CUTTING THE PROPHET’S HAIR God completes His proclamations - through symbols - about chastening Jerusalem and putting it under siege. He commanded Ezekiel to cut the hair of his head and to shave that of his beard, by means of a sharp sword; and explained to him the mystery and signs of his chastisement to Judah. This is considered as the fourth of the ‘clarification tools.’ 1- Cutting the prophet’s hair 1-4. 2- The reason behind this judgment 5-7. 3- A public judgment 8 . 4- A unique judgment 9-12. 5- A divine judgment 13-15. 6- Successive Stages of judgment 16-17. 1- CUTTING THE PROPHET’S HAIR “And you, son of Adam, take a sharp sword, take it as a barber’s razor, and pass it over your head and your beard; then take balances to weigh and divide the hair. You shall burn with fire one-third in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are finished; then you shall take one-third and strike around it with the sword, and one-third you shall scatter in the wind” (Ez 5:1, 2). God commanded the prophet Moses to speak to the priests, the children of Aaron, saying: “They shall not make any bald place on their heads, nor shall they shave the edges of their beards nor make any cuttings in their flesh. They shall be holy to their God, and not profane the name of their God, for they offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire, and the bread of their God; therefore they shall be holy” (Levi 21:5, 6). The divine command was clear and straightforward, that no razor shall touch the head or beard of a priest because he is holy to his God. That is because letting a woman’s hair is for her adornment; while letting a priest’s hair is a sign that he is not preoccupied with worldly things; dedicating every breath of his life to his priestly ministry. Thus the command to the prophet Ezekiel is a proclamation of the profanity of the priests of that time, and God’s rejection of their sacrifices, offerings, and prayers. When God intended to save the people in the old times, the angel of God appeared to the barren wife of ‘Manoah,’ and said: “You shall conceive and bear a son; and no razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines” (Judges 13:5). He (Samson), who when his hair was cut, the strength of God left him and became weak (Judges 16:17); and the Lord Himself departed from him (Judges 16:20). He lost his eyes, was bound with bronze fetters, became a grinder in the prison (judges 16:21), and was mocked at by the pagans. But now, It is God Himself Who commands His prophet (a priest) to cut his hair and to shave his beard, as a sign of His departure from the priests of His people, their loss of spiritual insight, their entry into captivity, and their becoming the mocking stock and laugh of the nations. Cutting the whole hair refers to God’s rejection of entering into any relationship with the people through the priests or the prophets. He would not accept an offering nor listens to a prayer, to chasten them for their wickedness. It also refers to His rejection of His people for their persistence committing sin. If God is the Head, our life is our abidance in Him. Cutting the hair is the end of the people’s abidance in the 5 source of their life. Concerning this St. Jerome says: [The prophet Isaiah speaks of a sharp razor that shaves the hair of the head and legs of sinners (Is 7:20). He shaves his head, as a symbol of Jerusalem that became an adulteress; that everything in it became lifeless and with no feelings1.] Shaving the whole hair referring to great grief, especially in cases of death, was in the eye of God a kind of profanity. That is why He warned His people, saying: “You are the children of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves, nor shave the front of your head for the dead. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for Himself” (Deut 14:1, 2). But now, as Jerusalem became as though dead; and as His people were rejected, He commanded them, as represented by Ezekiel, to profane themselves by shaving the hair of their head. Shaving the hair is also a sign of reproach, humiliation, and bondage; Man becomes with no dignity, with no authority even to cut or to let his own hair. That is why slaves used to have their hair completely cut; as well as kings when captivated. So sin does to man, let him lose all authority, and bring him down from a state of royalty and power, to the shame of servitude and fall into captivity and humiliation. David’s servants were ashamed to have audience with their king, when Hanun the king of the Amonites, doubting them, ordered their beards to be shaven. They stayed in Jericho until their beards grew before returning. Man, likewise, cannot encounter with the Lord His heavenly King, while still in the disgrace and reproach of sin; but has to wait until he proclaims his repentance, gets forgiveness, and regains his dignity, to be worthy of the possibility of encountering God, and His heavenly and earthly hosts. Shaving the hair with a sharp knife, refers to a bloody war; as God allowed the hard-hearted Chaldeans to invade Judah, according to His divine will, for Judah rebelled against God: One-third of its people to perish during the siege of Jerusalem, one-third to be mercilessly slain by the swords of the men of Nebuchadnezzar, and the last third to be scattered on the face of the earth among different nations. Weighing the hair is a sign, that what would befall the people, of hunger, thirst, death by the sword, and getting dispersed among nations, is not haphazard or a matter of chance; but according to a divine plan, and to the just, honest, and accurate divine balances. The Lord weighs the hearts” (Proverb 21:2), and “the spirits” (Prov 16:2); He who has the ways of man before His eyes, “And He ponders all his paths” (Prov 5:21); who “establish a weight for the wind, and mete out the waters by measure” (Job 28:25); who “calculated the dust of the earth in a measure, weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance” (Is 40 12); whose balances are just and true, and does not stand deceit or favoritism. That is God’s nature that He likes to pour into the life of His children. That is why he repeats His commandments: “You shall not have in your bag different weights, a heavy and a light. You shall not have in your house different measures, a large and a small. You shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure” (Deut 25:13-15); “Diverse weights are an abomination to the Lord, and a false balance is not good” (Prov 20:23; 11:1); When God weighs our life, unfortunately He finds it “lighter than vapor” (Prov 62:9); or as the prophet Daniel said to king Belshazzar: “You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting” (Dan 5:27). 1 Epistle 70:2. 6 And now, what would God do to us, when He finds us like this? He will bear the mystery of our wanting, will carry our iniquity on Himself, and when he comes to the balance, He will be priced as a slave - He, the Judge of all creation! In bitterness He says: “They weighed out for My wages thirty pieces of silver” (Zech 11:12). The Lord is evaluated as a slave, while the slave, in his vain self-righteousness says: “Let me be weighed in a just balance, that God may know my integrity” (Job 31:6). The perfect One is weighed while bearing our wanting, to become under reproach; and man, in the pride of his heart, wants to be justified in balances before God. Ezekiel’s hair was weighed as a symbol of the people fallen under the weight of sin, to be found worthy of being hungry, thirsty, scattered, and getting under the sword. These are the fruits of abominations and wickedness. If the people were found wanting in the balance, yet God would never disregard the very little remnants of them; those who, because of their faithfulness to Him, and complete obedience to His words, He keeps under the tail of His robe - under His care. These remnants probably refer to those, who were left back in Jerusalem under the leadership of ‘Gedaliah;’ or probably refer to the remnants that would stay faithful to God in the days of the false prophet or the antichrist. It is the congregation of God, hidden, kept, and concealed in Him, whom He knows by name, and surrounds them lest any of them would be lost, or snatched by the devil. Yet unfortunately, a few of this little remnant, the Lord commanded to be burned; because, after entering under His care, they rejected Him. Those, about whom the apostle said: “Having begun in the Spirit, are now being made perfect by the flesh” (Gal 3:3). That is why the Lord commands us to endure to the end (Mat 24:13); warns us against the last days, when even the elect might be deceived (Mat 24:24). 2- THE REASON BEHIND THIS JUDGMENT God as a Father, chastening His children, He reveals to them the reason behind His judgment. He is not a dictatorial or a master who takes His revenge; but, even in the firmness of His chastisement, He longs for our return and repentance. That is why He reveals to us our weaknesses to forsake them. Two things grieve God’s heart: the broken commandment and the defiled temple. Concerning the broken commandment He says: “They have refused My Judgments, and they have not walked in My statutes” (Ez 5:6). It is amazing that when the believer falls in rebellion, he becomes more evil than the unbeliever; the Lord says: “They rebelled against My judgments by doing wickedness more than the nations” (Ez 5:6). As to defiling the temple, He says: “Because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations; therefore I will also diminish you. My eyes will not spare, nor will I have any pity” (Ez 5:11). Keeping the commandment, and the worship (the temple), are two integrated things in the believer’s life. Obeying the commandment grants us dare to stand in God’s presence; and standing before Him for worship will support our life in the obedience of the commandment. Whoever thinks that he is keeping the commandment away from the spirit of worship, is deceiving himself. Likewise, whoever thinks that he is pleasing God by his worship, without walking in the obedience of the commandment. 3- A PUBLIC JUDGMENT When God sent the prophet Jeremiah to the people of Judah to rebuke them for 7 their sins, He said to him: “Go and cry in the hearing of Jerusalem” (Jer 2:2); as though He intended to whisper in their ears, to let them repent with no one knowing what they had committed. But when they did not listen, He commanded him to stand in the gate of the Lord’s house and proclaim God’s rebuking words (Jer 7:1). And when they persisted in their iniquity, God had to proclaim His chastisement for His people publicly before all nations; They transgressed publicly and shamelessly, and He tried to mend their ways without hurting their feelings, but, because of their growing haughtiness, He said: “I am against you, and will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of nations (Ez 5:8). “Moreover I will make you a waste and a reproach among the nations that are all around you, in the sight of all who pass by; so it shall be a reproach, a taunt, a lesson, and an astonishment to the nations that are all around you” (Ez 5:14, 15). God, the holy, does not accept or truce sin, even when His own people in His own holy city commit it. God, the Philanthropist, covers our transgressions and weaknesses, once and many times; but when He finds that our cure is in putting us to disgrace, He proclaims His chastising on us. This is what the Church also does with her children and ministers. She starts with love, but when there is need for public chastisement, she will do that for the sake of the salvation of the congregation. In the apostolic time, the apostle Paul publicly condemned someone who fell into sin with his father’s wife, saying: “It is actually reported, that there is sexual immortality among you, and such sexual immortality as is not even named among the Gentiles - that a man has his father’s wife!... For I indeed, as absent in body but present in Spirit, have already judged, as though I were present, concerning him who has so done this deed. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus... Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened” (1 Cor 5:1-7). 4- A UNIQUE JUDGMENT They raced to do evil and surpassed the nations; that is why God also chastens them with unique judgments: “I will do among you what I have never done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations. Therefore fathers shall eat their sons in your midst, and sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments among you, and all of you who remain I will scatter to all the winds” (Ez. 5:9-10). That was the bitter most punishment to befall the believers: that one would eat the other; and even a father would eat his son, and a son would eat his father! As when God’s grace forsakes them, they would be corrupted inside; and amid dissension and schisms, every member would eat another, despite being relatives in body or spirit. And finally, there would be nothing left of them but ashes that God will scatter to all the winds. I say, that the fruit of sin is that the congregation would eat one another, instead of supporting one another; and even dissension would happen within man himself: he would rise against himself, lose his peace, balance, and vitality; to turn, because of sin, into valueless ashes, to be scattered by the wind in every direction. 5- A DIVINE JUDGMENT God, to confirm to Judah that that public and unique judgment is not coming from the prophet who speaks to them, but from God Himself; He says: “I the Lord, have 8 spoken” (Ez 5:15). If the Chaldeans are fighting and captivating the people; yet, they are actually tools in God’s hand, who zealously uses the nations to chasten them; That is why He confirms: “Indeed I, even I, am against you” (Ez 5:9); and repeats the phrase, “I the Lord have spoken,” and the like, about 14 times in this book. That is why, when ‘Absalom’ rebelled against his father David, and the later escaped before him, ‘Shimei the son of Gera’ came to curse him by throwing stones at him and at all the servants, the people, and all the mighty men around him. When ‘Abishai the son of Zeruiah’ said to the king: “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Please, let me go over and take off his head” (2 Sam 16:9); David wisely and humbly answered him, saying: “Let him curse, because the Lord has said to him, ‘Curse David.’ Who then shall say, ‘Why have you done so?...‘ It may be that the Lord will look on my affliction, and that the Lord will repay me with good for his cursing this day” (2 Sam 16:10-12). St. John Chrysostom believes that, when the others plot against us, there is a chance for repentance; saying: [If we err, God will set our enemies against us to chasten us. That is why it is fitting for us not to fight them, but to hold ourselves accountable, and to accept the sufferings, the same way we accept the bitter medication from a physician, for our own sake; and as we accept chastisement from our fathers, to become glorified1.] 6- SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF JUDGMENT God, in His long suffering and love, began by talking in secret with His people; then by talking in public; and finally He had to resort to public chastisement. And here also, He chastens in stages, in hope that they may eventually repent. Then He would lift suffering from them. He allows them to go hungry; then increase it until they get in need for bread. Persisting on their iniquity, He brings against them the wild animals to devour their children; then allows for plagues and blood shed... He does not seek revenge, but repentance in all ways. . 1 للمؤلف: القدیس یوحنا الذهبي الفم، 1981 ، ص 322 9 AN INSPIRATION FROM THE BOOK OF E ZEKIEL 5 LET ME ABIDE IN YOU, WHO CHASTENS COMPASSIONATELY Let me abide in You, who chastens compassionately! You allowed it for Your prophet Ezekiel to shave all the hair of his head. To proclaim his great grief for the corruption of his people - as dead. And to threaten Your people, That You would likewise, remove them away from You, To reject their priesthood that was defiled; To confirm them in that they are living as shaven-head captive slaves. Chasten me O Lord; but do not deliver me to someone else! You who chastens compassionately! You have chastened me in secret; And I did not forsake my abominations. And here you are exposing me among my people. And even among the nations... Let it be; but do not deprive me of Your salvation! Because You are who chastens compassionately!
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