saying a word. He prophesied, after all, what is written in chapters 25-32. He was to be dumb about Israel. The chapters in between, before the messenger came, are about other nations. Then the promised messenger arrived, and his mouth opened again to prophesy about Israel.
"You will be a sign to them"
The verse does not say Ezekiel would give signs; it says he is one. The sign had already begun with a personal loss.
J. N. DarbyOn the day that Nebuchadnezzar lays siege to Jerusalem, the prophet's wife dies. Although she was the dearest object of his affections, Ezekiel was not to mourn. Under the figure of his wife's death, he is told to hold back his heart before the judgment of the LORD.
What he suffered stood in for God Himself.
Numerical Bible NotesHere, as elsewhere, Ezekiel stands as the representative of God to the people, as the prophet in fact always was. It should be noticed that the blow falls not on the people but on the prophet himself... So it is quietly made clear that the prophet's sorrow is the sorrow of God Himself. The affliction is on His side, not on man's. Yet it is an affliction that can find no outlet among a people as stubborn as these.
What the reopened mouth said
Commentators differ on the tone of his first words after the silence broke. One reads the reopening as the turn toward grace:
Numerical Bible NotesSo the prophet's mouth is reopened, because there is grace to be announced. Still, God first affirms that His righteous ways have not changed. That is the fitting introduction to the grace. The fall of the city shows the people now fully under judgment. Their false confidences are exposed.
Another points to the warning he in fact gave — to people whose talk of faith did not match their hearts:
William KellyThe news of Jerusalem's fall took a long time to reach the prophet. Then he opened his mouth, so long closed, and gave a solemn warning of further judgment. He warned them all the more because they pretended to speak the language of faith while their heart was far from the Lord.
Knowing the LORD — and knowing His word was true
The verse ends with the reason behind it all. The same aim runs through this whole series of judgments, and Israel receives something more.
J. N. DarbyGod carries out these prophecies to make them all know the LORD. Only in Israel's case there is something more: the understanding and the special verification of prophecy.
Summary
- Silence. God's word withheld from Israel was itself a message — the sign of His displeasure and of judgment on the way.
- Stroke. The blow fell first on the prophet, not the people; his unexpressed grief pictured a sorrow that was God's own.
- Sign. Ezekiel was not just a speaker of signs but a sign himself, standing before Israel in God's place.
- Speech. His mouth stayed shut until every false hope died. Only when the survivor came did God open it — as warning first, or as grace? Commentators differ.
- Knowing. Every step aimed at one end: that they would know the LORD. Israel alone would also see prophecy proved true in the ruins.