NOTES for Eze 21:1-32

This chapter, with its detailed description of destruction, would seem to leave sinners no hope of escaping retribution. Yet even here we can see that recompense for sin is not fate, not a blind and indifferent force, but a manifestation of that highest justice which, in a way beyond our understanding, is tempered by the highest mercy. The Lord does not wish to destroy sinners, but He shows us what we deserve and what we ourselves have provoked.

The prophecy about the sword points us to Christ's words: “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10:34). How easy it would be to confuse the meaning of these different swords and call the sword to come an instrument of punishment! But that sword will not be a means of destruction. It will be an instrument that separates one thing from another—life with God from life in sin.