Table of Contents
At the beginning of Ezekiel – at the beginning of Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry, in fact – Ezekiel experienced a vision from God about the nature of the words he was to speak to Israel:
Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me. In it was a scroll, which he unrolled before me. On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe. And he said to me, "Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the house of Israel." So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. Then he said to me, "Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it." So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth. (Ezekiel 2:9 – 3:3)
As the Book of Ezekiel plays out, Ezekiel was required by God to spend over 25 years declaring a message of judgement to the people in exile in Babylon. A people bereft of everything in the most traumatic of circumstances – Ezekiel included – Ezekiel was given the task of ensuring that Israel knew that it came at God’s hand of judgement.
But here is the twist in the tail. As Ezekiel experienced the vision, the word of judgement ‘tasted as sweet as honey’ in his mouth. The things Ezekiel would experience in his prophetic ministry were truly terrifying: he’d lose his speech, lose his freedom, lose his wife. And yet, here at the outset, he is given this confidence: even God’s hard words – his words of judgement – are good words.
We know it to be true: as parents disciplined us as children, it was never pleasant, but we know the loving purposes for which such discipline was spoken. Hard words can be good words. Better the rebuke of a friend than the flattery of an enemy.
When we read such words, we must let the character of God inform those words: a God who is truly loving, truly just. It allows us to know – and search for the way in which – God’s truly hard words are truly good.
