NOTES for Eze 5:1-17
The warning that most of the people will be destroyed sounds terrible; they have been reproached for their lawlessness, but should we forget that the very sins for which retribution must be endured are themselves monstrously terrible? Meanwhile, when we yield to sinful temptations, sin does not seem to us something so dreadful, a mortal danger from which we ought to flee. The destruction that befalls all three parts of the people is not an arbitrary sentence but a direct consequence of the lawlessness they committed, just as delirium tremens is the result of alcoholism.
The sins denounced in the prophetic discourse surpass the lawlessness of the pagans, and therefore their consequences are far more dangerous. But if the people were raised higher than the pagans, the consequences of their fall from that height inevitably become more traumatic. The pagans, who have no fellowship with the Living God, do not know the fullness of the moral law, yet even they will experience lesser consequences from the evil they have done than those who turned away from God and His commandments.