---
title: "Those Who Sigh and Groan: A Heart After God's Own"
category: "spiritual-disciplines"
description: "In Ezekiel 9 God sent a scribe through Jerusalem to mark everyone who sighed and groaned over its abominations, and the marked were spared. What grieves God grieves His own, and in Christ He gives that heart and seals it with His Spirit."
tags: ["ezekiel", "psalms", "lamentations", "amos", "1-samuel", "mark", "luke", "1-corinthians", "ephesians", "2-peter", "revelation", "numbers", "romans", "2-corinthians", "john", "2-timothy", "hebrews", "repentance", "remnant", "new-covenant", "holy-spirit", "method/word-study", "lang/hebrew", "lang/greek"]
questions: ["What grieves God?", "What is the mark in Ezekiel 9?", "What does 'a man after God's own heart' mean?"]
draft: false
primary_passage: "Ezekiel 9:1-11"
bible_references: ["Ezekiel 8:1-18", "Ezekiel 6:9", "Ezekiel 11:13", "Ezekiel 11:19-20", "Ezekiel 14:14", "Ezekiel 18:23", "Ezekiel 21:6-7", "Ezekiel 24:17", "Ezekiel 33:11", "Ezekiel 36:26-27", "Ezekiel 36:31", "Genesis 6:5-6", "Exodus 2:23-25", "Exodus 12:13", "Job 31:35", "1 Samuel 13:14", "Psalm 69:9", "Psalm 78:40-41", "Psalm 95:10", "Psalm 119:136", "Psalm 119:158", "Psalm 139:21-24", "Isaiah 63:10", "Jeremiah 3:15", "Jeremiah 13:17", "Lamentations 1:4", "Lamentations 1:8", "Amos 6:6", "Ezra 9:3-4", "Matthew 5:4", "Mark 3:5", "Luke 18:11", "Luke 19:41-42", "Acts 13:22", "Romans 1:32", "Romans 8:26", "Romans 15:3", "1 Corinthians 5:2", "2 Corinthians 7:10", "Ephesians 1:13-14", "Ephesians 4:30", "2 Timothy 2:19", "Hebrews 1:9", "1 Peter 4:17", "2 Peter 2:7-9", "Revelation 7:2-3", "Revelation 9:4", "Revelation 14:1", "1 Samuel 16:1", "1 Samuel 16:7", "Psalm 78:70-72", "Psalm 89:20", "Isaiah 44:28", "Numbers 16:5", "Numbers 16:26", "Numbers 16:32", "Isaiah 52:11", "1 Kings 19:18", "Romans 11:4-6", "Romans 11:26-27", "Isaiah 4:3-4", "Malachi 3:16-18", "Ezekiel 9:10", "Ezekiel 11:21", "Ezekiel 18:31", "Ezekiel 36:22-25", "Ezekiel 37:10", "Ezekiel 37:14", "Ezekiel 37:27", "Ezekiel 39:29", "Deuteronomy 30:6", "Jeremiah 31:33", "Jeremiah 32:39", "John 3:5", "John 3:10", "John 7:38-39", "2 Corinthians 3:3", "2 Corinthians 3:6", "Exodus 31:18", "Revelation 11:11", "Revelation 21:3", "Revelation 22:4", "Psalm 51:10", "Psalm 51:17", "Psalm 45:7", "Hebrews 8:10", "Hebrews 10:16", "Isaiah 44:3", "Romans 11:4"]
date_created: 2026-10-21
date_modified: 2026-10-31
ai_provider_models:
- anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
---
# Those Who Sigh and Groan: A Heart After God's Own
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](https://the-way.lewy.au/about/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?"](#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](#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-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](#the-test-who-groans-and-when). Everyone in Jerusalem groaned in
the end; the marked groaned first.
- [A heart after God's own](#a-heart-after-gods-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](#jesus-the-heart-wholly-gods). Christ grieved, wept and carried
the reproaches aimed at His Father.
- [The mark now](#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](#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](https://the-way.lewy.au/holy-spirit/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](https://the-way.lewy.au/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](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/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](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/israels-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](https://the-way.lewy.au/holy-spirit/names-of-the-holy-spirit/#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](https://the-way.lewy.au/christian-life/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](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/tribulation/#the-seals-and-the-sealed)).
Interpreters differ on whether the 144,000 are ethnic Israel or the whole church, and [Israel and the
Church](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/israel-and-the-church/#two-companies-in-revelation-7) 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](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/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?
## References & Recommended Reading
- **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*.
### On this site
- [The Names of the Holy Spirit](https://the-way.lewy.au/holy-spirit/names-of-the-holy-spirit/) — the Holy Spirit who
can be grieved (Isaiah 63:10) and who seals (Ephesians 1:13-14).
- [Taken Before Judgment](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/taken-before-judgment/) — Lot rescued from Sodom, with
Enoch, Noah and Elijah.
- [The Tribulation](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/tribulation/#the-seals-and-the-sealed) — the 144,000 sealed
before the trumpet judgments.
- [Israel and the Church](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/israel-and-the-church/#two-companies-in-revelation-7)
— the two companies of Revelation 7, and how secure that reading is.
- [Israel's Regathering and Refining](https://the-way.lewy.au/israel-and-church/israels-regathering-and-refining/) —
Ezekiel 36's new heart and Spirit as a promise to Israel.
- [When Love Grows Cold](https://the-way.lewy.au/christian-life/when-love-grows-cold/) — the remnant chosen by grace in Romans 11:1-6.
- [The Two Witnesses](https://the-way.lewy.au/last-things/two-witnesses/) — Revelation 11, raised by the breath of life.
- [Weeks](https://the-way.lewy.au/feasts/weeks/) — the law given at Sinai and the Spirit given at Pentecost.
- [The Hebrew Alphabet](https://the-way.lewy.au/hebrew/alphabet/) — the *tav* in each script.