The Unsheathed Sword: Judgment, Purification, and the Fall of Jerusalem

So Ezekiel was commanded to turn his attention directly towards Jerusalem.

Now, this is a symbolic act that puts focus and confrontation together.

Now, the sanctuary, in this case, means the courtyard, the holy place, and the holy of holies.

And it's facing judgment.

Despite their sacred status, God did not even spare the temple, and he certainly didn't spare the land because of their sins.

Now, the word of God, well, let's start in verse 2.

It begins by saying, Ben-Adam, son of man, set your face towards the south and preach towards the south and prophesy against the forest field of the south.

Now, the expression set your face, that's unique to Ezekiel.

He is the one who will use that expression several times yet.

And because of that, the exact meaning, well, it's really difficult to pin down because he is the only one using it, so there's no other place to compare it to.

Now, here in America, we use the direction of north as our standard.

But if you're in Jerusalem or in Israel, you use the direction called east.

Directions in Israel with no frame of reference are hard to even imagine.

Now commentators teach us that the individual is seen as facing east and thereby the side of spoken is on his right side or the south side.

South is also seen as the direction that's least populated in Israel today.

Now, today we're going to be talking about, well, the actual area is called the Arava, and the area is also called the Negev.

So that's the south part.

Understand that when Moses was bringing the people up, as he does, he actually did land in Israel at that point in time in the Negev, or not the Negev, but in the Arava.

In fact, in the book of Deuteronomy, in the first chapter, we run into some verses dealing with cities that he had already been through.

So, Both are focused, well, they're still sparsely populated down there, and it's because of the stream heat, and I thought the heat of Israel or of Houston was bad, but going down in the Arava is also bad.

Now, when we remember that Ezekiel was in captivity, he was directly, well, he'd be directly north of Israel in Babylon.

Now, Jeremiah, the prophet Ezekiel, might also help us to orient to where we're at because he talks about from the north will the evil begin.

And he does that in the first chapter of Jeremiah.

Now, spiritually, we need to see that the learning and wisdom are seen as being south.

And when we go to the holy place, The menorah is found on the south side of the room called the Holy Place.