Book of Ezekiel Chapter 5 Summary

Ezekiel Gets His Ears Lowered

  • God continues telling Ezekiel to perform strange, symbolic actions.
  • He says that Ezekiel should take a sharp sword and use it to completely shave his head and his beard. 
  • Then, Ezekiel needs to gather up the hair and strike a third of it with his sword around the city, burn another third of it, and scatter a third of it to the wind, though binding a small number of hairs from this last bunch in his robes. But even from this remaining bunch of saved hairs, Ezekiel is supposed to burn a few.

We're Having the Kids for Dinner

  • God announces that to punish Jerusalem for its disobedience and for being even worse than the nations surrounding it, he's going to come and execute judgments against it.
  • Parents will end up eating their children in the middle of the besieged city. 
  • Explaining the symbolism of Ezekiel's haircut, God says that one third of the citizens of Jerusalem will die of pestilence or famine, one third will die by the sword, and one third will be scattered (and some of them killed by the sword, again).
  • God's going to unleash his wrath on Jerusalem, making his people a horror and mockery in the eyes of the other nations. He'll let pestilence and famine kill people, let wild animals move into the city—stuff like that.