21 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, set your face towards Jerusalem and preach against the sanctuaries. Prophesy against the land of Israel 3 and say to the land of Israel, Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against you and will draw my sword from its sheath and will cut off from you both righteous and wicked. 4 Because I will cut off from you both righteous and wicked, therefore my sword shall be drawn from its sheath against all flesh from south to north. 5 And all flesh shall know that I am the Lord. I have drawn my sword from its sheath; it shall not be sheathed again.
6 “As for you, son of man, groan; with breaking heart and bitter grief, groan before their eyes. 7 And when they say to you, ‘Why do you groan?’ you shall say, ‘Because of the news that it is coming. Every heart will melt, and all hands will be feeble; every spirit will faint, and all knees will be weak as water. Behold, it is coming, and it will be fulfilled,’” declares the Lord God.
8 And the word of the Lord came to me: 9 “Son of man, prophesy and say, Thus says the Lord, say:
“A sword, a sword is sharpened
and also polished,
10 sharpened for slaughter,
polished to flash like lightning!
(Or shall we rejoice? You have despised the rod, my son, with everything of wood.) 11 So the sword is given to be polished, that it may be grasped in the hand. It is sharpened and polished to be given into the hand of the slayer.12 Cry out and wail, son of man, for it is against my people. It is against all the princes of Israel. They are delivered over to the sword with my people. Strike therefore upon your thigh. 13 For it will not be a testing—what could it do if you despise the rod?” declares the Lord God.
14 “As for you, son of man, prophesy. Clap your hands and let the sword come down twice, yes, three times, the sword for those to be slain. It is the sword for the great slaughter, which surrounds them, 15 that their hearts may melt, and many stumble. At all their gates I have given the glittering sword. Ah, it is made like lightning; it is taken up for slaughter. 16 Cut sharply to the right; set yourself to the left, wherever your face is directed. 17 I also will clap my hands, and I will satisfy my fury; I the Lord have spoken.”
The clapping of hands in 14, 17, attributed at first to the prophet and then to the Lord, might seem on the surface to suggest gloating over the prospect of the sword of the Lord being let loose among the people, but this is far from the real truth. What is meant is this: Ezekiel claps his hands in the way that the Lord claps His in 17, not in the sense of gloating over the judgment, but rather approving it, which is a very different matter. The idea corresponds to that expressed in Psalm 2, in the words, 'He that is in the heavens shall laugh ...'. Approval of the divine judgment may sound harsh to the modern ear, but we should consider the alternative. If God approves of judgment: and we do not, are we not setting ourselves up against God, and judging Him? And is not this a dangerous thing to do? We need not be afraid to approve of divine judgment, since to approve it does not mean to gloat over it. It was possible for Ezekiel to sigh and weep over the desolations of his people (6, 7) and also clap his hands in approval of judgment, at one and the same time, without any sense of contradiction. There is an important point here that we need to give due regard to since there is often much confusion and emotional thinking in matters of this nature. We tend to fall over backwards, lest we be thought to be gloating over the judgment of God or approving it in any malicious or self-righteous or censorious way; but it is at least as dangerous to fall over backwards in that sense as to fall over to the other extreme. If we recognised this more, we might begin to think very differently about many things. One that comes readily to mind is the whole concept of punishment as such, and this is so important that we shall devote the next reading to the consideration of it.