Context No. 3673 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Ezekiel 21:18-23: in context

18The LORD’s word came to me again, saying, 19“Also, you son of man, appoint two ways, that the sword of the king of Babylon may come. They both will come out of one land, and mark out a place. Mark it out at the head of the way to the city. 20You shall appoint a way for the sword to come to Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and to Judah in Jerusalem the fortified. 21For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination. He shook the arrows back and forth. He consulted the teraphim. He looked in the liver. 22In his right hand was the lot for Jerusalem, to set battering rams, to open the mouth in the slaughter, to lift up the voice with shouting, to set battering rams against the gates, to cast up mounds, and to build forts. 23It will be to them as a false divination in their sight, who have sworn oaths to them; but he brings iniquity to memory, that they may be taken.

Ezekiel is told to mark two roads for the sword of the king of Babylon, one to Ammon and one to Jerusalem. And the passage describes the Babylonian king standing at the fork, using pagan divination, shaking his arrows, consulting his idols, examining a liver, to decide which way to march. And by these means the lot falls on Jerusalem.

What is striking is that even the pagan king's superstitious divination serves God's purpose. The Babylonian thought he was consulting his gods and his arrows; in fact, the judgment God had already determined upon Jerusalem was being carried out. God's sovereignty extends even over the decisions of those who do not know him, even over what looks like chance or superstition. The king's arrows and omens were, unknown to him, instruments of a larger purpose. This is sobering when the purpose is judgment, but it is also assuring: nothing, not even the decisions of hostile powers or the workings of apparent chance, falls outside God's sovereign hand.

Do I trust that God's sovereign purpose reaches even over the decisions of those who do not know him, so that nothing, not even what looks like chance, falls outside his hand?

Sources

Ezekiel 21:21: "For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way... to use divination. He shook the arrows back and forth. He consulted the teraphim. He looked in the liver."
Ezekiel 21:22: "In his right hand was the lot for Jerusalem, to set battering rams... against the gates."
Proverbs 16:33: "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD."