(8) The End Is Near

In his fine commentary on Ezekiel Patrick Fairbairn offers one sentence of explanation on chapter seven because, "This chapter does not contain anything properly new." If Ezekiel 7 is largely repetition, why should we study it? John Calvin offers this answer: God repeats himself, "to stimulate that … sluggishness, under which the people labored." Hard truths need to be repeated. Some realities penetrate our minds the way steady rainfall waters parched earth.

The Israelites living 600 years before Christ did not think it possible for them to fall. The spiritual norm for Jewish people of the time was covenantal presumption. They took comfort in their name instead of in their Savior. Today too people call themselves Christians and so convince themselves that they are safe. We need the repetition of the hard truth of God's judgment.

And Ezekiel 7 does introduce the new idea of finality. Five times he says "the end has come!" The destruction of Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C. represented the changing of an epoch. And it points to a turning point of far grander proportions. In Ezekiel 7 at least four things were ending.