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Ezekiel, part 16, The Prophecy of Hair

Ezekiel 5:1-4 says,

¹ As for you, son of man, take a sharp sword; take and use it as a barber’s razor on your head and beard. Then take scales for weighing and divide the hair. ² One third you shall burn in the fire at the center of the city, when the days of the siege are completed. Then you shall take one third and strike it with the sword all around the city, and one third you shall scatter to the wind; and I will unsheathe a sword behind them. ³ Take also a few in number from them and bind them in the edges [kanaph, “corners”] of your robes. ⁴ Take again some of them and throw them into the fire and burn them in the fire; from it a fire will spread in all the house of Israel.

Ezekiel 5:1–4 presents a prophetic picture of Jerusalem’s coming judgment. Ezekiel’s hair represents the people, and the way he handles it shows how thoroughly the Babylonian siege would scatter and consume them. Yet God also tells him to preserve a few hairs—a small but significant sign of a protected remnant.

The Sword Used as a Razor

God tells Ezekiel to shave his head and beard with a sharp sword. The instrument of warfare becomes the instrument of humiliation. The shaving portrays Jerusalem stripped of its dignity and security. For Ezekiel, a priest, the act carried an additional force, since priestly holiness ordinarily included restrictions on shaving the head and beard. Leviticus 21:1, 5 says,

¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the priests… ⁵ They shall not make any baldness on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts in their flesh.”

The prophet must then weigh and divide the hair. This shows that the coming calamity would be measured, because, under biblical law, all judgment is proportionate to the crime (sin). Babylon would carry out the destruction, but the judgment remained under God’s authority.

The Remnant

Ezekiel uses the word kanaph, translated “edges” (of his robe). It is the same word translated “corners” in Numbers 15:38-40, which explains that the tassels reminded Israel to remember and obey God’s commandments and to be holy to Him. The hairs preserved at Ezekiel’s garment corners may therefore suggest a remnant kept within God’s covenant care.

These remnant hairs are placed in the garment corners where the law required the covenant-reminder tassels with blue thread to remind them of the law. The color blue, of course, pictures the sky, or heavens, showing that “the law is spiritual” (Romans 7:14).

We see, then, that hair speaks prophetically of people. In Ezekiel 5, then, the small portion of hair protected in the corners of the prophet’s robe, are the remnant of grace which God has chosen to fulfill His covenant plan. (See Romans 11:1-7.)

Incidentally, there are related laws that also speak of the remnant. The “edges” (pe’ah) of the beard in Leviticus 19:27 have a close connection with the “corners” (pe’ah) of the field in Leviticus 19:9. Both use the Hebrew pe’ah, meaning an edge, side, or corner. The edges of the beard are the sideburns, and this is why religious Jews often have long sideburns.

The edges of a field were gleanings that were devoted to God as provision for widows, aliens, and orphans—those who lack a natural covering to protect and provide for them. In harvesting olives, they were to beat the tree on one occasion only, leaving the rest as gleanings. The law concerning gleaning an olive tree is Deuteronomy 24:20,

²⁰ When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow.

Those who have no covering (or orphaned by the church) have the right to appeal to God Himself to be their covering (Exodus 22:21-24). David also benefited from this law while Saul was hunting him as an outlaw. David’s parents apparently were forced to renounce him. In Psalm 27:10 David says:

¹⁰ For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up.

When David lost the protection of his father’s covering, God took that responsibility upon Himself. In doing so, David entered a special fatherly relationship with God Himself, and this also applies to widows, orphans, and aliens (non-Israelites). More broadly, it identifies the remnant people. The law thus provides for and protects those that He covers directly.

These principles are seen again in Micah 7:1, 2, where God condemns the Israelites for violating this law of gleanings:

¹ Woe is me! For I am like the fruit pickers, like the grape gatherers. There is not a cluster of grapes to eat, or a first-ripe fig which I crave. ² The godly person has perished from the land…

God’s command for Ezekiel to cut his beard no doubt included cutting the sideburns as well. This showed that even the remnant (like Daniel and Ezekiel) were to go into captivity along with the ungodly.

The Three Portions of Hair

God Himself explains these portions in Ezekiel 5:12. One third of the hair was burned within the city, representing those who would die from plague and famine during the siege. One third was struck with the sword around the city, representing those killed in the actual fighting. One third was scattered to the wind, representing those dispersed among the nations.

The statement, “I will unsheathe a sword behind them” (Ezekiel 5:2), means that escaping Jerusalem would not necessarily mean escaping judgment. Their underlying problem was their covenant relationship with God; merely changing their location could not resolve it.

The few hairs are preserved in Ezekiel’s garment (verse 3). God instructs the prophet to take a few hairs and bind them in the edges of his robe. These represent a small remnant preserved amid the national catastrophe. The passage does not yet explain everything that God will accomplish through that remnant. It establishes that preservation is deliberate, just as the judgment is deliberate.

Some of the preserved hairs are burned (verse 4). This is the sobering qualification. Ezekiel must take some even from those few hairs and throw them into the fire. Belonging to the surviving remnant does not automatically place a person beyond further judgment. We are given many examples of martyrs throughout Scripture and history itself.

Physical survival and spiritual faithfulness are not identical. The fire that goes out “to all the house of Israel” broadens the warning beyond Jerusalem alone, extending it even to the House of Israel that had already been exiled to Assyria more than a century earlier. The city’s destruction reveals a covenant crisis affecting the whole people.