Ezekiel 9
Ezekiel 9 is a vision of God’s servants’ cleansing Israel. God tells a servant with an ink horn to put a mark on the forehead of all of those who “sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within [the temple]” (Ezekiel 9:4). These are spared. He tells his servants with battle-axes to kill the rest and to “begin at My sanctuary.” Ezekiel laments the loss of God’s people, but God responds, “My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense their deeds on their own head” (Ezekiel 9:10).
God will judge the wicked.
The interpretation of this vision is in Ezekiel 11:14-21. God explains that He will gather His people from where they have been scattered and give Israel to them. God says, “Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 11:19-20). What will be the fate of the rest? “But as for those whose hearts follow the desire for their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their deeds on their own heads,” (Ezekiel 11:21-22).
Peter alludes to Ezekiel’s prophecy in 1 Peter 4:17: “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?” For the wicked, who will not change their hearts and turn to God, their deeds are on their own heads. David understood. He wrote, “Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts….” (Psalm 51:6).