NOTES for Eze 5:1-17
The warning that most of the people will be destroyed sounds terrifying, addressed as it is to those rebuked for their lawlessness. But should we forget that the very sins for which retribution must be borne are themselves monstrously terrible? Yet when we yield to sinful temptations, sin does not seem so dreadful to us, so mortal a danger that we must flee from it. The destruction of three parts of the people is not an arbitrary sentence, but a direct consequence of the lawlessness they committed, just as delirium tremens is a result of alcoholism.
The sins denounced in the prophetic discourse exceed the lawlessness of the pagans, and their consequences are therefore far more dangerous. But if the people were raised above the pagans, the consequences of their fall from that height inevitably become more traumatic. Pagans who have no communion with the living God do not know the fullness of the moral law; yet even they will suffer less from the consequences of the evil they have done than those who turned away from God and His commandments.