Ezekiel 3:5

For thou [art] not sent to a people of a strange speech,.... "Deep of lip" (g), or "speech"; difficult to be got at and understood: and of a hard language: or "heavy of tongue" (h) of a barbarous and

For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language, but to the house of Israel; Thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language - (see margin,

Though the Divine command is reason enough why we should obey readily, yet God is pleased to give the prophet arguments to persuade, and ushers them in here. A people of a strange speech; who cannot skill of thy speech, nor thou speak (without gift of tongues) to them. Shift not off thy work as if, with Jonah, sent to a people of barbarous tongue, in which are dark and profound idioms, but as horrid to thy ear as deep and dark precipices and gulfs to the eye, as the Hebrew, deep of lip, intimates. Of an hard language; the same repeated in other words; they will need no interpreter to tell them what thou sayest to them, nor wilt thou need an interpreter to tell thee what answer they give. Thy work will be the easier, neither difficult, as things that lie deep to be digged out, nor as things of great weight and heaviness to be lifted, as both metaphors imply: this is his first argument. Next, implied in it, I send thee to thine own countrymen, whose welfare thou shouldst readily seek, and in their own tongue thou mayst express thy care for them. To the house of Israel; they still are a family that God owneth he hath not broke up housekeeping, there is further encouragement; and they are Israel’ s seed, the posterity of Jacob, and under covenant mercy; go therefore readily, for Israel shall be gathered.

Ezekiel 3:5 For thou [art] not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language, [but] to the house of Israel;Ver. 5. For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language.] Heb., Deep of lip and heavy of tongue. Qui strident sermone, et quasi e profundo gutture barbarum loquuntur. As Jonah was so sent, and those that now preach to the natives in New England in their own language, not without some good success. But to the house of Israel.] Among whom thou must use vulgari et vernaculo sermone, who also are well seen in the Scriptures; they are indeed God’ s library keepers, which is no small privilege, and therefore the better to be dealt with.

(5) To a people of a strange speech.—In Ezekiel 3:4-7 it is emphasised that Ezekiel’s immediate mission is to be, like that of his great Antitype, to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel; “and yet that they would not give the heed to him which men far below them in spiritual privilege would have gladly yielded. Similar facts are continually encountered in the Scriptures, whether in its histories, as in those of Naaman the Syrian, of the faith of the Syro-Phœnician woman (Matthew 15:21-28), and of the Roman centurion (Matthew 8:10-12), or in the express declarations of our Lord that the teaching and signs given to Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum in vain would have been more than sufficient for the conversion of Tyre, or Sidon, or even of Sodom (Matthew 11:21; Matthew 11:23; Matthew 12:41-42). If it be asked, Why then should so much of the Divine compassion be expended upon a nation which so generally refused to avail itself of its blessings? the answer must be that only thus could even a few be raised at all above the very lowest spiritual plane, and that the raising of these few leads ultimately to the elevation of many. As an accountable being, man must be left free to neglect the proffered grace; and, as in the case of the Israelites to whom Ezekiel was sent, there would always be many who choose to do so. The consequence of this neglect must be such a hardening of the heart as was now shown by these people, and every man is warned by their example of the responsibility attached to the enjoyment of religious privilege. But the same thing would have happened with any other nation; and that God’s faithfulness should not fail, and that His purposes for man’s salvation should be accomplished, more grace must yet be given and His people must still be pleaded with, that at least a remnant of them might be led to repentance and be saved from the impending ruin. Theodoret calls attention to the contrast between the restriction of the grace of the Old Dispensation to a single people, and the universal diffusion of the preaching of the Gospel.

Verse 5. Thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech] I neither send thee to thy adversaries, the Chaldeans, nor to the Medes and Persians, their enemies. Even these would more likely have hearkened unto thee than thy own countrymen.

5. a strange speech] lit. deep of lip (or speech) and heavy of tongue. The former expression perhaps refers to the inarticulateness with which, to one unacquainted with their language, foreigners appear to speak; and the other to the thickness of their utterance. The first half of the expression occurs again Isaiah 33:19, a people of deep speech, so that thou canst not perceive; and the second half is said of Moses, Exodus 4:10.

4-7. The prophet having learned the character of the message he is expected to deliver, Jehovah urges him to immediate action.