Ezekiel 2:1-7

Ezekiel 2:1 to Ezekiel 3:15. The Call. Ezekiel 2:1. The awful silence is broken by a voice from the Almighty upon His throne, bidding the prostrate prophet rise and accept his commission for service; for it is a work and not an inactive prostration that God and the world need. Into the phrase son of man, which occurs nearly 100 times in the book, Ezekiel throws his sense of his own frailty in contrast with the majesty of God as illustrated by the vision of the previous chapter. The service which he feels himself Divinely summoned to render is to declare the message of God in the first instance a message of doom (Ezekiel 2:10) to his people: a doom justified by the infidelity which they had shown from the beginning of their national history up to that very moment, and which had already swept into exile those whom he was immediately addressing. The prophet is under no illusions: they are a rebellious house, hard-faced and stubborn-hearted, and it is more than likely that they will not listen, though they are free to hear or forbear, as they please: they will be as briers and thorns, symbols of the opposition and persecution the prophet may expect to encounter (some emend these words in Ezekiel 2:6 to mean, they will resist and despise thee). There will be every temptation to refuse to embark upon so perilous a course, to rebel in one way as the people had rebelled in another: but he is to go on without flinching or fear to speak the word that would be given him, and the sequel would show them that he had been a true prophet, Divinely inspired.