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Those Who Sigh and Groan: A Heart After God's Own

Week 5 of 5 in When Faith Is Hard

New, published 21 October 2026. What else is new

In 592 BC a priest sat in his house in Babylon with the elders of Judah in front of him, and "the hand of the Lord GOD fell upon me there" (Ezekiel 8:1, ESV). The Spirit carried Ezekiel in a vision to Jerusalem and walked him through the temple. Then God sent seven men into the city. Six carried weapons. One carried a writing case, and his job was to find everyone who grieved.

In one sentence: God marks as His own those whose hearts break over what breaks His; in Ezekiel 9 the scribe set a mark on everyone who sighed and groaned over Jerusalem's abominations, and in Christ God gives that heart and seals it with His Holy Spirit, who Himself can be grieved.

✝️ Ezekiel 9:4 (ESV)

4 And the LORD said to him, "Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it."

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Types & Prophecy

  • Pattern. God has marked His own before judgment before. The blood on the doorposts was "a sign for you ... when I see the blood, I will pass over you" (Exodus 12:13, ESV). In Ezekiel 9 the mark goes on the forehead, and the scribe goes out before the executioners.
  • Prophecy. In the same vision God promised to replace the heart of stone: "I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them" (Ezekiel 11:19, ESV). He repeated it with His Spirit named: "I will put my Spirit within you" (Ezekiel 36:27, ESV; also Ezekiel 37:14; 39:29). Paul says the Spirit has written on "tablets of human hearts" (2 Corinthians 3:3, ESV), using Ezekiel's own words for stone and flesh, and every believer now has that Spirit as a seal (Ephesians 1:13).
  • Prophecy. Revelation repeats the forehead seal before judgment: "until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads" (Revelation 7:3, ESV). It ends with the same mark on all God's servants: "They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads" (Revelation 22:4, ESV).

Lessons about Jesus

  • He grieves what God grieves. In the synagogue "he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart" (Mark 3:5, ESV).
  • He weeps over the city He will judge. "And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it" (Luke 19:41, ESV). Ezekiel fell on his face for the same city (Ezekiel 9:8).
  • He carried the insults aimed at God. Paul applies Psalm 69:9 to Him: "The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me" (Romans 15:3, ESV). Jesus is the man whose heart was wholly His Father's.

Memory verses

✝️ Ezekiel 9:4 (ESV)

4 And the LORD said to him, "Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it."

✝️ Ephesians 4:30 (ESV)

30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Be Transformed

  • Think. God sees what is done in the dark (Ezekiel 8:12; 9:9), and He feels it. Sin is something that grieves a Person, and the Spirit who lives in you is that Person.
  • Attitude. Let what breaks God's heart break yours, starting with your own sin: "Search me, O God, and know my heart!" (Psalm 139:23, ESV). Grief over sin weeps over the sinner (Psalm 119:136) and prays for him.
  • Do. Name one thing your culture, your church or your own home has learned to laugh at that God calls an abomination. Bring it to Him in prayer this week, with tears if they come, as the ones God marked "sigh and groan over all the abominations" (Ezekiel 9:4, ESV), and ask Him what He wants you to do about it.

Prayer

Father, you see everything done in the dark, and you are grieved by it. You have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; you want them to turn and live. Thank you that you did not leave us with hearts of stone. You gave us your Holy Spirit and sealed us as your own. Forgive us for the sins we have stopped noticing and for the ones we have learned to laugh at. Give us the heart of your Son Jesus, who was grieved at hard hearts and wept over the city. Make us people who sigh and groan over what grieves you, and who pray for mercy while there is still time.

In Jesus' name. Amen.

Study outline

  • The vision: "Do you see?". Ezekiel 8 sets up chapter 9: God shows His priest what is done in the temple, and the elders say God does not see.
  • What grieves God. God is grieved by sin, and He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
  • The mark on the forehead. The two Hebrew words for the groaning, the tav, and the one thing the scribe was looking for.
  • The test: who groans, and when. Everyone in Jerusalem groaned in the end; the marked groaned first.
  • A heart after God's own. What 1 Samuel 13:14 means, how God chose David by looking on his heart, and how the same feeling passes from God to His people.
  • Jesus, the heart wholly God's. Christ grieved, wept and carried the reproaches aimed at His Father.
  • The mark now. The new heart and Spirit Ezekiel promised, the Spirit who seals and is grieved, the Lord who knows those who are His, and the pattern in Revelation.
  • Annex: the tav and the cross. What the early church saw in the letter.

The vision: "Do you see?"

Ezekiel was a priest (Ezekiel 1:3), taken to Babylon with King Jehoiachin in 597 BC. The vision of chapters 8-11 is dated to "the sixth year" of that exile (Ezekiel 8:1, ESV), about 592 BC. The temple still stood. It would burn in 586.

In chapter 8 God gives Ezekiel a tour. At each stop He shows him something worse: an idol at the north gate "which provokes to jealousy" (Ezekiel 8:3, ESV), seventy elders burning incense to creatures drawn on a wall, women weeping for Tammuz, and twenty-five men with their backs to the temple, bowing to the sun. And at each stop God asks the same question:

  • "Son of man, do you see what they are doing?" (Ezekiel 8:6, ESV)
  • "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark?" (Ezekiel 8:12, ESV)
  • "Have you seen this, O son of man?" (Ezekiel 8:15, ESV)
  • "Have you seen this, O son of man?" (Ezekiel 8:17, ESV)

The elders give their answer in Ezekiel 8:12: "The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land" (ESV). God repeats their words back to Ezekiel at Ezekiel 9:9 as the reason for the judgment.

So the vision is built on sight. The leaders of Israel decided God was not looking. God answered by showing His prophet everything, room by room, and asking him four times whether he saw it. This shows that God sees what is done in the dark, and He wants His servants to see it with Him.

Chapter 8 ends with God's verdict: "though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them" (Ezekiel 8:18, ESV). Chapter 9 opens with God Himself crying "in my ears with a loud voice" (Ezekiel 9:1, ESV) to summon the executioners. The ESV Study Bible notes the echo. The people would cry too late; God's cry comes first.

What grieves God

The men with the mark felt about Jerusalem what God felt about it. Scripture says plainly what that was.

God is grieved by sin

The first time Scripture says God was grieved, the cause was sin. "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth ... and it grieved him to his heart" (Genesis 6:5-6, ESV). The verb is וַיִּתְעַצֵּב (vayyitʿatsev, H6087), He was pained. Israel "grieved him in the desert" (Psalm 78:40, ESV) and "grieved his Holy Spirit" (Isaiah 63:10, ESV). The Names of the Holy Spirit works through that word and its point: only a person can be grieved.

Ezekiel says it more sharply. Two chapters before the vision, God speaks of the exiles who will remember "how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols" (Ezekiel 6:9, ESV). The verb is נִשְׁבַּרְתִּי (nishbarti, H7665), "I was broken", the same root used three verses earlier for the idols that God will break (Ezekiel 6:6). Israel's idolatry broke their idols, and it broke God.

That reading is the Hebrew text as it stands, and the ESV, NASB ("hurt"), NIV ("grieved"), CSB ("crushed") and LSB all keep it. The Septuagint has ὀμώμοκα (omōmoka, G3660, "I have sworn"), which reads one letter differently. The Hebrew is the harder reading and the one all five of those versions follow, so this study follows it too.

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked

The same God who sends the executioners says this, twice, in the same book:

✝️ Ezekiel 33:11 (ESV)

11 Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?

See also Ezekiel 18:23. God's grief has two sides. He grieves over sin, and He grieves over the death that sin brings. Ezekiel 9 shows both. God ordered the judgment, and when Ezekiel fell on his face crying "Ah, Lord GOD! Will you destroy all the remnant of Israel?" (Ezekiel 9:8, ESV), God answered him without rebuke. A heart after God's own will hold both sides too.

The mark on the forehead

Two words for grief

God's instruction to the man in linen names one quality and nothing else. He is to mark "the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it" (Ezekiel 9:4, ESV).

The Hebrew uses two participles side by side:

  • הַנֶּאֱנָחִים (ha-neʾenachim, ha-neh-eh-nah-KHEEM, H584), "those who sigh". Israel "groaned because of their slavery" in Egypt with this word (Exodus 2:23, ESV), and in the next verse "God heard their groaning", where "groaning" is the related noun נְאָקָה (neʾaqah, H5009) from the second word below.
  • הַנֶּאֱנָקִים (ha-neʾenaqim, ha-neh-eh-nah-KEEM, H602), "those who groan", or "cry out". It appears in four verses. One of them is God's command to Ezekiel on the day his wife died: "Sigh, but not aloud" (Ezekiel 24:17, ESV), so this groan can be held in.

Both are participles, so they describe people who are sighing and groaning as a settled condition. The scribe was looking for men who kept on grieving while the abominations kept on happening. What they grieved over is הַתּוֹעֵבוֹת (ha-toʿevot, H8441), "the abominations", the word God used for each stop on the tour in chapter 8 (Ezekiel 8:6, 9, 13, 15, 17).

Translations render the pair differently. The ESV has "sigh and groan", the WEB "sigh and cry", the NIV "grieve and lament". The Septuagint has καταστεναζόντων καὶ κατοδυνωμένων, "groaning and in anguish". All of them land on grief.

The tav

The mark is תָּו (tav, tahv, H8420): "put a mark" is literally "mark a tav". Tav is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the noun occurs three times: here, in Ezekiel 9:6, and in Job 31:35, where Job signs his defence, "Here is my signature!" (ESV). A tav was the mark a man made when he signed his name. In the script of Ezekiel's day the letter was a simple cross-stroke, written 𐤕 (see The Hebrew Alphabet).

So the scribe went through the city signing God's name on the foreheads of the grieving. The mark said whose they were. And God's order to the executioners was absolute: "touch no one on whom is the mark" (Ezekiel 9:6, ESV).

Judgment began at the temple

The executioners "began with the elders who were before the house" (Ezekiel 9:6, ESV). They were standing at the temple, the nearest anyone in Jerusalem stood to God. They held office, they knew the law, and they were not marked. Peter takes up the same order of judgment: "it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God" (1 Peter 4:17, ESV).

The scribe asked one question of every person in the city, the elders at the altar included: does this person grieve over what grieves God?

The test: who groans, and when

Everyone groaned in the end

Six years later Jerusalem fell, and the whole city groaned. Lamentations uses the same verb as Ezekiel 9:4, אָנַח (anach, H584), four times in its first chapter (Lamentations 1:4, 8, 11, 21): "her priests groan" (Lamentations 1:4, ESV); "Jerusalem sinned grievously ... she herself groans and turns her face away" (Lamentations 1:8, ESV).

God had already told Ezekiel this would happen. He ordered His prophet to groan in public as a sign:

✝️ Ezekiel 21:6-7 (ESV)

6 "As for you, son of man, groan; with breaking heart and bitter grief, groan before their eyes. 7 And when they say to you, 'Why do you groan?' you shall say, 'Because of the news that it is coming. Every heart will melt, and all hands will be feeble...'"

"Groan" in Ezekiel 21:6 is הֵאָנַח (heʾanach, H584), the same verb again. Everyone would groan. The question the scribe put to the city was when, and over what. The marked groaned over the sin while the city still stood. The rest groaned over the judgment after it fell.

This shows that God looks for grief over sin itself, before any consequence arrives. Grief that only comes with the consequences is grief over the loss. Paul names the two: "godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death" (2 Corinthians 7:10, ESV).

The failure has a name

Amos charged the leaders of Samaria with exactly the opposite of Ezekiel 9:4. They "drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!" (Amos 6:6, ESV). Their comfort was intact while the nation broke.

Paul made the same charge to a church. A man in Corinth was living with his father's wife, and the church was proud of its tolerance: "And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn?" (1 Corinthians 5:2, ESV). The verb is πενθέω (pentheō, G3996), the one Jesus used in "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4, ESV). Paul expected a church to mourn over sin in its own fellowship. Romans 1:32 describes the last stage of a heart that has stopped: people "not only do them but give approval to those who practice them" (ESV).

A heart after God's own

What 1 Samuel 13:14 says

The phrase "a man after his own heart" comes from Samuel's word to Saul: "The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart" (1 Samuel 13:14, ESV). The Hebrew is כִּלְבָבוֹ (kilvavo, H3824), "according to his heart". What it means is contested, and the case on both sides is real.

  • God's choice. In Babylonian royal inscriptions, a king who sets someone on a throne "according to his heart" appoints the man of his choosing. The NIV and NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bibles cite the chronicle in which Nebuchadnezzar installs a king of his own choice in Judah. In context Samuel is announcing that God has chosen Saul's replacement.
  • David's heart. God promised Israel "shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding" (Jeremiah 3:15, ESV). There "after my heart" describes men whose work matches God's.

Paul's quotation in Acts 13:22 does not settle it either way. "I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will" (Acts 13:22, ESV) joins three verses: "I have found David" (Psalm 89:20), "a man after my heart" (1 Samuel 13:14), and a closing clause whose Greek matches what God said of Cyrus, "he shall fulfill all my purpose" (Isaiah 44:28, ESV). Cyrus was a Persian king God chose for a task. So Paul's sentence ties God's choosing to the doing of His will.

God chose by looking on the heart

1 Samuel itself joins the two readings, three chapters later. God sends Samuel to Jesse: "I have provided for myself a king among his sons" (1 Samuel 16:1, ESV). The Hebrew is רָאִיתִי לִי (raʾiti li, H7200), "I have seen for myself". When Samuel admires Eliab, God corrects him with the same verb:

✝️ 1 Samuel 16:7 (ESV)

7 But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart."

God's choosing is His seeing, and what He sees is the heart. Psalm 78 tells it in that order: "He chose David his servant" (Psalm 78:70, ESV), and David shepherded Israel "with upright heart" (Psalm 78:72, ESV), literally "according to the integrity of his heart". The elders of Ezekiel 8:12 said "The LORD does not see us" with that same verb. This shows that God sees the heart He chooses, and He knows His own by it. This study uses "a heart after God's own" in that sense: the heart God chose and sees, which wants what He wants and grieves over what He grieves.

The same feeling, in God and in His people

One Hebrew word shows that feeling passing from God to His people. קוּט (qut, koot, H6962) means to feel loathing, and it occurs in eight verses.

  • God feels it. "For forty years I loathed that generation" (Psalm 95:10, ESV).
  • His servant feels it. "I look at the faithless with disgust, because they do not keep your commands" (Psalm 119:158, ESV). The same psalm has the tears: "My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law" (Psalm 119:136, ESV).
  • His restored people feel it about themselves. "Then you will remember your evil ways ... and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations" (Ezekiel 36:31, ESV; also Ezekiel 6:9; 20:43).

That last use is the safeguard. The psalmist who asks, "do I not loathe those who rise up against you?" (Psalm 139:21, ESV) goes straight on to "Search me, O God, and know my heart! ... And see if there be any grievous way in me" (Psalm 139:23-24, ESV). The heart God gives turns the same grief on its own sin first. Without that turn, grief over sin becomes the Pharisee's prayer: "God, I thank you that I am not like other men" (Luke 18:11, ESV).

Others who were marked

  • David, after his sin with Bathsheba, turned the grief on himself and asked God for the new heart: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10, ESV). He knew what God accepts: "a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise" (Psalm 51:17, ESV).
  • Ezra heard that the returned exiles had broken faith, tore his garments and "sat appalled", and "all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me" (Ezra 9:3-4, ESV).
  • Jeremiah: "my soul will weep in secret for your pride" (Jeremiah 13:17, ESV).
  • Lot lived in Sodom, and Peter says that "as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard" (2 Peter 2:8, ESV). The verb ἐβασάνιζεν (ebasanizen, from βασανίζω, G928) is imperfect: it kept happening, day after day, like the participles of Ezekiel 9:4. And "the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials" (2 Peter 2:9, ESV). Taken Before Judgment studies his rescue.

Jesus, the heart wholly God's

Every person in Ezekiel 9 who received the mark had a heart that partly matched God's. Jesus' heart matched it entirely.

He was grieved by hard hearts. When the Pharisees watched to see whether He would heal on the Sabbath, "he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart" (Mark 3:5, ESV). The participle συλλυπούμενος (syllypoumenos, G4818) has the prefix "with": He grieved with, or over, them.

He wept over the city He would judge. "And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, 'Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!'" (Luke 19:41-42, ESV). Six hundred years after Ezekiel fell on his face over Jerusalem, the Son of God wept over it.

He carried the insults aimed at His Father. David wrote, "zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me" (Psalm 69:9, ESV), and Paul applies it to Jesus (Romans 15:3). What grieved the Father fell on the Son.

And He loved what God loves. Hebrews applies Psalm 45:7 to Him: "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you" (Hebrews 1:9, ESV). This shows that God has given us, in His Son Jesus, the heart after His own in full, and He shapes ours into the likeness of His.

The mark now

The heart God promised

Ezekiel's vision of judgment carries a promise inside it. Two chapters after the scribe went out, God speaks to the exiles:

✝️ Ezekiel 11:19-20 (ESV)

19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

The next verse sorts hearts the way chapter 9 did: "But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads" (Ezekiel 11:21, ESV), the words God used of the unmarked in Ezekiel 9:10.

Ezekiel returns to the new heart in chapters 18 and 36, and from chapter 36 on he names the Holy Spirit as the one who gives it life:

  • The command. "Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel?" (Ezekiel 18:31, ESV).
  • The gift. "I will sprinkle clean water on you ... And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you ... And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes" (Ezekiel 36:25-27, ESV).
  • The life. In the valley of dry bones "the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet" (Ezekiel 37:10, ESV), and God explains: "I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live" (Ezekiel 37:14, ESV). He ends the section, "I will not hide my face anymore from them, when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel" (Ezekiel 39:29, ESV).

God commands a new heart in Ezekiel 18 and gives one in Ezekiel 36. He requires what He then supplies. Moses had promised it ("the LORD your God will circumcise your heart", Deuteronomy 30:6, ESV), and Jeremiah too: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33, ESV), a promise Hebrews quotes twice (Hebrews 8:10; 10:16).

Ezekiel 36 also gives the order. The new heart and the Spirit come first (Ezekiel 36:26-27); then "you will remember your evil ways ... and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations" (Ezekiel 36:31, ESV). The grief follows the gift, and God does it "for the sake of my holy name" (Ezekiel 36:22, ESV). This shows that God Himself creates the grief He looks for. The sighing of Ezekiel 9:4 grows from a heart He gives. The men of Ezekiel 9 did not earn their mark by grieving; Ezekiel 14:14 says even Noah, Daniel and Job "would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness" (ESV). Their grief was what the scribe could see of a heart that already belonged to God.

Spoken to the house of Israel

These promises are spoken to "the house of Israel" and joined to the land (Ezekiel 36:24, 28; 37:14). Paul still expects their fulfilment for Israel: "all Israel will be saved ... 'and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins'" (Romans 11:26-27, ESV). Dispensational teachers differ on how the church relates to that new covenant. They agree that the Holy Spirit is given to every believer now, and that the gathering into the land waits for Israel; Israel's Regathering and Refining works through Ezekiel 36 for Israel.

The same care sorts Ezekiel 9 itself. The scribe's ink, the six executioners and the fall of the city belonged to Jerusalem between 592 and 586 BC, and no one today is marked that way. What carries over is what the vision shows about God: He sees what is done in the dark, He is grieved by it, and He knows and keeps His own before judgment falls. The rest of Scripture teaches each of those plainly, which is why they apply to you.

The heart Jesus and Paul preached

Jesus told Nicodemus, "unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (John 3:5, ESV), and then asked, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?" (John 3:10, ESV). Jesus expected a teacher of Israel to know this from Scripture. Ezekiel 36:25-27 puts clean water and God's Spirit together in a new birth of the heart, and it is the likeliest text He had in mind, though Isaiah 44:3 pairs water and Spirit too and John names neither. At the feast Jesus said rivers of living water would flow from the believer's heart, and John adds, "this he said about the Spirit" (John 7:38-39, ESV).

Paul names the fulfilment. The Corinthians are "a letter from Christ ... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Corinthians 3:3, ESV). His Greek for "of stone" and "of flesh", λίθιναι (lithinai, G3035) and σάρκιναι (sarkinai, G4560), is the Septuagint's wording for the heart of stone and the heart of flesh in Ezekiel 11:19 and 36:26. The stone tablets of Sinai (Exodus 31:18) stand behind it too. Paul calls himself a minister "of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:6, ESV).

Sealed by the Spirit who grieves

The New Testament joins the seal and the grief in one verse:

✝️ Ephesians 4:30 (ESV)

30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

"Grieve" is λυπέω (lypeō, G3076), and "sealed" is σφραγίζω (sphragizō, G4972). Every believer was sealed with the Holy Spirit when they believed (Ephesians 1:13-14; see the seal and the guarantee). The seal is God's act, given on faith in Jesus, and it is His guarantee that He will finish what He began. The One who seals you is a Person who is grieved by sin. Paul's warning in Ephesians 4:30 is about your own sin: the Spirit who marked you as God's own feels what God feels.

So the heart of Ezekiel 9 is now the believer's by the Spirit who lives in them. He grieves in you over sin. He also "intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (Romans 8:26, ESV), and the groaning of God's people is His work in them.

The Lord knows those who are His

God's knowing of His own is written into the foundation itself:

✝️ 2 Timothy 2:19 (ESV)

19 But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: "The Lord knows those who are his," and, "Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity."

The first line quotes the Greek of Numbers 16:5, with one change: the Septuagint reads "God knows", and Paul writes "the Lord", which is what the Hebrew has (the LORD's own name). Korah had challenged Moses and Aaron, and Moses answered: "In the morning the LORD will show who is his, and who is holy, and will bring him near to him. The one whom he chooses he will bring near to him" (Numbers 16:5, ESV). Knowing and choosing stand side by side; "chooses" is יִבְחַר (yivchar, H977). God's own were already His, and the morning made it visible. Then came the call, "Depart, please, from the tents of these wicked men" (Numbers 16:26, ESV), and the ground opened (Numbers 16:32). Paul's second line has no exact source. Its verb ἀφίστημι (aphistēmi, G868), "depart", is the one in the Greek of Isaiah 52:11: "Depart, depart, go out from there; touch no unclean thing" (ESV).

So the seal reads in Ezekiel 9's order. God knows His own first. Then His own can be seen, leaving what He hates.

The remnant God kept for Himself

The word "remnant" carries the same truth. It is built on שָׁאַר (shaʾar, H7604), "to leave". Ezekiel used it of himself in Ezekiel 9:8, "I was left", and then asked whether God would destroy "all the remnant of Israel" (ESV). When God tells Elijah who is left, He is the one doing the leaving: "I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal" (1 Kings 19:18, ESV). Paul quotes it as "I have kept for myself seven thousand men" (Romans 11:4, ESV) and draws the conclusion:

✝️ Romans 11:5-6 (ESV)

5 So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

"For myself" is in neither the Hebrew nor Brenton's Septuagint. The seven thousand can be described by what they did not do, and Paul grounds them in what God did: He kept them (When Love Grows Cold reads Romans 11:1-6 in full). Isaiah saw the same remnant as a list: "everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem" (Isaiah 4:3, ESV). Malachi saw a "book of remembrance ... of those who feared the LORD", and God's promise over it: "They shall be mine ... and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him" (Malachi 3:16-17, ESV). "Spare" there is חָמַל (chamal, H2550), the pity the executioners were told not to show (Ezekiel 9:5) and God withheld from the unmarked (Ezekiel 9:10). This shows that God's own are His by His choosing, kept by His grace, and known to Him by name before judgment falls.

The pattern returns

Revelation repeats Ezekiel 9. Before judgment falls on the earth an angel cries, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads" (Revelation 7:3, ESV). The noun for "foreheads", μέτωπον (metōpon, G3359), is the one the Septuagint uses at Ezekiel 9:4. When the locusts come they may harm "only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads" (Revelation 9:4, ESV), and the sealed later stand with the Lamb with "his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads" (Revelation 14:1, ESV). The ESV, NIV Biblical Theology and both Cultural Backgrounds study Bibles name Ezekiel 9:4 as the background. Read with this site's dispensational framework, the 144,000 "sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel" (Revelation 7:4, ESV) are Jewish servants of God sealed during the Tribulation, after the church has been caught up (see The Tribulation). Interpreters differ on whether the 144,000 are ethnic Israel or the whole church, and Israel and the Church calls its own treatment of Revelation 7 the weakest part of its case, because the chapter is apocalyptic imagery. The pattern holds on either reading: God marks His own before His wrath falls, and the destroyer touches none of them.

The breath, the covenant and the name

Revelation draws on Ezekiel's promises of the Spirit as well as its mark. When God raises His two witnesses, "a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet" (Revelation 11:11, ESV). The Septuagint of Ezekiel 37:10 has the same three pieces, πνεῦμα (pneuma, G4151, "breath"), "entered" and "stood on their feet", and the ESV Study Bible cites it. The covenant line Ezekiel repeats ("And they shall be my people, and I will be their God", Ezekiel 11:20, ESV; in similar words at 36:28 and 37:27) is the voice from the throne at the end: "they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God" (Revelation 21:3, ESV).

And the mark on the forehead has its last appearance there. Of all God's servants in the new Jerusalem, "They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads" (Revelation 22:4, ESV). Before his temple vision, Ezekiel's promises of restoration end with God saying, "I will not hide my face anymore" (Ezekiel 39:29, ESV). The scribe's mark in Jerusalem was a signature for one terrible day. The name on the forehead in Revelation 22 belongs to a people who will see His face.

Annex: the tav and the cross

The early church saw the cross in Ezekiel's mark, and the reading is old. Two second-century translators of the Old Testament into Greek, Aquila and Theodotion, left the letter untranslated and wrote "Thau", as Origen records (Selecta in Ezechielem, cited in the editor's note to the Ante-Nicene Fathers translation of Tertullian). Around AD 207 Tertullian wrote that God "signed them with that very seal of which Ezekiel spake ... Now the Greek letter Tau and our own letter T is the very form of the cross, which He predicted would be the sign on our foreheads" (Against Marcion 3.22, ANF 3).

The shape is a fact: the tav of Ezekiel's script was a cross-stroke. The meaning is a later Christian reading. Ezekiel 9 itself presents the tav as a mark of ownership, the kind of mark Job used to sign his name (Job 31:35), and the New Testament never cites Ezekiel 9:4 for the cross. Tertullian's reading fits the gospel. The cross is where God's grief over sin and His mercy to sinners meet, and those who belong to Christ are marked by it. The cross in the tav is a fitting Christian reading; the teaching of Ezekiel 9 rests on the mark of ownership the text itself describes.

Discussion questions

  1. The language. Ezekiel 9:4's two participles describe men who kept on sighing and groaning, and Peter uses an imperfect for Lot, who "was tormenting his righteous soul" day after day (2 Peter 2:8). What separates that kind of grief from a moment of shock at the news?
  2. The text in its context. God walked Ezekiel past every abomination in the temple and asked four times whether he saw it (Ezekiel 8:6, 12, 15, 17). Why would God make His prophet look before the scribe went out?
  3. Christ. Jesus "looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart" (Mark 3:5) and then healed the man. What does that tell you about how anger and grief over sin worked together in Him?
  4. The hard part. The psalmist says "Do I not loathe those who rise up against you?" (Psalm 139:21), and God says "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 33:11). How do you hold those two sentences together?
  5. The text in its context. God says "make yourselves a new heart" (Ezekiel 18:31) and also "I will give you a new heart" (Ezekiel 36:26). What does each sentence ask of the person who hears it?
  6. The hard part. "The LORD looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7) and "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Timothy 2:19). What comfort, and what warning, do those two sentences hold for someone unsure whether their own grief over sin is real?
  7. Be transformed. Amos condemned people who "are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph" (Amos 6:6). What has your own heart stopped grieving over, and what would it take for it to start again?
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Group study · 40 minutes

Those Who Sigh and Groan: A Heart After God's Own

Ezekiel 9:1-11

The point God marks as His own those whose hearts break over what breaks His; in Ezekiel 9 the scribe set a mark on everyone who sighed and groaned over Jerusalem's abominations, and in Christ God gives that heart and seals it with His Holy Spirit, who Himself can be grieved.

0–5min

Ask: What grieves God? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

5–12minRead it aloud BSB

Ezekiel 9:1-11 1Then I heard Him call out in a loud voice, saying, “Draw near, O executioners of the city, each with a weapon of destruction in hand.” 2And I saw six men coming from the direction of the Upper Gate, which faces north, each with a weapon of slaughter in his hand. With them was another man clothed in linen who had a writing kit at his side. And they came in and stood beside the bronze altar. 3Then the glory of the God of Israel rose from above the cherubim, where it had been, and moved to the threshold of the temple. And He called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side. 4“Go throughout the city of Jerusalem,” said the LORD, “and put a mark on the foreheads of the men sighing and groaning over all the abominations committed there.” 5And as I listened, He said to the others, “Follow him through the city and start killing; do not show pity or spare anyone! 6Slaughter the old men, the young men and maidens, the women and children; but do not go near anyone who has the mark. Now begin at My sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were before the temple. 7Then He told them, “Defile the temple and fill the courts with the slain. Go forth!” So they went out and began killing throughout the city. 8While they were killing, I was left alone. And I fell facedown and cried out, “Oh, Lord GOD, when You pour out Your wrath on Jerusalem, will You destroy the entire remnant of Israel?” 9He replied, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of bloodshed, and the city is full of perversity. For they say, ‘The LORD has forsaken the land; the LORD does not see.’ 10But as for Me, I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. I will bring their deeds down upon their own heads.” 11Then the man clothed in linen with the writing kit at his side reported back, “I have done as You commanded.”

12–25minLook closer
What does it say?
What did it mean to them?
What does it mean for us?
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Those Who Sigh and Groan: A Heart After God's Own

The study in brief
  1. The vision: "Do you see?". Ezekiel 8 sets up chapter 9: God shows His priest what is done in the temple, and the elders say God does not see.
  2. What grieves God. God is grieved by sin, and He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
  3. The mark on the forehead. The two Hebrew words for the groaning, the tav, and the one thing the scribe was looking for.
  4. The test: who groans, and when. Everyone in Jerusalem groaned in the end; the marked groaned first.
  5. A heart after God's own. What 1 Samuel 13:14 means, how God chose David by looking on his heart, and how the same feeling passes from God to His people.
  6. Jesus, the heart wholly God's. Christ grieved, wept and carried the reproaches aimed at His Father.
  7. The mark now. The new heart and Spirit Ezekiel promised, the Spirit who seals and is grieved, the Lord who knows those who are His, and the pattern in Revelation.
  8. Annex: the tav and the cross. What the early church saw in the letter.
Notes
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Those Who Sigh and Groan: A Heart After God's Own

12–16minStep 1 · The vision: "Do you see?"

1The text in its context. God walked Ezekiel past every abomination in the temple and asked four times whether he saw it (Ezekiel 8:6, 12, 15, 17). Why would God make His prophet look before the scribe went out?

16–20minStep 2 · What grieves God

2The hard part. The psalmist says "Do I not loathe those who rise up against you?" (Psalm 139:21), and God says "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 33:11). How do you hold those two sentences together?

Step 3 · The mark on the forehead
Step 4 · The test: who groans, and when
20–27minStep 5 · A heart after God's own

3The language. Ezekiel 9:4's two participles describe men who kept on sighing and groaning, and Peter uses an imperfect for Lot, who "was tormenting his righteous soul" day after day (2 Peter 2:8). What separates that kind of grief from a moment of shock at the news?

4The hard part. "The LORD looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7) and "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Timothy 2:19). What comfort, and what warning, do those two sentences hold for someone unsure whether their own grief over sin is real?

27–31minStep 6 · Jesus, the heart wholly God's

5Christ. Jesus "looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart" (Mark 3:5) and then healed the man. What does that tell you about how anger and grief over sin worked together in Him?

31–35minStep 7 · The mark now

6The text in its context. God says "make yourselves a new heart" (Ezekiel 18:31) and also "I will give you a new heart" (Ezekiel 36:26). What does each sentence ask of the person who hears it?

Step 8 · Annex: the tav and the cross
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Those Who Sigh and Groan: A Heart After God's Own

35–40minBe transformed

7Be transformed. Amos condemned people who "are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph" (Amos 6:6). What has your own heart stopped grieving over, and what would it take for it to start again?

  • Think. God sees what is done in the dark (Ezekiel 8:12; 9:9), and He feels it. Sin is something that grieves a Person, and the Spirit who lives in you is that Person.
  • Attitude. Let what breaks God's heart break yours, starting with your own sin: "Search me, O God, and know my heart!" (Psalm 139:23, ESV). Grief over sin weeps over the sinner (Psalm 119:136) and prays for him.
  • Do. Name one thing your culture, your church or your own home has learned to laugh at that God calls an abomination. Bring it to Him in prayer this week, with tears if they come, as the ones God marked "sigh and groan over all the abominations" (Ezekiel 9:4, ESV), and ask Him what He wants you to do about it.
Memory verse

And the LORD said to him, "Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it."

Ezekiel 9:4 (ESV)
Pray together

Father, you see everything done in the dark, and you are grieved by it. You have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; you want them to turn and live. Thank you that you did not leave us with hearts of stone. You gave us your Holy Spirit and sealed us as your own. Forgive us for the sins we have stopped noticing and for the ones we have learned to laugh at. Give us the heart of your Son Jesus, who was grieved at hard hearts and wept over the city. Make us people who sigh and groan over what grieves you, and who pray for mercy while there is still time.

In Jesus' name. Amen.

Notes
The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/christian-life/those-who-sigh-and-groan/
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Group study · step by step

Those Who Sigh and Groan: A Heart After God's Own

Ezekiel 9:1-11

Open Ask: What grieves God? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

Read it aloud Ezekiel 9:1-11

Step 1The vision: "Do you see?" — Ezekiel 8 sets up chapter 9: God shows His priest what is done in the temple, and the elders say God does not see.

1The text in its context. God walked Ezekiel past every abomination in the temple and asked four times whether he saw it (Ezekiel 8:6, 12, 15, 17). Why would God make His prophet look before the scribe went out?

Step 2What grieves God — God is grieved by sin, and He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.Key verses: Ezekiel 33:11

2The hard part. The psalmist says "Do I not loathe those who rise up against you?" (Psalm 139:21), and God says "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 33:11). How do you hold those two sentences together?

Step 3The mark on the forehead — The two Hebrew words for the groaning, the tav, and the one thing the scribe was looking for.
Step 4The test: who groans, and when — Everyone in Jerusalem groaned in the end; the marked groaned first.Key verses: Ezekiel 21:6-7
Step 5A heart after God's own — What 1 Samuel 13:14 means, how God chose David by looking on his heart, and how the same feeling passes from God to His people.

3The language. Ezekiel 9:4's two participles describe men who kept on sighing and groaning, and Peter uses an imperfect for Lot, who "was tormenting his righteous soul" day after day (2 Peter 2:8). What separates that kind of grief from a moment of shock at the news?

4The hard part. "The LORD looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7) and "The Lord knows those who are his" (2 Timothy 2:19). What comfort, and what warning, do those two sentences hold for someone unsure whether their own grief over sin is real?

Step 6Jesus, the heart wholly God's — Christ grieved, wept and carried the reproaches aimed at His Father.

5Christ. Jesus "looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart" (Mark 3:5) and then healed the man. What does that tell you about how anger and grief over sin worked together in Him?

Step 7The mark now — The new heart and Spirit Ezekiel promised, the Spirit who seals and is grieved, the Lord who knows those who are His, and the pattern in Revelation.Key verses: Ezekiel 11:19-20; Ephesians 4:30; 2 Timothy 2:19

6The text in its context. God says "make yourselves a new heart" (Ezekiel 18:31) and also "I will give you a new heart" (Ezekiel 36:26). What does each sentence ask of the person who hears it?

Step 8Annex: the tav and the cross — What the early church saw in the letter.
Be transformed

7Be transformed. Amos condemned people who "are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph" (Amos 6:6). What has your own heart stopped grieving over, and what would it take for it to start again?

  • Think. God sees what is done in the dark (Ezekiel 8:12; 9:9), and He feels it. Sin is something that grieves a Person, and the Spirit who lives in you is that Person.
  • Attitude. Let what breaks God's heart break yours, starting with your own sin: "Search me, O God, and know my heart!" (Psalm 139:23, ESV). Grief over sin weeps over the sinner (Psalm 119:136) and prays for him.
  • Do. Name one thing your culture, your church or your own home has learned to laugh at that God calls an abomination. Bring it to Him in prayer this week, with tears if they come, as the ones God marked "sigh and groan over all the abominations" (Ezekiel 9:4, ESV), and ask Him what He wants you to do about it.
Page 1 of 2 · print double-sided, flip on long edgeScripture: BSB, public domain · ESV® © 2001 Crossway, used by permission

Those Who Sigh and Groan: A Heart After God's Own

The point God marks as His own those whose hearts break over what breaks His; in Ezekiel 9 the scribe set a mark on everyone who sighed and groaned over Jerusalem's abominations, and in Christ God gives that heart and seals it with His Holy Spirit, who Himself can be grieved.

The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/christian-life/those-who-sigh-and-groan/
Page 2 of 2 · print double-sided, flip on long edgeScripture: BSB, public domain · ESV® © 2001 Crossway, used by permission
  • ESV Study Bible (Crossway) — verse text throughout; notes on Ezekiel 6:8-10, 9:1-11, 9:3-7, 9:6, 9:8-10, 18:30-32, Revelation 7:1-3 and 11:11-14.
  • NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible (Zondervan) — notes on Ezekiel 6:9, 9:4 and Revelation 7:3.
  • NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan) — notes on 1 Samuel 13:14 ("of his own choosing") and Revelation 7:3.
  • NLT Life Application Study Bible (Tyndale) — note on Ezekiel 9, consulted as an independent check on reading the marked as a faithful minority.
  • NASB, NIV, CSB and LSB — compared at Ezekiel 6:9.
  • Septuagint (Brenton's Greek text) — Ezekiel 6:9, 9:4, 11:19, 36:26, 37:10; Numbers 16:5; 1 Kings 19:18; Isaiah 52:11.
  • Macula Hebrew (WLC) and Macula Greek (SBLGNT) — occurrence data for אָנַח, אָנַק, תָּו and קוּט; unfoldingWord ULT interlinear.
  • Tertullian, Against Marcion 3.22, in Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 3 (Roberts & Donaldson, eds.), with the editor's note citing Origen, Selecta in Ezechielem.

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