Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ezekiel · About this commentary
The Razor and the Three Portions of Hair
Ezekiel 5:1-17
1 “You, son of man, take a sharp sword. You shall take it as a barber’s razor to yourself, and shall cause it to pass over your head and over your beard. Then take balances to weigh and divide the hair. · WEB
A priest shaves his head with a sword and weighs out the hair, and the fraction he saves in his robe is not safe either.
The act is shocking before it is explained. A priest was forbidden to shave his head Leviticus 21:5. This one does it with a sword used as a razor, over head and beard together, and then puts the hair on scales. Shaving was the mark of mourning and of disgrace. Using a sword names what does the shaving. And weighing the hair says that what follows is measured out rather than random.
The three portions are then disposed of, and each is interpreted in the same chapter. A third is burned inside the city: those who die of pestilence and famine within the walls. A third is struck with the sword around it: those who fall in the fighting. A third is scattered to the wind, and I will draw out a sword after them — the deported, who are not thereby out of reach. The arithmetic is deliberate and it leaves nothing over.
Except that it does, and this is the sharpest stroke in the chapter. A small number is taken out and bound in the folds of your robe. The fold of a garment was where a man carried what he meant to keep. And then, from that saved handful, some are taken again and thrown into the fire. A remnant is preserved, and the remnant is not exempt from testing. The book will later promise a purging of the returning exiles in the same spirit Ezekiel 20:38, so this is not a passing image.
The indictment underneath is geographic and it is the reason the judgment is public. This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the middle of the nations, and countries are around her. A city placed at the center to be seen has rebelled more than the nations watching. It has not even kept the ordinances those nations keep. So the sentence is executed in the sight of the nations, and the horror named is the one the law had named as the end of a siege — fathers eating sons and sons their fathers. The chapter's own summary is four words long and admits of no appeal: I, even I, am against you.
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