2 And he said to me, “Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak with you.” 2 And as he spoke to me, the Spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, I send you to the people of Israel, to nations of rebels, who have rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day. 4 The descendants also are impudent and stubborn: I send you to them, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ 5 And whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house) they will know that a prophet has been among them. 6 And you, son of man, be not afraid of them, nor be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions. Be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. 7 And you shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear, for they are a rebellious house.
8 “But you, son of man, hear what I say to you. Be not rebellious like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you.” 9 And when I looked, behold, a hand was stretched out to me, and behold, a scroll of a book was in it. 10 And he spread it before me. And it had writing on the front and on the back, and there were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe.
In this chapter we are given an account of Ezekiel's call and commission. Clearly, the vision he had seen was an overwhelming experience for him, which prostrated him, and this prompts the reflection that we in our day have largely lost sight of the tremendous nature of the divine revelation, in the misconceived notion that we have about angelic beings. We have devalued and emasculated the angels of God by making them pretty pictures on Christmas cards. But the real angels of God are terrible beings, in the classical sense of that word, as Ezekiel discovered in this awesome experience that overtook him. It was small wonder that he fell upon his face, with all strength drained from him, and that God had to infuse a new strength into him (1, 2). The nature of the commission given to him is also significant: it was not so much that God spelt out the message he was to deliver - in fact, nothing is said in this chapter about it - as that he was instructed as to the nature of what he was to say. It was to be 'Thus saith the Lord God' (4), that is, he was to speak God's words to the people, whether or not they would hear (7). It is in this context that we need to understand the divine exhortation not to be afraid (6), and to resist the temptation to disobey and refuse the call because of that fear (8). Nor should we miss the significance of this exhortation: You do not keep on saying to people 'Don't be afraid' unless you see signs of fear in their eyes and on their faces. Ezekiel was doubtless the same as the rest of us when faced with an uncongenial or daunting task, and he would naturally shrink from it, although that shrinking is not recorded for us here, in the way that Jeremiah's was in the first chapter of his prophecy. It is just that God's enabling was such that it kept him as steady as a rock throughout his long ministry. This bears witness to the wonderful truth, that whatever our natural temperament may be, if God calls us to a particular work and promises us His enabling, we will be able to do it, however much our natural trembling. All honour to Ezekiel that he showed himself so firm and unbending in the difficult and unrewarding assignment given him.