CHAPTER 7 Sep. 11 
God’s Anger Means the End Has Come
Moreover the word of Yahweh came to me, saying, 2You, son of man, thus says the Lord Yahweh to the land of Israel, An end: the end has come on the four corners of the land. 3Now is the end on you, and I will send My anger on you, and will judge you according to your ways; and I will bring on you all your abominations. 4My eye shall not spare you, neither will I have pity; but I will bring your ways on you, and your abominations shall be in the midst of you. You shall know that I am Yahweh. 5Thus says the Lord Yahweh: An evil, a one-time evil; behold, it comes. 6An end has come, the end has come; it awakes against you; behold, it comes. 7Your doom has come to you, inhabitant of the land. The time has come, the day is near, a day of tumult, and not of mere echoing on the mountains. 8Now will I shortly pour out My wrath on you and accomplish My anger against you, and will judge you according to your ways; and I will bring on you all your abominations. 9My eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity. I will bring on you according to your ways; and your abominations shall be in the midst of you; and you shall know that I, Yahweh, do strike. 10Behold, the day, behold, it comes: your doom is gone forth; the rod has blossomed, pride has budded. 11Violence has risen up into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, neither of their multitude, nor of their wealth. There shall be nothing of value among them. 12The time has come, the day draws near: don’t let the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn; for wrath is upon all its multitude. 13For the seller shall not return to that which is sold, even if they be still alive. The vision is touching the whole multitude of it, none shall return; neither shall any strengthen himself in the iniquity of his life. 14They have blown the trumpet, and have made all ready, but none goes to the battle; for My wrath is on all its multitude. 15The sword is outside, and the pestilence and the famine within. He who is in the field shall die with the sword; and he who is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him. 16But those of the ones who escape shall escape, and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them moaning, every one in his iniquity. 17All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water. 18They shall also clothe themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be on all faces, and baldness on all their heads. 19They shall throw their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be as an unclean thing; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of Yahweh. They shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their stomachs; because it has been the stumbling block of their iniquity. 20As for the beauty of His ornament, He set it in majesty; but they made the images of their abominations and their detestable things therein; therefore have I made it to them as an unclean thing. 21I will give it into the hands of the gentiles for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall profane it. 22My face will I turn also from them, and they shall profane My secret place; and robbers shall enter into it, and profane it. 23Make the chain; for the land is full of bloodshed, and the city is full of violence. 24Therefore I will bring the worst of the nations, and they shall possess their houses. I will also make the pride of the strong to cease; and their holy places shall be profaned. 25Destruction comes; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none. 26Mischief shall come on mischief, and rumour shall be on rumour; and they shall seek a vision of the prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the elders. 27The king shall mourn, and the prince shall be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people of the land shall be troubled. I will do to them after their way, and according to their own judgments will I judge them; and they shall know that I am Yahweh.

Commentary

7:9 According to your ways- Here God says that He will punish Israel at the hand of the Babylonians according to their sins, proportionate to them. But when Israel were punished by the Babylonians, Ezra (9:13) realized that they had not been punished proportionate to their sins. Yet in Is. 40:2, again in the context of Judah's punishment by the Babylonians, God says that their judgment had been double what it ought to have been; and yet Ezra says it was less than the promised proportionate recompense for their sins. Here we have the utter, humanly inconsistent grace of God; almost taking guilt for punishing them too much, not punishing them enough, and yet saying He will punish them in exact proportion to their sin (see too 5:11; 8:18,19; 9:10). All we can say is that God is passionate and emotional. He hates punishing His children for their sins, just as any loving parent does, even if He speaks at times in the fire of His wrath. And when He did punish Judah, it seems He almost rushes to take it back and say it was far too much. This isn’t to say that God is in any sense fickle; the paradox can perhaps only dimly be understood by the analogy to human parenting dilemmas. All we can say is that His love and passion for His wayward children is real and felt, and He will not hold Himself to His word of judgment in a legalistic, literalistic sense- quite simply because love, not least His love, is beyond such limitation.
7:12 The time has come- And yet God says elsewhere that it is still to come (:10). God is outside of time as we know it. The future is as if it’s happened. Because of this, God can speak of the dead as if they are alive, although they are not; and can speak of people as if they were alive before birth. He can speak of a day coming as if it has come (Is. 3:8). We need to bear this in mind in interpreting His word.
7:20 Therein- Amazingly, there were idols made in Yahweh’s temple…
7:23 The Hebrew word mishpat means [and is translated] both “crime” (7:23) and “judgment” (5:7,16,20). Every sin is its own judgment, and brings us immediately as it were before the judgment throne of God. And yet mishpat is also translated “ordinance”, in speaking about the commands of God (11:20). Acts of obedience are also acts of judgment; they too bring us positively before the judgment of God. The Greek and Hebrew words translated 'judge' mean both the process of discerning / summing up, and also the execution of judgment.