Your doom has come to you, O inhabitant of the land. The time has come; the day is near, a day of tumult, and not of joyful shouting on the mountains.
The Spirit announces through Ezekiel that time has run out for the land of Israel. This is not a warning about some distant future; the end is already at hand. Verse 7 piles up three short announcements — doom, time, day — and then says what that day will not be.
The style of the announcement
This verse sits in a chapter that lands like hammer blows. One writer points to the style of the chapter itself.
William KellyChapter 7 closes this opening series of warnings of coming woe. It covers everything, yet it is never vague. Its style is short, strange, abrupt and fast. In it the Spirit proclaims, with frequent and emphatic repetitions, an end to the land of Israel as something just at hand.
"Your doom has come"
The word behind "doom" has puzzled translators. One writer explains it from the wheels in Ezekiel's vision: the wheel has turned.
Numerical Bible NotesGod declares that what has come is evil, and only evil. It is unmixed calamity. The "turn" — that is, the revolution of the wheel — has come to the one who dwells in the land. People have made much difficulty out of an expression that is very simple. Just look at what fills so much of Ezekiel's vision: those wheels, so high that they are terrible. They do a terrible but needful work in bringing man low, and they have final restoration in view as well. So the privileged people of God come under the same changeableness that rules everything merely human. They could claim no exemption; and the higher they had been lifted, the more terrible the fall would be.
Tumult, not shouting on the mountains
Messengers shouted news of victory from the mountains. This day brings no such shout, and the same writer explains why: the people had been predicting a different day for themselves.
Numerical Bible NotesThe time had come for this. It was not the day their false hopes had predicted for themselves. It was a day of dismay and confusion. The battle was lost, not won. There was no joyful news of victory to announce from the mountain-tops, as there will be for them yet in the future (Isa. 40:9). For God was now to pour out His wrath fully and finish His anger — though it would be no more than the fruit of their own ways.
The mountains do get used in that day, but for the opposite sound.
J. N. DarbyThose who escape the general judgment mourn alone on the mountains, having given up everything in despair — with no power to resist.
Why the time had "come"
"The time has come" marks a crossed boundary. God's patience had reached its end, and the land had no more fruit to give.
Numerical Bible NotesThere is no soil to produce fruit. God's patience has reached its limit, and there is no limit to the wrath. The one exception is this: there are still those in whom grace shows its power, as there always will be... God's own pitiful eye can spare no more. "I will punish you for your ways, while your abominations are in your midst" [older wording: "I will bring your ways upon you"]: that is, there is no deliverance, no ability to roll the burden off.
That same patience explains the delay before such a day falls. Two words below need a note: Ahab was a king of Israel, and Christendom means the whole world that calls itself Christian.
Numerical Bible NotesIt is a solemn thing to realise this: God lets human wickedness reach its full growth before the judgment falls. As it was in Israel, so it will be in Christendom. God does not come in to judge in a day of reformation, even a partial one. If He sees even an Ahab put on sackcloth and walk humbly before Him, He holds back from judgment (1 Kings 21:27-29).
The danger of feeling safe
The verse speaks to the one living in the land — settled, privileged, confident. One writer sees that confidence as the great danger.
William KellyThe plague-spot in Christendom, as in Israel, is to claim for its most guilty and apostate condition the safety that belongs only to the purposes of grace. Never was Judah higher in its claims or louder in its sense of security than on the eve of unsparing judgment.
Summary
- Ripening. God waits for evil to come fully into the open before He strikes. Even Ahab's show of mourning won a delay.
- Limit. God's patience is long, but not endless. Here it reaches its edge, and past that edge the wrath has no limit.
- Turn. The word for "doom" pictures the wheel coming round. Being God's privileged people bought no exemption, and the higher the lifting, the harder the fall.
- Tumult. The day comes, but not the day they had predicted. The battle is lost. No victory shout rings from the mountains — only mourning, until the joyful news comes at last in a future day.
- Warning. Judah was never louder about its safety than on the eve of judgment. That is the standing danger: claiming safety while living in abominations.