EZEKIEL

Ezekiel is a son of a priestly family. He is born in 622 BC, towards the end of the kingdom of Judah, and sees his nation deteriorate both spiritually and politically. Ezekiel is seventeen years old when Jerusalem is first conquered by Babylon in 605 BC and many Jews are exiled. He is twenty-five years old when Babylon conquers the rebellious Jerusalem again in 597 BC and many more Jews, among them Ezekiel, are exiled. In 592 BC, when he is thirty years old, the age he should have started his priestly duties at the temple, he finds himself in exile in Babylon, far from the temple. This is when God grants him a powerful vision and calls him to be a prophet to the exiled Jews in Babylon.
When Ezekiel starts his prophetic ministry, there are Jews still in Jerusalem who so far have escaped the exile, though Jerusalem has been conquered by Babylon already twice. These Jews are proud and think themselves favored by God and superior to those exiled, though they are steeped in idolatry, syncretism and societal injustice. On the other hand the exiled Jews think themselves abandoned by God and unjustly singled out for judgment.
This is the situation when Ezekiel sees an awe-inspiring vision of God on the throne, seated on a dome carried by four living creatures (Eze 1). The most shocking thing about the vision is that he sees the glory and presence of God not in the temple in Jerusalem, where he would have thought it to be, but in Babylon, in a heathen land. Later Ezekiel sees a related and equally shocking vision: He sees the Jerusalem temple filled with Jews worshiping all sorts of idols and the glory and presence of God departing from the temple (Eze 8-11).
These visions become his message: God’s favor and calling is no longer with those left in Jerusalem (they are more like rats in a trap), but with those in exile who went through judgment and accepted God’s correction. Ezekiel becomes the encourager of the exiled Jews, telling them that God has not abandoned them, rather that they should accept God’s correction, be faithful to him in exile and hope for the promised return from exile, that God will surely and sovereignly bring about. The blessing and calling of God is not on those in Jerusalem, but on those in exile, whom God will keep safe in these foreign lands and with whom he will make a new beginning. Jeremiah is preaching the exact same message in Jerusalem (Jer 29:5-14, 38:17-18).
So Ezekiel speaks this message from 592 to 587 BC to the exiled Jews, using many metaphors, allegories and dramatic presentations (Eze 4-24). God puts severe restrictions on Ezekiel’s speech, he is no longer able to speak except in the moments when he gives God’s word to the exiles (Eze 3:22-27). These speech restrictions that last for years, would have made the times when Ezekiel speaks even more weighty and meaningful; his silence becomes as powerful a message as the few words he speaks. In 587 BC, when the Babylonians close in and besiege Jerusalem for the third time, Ezekiel is completely silenced by God. All words have been spoken, the final count down is running (Eze 24:25-27). Only when a messenger arrives from Jerusalem, reporting the breach, conquest and destruction of the city, is Ezekiel’s tongue loosened again (Eze 33:21-22). All his prophecies have come true, he is proven a true prophet of God (Deu 18:20-22).
God then calls him again (Eze 33:1-20) and makes him a messenger of hope: He becomes a communicator of the amazing deliverance God promises, a restoration beyond belief or merit.
Ezekiel predicts, as Jeremiah before him, that God will bring the Jews back to their land and restore their fortunes. But the prophecies go far beyond the return of the Jews under Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah in 536, 458 and 444 BC respectively. Ezekiel predicts that God will give them a shepherd of his choice, a prophecy pertaining to Christ. He also predicts a sweeping restoration: what was dead will live again (Eze 37), evil, aggressive humans will be defeated (Eze 38-39), a perfect temple will be built (Eze 40-43), a peaceful society will be established (Eze 44-48) and a river will flow from God’s presence that brings life, provision and healing. The pictures he paints are so grand that they are picked up in Revelation (Rev 21-22) to describe heaven, God’s good reign over all things.

The author

The author identifies himself as Ezekiel, son of Buzi, a priest. He is married, and during the events of the book his wife, ‘the delight of your eyes’ dies. God does not allow him to mourn her, as a sign to the Jews (Eze 1:3, 24:24).
At the time of his calling he is thirty years old and he lives among the exiles in Tel-abib, on the river Kebar in Babylon (Eze 1:1,3:15). It is the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile, they year 592 BC (Eze 1:1). His life can therefore be reconstructed with a bit of detail:
622 BC          Birth       Young Jeremiah has been prophesying for 5 years, King Josiah finds the book of the Law, leading to a spiritual revival (2 Kin 22)
609 BC        Age 13     King Josiah is tragically killed in war. Judah relapses into idolatry and deteriorates quickly.
605 BC        Age 19     Jerusalem is conquered and many Jews are exiled to Babylon.
Ezekiel remains in Jerusalem.
597 BC        Age 25     Jerusalem is conquered and many more Jews are exiled to Babylon. This time Ezekiel is taken into exile.
592 BC       Age 30    Ezekiel should have started his priestly duties, but he is geographically removed from the temple (Num 4:3, 2 Chr 23:3).
Is he feeling sidelined? Trying to go to Jerusalem? Jealous? Resentful? Or not interested anyway as the priesthood is totally corrupt? It is interesting that when he is thus deprived of his function, God grants him a powerful vision and calls him to be a prophet. Daniel and Ezekiel are the first prophets whom God calls outside of Israel and who minister outside of Israel (with the exception of Jonah).
586 BC       Age 36     Babylon has conquered Jerusalem again, and destroyed the city and the temple completely. No one can serve as priest now. Maybe Ezekiel feels this as a confirmation of God.
572 BC       Age 50    Ezekiel receives his last dated prophecy (Eze 29:17). According to the law the priests’ retirement age is fifty years old (Num 4:2-3).
God is being exact with this priest!
Though Ezekiel is not respected as a prophet (Eze 3:7-11, 20:49), gets many difficult assignments from God (for example Eze 4), is silenced by God and is not allowed to mourn the death of his wife (Eze 24:15-27), he is obedient and not complaining. Only once he objects to something, the making of food over human dung (Eze 4:14).
Ezekiel is a contemporary of Jeremiah, who prophesies in Jerusalem, and Daniel, who is a government official, sometimes addressing the kings of Babylon.

Ezekiel’s audience

Ezekiel’s audience are the exiles in Babylon, those deported in 605 or 597 BC. Later also the group deported in 586 BC, that joins those already there, will become his audience (Eze 3:11). The ones who will read his written prophecy are the second generation exiles, many of them born in Babylon.
When Ezekiel starts his prophetic ministry, there are Jews still in Jerusalem who so far have escaped the exile, though Jerusalem has been conquered by Babylon already twice. These Jews are proud and think themselves favored by God and superior to those exiled. Though they are steeped in blatant idolatry, syncretism, societal injustice and active resistance to God’s word by Jeremiah (Eze 2:6-7), they believe that Jerusalem will not be destroyed. They are religiously relying on the presence of the temple and sacrifices as their protection, yet they are totally corrupt and have no knowledge of God. There are false prophets, idolatrous priests, corrupt kings, officials and elders (Eze 22:6-12, 8:13-14), all leading the people astray (Eze 11, 34).
On the other hand the exiled Jews think themselves abandoned by God and unjustly singled out for judgment. They think Jerusalem will not fall and have the false hope of being able to return there any moment. They feel religiously inferior to the Jews left in Judah, who supposedly ‘have escaped judgment’. They feel cut off from the sacrificial system. Jeremiah encourages them by letter to get established locally, accept God’s chastisement and thrive even in their idolatrous surroundings (Jer 29:1-23). As long as they remain peaceful, they enjoy relative freedom in Babylon and are allowed to own houses and businesses. They are spread out in communities in a fertile area.
Once Jerusalem falls in 586 BC (Eze 33:21-22), all this false superiority and inferiority, this false security and false jealousy are dashed, all those that survived find themselves in the same situation in Babylon.
The mindset of the exiles can be seen through some of the things they say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” (Eze 18:19) The exiles believe they are being unjustly punished for their ancestors’ sins. “The way of the Lord is unfair” (Eze 18:25). They believe that they have been singled out for punishment, whereas other Jews survived and are still in Jerusalem. “Let us be like the nations, like the tribes of the countries, and worship wood and stone” (Eze 20:32). They say that worshiping God didn’t profit them, so they might as well worship idols. “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely” (Eze 37:11). They no longer have hope for a future as a nation of God. This is the mindset Ezekiel addresses.

Historical Situation

Descriptions of the historical situation are found in 2 Kin 22-25 and 2 Chr 34-36. Here a short summary:
605 BC Battle of Charchemish: Babylon, under its new leader Nebuchadnezzar, defeats Assyria and its ally Egypt decisively. Babylon takes over Assyrian lands and sweeps southward towards Egypt. Judah and Jerusalem (and many surrounding nations) are defeated and conquered and a first wave of Jews are deported to Babylon. Among them are Daniel and his three friends. King Jehoiakim, second son of Josiah, is made a vassal king.
601 BC Jehoiakim rebels against Babylon’s over-lordship.
597 BC Babylon re-attacks the rebellious vassal and besieges Jerusalem. Jehoiakim dies and his son Jehoiachin ascends the throne. Jehoiachin surrenders and Babylon conquers Jerusalem for the second time. Jehoiachin and some ten thousand more Jews are deported (2 Kin 24:14), among them Ezekiel. Babylon puts Zedekiah, the third son of Josiah, on the throne as vassal king.
59? BC Zedekiah rebels against Babylon against the clear word of Jeremiah.
588 BC Babylon besieges Jerusalem for the third time.
586 BC Jerusalem is breached, conquered and totally destroyed, including the temple. The few surviving Jews are exiled (Eze 33:21).

Ezekiel’s shocking vision Ezekiel 1-3

When Ezekiel is thirty years old and he finds himself somewhere in a heathen land, as a priest without a temple. Right at that time, God meets him in an awe-inspiring vision: In a tempest with clouds, brightness and flashing fire, seated on a dome on a movable chariot-like thing, carried by four living creatures, he sees God himself (Eze 1)! Or as he so carefully says: “I saw… the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD”. Ezekiel is flat on his face (Eze 1:28).
The most shocking thing about the vision is that he sees the glory and presence of God not in the temple in Jerusalem, where he would have thought it to be, but right there in Babylon, in a heathen land. And that is already part of his message: God is here, in Babylon, with the exiles. They are not abandoned, they are not unprotected, they are not without hope.
And then God starts speaking out of the vision: “Son of man, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me… I am sending you to them” (Eze 2:3-4) Throughout the book God will always address Ezekiel with ‘son of man’, a title expressing both honor and mortality. Jesus will use this term often to describe himself (see Luke). “You shall speak my words to them, whether they hear of refuse to hear; for they are a rebellious house” (Eze 2:7).
God gives Ezekiel a very realistic description of what his ministry will look like and how well it will be received. Later, in a renewal of this calling God says “if the sentinel sees… and warns the people; then if any who hear the sound of the trumpet do not take warning… their blood shall be upon their own heads… But if the sentinel sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned… their blood I will require at the sentinel’s hand. So you, son of man, I have made a sentinel for the house of Israel” (Eze 33:1-9).
From the very start God tells Ezekiel that he is responsible to speak the word of God, but he is not responsible for how people will react to God’s word. Ezekiel is not promised much ‘success’ as we define it, but that is not his short coming. He is obedient, and obedience is all God requires.

Ezekiel’s second vision Ezekiel 8-11

Later Ezekiel sees a related and even more shocking vision. He has the elders of Judah sitting in front of him who must have come all the way from Jerusalem, probably inquiring to receive a word from God. It seems they don’t like what Jeremiah, their prophet on site, says.
While having the elders in front of him, Ezekiel has a vision where he is taken to the temple in Jerusalem and (almost like a stealth observer) sees what really is going on in the temple premises: First he sees the ‘image of jealousy’ (probably an idol statue) in the inner court of the temple, then he sees the elders of Israel in a closed room worshiping pictures of creeping things (possibly he sees the very people that are coming to him to inquire). Then he sees women, weeping for a Babylonian god and finally he sees about twenty-five men, who – with the back to the temple – worship the rising sun! God says: “Have you seen this, O mortal? Is it not bad enough that the house of Judah commits the abominations done here? Must they fill the land with violence and provoke my anger still further?” (Eze 8:17), revealing the age-old connection between idolatry and societal injustice. Then God pronounces doom: “I will act in wrath; my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity” (Eze 8:18).
Ezekiel in his vision then sees a man in linen with a writing case, who marks God’s people remaining in the city. Then he sees six executioners, called forth by God and commanded to slaughter all who do not have the mark, beginning at the sanctuary (Eze 9:1-7). Ezekiel cries out in intercession but God tells him that things have passed the point of no return (Eze 9:8-11).
But even more shockingly Ezekiel sees the same chariot-like throne of God again, this time in the temple of Jerusalem, but step by step it leaves the temple premises: from the center of the temple it moves to the threshold of the temple (Eze 9:3), then to the south side of the temple (Eze 10:3), then to the east gate (Eze 10:19) and from there it ascends from the middle of the city and stops on the mountain east of the city (Eze 11:23). Then Ezekiel is taken back to Babylon.

These visions become his message: God’s favor and calling is no longer with those left in Jerusalem (they are more like rats in a trap), but with those in exile who went through judgment and accepted God’s correction. Ezekiel becomes the encourager of the exiled Jews, telling them that God has not abandoned them, rather that they should accept God’s correction, be faithful to him in exile and hope for the promised return from exile, that God will surely and sovereignly bring about. The blessing and calling of God is not on those in Jerusalem, but on those in exile, whom God will keep safe in these foreign lands and with whom he will make a new beginning. Jeremiah is preaching the exact same message in Jerusalem (Jer 29:5-14, 38:17-18).

Dramatization of Jerusalem’s imminent doom Ezekiel 4-24

So Ezekiel speaks this message from 592 to 587 BC to the exiled Jews in Babylon. God commands him to dramatize Jerusalem’s siege and imminent fall in various ways: He plays out a miniature version of the siege of Jerusalem, lies bound and eats rationed food and water for over a year, shaves his hair and uses it to illustrate various types of judgments (Eze 4-5). He prepares an exile’s baggage and digs through the wall, carrying off his baggage with his face covered, illustrating the arrest and exile of King Zedekiah of Judah (Eze 12).
He speaks out against bad leaders, against false prophets, who deceive people by telling them what they want to hear, and against elders who are steeped in idolatry (Eze 13-14).
Ezekiel tells parables or allegories: He compares Jerusalem to a vine, producing wood that is completely useless (Eze 15). He tells a parable of an eagle, implying that King Zedekiah’s rebellion against Babylon is doomed (Eze 17). He tells an allegory of a family of lions, representing the last kings of Judah, saying that the kingly line coming to an end (Eze 19). He does a dramatic retelling of Israel’s history, featuring Israel as an unloved, abandoned girl, brought to honor by God but cheating on him (Eze 16). He tells an even more dramatic story of Israel and Judah as two lewd sisters who prostitute themselves (Eze 23).
He speaks against the lie in the exiles’ mind that they have been unjustly judged for their fathers’ sin by stressing that God has no joy in judgment and will only judge the person himself for his wrong choices (Eze 18).
He sees a fearful picture of God’s sword drawn against Jerusalem, sharpened, polished, honed and grasped (Eze 21). He calls Jerusalem “the bloody city” and compares it to a melting pot, which God is going to put on the fire like a smelter, to get rid of the dross. He especially finds fault with the elders and the princes (Eze 22). He speaks a prophetic word on the very day that the Babylonian armies close the siege on Jerusalem far away (Eze 24:1-2, 9th year, 10th month, 10th day = 10th Jan 587 BC). After this date no one can flee the city any more, the noose tightens. When Ezekiel’s beloved wife dies, he is not allowed to mourn her as a symbol of God having abandoned pity on Jerusalem (Eze 24:15-27).
Besides all this God puts severe restrictions on Ezekiel’s speech, he is no longer able to speak except in the moments when he gives God’s words to the exiles (Eze 3:22-27). These speech restrictions, that last for years, would have made the times when Ezekiel does speak even more weighty and meaningful. His silence becomes as powerful a message as the few words he speaks. In 587 BC, when the Babylonians close in and besiege Jerusalem for the third time, Ezekiel is completely silenced by God. All words have been spoken, the final count down is running (Eze 24:25-27). Only when a messenger arrives from Jerusalem, reporting the conquest and destruction of the city, is Ezekiel’s tongue loosened again (Eze 33:21-22). All his prophecies have come true, he is proven a true prophet of God (Deu 18:20-22).

Judgment on the Nations Ezekiel 25-32

In this middle section of his writing, Ezekiel collects God’s prophecies of judgment against surrounding nations. As surely as God will judge evil Jerusalem, he will also judge other evil nations for their transgressions. He focuses on their transgressions against Judah at the time of her weakness.
God will display his power and justice to all nations so that they, too, “may know that I am the Lord”. God judges Judah by the Law they knew, and other nations by the golden rule: anything they would consider injustice if done against them, they are judged for if they do it to another nation.

Nation
Reference
Reason for judgment
Outcome
Ammon
Eze 25:1-7
rejoicing, gloating when temple, land destroyed
cut off, destroy
Moab
Eze 25:8-11
profaned God’s people, said ‘they are like others’

Edom
Eze 25:12-14
profaned God’s people, said ‘they are like others’, revenge

Philistia
Eze 25:15-17
acted revengefully
cut off, destroy
Tyre
Eze 26:1-28:19
pride to think she could be god

Sidon
Eze 28:20-24

pestilence, blood
Egypt
Eze 29-32
pride: think Nile own creation (29:3,9-10) staff of reed to Israel (29:6-7)
desolation, given to Babylon, restoration after 40 years (Eze 29:13-14)

The passage of Eze 28:11-19 has been given special attention. It has been interpreted as a description of Satan and his attitude. Actually the text is part of the prophecy about the ancient and prominent sea-faring Phoenician city of Tyre. Ezekiel prophesies the coming desolation of Tyre (Eze 26:1-21), describing Tyre as ‘the ship that sank’ (Eze 27:1-36), describing the downfall of the king of Tyre (Eze 28:1-10), uttering a lament over the king of Tyre (Eze 28:11-19), adding a prophecy about the sister-city Sidon (Eze 28:20-24) and ending with Israel’s exaltation (Eze 28:25-26).
The context makes it clear that Ezekiel is not quickly turning aside, teaching his readers about spirit beings as an interlude, and then getting back to business with Tyre. Yet it can be said that since the King of Tyre is a proud, self-reliant, unaccountable, godless tyrant, his description and that of Satan has many parallels indeed. Pride looks boringly similar in all those who are proud. The same can be said of the description of the king of Babylon (Isa 14), also often interpreted to be about Satan.

Prophecies of Restoration Ezekiel 33-48

After all these prophecies of judgment, God then calls Ezekiel one more time and makes him a messenger of hope (Eze 33:1-20). God gives Ezekiel visions of the amazing deliverance God promises, a restoration beyond belief or merit.
Ezekiel predicts, as Jeremiah before him, that God will bring the Jews back to their land and restore their fortunes. But the prophecies go far beyond the return of the Jews under Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah in 536, 458 and 444 BC respectively. Ezekiel predicts that God will give them a shepherd of his choice, a prophecy pertaining to Christ.
He also predicts a sweeping restoration: Intercession will be restored (Eze 33), righteous leadership will be restored (Eze 34), God’s protection will be restored (Eze 35-36), what was dead will live again (Eze 37), evil, aggressive humans will be defeated (Eze 38-39), a perfect temple will be built (Eze 40-43), a peaceful society will be established (Eze 44-48) and a river will flow from God’s presence that brings life, provision and healing. God’s presence will be restored.

False shepherds, careless sheep and God’s shepherd Ezekiel 34

Earlier Ezekiel had spoken out against false prophets (Eze 13), women teaching idolatry (Eze 14), idolatrous elders and evil princes (Eze 22). In Eze 34 he describes bad leaders as selfish shepherds (a metaphor applying to leadership ever since David): The are “feeding themselves, not feeding sheep, eat fat, clothe themselves with wool, do not strengthen the weak, nor heal the sick, nor bind up the injured nor seek the strayed” (Eze 34:1-6). God’s verdict: “I am against the shepherds, and I will demand my sheep at their hand” (Eze 34:11-16). By contrast God himself is the good shepherd: “I will search for my sheep, rescue them, feed them, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured strengthen the weak” (Eze 34:11-16). Jesus will describe himself with this same metaphor (Jhn 10:1-18) and it is he that God speaks about when saying that he will “set up one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them… You are my sheep and I am your God” (Eze 34:23-31). Besides this, God will not only hold accountable bad leaders, but also selfish sheep (Eze 34:17-19), in line with individual accountability.

Ezekiel’s third Vision: The valley of Dry Bones Ezekiel 37

Maybe Ezekiel’s most famous vision is the one where he – at God’s command – speaks life to a whole valley full of dry bones. The bones are put back together, life enters them and end up being a vast army.
The message of the vision is clear: “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. I will put my spirit spirit within you, and you shall live … then you shall know that I am the LORD” (Eze 37:12-14).
This is an amazing picture of restoration, from death to life, from exile to their own land, from godlessness to being inhabited by the spirit of God. To the exiles in Babylon this was the promise, that Israel as a nation had not ceased to be God’s people, his calling was still on them, the prophecies were going to come true.
The primary fulfillment of this prophecy was 536 BC, when the defeat of Babylon by the hands of Medo-Persia results in the Jews being allowed to return to their land.
But the return wasn’t that glorious, neither did they do so well back in their land. The prophecy speaks of so much more “They shall never again defile themselves with their idols … I will save them from all the apostasies … and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God … I will make a covenant of peace with them” (Eze 37:23,26). This leaves the Jews hoping for more and is getting them ready for the Messiah, who alone will be able to fulfill these prophecies.

God defeats Gog of Magog Ezekiel 38-39
Ezekiel prophesies that in the future, when God’s people will be living in safety and with no war-protection (probably a picture of the Jesus-like vulnerability of the believers living among unbelievers) Gog of Magog (a compound picture of all those who opposes God) will attack them. But God is in complete control, orchestrating it all and defeating Gog to deliver his people forever. In this battle God’s people can do and do do nothing, God does it all. One only needs to be on the right side of the battle.

Ezekiel’s fourth vision: Restoration Ezekiel 40-48

This last vision is dated to 572 AD, at the time of the Passover feast, a date fitting the vision. Passover commemorates the Exodus, God freeing his people from slavery so that they can go and worship him, vision. Ezekiel is now fifty years old (which is the retirement age for priests) and God gives him a grand final vision of a restored temple, city, people and land.
Ezekiel had earlier prophesied about God’s presence abandoning the temple (Eze 8-11) and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (Eze 24), which came true in 586 BC. Now he is allowed to prophesy the re-establishing of a glorious temple (Eze 40-43).
His vision is a completely symmetrical temple, one that (interestingly) the returned Jews never try to build to measure. He describes the altar, the dedication of the altar, the measures to keep the temple pure (Eze 44), the holy district in which it is located, the civil law, the offerings, the festivals (Eze 45) and the keeping of the sabbath day, with special duties for the prince (Eze 46).
He then describes water flowing from beneath the threshold of the temple towards the east, getting deeper and deeper, with many ever-green trees, bearing fruit for food and leaves for healing on its banks (Eze 47). He also describes a strange re-allotment of tribal lands and the city, located in the midst of the tribes. He concludes with the sentence: “The name of the city from that time on shall be “The LORD is there”.
How should we understand this vision? If taken literally, many questions arise. Much detail is given, but important details (for example height measurements) are omitted. Many features are new or different from the earlier temple, with no explanation. The great focus on the prince is also new, not to speak of the unnatural and completely changed land allotments. Some think this will be Christ’s millennial temple, to be built exactly as Ezekiel instructs at some point in the future. But why starting up sacrifices of animals again after Jesus died on the cross?
It is better to understand the vision in figurative terms, for the New Testament sees the temple with new eyes. The symmetrical temple plans are a picture of the perfection of God’s restoration, pointing to Jesus, who is the temple, who is ‘God dwelt among us’, Immanuel. And Jesus builds his believers, both Jews and Gentiles, into a living temple of the Holy Spirit, corporately and individually. The river, flowing out of the temple, is a picture of life flowing out of Christ (Jhn 8:37), out of the church he founds, bringing life wherever it goes. It is a picture of God’s eternal life, gospel truth and blessing going out, creating a progressively growing kingdom of God, until the knowledge of God covers the earth (parallel passages are Rev 22:1,2, Joel 3:18, Zec 14:8, Hab 2:14, Isa 11:9). The river and the trees are a picture of creation having been fully restored, the effect of sin having been wiped away, a new heaven and a new earth having been created. Ezekiel ends his book as does Revelation: with God dwelling with his people: “The LORD is there”.
Ezekiel draws the eyes and the hearts of his contemporary exiles forward, looking towards an amazing restoration, giving them hope, motivating them to faithfulness and encouraging them to trust God to work out his promises, even through them.

Color Coding Suggestions

• Who people, groups, exiles
• Where
• When dating of prophecies
• Reasons / Connectives
• Quotes (of Scripture, exiles, people)
• Emotion
• Conditional statements
• Metaphors / Word pictures / Enacted symbols

Repeated Themes

• know God, know that I am God
• glory of God, spirit of God
• sin, rebellion, idolatry, adultery, defile, abominations
• punishment, exile, judgment
• temple, court, altar, sanctuary, God’s house, offerings

Meditation Passages

• Eze 2:1-5                Ezekiel’s calling
• Eze 8:7-12             idolatry in the heart, room of images
• Eze 13:1-5, 13-14  repair breaches vs false prophets whitewashing doomed wall
• Eze 16:59-63        shame you by forgiveness
• Eze 22:26-31       leaders sinning, nobody in the breach to prevent God’s wrath
• Eze 34:1-6            selfish shepherds preying on the flock
• Eze 36:23-27      God will sanctify his name, return, new heart of flesh
• Eze 37:11-14      dry bones vision, promise of God to restore beyond belief

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Who wrote?

• Eze 1:3, 24:24 Probably Ezekiel himself. He uses the pronoun ‘I’ throughout the book (except Eze 1:2-3, 24:24, introductory explanations). Ezekiel is the son of Buzi, of a priestly family. He is living among the exiles on the river Kebar (Eze 1:1).
• Eze 24:1,15-27 Ezekiel is married. His wife, ‘the delight of your eyes’, dies. He is not allowed to mourn. > Enacted symbol
• Eze 3:7-11 Though Ezekiel is not respected and has a tough life, he is completely obedient and not complaining. Only two issues: the cooking over human dung and when people say ‘maker of allegories’ (Eze 20:49)
• Eze 1:1-2 First vision 30th year 4th month 6th day = 5th year of Jehoiachin’s exile = 592 BC
• The first date most likely is Ezekiel’s age, which means he was born 622 BC.
• Ezekiel is deported in the 2nd group, 597 BC.
  • 622 BC Age 0 years old … Jeremiah starts prophesying 627 BC. Josiah finds Law in 622 BC (2 Kin 22) > spiritual revival
  • 609 BC Age 13 years old … Josiah tragically killed. Judah relapses into idolatry and deteriorates quickly.
  • 605 BC Age 19 years old … Jerusalem conquered and population exiled by Babylon. Ezekiel remains.
  • 597 BC Age 25 years old … Jerusalem is conquered and population exiled by Babylon again. This time Ezekiel is exiled.
  • 592 BC Age 30 years old … Ezekiel should have started his priestly duties, but he is geographically removed from the temple (Num 4:3, 2 Chr 23:3). Is he feeling sidelined? Trying to go to Jerusalem? Jealous?
• Resentful? Or not interested as the priesthood is totally corrupt? When he is thus deprived of his function, God calls him to be a prophet and grants him a powerful vision.
• Daniel and Hezekiel are the first prophets that God calls outside of Israel and minister outside of Israel (except Jonah).
  • 586 BC Age 36 years old … The temple is destroyed, the hopes of priesthood are dashed even on the Judah side. Ezekiel must have felt this as a confirmation of God.
  • 572 BC Age 50 years old … Eze 29:17 is Ezekiel’s last dated prophecy. Priests’ retirement age was 50 (Num 4:2-3), God is being exact 🙂

Written to whom?

• Eze 3:11 Ezekiel’s first hearers were the exiles in Babylon (either of the 605 BC or the 597 BC deportation, later also of the 586 BC deportation)
• Ezekiel’s first readers are: the exiles, the 2nd generation exiles in Babylon and future generations of Israel.

When written?

• Ezekiel dates many of his prophecies very explicitly. His prophecies range from his first vision (Eze 1:1 30th year, 4th month 5th day = 5th July 592 BC) to his last vision (Eze 29:17, 27th year, 1st month, 1st day = 1st April 572 BC), Egypt in exchange for Tyre.
• The book, encompassing all these prophecies must have been written after 572 BC in its final form, though Ezekiel surely wrote down many prophecies as he received them.
• The book was probably written before 539 BC, because of Ezekiel’s advanced age, but also because of the context and the message > Ezekiel written 571 – 540 BC

Written from where?

• Most probably from Babylonia, on the Euphrates, near Tel-abib (Eze 3:15), Babylon, Nippur

Historical Background?

Political Situation              2 Kin 22-25, 2 Chr 34-36

• 605 BC Charchemish: Assyria defeated and ally Egypt weakened. Babylon sweeps southward defeating Judah and conquering Jerusalem. > 1st deportation of Jews, among them Daniel. Jehoiakim made king as vassal.
• 601 BC Jehoiakim rebels against Babylon.
• 597 BC Babylon re-conquers the rebellious vassal and besieges Jerusalem. Jehoiakim dies and Jehoiachin ascends the throne. Babylon conquers Jerusalem for the 2nd time, deports Jehoiachin and some ten thousand more Jews (2 Kin 24:14), among them Ezekiel. Babylon puts Zedekiah on the throne as vassal king.
• 59? BC Zedekiah rebels against Babylon against Jeremiah’s word.
• 588 BC Babylon besieges Jerusalem for the 3rd time.
• 586 BC Jerusalem breached, conquered and totally destroyed, including the temple and the remaining Jews exiled (Eze 33:21)
• Remaining Jews in Judah (597-586 BC) have spiritually, morally and politically deteriorated. In rebellion against Babylon contrary to Jeremiah’s prophecy, holding on to false hope of escaping Babylon – and pride, thinking themselves the favored ones of God. Their neighboring countries are likewise weak and under threat, partial dominion or control by Babylon. Egypt has probably most strength left, but can’t ward off Babylon either.
• The First hearers and readers are the exiled Jews in Babylonia, relatively free and little Babylonian interference as long as peaceful, can own houses, businesses (archeology), spread in communities in a fertile area. Had some structure to their Jewish society: elders, prophets are mentioned.

Religious Situation

• Judah: See Jeremiah Background Information.
• Blatant idolatry, oppression, tarnished justice, open rebellion against God’s word through Jeremiah, embracing false prophets, religiously holding on the temple and sacrifices (thinking the temple the guarantee for protection), yet totally corrupt and with no real knowledge of God. Corrupt priests, kings and princes (Eze 22:6-12). They are a ‘rebellious house'(17 in Ezekiel and only in Ezekiel) refuse to hear God’s words (Eze 2:6-7), have profaned God’s name through idolatry (Eze 6, 8), have done great abominations in the temple (Eze 8). The leaders were leading people astray (Eze 11, 34) and there were false prophets and idolatrous elders (Eze 8:13-14).
• Exiles Have the false hope of returning ‘any moment’. Feel religiously inferior to the Jews left in Judah, feel cut off from sacrificial system. Encouraged by Jeremiah to rather get established locally, accept God’s chastisement and thrive even in their idolatrous surroundings.

Reigning Kings? Contemporary Prophets?

• Judah       597 BC    Zedekiah 586 BC exiled 560 BC Jehoiachin freed
• Babylon   605 BC    Nebuchadnezzar 562 BC Evil-Merodach 560 BC Neriglissar
• Egypt       609 BC    Neco II 594 BC Psamtik 588 BC Hophra 568 BC Amasis
• Prophets 627 BC    Jeremiah in Judah 605 BC Daniel 593 BC Ezekiel both Babylon

Literary Category?

• Mostly prose, which is unlike earlier prophets, and like Daniel and post-exilic prophets > literal interpretation.
  Little poetry, lamentations or woes (Eze 19 over princes of Israel, Eze 26-28 over Tyre, Eze 30-32 over Egypt) > figurative interpretation.

Structure?

• Prophecy 2 Divisions: Prophecies of Judgment (Eze 1-32) Prophecies of Restoration (Eze 33-48) on Judah (Eze 1-24) and nations (Eze 25-32)
• Chiastic Structure (?) see handout

Composition?

• Balancing within the book:
  • Ezr 10-11 desecrated temple                  Ezr 40-48 restored temple
  • God’s presence removed                       God’s presence restored
  • Ezr 1 God of wrath                                    Ezr 48:35 God of comfort
  • Ezr 3 Ezekiel, watchman of judgment  Ezr 33 watchman of the new age
  • Ezr 6 mountains of Israel rebuked        Ezr 36 mountains consoled
  • defiled temple                                            pure temple restored
  • God’s presence removed                         God’s presence restored
• Visions, laments, woe-oracles, allegories, metaphors, … (Jesus uses Ezekiel’s metaphors like ‘the good shepherd’ Jhn 10,’ the true vine’, ‘the Son of man’ to describe himself).
• Enacted Symbols … to catch a people hardened to hearing, as an attention-grabber, to find a memorable way to communicate, to illustrate obedience, to speak by actions, … Ezekiel was the entertainment of the day (Eze 33:30-33). He was mute for 7 years until the fall of Jerusalem (Eze 3:24-27, 24:27, 33:21-22), which makes his few speeches even more heavy and deafening.
• Apocalyptic material (as also Daniel, Zechariah, Revelation). Use of numbers: 4 visions, 4 interventions (Eze 37), 4 fold judgment (Eze 14:21), 4 symbolic acts, 4 different messages (?). 7 humans (Eze 9:2), 7 prophecies about nations (Eze 24-32), 7 months to bury the dead, 7 years of burning wood (Eze 38-39). 7x ‘the hand of the Lord’.
• Four visions: the throne and glory of God (Eze 1-3), the glory of God leaving the temple (Eze 8-11), the valley of dry bones (Eze 37) and the temple (Eze 40-48).
• Eleven Enacted symbols: 1 the mock battle, 2 lying on the side, 3 eating unclean and rationed food, 4 cutting his hair (all Eze 4-5), 5 baggage of an exile (Eze 12), 6 eating with fear (Eze 12), 7 sighing and moaning (Eze 21:4-7), 8 crossroads (Eze 21:18-23), 9 not mourning over wife’s death (Eze 24:25-27), 10 mute until Jerusalem’s fall (Eze 24:25-27), 11 union of two sticks (Eze 37:15-28).
• Four allegories:
  • 1 Jerusalem as useless vine (Eze 15)
  • 2 beautiful woman to harlot (Eze 16)
  • 3 eagle and the vine (Zedekiah, Eze 17)
  • 4 Oholah and Oholibah (Eze 23)
  • 5? Jerusalem as the corroded pot (Eze 24:1-14)

Special Things concerning language

• The typical name Ezekiel calls God by is ‘Adonai-Jahweh’ (217x), maybe replacing the ‘Lord Zebaioth’, ‘Lord of hosts’
• He uses the name Israel for Judah and the exiles in various connections (186x), not meaning Northern Israel.
• ‘House of Israel’ (82x), among which ‘rebellious house of Israel’ (17x)
• He calls the temple the ‘house of God’
• The repeated phrase ‘they will know that I am God’ (76 verses).
• The word ‘holy’ is much repeated, in connection with things: ‘holy sacrifices’, ‘holy name’, …
• Ezekiel never uses the following terms: Zion, Lord Zebaioth, king, fear of God, love of God, redemption or ransom

Main Ideas

• Break the false hope of ‘quick return’ and of ‘Jerusalem will survive’ > all will be exiled, Jerusalem will be destroyed. Convicting of sin, understanding and agreeing with God’s judgment.
• true knowledge of God, God’s justice in his judgment and allowing of the exile, God’s mercy in the coming redemption
• God’s future judgment on the nations who are reviling, despising and abandoning Judah in its fall
• Coming restoration of Judah and Israel to their land and their God
• Coming restoration and judgment ‘beyond’ the temporal exile

Main Reasons

• To ensure the exiles know why the exile happened, so that they will be repentant, accepting the judgment, trusting God and obedient in the exile … knowing him
• To encourage hope, faith, expectancy in the 2nd generation exiles for the approaching end of the 70 years captivity
• To give weight and authority to Ezekiel’s restoration promises by showing the fulfilling of his immediate judgments
• To clearly communicate God’s heart for his people, his reasons for and purposes with the exile, his call into repentance and faith to start anew

The mindset of the exiles in Babylon

• The mindset of the exiles during this time period can be seen through the window of the slogans, or verbal expressions that were commonly spoken, but that God doesn’t agree with. Here is a list of some of the expressions that the Judah is rebuked for in the book of Ezekiel.
• Before the fall of Jerusalem:
  • Jer 29:15 “The Lord has raised up prophets for us in Babylon.” The exiles believe the false prophets are from God, and further don’t think they need to listen to Jeremiah anymore.
  • Eze 9:9 “The Lord has forsaken the land and the Lord does not see.” Judah thinks God is like an idol, which is territorial, and has left.
  • Eze 11:3 “The time is not near to build houses. This city is the pot and we are the meat.” The elite of Jerusalem don’t believe Jeremiah’s prediction, and believe they are protected in Jerusalem (meat safe in the pot and won’t be taken out).
  • Eze 11:15 Those still in Jerusalem spoke of those in exile: “They have gone far from the Lord: to us this land is given for a possession.” Those in Jerusalem don’t care about those in exile because of greed.
  • Eze 12:22 “The days are prolonged, and every vision comes to nothing.”
  • Eze 12:26 “The vision that he sees is for many years ahead; he prophesies for distant times.” The exiles don’t believe God will fulfill the prophesies through Ezekiel.
  • Eze 13:10 False prophets prophesy ‘peace’. People believed the exile would be short, and Jerusalem would survive.
  • Eze 18:2 “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
  • Eze 18:19 “Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?” The exiles believe they are being punished for their ancestors sins.
  • Eze 18:25 “The way of the Lord is unfair.” They believe that their good should make up for their ancestors’ sins
  • Eze 20:32 “Let us be like the nations, like the tribes of the countries, and worship wood and stone.” Israel / Judah abuses the mercy of God in the covenant.
  • Eze 20:49 Of Ezekiel: “Is he not a maker of allegories?” The exiles don’t take Ezekiel seriously, but as a story-teller.
• After the fall of Jerusalem:
  • Eze 33:10 “Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?” The exiles have heard of the fall of Jerusalem.
  • Eze 33:20 “The way of the Lord is not just.” They believe that God broke His part of the covenant by not protecting Jerusalem.
  • Eze 33:24 “Abraham was only one man, yet he got possession of the land; but we are many; the land is surely given to us to possess.” They don’t see that numbers don’t matter to God, only the heart.
  • Eze 33:30 “Come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.” The exiles see Ezekiel as a source of entertainment.
  • Eze 37:11 “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” They are in depression due to the fall of Jerusalem.

Dating of the prophecies

• The years are dated from King Jehoiachin’s captivity, when Ezekiel was taken into exile as well in 597 BC. The “30th year” (Eze 1:1), which was the equivalent of the “5th year” of Jehoiachin’s captivity (Eze 1:2), is thought to have been the 30th year of Ezekiel’s life.
  • Vision by the River Chebar      Eze 1:2       5th year 4th month 5th day          5th Jul 592 BC
  • Vision of Jerusalem                 Eze 8:1       6th year 6th month 5th day          6th Sep 591 BC
  • Second Meeting with Elders   Eze 20:1     7th year 5th month 10th day        10th Aug 590 BC
  • Beginning of the Siege             Eze 24:1     9th year 10th month 10th day     10th Jan 587 BC
  • Prophecy against Tyre             Eze 26:1     11th year 5th month 1st day        1st Aug 586 BC
  • Prophecy against Pharaoh      Eze 29:1     10th year 10th month 12th day   12th Jan 586 BC
  • Egypt – Payment for Babylon   Eze 29:17   27th year 1st month 1st day       1st Apr 570 BC
  • Broken arm of Pharaoh            Eze 30:20   11th year 1st month 7th day       7th Apr 586 BC
  • Allegory of the Cedar               Eze 31:1      11th year 3rd month 1st day       1st Jun 586 BC
  • Jerusalem falls                         Eze 33:21    11th year 4th month 9th day       9th July 586 BC
  • Lamentation over Pharaoh     Eze 32:1      12th year 12th month 1st day      1st Mar 584 BC
  • Prophecy of the Pit                  Eze 32:17    12th year 12th month ? 15th day  15th Mar 584 BC
  • Fugitive Brings the News        Eze 33:21    12th year 10th month 5th day      5th Jan 584 BC
  • Vision of the Temple               Eze 40:1       25th year 1st month ? 10th day   1st Apr 572 BC
• Since Ezekiel is so meticulous in dating his visions, even to the exact day, it is assumed that all that follows a given date belongs to that date, until the next date is mentioned.

EZEKIEL TEXT

First Vision: The Throne of God                           Ezekiel 1

• Description
  • Eze 1:1-3 Date of the vision: 5th day 4th month 5th year (5 Jul 592 BC), in Ezekiel’s 30th year, when he would have started priestly duty if not exiled.
  • Eze 1:4-5 Stormy wind out of the North, great cloud with brightness around it, fire flashing continually, in the middle of the fire gleaming amber, 4 living creatures.
  • Eze 1:5-14 4 living creatures: Human form, sparkling like burnished bronze. Four faces: human, lion, eagle, ox. Four wings: two stretched out touching the other creature, 2 to cover bodies. Straight legs with hoofs. Four human hands. Each creature moved straight ahead, as Spirit moves, without turning, darting to and fro. In the middle of the creatures: burning coals of fire, like torches moving to and fro among living creatures, bright and lightning issuing forth.
  • Eze 1:15-21 Beside the 4 living creatures: 4 wheels, gleaming like beryl, wheel within a wheel. Moved in the 4 directions without veering. Wheels have tall and awesome rims, full of eyes. Wherever the Spirit moved, there 4 living creatures and wheels would move, to and fro, up and down.
  • Eze 1:22-25 Dome above the head and outstretched wings of the 4 living creatures. Shining like crystal. When creatures moved, sound of wings like sound of mighty waters, like thunder of the Almighty, like sound of an army. Voice above the dome.
  • Eze 1:26-28 Above the dome, a throne, like sapphire. On it a human form. Loins upward gleaming amber, enclosed all around. Loins downward fire, surrounded by splendor. Splendor all around like rainbow.
• Cherubim (91x in the Bible, not in Eze 1 but in Eze 9:3, 10:1-20 referring to the same vision) in the Bible are the guardians of the holy things of God. They appear in Gen 3 guarding the tree of life, they appear over the mercy seat and over the curtain separating the holy place from the holy of holies. In Revelation, they are surrounding the throne of God and in Ezekiel, they carry the chariot.” – Judy Smith
• Overall message of the vision?
  • God is real, powerful, awesome, holy, … full of beauty, splendor, purity
  • The vision is so powerful that Ezekiel is stumbling over his own words when describing it, also he is very careful: words like “like” and “having the appearance of” abound. Not because the vision is unreal, but because our words are too weak to describe it. Summary statement Eze 1:28: ‘This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD’.
  • God appears as present in Babylon. He is not limited to Judah or Jerusalem. God is mobile ‘for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels’ (Eze 1:20-21). He is everywhere. He is the God over everything. He is not confined to one place of one people. God is not tied to his temple.
  • God’s glory in the OT so far has always been associated with the temple and with the people of Israel, but in this book, the glory of God shows up in a pagan land with no ‘temple base’ (Eze 1:1, 3:23). And even more dramatic: in Eze 8-11, we will see the glory of God leaving his temple and his land.
  • Message: God’s glory is in Babylon with the exiles, not the Jews in Jerusalem! The exiles can still worship Him as their Lord, and that is exactly what he wants: submit to the judgment, hold on to God. The Jews in Jerusalem miss God by trusting in the existence of the temple rather than in God.
• What is the proper response to the great and awesome power of God?
• We want great visions, we are impressed with great visions, we talk about great visions, we take pride in great visions, but then life goes back to normal. The vision may have been powerful, but we are not changed. Ezekiel is.
• Or worse: we become over-focused on the vision itself, who got it, how it was gotten. Illustration: an angel yesterday night at 10:30 pm gave an appearance to one of the students studying.
• The more we see the glory of God, the more we are compelled to live for no one else other than Him. We can give our lives totally to love, serve and worship Him when we see Him for who He really is.

The Call of Ezekiel                           Ezekiel 2-3

• Eze 1:18 When seeing the vision, he falls on his face and hears a voice. This thing is actually speaking to him! Him! Similar to Isaiah who sees God, then hears the question ‘Whom shall I send?’ and so engages, here Ezekiel is addressed out of the vision and responds. Having a vision or supernatural encounter with God is one, to respond to it with life-long faithfulness in another.
• Eze 2:1 The voice says “O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak with you.” The reaction of falling on one’s face is surely the right reaction for seeing the glory of God. But God here makes him partner. He puts him on his feet, a bestowing of honor and role. God calls him literally ‘ben adam’, ‘son of man’, the title Jesus will usually use to refer to himself. God uses this address on Ezekiel all throughout the book. God is addressing his humans, humans he meant to be co-creators and co-regents (Gen 1:28). You are also ‘ben adam’, or ‘bath adam’, the calling of humankind in general and the specific calling of God is on you.
• Eze 2:7 ‘Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me, they and their ancestors … are impudent and stubborn, a rebellious house… whether they hear or refuse to hear, they shall know that there has been a prophet among them… Do not be afraid of them, do not be dismayed at their looks’. The word ‘rebellious’ is repeated 17x here, as nowhere else in the Bible.
• In Ezekiel the word ‘Judah’ comes 15x, the word ‘Israel’ comes 186x. When God says ‘Israel’ in this book, he most often doesn’t refer to the Northern Kingdom, but to the people of God, to those on whom the calling rests, which is mostly the exiled Jews here.
• Ezekiel is told from the beginning about his unwilling audience, opposing him and God. God predicts Ezekiel will largely be ‘unsuccessful’. But he must speak. God will bring about a vindication in the long run. The first readers would see that better then the first readers.
• Eze 2:8-10 Ezekiel is commanded to speak, to not be afraid and to not be rebellious himself. The messenger is the message. Ezekiel all throughout the book will be just that: fully obedient, whatever the cost. He will be what Israel should be. He models the right attitude and action to his hearers and readers.
• Eze 3:1-3 Ezekiel is told to eat the written scroll, the lamentation of mourning and woe. What exactly is this scroll? > God’s word? God’s word that Ezekiel will speak, at least Eze 1-33?
  He does so. God’s word needs to be eaten, digested, made one’s own before he can speak it. See also Eze 3:10-11, where he “hears, receives and speaks the word”, a triplet not unlike later in Ezr 7:10.
• It is sweet as honey. The message of God he will mostly preach is judgment, the total destruction of Jewish hopes, very unpopular. Yet it is sweet. He understands the grace of God in this new start, and even more in the restoration predictions he also gets to speak. Have we so understood God’s heart and ways so well that we will embrace God’s judgement, even seeing God’s sweetness in it? Or are we still in self-pity asking ‘how can a loving God let this happen?’.
• Eze 3:4-11 Repeat: Israel is rebellious, unwilling to listen, of a hard forehead and a stubborn heart. Repeat: Do not fear them. Promise: I have made your face or forehead as flint, harder than theirs.
• Eze 3:12-15 The glory of God departs, the spirit lifts Ezekiel up and bears him away, he sits stunned for 7 days in Tel-abib among the exiles. This is the appropriate response of a human meeting God. It is also a message to the exiles: Something supernatural is brewing, they better pay attention. They should learn from Ezekiel’s response.
• Eze 3:16-21 The word of God comes to Ezekiel, this time without vision and throne: “Mortal, I have made you a sentinel”. Command to speak exactly as God gives. Warning: as a sentinel he must warn of danger, or he makes himself guilty. If they ignore his warning, that is their guilt. Serious business, accountability of the prophet, the messenger, the sentinel. Clear also on sovereignty: His job is to speak, but he has no power to make people respond: Humans are sovereign, God made them so.
• Eze 3:22-27 God tells him to go out into the valley, where he sees the same vision again: “the glory of the LORD stood there”. The glory of God is not bound to a ‘new place’, the river Chebar, it is moving, now in a valley. Ezekiel must again have fallen on his face, for the spirit again enters him and sets him on his feet. Message: Ezekiel will be bound, which means he cannot go out among the people and he cannot speak unless he speaks the word of God. Why this isolation? It shows the utter importance of God’s word that he will speak (he won’t speak anything else) but also puts the responsibility to respond and seek out the Word of God on the exiles. It’s also somewhat ironic: now that he really has much to tell, he is silenced!
• This situation will last 6-7 years (592-586 BC), till the fall of Jerusalem where it is finally lifted (Eze 33:22). God ‘takes over’ his life. He becomes the message, definitely not an easy thing.

Jerusalem will fall: Signs and Words                                 Ezekiel 4-5

• Fours signs 4 sign of coming siege of Jerusalem:
  • 1 mock battle
  • 2 lying on the side bound
  • 3 rationed food
  • 4 shaving
• Eze 4:1-3 Portray Jerusalem on a brick, put siege works against it, cast up a ramp, camps, battering rams, press the siege against it. Iron wall between city and Ezekiel.
• Eze 4:4-8 Lie on left side, bear the punishment for Israel for 390 days. Lie on right side, bear the punishment for Judah for 40 days. Set face against the siege, with bare arm prophesy against it. Cords so he cannot turn. Numbers don’t really match anything. But it is a powerful visualization of the siege to come in about 4 years, 592 BC > 588 BC.
• Eze 4:9-15 Food and water measured (20 shekel, 333 g food and sixth of a hin, 3.7 l per day), eaten at fixed times. Food: a bread made of wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt. Prepared over human dung. This is basically not a too bad diet (starch, quite some protein, some oil, some B vitamins), but it only amounts to about a 1200 kcal diet (adult men 2500 kcal is normal, though strongly depending on labor). It is a ‘staying alive’ but not really a sufficient diet. He seems to keep it for 430 days, 1 year and about 2 months.
• Ezekiel objects that (as a priest) he has never eaten anything unclean (some people still knew and obeyed the law, it seems!) and God lets him have it prepared over cow dung.
• Eze 4:13, 16-17 Message behind this: ‘Israel will eat their bread unclean among the nations, they shall eat by weight and with fearfulness and dismay. They shall waste away under their punishment’.
• Eze 5:1-4 Ezekiel must shave his head and beard with a sharp sword, weigh and divide the hair. Shaving is a sign of grief, loss, death, shame, slavery, Nazirite vow. All of these can be linked with Ezekiel’s message.
• A third of the hair > burnt in the fire inside the city, a third > strike with sword around the city, a third > scatter to the wind. A small amount from that > bind into seam of the robe. A small amount from that > burn in fire. The hair = Jews in Jerusalem. Not all aspects fully explained. The hair in the seem could be the small 3rd group of exiles to Babylon, those kept by God, later becoming part of the restoration.
• Eze 5:5-12 Message: Judah had the law, but became more evil than the surrounding nations. What an utter shame and failure! This should be a sore wake up call, humbling them and calling them to repentance.
• Therefore: God himself will come against you (doing what God never did before): siege where parents will eat children and vice versa, survivors scattered to the winds, cut down mercilessly, die of pestilence or be consumed by famine, a third fall by sword, a third scattered with the sword unsheathed after them.
• The four destroyers: sword, famine, pestilence, wild animals
• Eze 5:13-17 God will do this in anger, from jealousy …’and they shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken.’ God will make them an object of mocking, taunt, warning and horror to surrounding nations. Wild animals against you, children will die.
• Eze 6:1-7 Prophecy of judgment against mountains of Israel: sword, destroy high places, people killed … then you shall know that I am the LORD.
• Eze 7:1-27 Now poetry, a vivid description of the destruction: disaster after disaster, the sword on the outside, famine and pestilence within (Eze 7:15). ‘The rod has blossomed, pride has budded. Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain … the time has come” (Eze 7:10-12). The long suffering God has seen a slow descent into evil, and he must stop it.
• Individualization: ‘The king shall mourn, the prince shall be wrapped in despair, and the hands of the people of the land shall tremble.’
• The refrain (Eze 7:9, 27) is: “and they shall know that I am the LORD”. God’s forever goal is revelation to humankind in the hope of a proper response from Gen 3 onward. Even now.
• Summary The assurance of the total destruction of Judah and Jerusalem is still not believed. Jerusalem Jews consider themselves the lucky ones, exiled Jews think they missed God. Ezekiel strongly speaks against this (first hearers) and writes against this (first readers). The calling of God now lies on those who accept the judgment and trust God in it.
• Ezekiel speaks against false hopes, false security (Jerusalem) and against false hopelessness (Babylon). Embrace God’s way.

The Glory Leaves the Temple: 2nd vision Ezekiel 8-11

• Eze 8:1 Setting: 5th day, 6th month, 6th year (6 Sep 591 BC) Ezekiel has the elders of Judah in front of him, presumably to inquire of God. About 15 months have passed since his calling, shortly after or maximum 3 months after his siege-lying.
• Eze 8:2 The hand of God ‘fell upon’ him, with the elders presumably looking on. He sees a figure like a human being, above gleaming amber, below fire. Same description as Eze 1:27, the one on the throne. So this is presumably Jesus himself who guides him through this vision.
• Eze 8:3-4 He reaches out the hand, grabs a lock of Ezekiel, spirit lifting him up between heaven and earth and brings him ‘in visions of God’ to Jerusalem, to the entrance of the gateway of the inner court of the temple that faces North, to the seat of the image of jealousy. The glory of the LORD was there, like in the vision in Eze 1 and 3. Ezekiel knows the place, this is where he should have been working as a priest. But the vision will be shocking. Is the image of jealousy newly there? Or has Ezekiel never been inside? Or is he already aware of what the vision shows, but it is still shocking to see is with God’s real presence there?
• Eze 8:5-6 Visual tour of the temple compound: Four abominations that get progressively worse, the next one being introduced by God’s words: ‘you il see still greater abomination’.
  Image of jealousy. Then he said to me: ‘O mortal, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel is committing here, to drive me far from my sanctuary?
• Eze 8:7-13 Digging through the wall: 10 Elders worshiping animals / idols hidden in the ‘room of images’, thinking God can’t see, he has forsaken the land. Among them Jaazahiah, son of Shaphan. Jeremiah: Shaphan. Has sons Eliasha, Ahikam, Gemaliah, who are good. Is this a different Shaphan? Later: son of Azzur.
• Eze 8:14-15 Entrance of the North gate: women weeping for Tammuz, an early Mesopotamian god linked to shepherds.
• Eze 8:16 Inner court entrance, between the porch and altar, 25 men with the backs to the temple, worshiping the sun toward the east.
• Eze 8:17-18 God saying “Have you seen this, O mortal? Is it not bad enough that the house of Judah commits the abominations done here! Must they fill the land with violence and provoke my anger still further? … I will act in wrath, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity, and though they cry in my hearing with a loud voice, I will not listen to them.” This seems to be the answer to the elders of Judah sitting in front of Ezekiel. Again the link of idolatry and societal injustice, hating God and hating the neighbor (instead of loving God and my neighbor). God is almost emotionally appealing to Ezekiel, deeply offended, tragically saddened, upset.
• Eze 9:1-2 Man on the throne / man of light calls the six executioners, one of them is in white linen with a writing case at their side > all stand beside the bronze altar. The place of sacrifice. They didn’t come to God. Now they will be sacrificed for their sin.
• Eze 9:3 Glory of God moves to threshold of temple.
• Eze 9:4 Man in linen commanded to go through city and put a mark of the foreheads of those who sigh and groan over all the abominations. The remnant (Elijah’s 7000 people left). There are those who sigh and groan (Jeremiah, Baruch, some officers, Ebed-Melech).
• This picture is taken up in Rev 7:1-3 etc. Recognition and protection of God’s own people in the midst of great judgment. God will know to distinguish the good from the evil > comfort, assurance for those who suffer with evil.
• Eze 9:5-7 Executioners are commanded to slaughter without pity old, young, men, women, all with no mark (Rev 9:4) Begin at sanctuary (1 Pet 4:17) > elders in front of the house, onward.
• Eze 9:8-11 Ezekiel falls prostrate and intercedes: “Will you destroy all who remain?” God answers (not taking back the judgment): Judah’s sin ‘is exceedingly great, bloodshed, perversity… for they say “the LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD does not see”. The one in linen reports back having done the job. Complete number preserved. One wonders what the elders sitting gazing at Ezekiel saw or heard while all this is going on?
• Eze 10:1-5 Throne of God, commands the one in linen to bring out living coals from between the 4 living creatures (here called Cherubim). Glory of the LORD on South side of temple, cloud filled the inner court, glory rises up, moves to threshold of the temple, house filled with the cloud, court filled with brightness, sound from the wings. Presence of God (with cloud, brightness) is step by step moving out of the temple!
• Eze 10:6-8 Man in linen goes to take coals, a cherub gives it to him (Rev 8:3-5).
• Eze 10:9-17 Description of wheels, wheel in wheel, moving synchronized, full of eyes, four faces (cherub, human, lion, eagle … ox replaced by cherub). Cherub = living creatures. Spirit of the cherubim in the wheels.
• Eze 10:18-23 Glory of God moves to East Gate.
• Eze 11:1-4 At East Gate Ezekiel sees the 25 elders, among them Jaazaniah, son of Azzur and Pelathia, son of Benaiah, officials of the people. Ezekiel is told that these devise iniquity and give wicked counsel. They say: “The time is not near to build houses; this city is the pot, and we are the meat”. A snug word picture, meaning invulnerability, self-pleasing, self- assurance, luxury.
• Eze 11:5-12 Spirit of the LORD falls on Ezekiel, has him prophesy: ‘You have killed many, filled the streets with the slain. I will bring the sword upon you. I will take you out of the pot (Jerusalem). I will judge you at the border of Israel.’ God will destroy their smug self-assurance and false security. Border of Israel maybe Riblah, where Nebuchadnezzar judges many (Jer 39:5), among them King Zedekiah.
• Eze 11:13 While prophesying Pelatiah, from among he elders, dies. Ezekiel falls down to intercede with a loud voice: ‘will you make a full end of the remnant of Israel?’ Shocking to see the immediate results of one’s own prophecy, the power of the word of God, the reality of what will happen. God does not take back the judgment.
• Eze 11:14-15 Word to Ezekiel: The Jerusalem Jews look down upon the exiles, claim all the land to be theirs. The arrogance! In the face of prophecy fulfilling still a total denial of everything
  Jeremiah has said. A refusal to see or know
• Eze 11:16-21 God counters: ‘Though I removed them (exiles) far away among the nations… yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a little while in the countries where they have gone … I will gather you from the countries where you have been scattered and I will give you the land of Israel … they will remove from it all the detestable things … I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them and I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes (the disobedience didn’t go away!) Then they shall be my people and I will be their God. (Exo 19). But (regarding Jerusalem Jews) ‘I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, says the Lord”. The Jerusalem Jews will be killed off, their pride will be broken. The promise now solely rests on the willing exiles. God predicts a total restoration, referring to Jesus.
• Eze 11:22-25 Glory of God ascends from middle of the city, stopped on the mountain east of the city. Calvary? Mount of Olives? God’s presence has left the temple and Jerusalem, they are given up to destruction. Probably nobody noticed.
• Ezekiel brought back to the exiles in Babylon. Tells them the vision > encouragement to the exiles, and a prophecy soon fulfilling before their eyes.
• Repeated Theme in these chapter: ‘Do you see?’ God does see. Assurance for those frustrated by evil. Often we think God does not see, or he would do something. Here God is telling Ezekiel to see, to understand, to agree that judgment is inevitable. His ‘eye will not spare’.

Assurance of exile: Two more signs                   Ezekiel 12

• Eze 12:1-7 Enacted symbol: Ezekiel prepares an exile’s baggage, at evening digs through the wall and carries off baggage with covered face.
• Eze 12:8-16 Word of God in answer to people’s question: ‘What are you doing?’ Enacted symbol portraying the prince of Judah (Zedekiah) going into exile to Babylon ‘yet he shall not see it’. Sword unsheathed after him and his helpers and troops, famine and pestilence. Only few will survive to report their abominations. Fulfilled as Zedekiah’s eyes are gouged out at Riblah before being taken into captivity.
• Eze 12:17-20 Enacted symbol: Ezekiel eats his bread with quaking and fearfulness, drinks his water with in dismay > the inhabitants of Jerusalem will do so because the land will be desolated, them being taken captive.
• Eze 12:21-28 Proverb: “The days are prolonged and every vision comes to nothing’. God: ‘I will put an end to this proverb … It will be fulfilled, it will no longer be delayed”. Meaning to both sides: To the Jerusalem Jews > the doom is near. To the exiles who are frustrated at having been the ones that were taken and jealous of those that remain > soon this discrepancy will be rectified. Shows what the prophet Ezekiel had to deal with attitude wise: disrespect, ridicule.

Bad Leaders judged                                               Ezekiel 13-14

• Introduction In Eze 9:6-7 the judgment started at the sanctuary, with the 25 elders there. In agreement with this:
• Eze 13:1-7 Ezekiel’s prophecy against false prophets: They have followed own spirit, seen nothing, envisioned falsehood, lying divination.
• Eze 13:8-16 God’s judgment announced: “I am against you … you will not be in the council of my people, nor enrolled in the register, nor enter the land, and you shall know that I am the LORD. Because you misled people, saying ‘Peace’ when there is no peace … You whitewashed the walls people built .. a deluge of rain, hailstones, story wind > will fall … you shall perish…. concerning Jerusalem”. It seems they were prophesying that Jerusalem will be saved, false hope for Jerusalem Jews and false frustration for exiled Jews. Exactly contrary to Ezekiel.
• Eze 13:17-19 Prophecy against women who prophesy out of their own imagination, who sew bands an all wrists, make veils for the heads. Will you hunt down lives among my people, and maintain your own lives? You have profaned me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, putting to death persons who should not die and keeping alive persons who should not live. Not sure what bands and veils, linked with idolatry most likely.
• Eze 13:20-23 I am against your bands, veils … you have disheartened the righteous falsely … you have encouraged the wicked not to turn from their wicked way … you shall no longer see false visions, practice divination. The women were false prophets, false counselors, maybe selling charms, in every case making people trust in the wrong things. Every small sin or unfaithfulness is an active discouragement to the good and an excuse to the bad. Every small faithfulness is an encouragement to the good and a challenge to the bad. Our every action matters. Sin never just affects us. Neither does faithfulness.
• Eze 14:1-5 Certain elders sitting before Ezekiel. God: ‘These have taken their idols into their hearts and placed their
  iniquity as a stumbling block before them … No fooling God.
• Eze 14:6-8 “Repent and turn from your idols … Those who do so and yet come to a prophet to inquire … I myself will set my face against them… and cut them off”. God hates double-heartedness.
• Eze 14:9-11 “If a prophet in deceived … I have deceived him, will destroy him. The punishment of the inquirer and the punishment of the prophet shall be the same – so that the house of Israel may no longer go astray from me. Then they shall be my people and I will be their God” (Exo 19). Both are equally responsible.
• Eze 14:12-20 “When a land sins … I send famine, wild animals, sword, pestilence (4x) upon it … even if Noah, Daniel and Job, were in it, they would save only their won lives by their righteousness”. Sin far gone. Individual consequences even with national judgments.
• Eze 14:21-23 Acts of judgment (sword, famines, wild animals, pestilence) … Consolation when seeing the evil God bought upon Jerusalem. To the exiles.

Four Parables or Allegories                               Ezekiel 15, 16, 17, 23

Jerusalem the Useless Vine                                Ezekiel 15

• Eze 15:1-8 Inhabitants of Jerusalem compared to the wood of the vine, which has no use for building, support, furniture, not even a peg … only to be burnt. Jerusalem is compared to an already burnt and charred piece of vine, totally useless.
• God’s verdict: “I will give up the inhabitants of Jerusalem, I will set my face against them, I will make the land desolate … even if they escape the fire”. A picture of utter failure. God’s dream of a blessing to the nations and an attractive nation under God to reveal his name is dead.

Allegory of Jerusalem the Faithless Bride    Ezekiel 16

• Eze 16:1-14 Dramatic Retelling of History: Israel as an unloved, unimportant, uncared for baby girl, into which God speaks life, to which God commits himself in marriage, richly providing for her. God bestowing undeserved grace, giving call and chosenness.
• Eze 16:15-22 Israel trusted in its beauty, commits adultery with any passer by, gives God’s provision as offering to lovers, slaughtered its children as offering (Molech cult). Pride, false self-confidence, independence, unfaithfulness, selfishness takes Israel down the path of sin.
• Eze 16:23-29 ‘Woe, woe, woe to you’. Israel built a platform, continued whorings with Egypt, Philistia, Assyria, Chaldea. Probably referring to political alliances.
• Eze 16:30-34 ‘How sick is your heart’. Israel was different because it paid people to use her as prostitute, instead of taking money.
• Eze 16:35-43a Therefore God will throw down her platform, strip her naked, give her into the power of her lovers. God will satisfy his fury on you.
• Eze 16:43b-52 Proverb: ‘Like mother like daughter’. Judah did like older sister Samaria, and younger sister Edom (Sodom), did even worse than them.
• Eze 16:53-58 I will restore their fortunes (of Sodom, of Samaria, of Judah), they shall return to their former state. Judah must swallow her pride in looking down on Sodom.
• Eze 16:59 Judah has broken the covenant, but God will remember the covenant, re-establish it, give Samaria and Sodom as children to Judah. Judah be ‘confounded, never open mouth again because of shame, when I forgive you all that you have done’. God wants to overwhelm with lavish, undeserved grace, hoping for a response of gratefulness and love. This is what Jesus is: overwhelming, lavish, undeserved grace.

Oholah and Oholibah                       Ezekiel 23

• Like chapter 16, this is a Dramatic Retelling of History, parallel to the story of the girl turned faithless bride.
• Eze 23:2 ‘There were two women … they played the whore in Egypt… in their youth, their breasts were caressed tere, and their virgin bosoms were fondled”… the picture being painted is almost a sleazy R-rated movie.
• Consider the effectiveness of this. Like with the enacted symbol performed by Hosea with his wife, Gomer, this graphic description of the lustfulness of Israel and Judah here would strike a raw nerve in those who hear of it – because it is such a blatant, outrageous story and – worse – it is depicting just them. The story brings home just how lewd, rotten and scandalous Israel is in its turning away from God.
• Eze 23:3 The name of the elder sister: Ohola (Israel). From ‘ohel = tent. Literally: her tent, usually translated ‘idolatrous sanctuary’, could refer to tent of meeting.
• The name of the younger sister: Oholiba (Juda): Literally: my tent is in her, probably referring to the sanctuary of God being in Jerusalem.
• Eze 23:5-10 Oholah is lusting after Assyrian warriors ‘when she was mine’, governors and commanders, handsome young men, mounted horsemen … She defiled herself with all the idols of everyone after whom she lusted. As in youth fornication with Egypt, now adultery with Assyria. Judgment: “I delivered her into the hand of her lovers”. Israel is destroyed by Assyria in 722 BC.
• Eze 23:11-21 Oholibah saw this but she was more corrupt than her sister… She lusted after the Assyrians… But she took her whorings further; she saw male figures carved on the wall, images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermillion, with belts, flowing turbans … She lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love (Hezekiah’s political alliances, messengers from Babylon, Isa 39) … after she defiled herself with them she turned from them in disgust … carried on her whorings openly … I turned in disgust from her as I had turned from her sister. … But she increased her whorings, remembering the days of their youth … she played the whore in the land of Egypt … whose members were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of stallions. Judah descends even further.
• Eze 23:22-35 Judgment: ‘I will rouse against you your lovers… Babylonians, Chaldeans, Pekod, Shoa, Koa (describing Chaldea, shoa = rich, koa = noble), Assyrians … they shall cut off your nose and your ears … they will deal with you in hatred … polluted yourself with their idols … you shall drink your sister’s cup’. Judah is destroyed and exiled by Babylon in 586 BC.
• Eze 23:36-49 God to Ezekiel: ‘Will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Then declare to them their abominable deeds …. adultery, blood on their hands, idols, offered children, defiled my sanctuary, profaned my Sabbaths … guilty of adultery and bloodshed … sinful idolatry’. God is looking for someone who understands enough to share his disgust, to agree with the rightness of the judgment, to learn from it for the future. Eze 23:20 has the “member like a donkey”.

Parable of the Eagle and the Vine                   Ezekiel 17

• Introduction Just after God promises His everlasting covenant in Eze 16, God gives the parable of the eagle and the vine to show how much He is against covenant-breakers.
• Eze 17:1-10 An eagle breaks off the topmost twig of a cedar of Lebanon, carries it to a land of trade, plants in fertile soil and abundant waters and it sprouts. Then another eagle comes and the vine bends toward it so that it might water it. God says: ‘Will it prosper? Will he not pull up its roots, cause its fruit to rot and wither, its leaves to fade? When it is transplanted will it thrive?
• Eze 17:11-21 Interpretation: The king of Babylon came to Jerusalem, exiled a king (Jehoiachin), took another of the royal family on the throne (Zedekiah). But he rebelled and sent ambassadors to Egypt to grant him horses and a large army. “Will he succeed? Can one escape who does such things? Can he break the covenant and yet escape?”
• God swears: ‘He will die in Babylon, I will return upon his head the covenant that he broke. Egypt will not help him, Babylon will judge him for treason’. Fulfilled when Zedekiah rebels against Nebuchadnezzar (588 BC?), then is besieged, conquered, blinded and exiled in 586 BC.
• Eze 17:22-24 God’s promise: God himself will take a sprig from a cedar, plant in on the mountain height in Israel > noble cedar. “All the trees of the field shall know that I am the LORD. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree. I the LORD have spoken; I will accomplish it.” God wants covenant faithfulness, to him but also among nations. God can make any nation thrive, God can bring down any nation. God himself is faithful to his covenant, he will do as he has spoken. Probably also a messianic prophecy: Jesus is the sprig that will become the noble cedar on a mountain.

Individual Responsibility Ezekiel 18

• Introduction One idea repeated throughout this book is that each person must take personal responsibility for his sin: Eze 18, 33:10-20, 3:16ff.
• Eze 18:1-5 Current Proverb: ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge”. God counters strongly: “it is only the person who sins that shall die.”
• Eze 18:6-9 “The one who does right will surely live’. Definition of doing right: ‘not eat upon mountains, not lift up eyes to idols, does not defile his neighbor’s wife, sleep with his wife during menstruation, not oppresses anyone, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry, covers the naked with a garment, does not take advance or accrued interest, withholds his hand from iniquity, executes true justice between contending parties, follows my statutes”. An interesting and fair summary of the law.
• Eze 18:10-13 “If he has a son who is violent … who does any of these things though his father does none of them … shall he then live? He shall surely die.”
• Eze 18:14-15 “But if this man has a son who sees all the sins that his father had done, considers and does not do likewise, … he shall not die for his father’s iniquity; he shall surely live.”
• Eze 18:19-20 “Yet you say ‘Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father? … The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own”. Individual responsibility, sovereignty of human choice. Family or model or circumstance is important but not decisive.
• Eze 18:21-23 “But if the wicked turn away from all their sins … and keep all my statues … they shall surely live. None of the transgressions that they have committed shall be remembered … Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the LORD GOD, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live?” The mercy of God to surely take back anyone who repents. God has no pride. He doesn’t choose to be insulted, though be has grounds galore.
• Eze 18:24 “But if the righteous turn away from their righteousness and commit iniquity … they shall die”. This is interesting: not the initial choice but the final choice of our lives counts. Not: have you once some when said the ‘sinner’s prayer’? But: what is the final outcome of your life?
• Eze 18:25 “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is unfair’… ‘Is it not your ways that are unfair?” The arrogance of humans to think and even call God unfair after grace upon grace and patience upon patience.
• Eze 18:30-32 “Therefore I will judge you… all of you according to your ways … Repent and turn from all your transgressions, otherwise iniquity will be your ruin. … Whey will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone… Turn then, and live”. The cry of God’s heart, how much clearer can it be? This also shows that ‘having been punished by going into exile’ doesn’t even the score. Even those in exile desperately need to repent. Anyone still breathing should not consider the exile a full punishment.
• Note On one hand Eze 18: God judges each one according to his sins. On the other hand, God also says He judges for His name’s sake and “not according to your evil ways” in Eze 20:44. This is an amazing picture of His love and mercy.

Lion and Vine: Lamentation for the princes of Israel                   Ezekiel 19

• Eze 19:1 Metaphorical Retelling of Judah’s last years: ‘Raise up a lamentation for the princes of Israel … Mother was a lioness … She raised up one cub … taken to Egypt (Jehoahaz) … took another of her cubs … taken to Babylon (Jehoiachin)’.
• Eze 19:10 Mother was a vine… fruitful … abundant water … its strongest stem became a ruler’s scepter, towered aloft … But if was plucked up in fury, cast down, dried up, stripped off, withered, fire consumed it, transplanted into wilderness … fire > there remains no strong stem, no scepter for ruling. The house of David wil come to an end, though that seems in breach of God’s promise (2 Sam 7).

Israel’s continued Rebellion                                                              Ezekiel 20

• Eze 20:1-8a Elders of Israel come to consult the Lord through Ezekiel. God’s answer: ‘Why are you coming? To consult me? … I will not be consulted by you’ … Retelling of Israel’s history … ‘But they rebelled against me and would not listen to me’.
• Eze 20:8b-32 “Then I thought I would our out my wrath upon them … But for the sake of my name, that is should not be profaned in the sight of the nations (3x, Eze 20:9,14,22) … So I led them out of the land of Egypt, gave them my statutes, my sanctuary. But the rebelled against me … I thought I would pour out my wrath upon them … But I acted for the sake of my name s that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations … They rejected my ordinances … nevertheless my eye spared them’. Long story of continued grace and continued rebellion”. Conclusion: ‘As I live, I will not be consulted by you’ (2x, Eze 20:3,31).
• Eze 20:33 For no reason other than God’s mercy after this sickening chapter God promises restoration! “34 I will bring you out form the peoples and father you … 36 I will enter into judgment with you face to face. 37 I will make you pass under the staff and will bring you within the bond of the covenant. 38 I will purge out the rebels among you… they shall not enter the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the LORD… 40 I will accept them …41 I will manifest my holiness among you … 44 and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
• Eze 20:45-48 A prophecy against the Negeb: ‘I will kindle a fire in you, and it shall devour every green tree … it shall not be quenched’.
• Eze 20:49 “Is he not a maker of allegories?” Ezekiel is upset that after so much prophesy, enacted symbols, faithfulness and obedience they treat him a story peddler. And well he might be.

Picture: God’s drawn sword                                  Ezekiel 21

• Eze 21:1-17 “Set your face towards Jerusalem and prophesy against Israel: I am coming against you,and will draw my sword … sharpened, polished, honed, grasped’ … I will satisfy my fury”. Announcement of immanent disaster over Jerusalem.
• Eze 21:18-12 “Mortal, mark out two roads for the sword of the king of Babylon to come … the road to Rabbah of the Ammonites or to Jerusalem … Into his right hand comes the lot for Jerusalem … Vile, wicked prince, you whose day has come … a ruin, a ruin, a ruin I will make it”. Dramatic description of Babylon’s approach.

Picture: The bloody city, melting pot              Ezekiel 22

• Eze 22:1-5 “Will you judge the bloody city? Shedding blood, making idols … therefore I have made you a disgrace before the nations”. Agreeing with God in judgment.
• Eze 22:6-12 “The princes of Israel in you … bent on shedding blood (6th command), father and mother are treated with contempt (5th command), alien suffers extortion (7th command), orphan and widow are wronged (9th command), despised my holy things (1-3rd command), profaned my Sabbaths (4th command), slander, shed blood, eat upon mountains, commit lewdness, accrued interest, gain by extortion … I will scatter you among the nations and I will purge your filthiness out of you”. Declaration of what is coming. Princes singled out. Also in Jeremiah the princes are a force for worse (Jer 38:25).
• Eze 22:17-31 “Israel has become dross to me in the smelter … I will gather you in the midst of Jerusalem … I will put you in and melt you … I am profaned among them. Its officials within it are like wolves tearing the prey … I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found non one. Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; I have returned their conduct upon their heads, says the Lord God”. Purification by fire like metal. Picking up threateningly on the earlier snug picture of them being the meat in the caldron (Eze 11:3). The solution is only to go through judgment, accept is as justified of God, embrace it and come out on the other side humble and trusting.

The boiling pot, the count down                           Ezekiel 24

• Eze 24:1-14 9th year, 10th month, 10th day (= 10th Jan 587 BC) … “this very day the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem. Set on the pot, pour in water, put in the pieces, fill it with choice bones … the time is coming, I will act. I will not refrain, I will not spare, I will not relent. According to your ways and your doings I will judge you, says the Lord GOD”. The noose is tightening. The fulfillment is beginning. God informs the exiles. So bad, no burials anymore.
• Eze 24:15-18 Ezekiel’s wife ‘the delight of your eyes’ will die. No outward signs of mourning, turban bound on, sandals on feet (immanent exile) not covering upper lip, not eating the bread of mourners.
• Ezekiel announces this to people in the morning, the same evening she is dead.
• Eze 24:19-24 Paralleled with God destroying the sanctuary in Jerusalem, ‘the delight of your eyes’ (not of God’s). Imagine the pain that would come with such a sudden death and the commanded not to mourn for his wife at all. Throughout the book, Ezekiel always “did as he was commanded” to, here surely with a bleeding heart. He cannot distance himself form the coming disaster (like Jonah), coolly waiting for God to strike, he is suffering the disaster
• Eze 24:25-27 God will take from them the delight of their eyes, their stronghold, their joy and glory, their sons and daughters. Till the day a messenger will bring the news of the fall of Jerusalem to Ezekiel, so long Ezekiel will not be able to speak again. All messages are spoken, nothing left to say, no escape any more, the pieces are moving, the total countdown has begun till its fulfillment. Ezekiel is silently watching. Ezekiel’s silence is not more dramatic than his words.

Judgment on the Nations Ezekiel 25-32

Overview

• Ammon Eze 25:1-7 rejoicing, gloating when temple & land destroyed  cut off, destroy
• Moab Eze 25:8-11 profaned God’s people, said ‘they are like others’
• Edom Eze 25:12-14 profaned God’s people, said ‘they are like others’, revenge
• Philistia Eze 25:15-17 acted revengefully  cut off, destroy
• Tyre Eze 26:1-28:19 pride to think she could be god
• Sidon Eze 28:20-24  pestilence, blood
• Egypt Eze 29-32 pride: think Nile own creation (29:3,9-10) staff of reed to Israel (29:6-7) desolation, given > Babylon
• But note that God promises restoration to Egypt after 40 years (Eze 29:13-14). However, it shall be the most lowly of kingdoms (Eze 29:15) – never again rule over the nations. Most importantly, “it shall never again be the reliance of the house of Israel, recalling their iniquity, when they turn to them for aid. Then they will know that I am the Lord God.” (Eze 29:16)

Big Picture

• As surely as God will judge evil Jerusalem, he will also judge evil surrounding nations, also for their attitude and actions against Judah at the time of her weakness.
• God will display His true character to all His nations. God wants to be known, understood and recognized for who He is … ‘so that they may know that I am the Lord’.
• God’s judgment is needed because he is mindful of the oppressed, because he tries to get Israel’s attention, because he is serious bout his law, because he must eventually limit or terminate evil due to his goodness.
• God judges the nations by the common understanding / golden rule / Rom 1:20 standard. All nations are accountable to him. No evil nation will be allowed to continue forever.
• God is in control of all things – Judah but also the nations including Judah. We need to respond by submitting to God, accepting his judgment, agreeing with him, repenting. He is in control, he has the big picture. I can’t and don’t have to control outcome. We can let go of the illusion of control. God is revealed in how cheerfully and confidently I move through any circumstance in life.
• The most powerful repeated theme of Ezekiel (57x) ‘so that they may know that I am the Lord’. This is addressed to Judah and the nations. God wants to be known for his justice, his righteousness, his mercy, his truth. He is the Creator. He is holy. He is in control, all-powerful.
• Restoration is when people know, understand, choose, love and obey God.

AMMON

• History
  • Traced to Gen 19:38 being descendants of Lot by his own daughter.
  • They settled in the Transjordan area, yet God set forth that their land would not be given to Israel as part of the promise land.
  • The first clash with Israel came under the Judge Ehud, as Ammon sided with Eglon of Moab (Jdg 3).
  • They continued this enmity subduing Israel for 18 years (Jdg 10:8) before it was saved by Judge Jephthah.
  • Saul continued the war (1 Sam 11), yet David and Solomon were able to make them a vassal state.
  • Ammon regained independence when the kingdom divided, and came against Jehoshaphat in an alliance with Moab and Edom.
  • Jeroboam II and Jotham put them back as a vassal, but the Assyrians put the whole area under their control.
  • By Ezekiel’s time they served Babylon, and were sent by Babylon to attack Judah under Jehoiakim (2 Kin 24:2).
  • They plotted with Zedekiah in a conspiracy against Babylon (Jer 27:2).
  • Many Jews in 586 BC fled to Ammon for refuge (Jer 40:11).
  • King Baalis plotted with Johanan of Judah to kill Gedaliah (Jer 10:13).
• Judgment
  • Eze 21:28-32; 25:4-7, 10b
  • Guilt clapped hands, rejoiced with malice when Israel, Judah, sanctuary made desolate.
• Prophecy
  • I will hand you over to the peoples of the east. Ammon, Rabbah a fold for animals, cut you off. Ammon shall be remembered no more (Eze 25:10).
  • Fulfillment    Either in 582-581 BC by Nebuchadnezzar continuing his Syriac-Palestinian Campaign, with “East” in verse 4 denoting “Babylon”.
  • Or from the 5th to the 1st century the Nabateans, an eastern Arab group, gradually formed a kingdom and conquered the east Jordan area.
• Other prophets
  • Isa 11:14
  • Jer 9:26, 25:21, 27:3, 40:11, 41:1049:1-6
  • Dan 11:41
  • Amo 1:13
  • Zep 2:8-11

MOAB

• History
  • Traced to Gen 19:30-38 as a descendant of Lot by his own daughter, who also settled in the Transjordan area.
  • Their first contact with Israel was sending Balaam against Israel.
  • King Eglon of Moab oppressed Israel during the judges, and was killed by Judge Ehud (Jdg 3).
  • Ruth was a Moabite.
  • Not much mention is given of their relation during the time of the kings, but Moab appeared to be a vassal.
  • They broke free under Ahab and attacked Jehoshaphat with an alliance. Moab paid tribute to Assyria.
  • By Ezekiel’s time Moab had joined Ammon as mercenaries for Nebuchadnezzar against Judah (2 Ki 24:1).
  • Many Jews in 586 BC fled to Moab for refuge (Je 40:11).
• Judgment
  • Eze 25:8-10.
  • Guilt said ‘Judah is like all the other nations’.
• Prophecy
  • I will give it to the people of the east as a possession along with Ammon. Execute judgments.
• Fulfillment
  • fulfillment same as Ammon hinging on who “people of East” are.
• Other prophets
  • Isa 15:1-16:14, 25:10.
  • Jer 25:21, 27:3, 40:11, 48:1-47.
  • Dan 11:41.
  • Amo 2:1-3.
  • Zep 2:8,9.

EDOM

• History
  • Traced to Esau (Gen 25:30) they settled also in the Transjordan area, their first contact with Israel being their refusal of passage to Moses and the people on the way to the promise land.
  • Saul came into conflict with them, but David was the first to subdue them.
  • They joined the attack against Jehoshaphat, and successfully broke free during the reign of his son Jehoram. Though Amaziah and Uzziah won battles against them, they continued to be independent, until they were forced to pay tribute to Assyria.
  • By Ezekiel’s time they are a vassal under Babylon. They sided with Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem in 587 BC and further joined the raid after the fall as told in Obadiah. Many Jews in 586 BC fled to Edom for refuge (Jer 40:11).
• Judgment
  • Eze 25:12-14; 35:1-15
  • Guilt: acted revengefully, grievously offended in taking vengeance on Judah.
  • Eze 35 cherished ancient enmity, gave over Israel to the sword at the time of their calamity, did not hate bloodshed.
  • Claiming Israel and Judah for itself, abusive speech against Israel, magnified yourself against against me, rejoiced over Israel’s desolation.
• Prophecy
  • I will cut off humans and animals, make it desolate, by the hand of Israel. As they have done, so God will do to them
  • Fulfilment: 120 BC by John Hyrcanus, a Maccabean ruler, the “hand of Israel” mentioned in Eze 25:14.
• Other prophets
  • Isa 11:14, 63:1.
  • Jer 9:26, 25:21, 27:3, 40:11, 49:7-22.
  • Dan 11:41. Joel 3:19.
  • Amo 1:11-12.
  • Obadiah.
  • Mal 1:4

PHILISTIA

• History
  • Traced to Genesis with Abimelech being a Philistine who made covenants with Abraham.
  • They were a sea people from possibly Crete who migrated to Palestine. 1200-1000 BC was the height of the empire, overtaking the Hittites.
  • They had wars with Egypt in 1188 BC with Rameses III.
  • The Philistine culture eventually sycretized with Canaanite culture.
  • They controlled Judah during time of Samson (Jdg 14:4).
  • 1 Sam 2-4 sees their capture of the ark, and defeat of King Saul in 1 Sam 31.
  • The Philistines were forced into a suzerainty treaty with David and Solomon, and paid tribute under Jehoshaphat (2 Chr 17:11).
  • They conducted raids on Judah under Jehoram (2 Chr 21:16-17), but Uzziah defeated them.
  • Ahaz is attacked (2 Chr 28:18), but the Assyrians subdued them.
  • The capture of Gaza by Hezekiah (2 Kin 18:8) is last mention of them in OT.
  • By Ezekiel’s time: No biblical reference beyond Ezekiel of their involvement and fall.
• Judgment
  • Eze 25:15-17
  • Guilt: they acted with unending hostility in vengeance, with malice of heart took revenge in destruction
• Prophecy
  • cut off Philistines, destroy rest of the sea coast, execute vengeance
  • Fulfillment in 582-581 BC by Nebuchadnezzar, who captured the major cities and deported most of the leaders and people.
• Other prophets
  • Isa 9:12, 11:14.
  • Jer 25:20, 47:1-7.
  • Amo 1:6-8.
  • Oba 19.
  • Zeph 2:5
  • Zech 9:5-7

TYRE

• History
  • A wealthy city state, a famous and the best natural port on the sea coast, part of Phoenicia, modern day Lebanon.
  • It began relations with Israel under King Hiram who sent materials and workers to David to build the house of the Lord (2 Sam 5).
  • There was a shift of power after Hiram to Tyre over Sidon becoming the leading city.
  • They were one of the only nations who escaped Assyrian dominance by their wealth, sea power and geographic position.
  • By Ezekiel’s time Tyre had joined the envoy to Zedekiah inciting him to rebel against Babylon (Jer 27:2).
  • It was in economic conflict with Israel over the slave trade of prisoners (?, Eze 27:13)
• Judgment
  • Eze 26:1-6, 26:7-21
  • Guilt: Joy over Jerusalem’s destruction, expects to be replenished as a result
• Prophecy
  • I will hurl many nations at you.
  • They shall destroy the walls, break down its towers, scrape the rock bare > place for spreading the nets.
  • Tyre shall be plunder for the nations, its daughter cities killed.
  • Eze 26:8-14 Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon against Tyre, siege wall, ramp > plundered.
  • Eze 26:15-18 princes of the sea shall wail.
  • Eze 26:19-21 never inhabited again.
• Fulfillment
  • Eze 26:1-6 “many nations” means possibly Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 585-572 BC or Alexander the Great of Greece in 332 BC or Muslim Arabs in 1291 AD.
  • Eze 26:7-21 fulfilled in 585-572 BC by Nebuchadnezzar with a 13 year siege only destroying the mainland side city ‘Old Tyre’.
  • Eze 27:1-28:19 either of three mentioned above, with note that Alexander destroyed the island city ‘New Tyre’, and after the Muslim attack, the island city was never again rebuilt.
• Other prophets
  • Isa 23:1-18.
  • Joel 3:4.
  • Jer 25:22, 27:3, 47:4.
  • Amo 1:9-10.
  • Zech 9:2.
  • Lament Eze 27:1-36 Tyre, the ship that sank.
  • King of Tyre Eze 28:1-19

SIDON

• History
  • Gen 10:19 shows the antiquity of this famous Phoenician port city.
  • They were known as aggressive sea-faring traders who were an independent city but linked in the Phoenician alliance.
  • They began relations with Israel under King Ethbaal who gave his daughter Jezebel to King Ahab to marry.
  • They also avoided Assyrian dominance but paid tribute to them from 1000-800 BC.
  • In 677 BC Esar-haddon the Assyrian destroyed the city, but it was rebuilt.
  • By Ezekiel’s time they had joined the envoy to Zedekiah (Jer 27:2)
• Judgment
  • Eze 28:20-26
  • Guilt: contempt for Israel, pricking brier, piercing thorn to Israel (together with other neighbors)
• Prophecy
  • pestilence, bloodshed, sword
  • Fulfilment: in 345 BC by Artaxerxes II who sold them into slavery.
• Other prophets
  • Isa 23:2.
  • Jer 25:22, 27:3, 47:4.
  • Joel 3:4.
  • Zech 9:2

EGYPT

• History
  • Israel’s first contact with Israel after the ascension of the monarchy, was their asylum to Hadad the enemy of David. Solomon married a daughter of the Pharaoh to forge an alliance with Egypt.
  • Shishak raided Jerusalem during Rehoboam’s rule, but then has no more contact until Hoshea sends to Pharaoh So (Oskoron IV) for help against the Assyrians, which was refused.
  • By Ezekiel’s time Necho II had killed Josiah on his way to winning the first Battle of Carchemish against Babylon, after which he placed Jehoiakim on the throne.
  • The second Battle of Carchemish saw Egypt’s defeat, but won against Babylon in 601 BC Hophra encouraged Zedekiah to rebel against Babylon in 587 BC but gave no real help.
• Judgment
  • Eze 29:1-16, Ez 29:17-20; 30:1-19; 32:1
  • Guilt: Pride “my Nile is my own, I made it for myself”
• Judgment
  • Eze 29:1-12 God will draw Egypt up with a hook, fling it into wilderness, given, cut off humans and animals > Egypt a desolation.
  • Eze 29:13-16 God will restore the fortunes of Egypt > lowly kingdom, never again to rule over nations.
  • Eze 29:17-21 Babylon will plunder Egypt to be reimbursed for their fruitless labor against Tyre.
  • Eze 30:20-26 God will break the arm of Pharaoh and not bind it up, to prevent it becoming strong again.
  • Fulfillment either in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar defeated Pharaoh Hophra who was coming out in aid of Jerusalem which was under siege; thereby making the “40 years” of v. 13 being roughly the time between 586 and 538 BC when Cyrus Decree allowed those Egyptians who were exiled by Nebuchadnezzar to return home to Egypt or the “40 years” refers to the 40 year siege of Cambyses the Persian from 525-487 BC
  • Eze 29:17-20; 30:1-19; 32:1 was fulfilled in 568-67 BC by Nebuchadnezzar after the siege of Tyre in which Pharaoh Ahmose II (Amasis) was forced to pay heavy tribute to Babylon in order to stave further destruction.
  • Eze 30:20-26 fulfilled in 586 BC by Nebuchadnezzar with the Pharaoh being Pharaoh Hophra.
• Other prophets
  • Isa 7:18, 11:1, 19:1-25, 20:1-6, 27:12-13, 30:1-5, 31:1-3, 36:6, 45:14.
  • Jer 9:26, 24:8-10, 25:19, 37:6-10.
  • Hos 7:11, 8:13, 9:6, 11:11, 12:1.
  • Joel 3:19.
  • Mic 7:12.
  • Nah 3:9.
  • Zech 10:11, 14:18
  • Lament Eze 30:1-19

King of Tyre or Satan                                    Ezekiel 26-28

• Eze 26:1-21 Tyre’s coming Desolation
• Eze 27:1-36 Tyre, the ship that sank
• Eze 28:1-10 Downfall of the king of Tyre
• Eze 28:11-19 Lament over the King > passages ascribed to Satan
• Eze 28:20-24 Sidon
• Eze 28:25-26 Israel exalted
• “12 You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, carnelian, chrysolite, and moonstone, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald; and worked in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared 14 With an anointed cherub as guardian I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the stones of fire. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you. 16 In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from among the stones of fire. 17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you. 18 By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade, you profaned your sanctuaries. So I brought out fire from within you; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you. 19 All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you; you have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever.”
• No other titles in this section are taken symbolically, so why should “King of Tyre” be (Eze 28:12)?
• Garden of Eden imagery is also used with Egypt in Eze 31:1-18: Egypt as tree garden and with Israel in Eze 36:35: Israel restored to be a garden of Eden.
• If this is about Satan it would mean Satan’s presence in Eden (Gen 3), tough as a spiritual being he would not be bound to it. If this is about the King of Tyre it would refer to the time when he as a ruler was still good, wealthy, reasonable and just. Or it could refer to the people of Tyre, when it first became a nation.
• Eze 28:14 is a contested verse “with a cherub” or “as a cherub”. As a cherub would still work for the King of Tyre as a metaphor. If taken literally then it is ascribing angelic nature.
• Eze 28:16 “abundance of trade” is consistent with Tyre’s sins described (Eze 26-27). In abundance of trade Tyre was filled with violence, pride, corrupted wisdom for splendor. Tyre and its empire was built on shipping and trade.
• Eze 28:17-19 “I exposed you before kings” … what meaning if this is Satan?
• Eze 28:17ff onwards focuses on shame before humans, that are appalled that powerful Tyre has fallen. Tyre shall be no more. This is an accurate prediction. Alexander conquered and destroyed Tyre. The peninsula where it was situated is now only a shallow place in the sea.

Conclusion

• The teaching about Satan is a genre confusion: prophecy-poetry-figurative
• In context of the judgments on the nations it is unlikely Ezekiel turned aside and quickly said ‘Oh, I just thought I’d teach you something about the spiritual realm in between, okay?’
• On could say that pride (Satan’s sin and the King of Tyre’s sin) look alike. In that sense any description of thorough-going pride is also indirectly a description of Satan. Satan’s sin is the comparison with God, thinking having the mind of a god, has wisdom and understanding but used it to trade and increase wealth, leading to pride. He has beauty, but is proud. He corrupted his wisdom for the sake of splendor.’
• See below: Picture of the ruins of Alexander’s palace in Tyre (on the land side). Map of Tyre (ancient and present coastline) and modern day aerial view.

Prophecies of Restoration Ezekiel 33-48

In the second division of Ezekiel (Eze 33-48) God promises restoration and the flourishing of God’s kingdom in the following ways:

• Eze 33 Intercession restored
• Eze 34 Righteous leadership restored
• Eze 35-36 Divine protection and vindication restored
• Eze 37 Life re-birthed and unity restored
• Eze 38-39 God’s protection returns
• Eze 40-49 God’s holiness and presence restored

Chapter 33 – Watchman of Restoration, God: no pleasure in judging, Jerusalem falls, stubborn survivors

• Eze 33:1-9 Calling as watchman again. Even after the judgment the need for repentance as a life style is undiminished. Ezekiel becomes a watchman of the restoration, making sure people don’t miss it.
• Eze 33:10-20 Assurance of God’s heart behind judgment, his commitment to mercy, his acceptance of all who repent. God has no pride. Again both God’s sovereignty and human sovereignty, choice and accountability are affirmed.
• Eze 33:21-22 A survivor arrives from Jerusalem: ‘The city has fallen’. Ezekiel has felt ‘God’s hand on him’ since the evening before. With the message, the 7 year restriction of speech (!) is lifted. His prophecies are fulfilled. A page is turned.
• Eze 33:23-29 The remaining survivors are prideful about becoming the inheritors of the land. God challenges their sense of entitlement: if they were God-fearing, that would be appropriate, but they are not. These are the same people that inquire of Jeremiah, but then reject his word and forcefully take him to Egypt (Jer 42-44).
• Eze 33:30-33 The exiles flatter, but don’t take Ezekiel serious nor obey God: “singer of love songs”, “beautiful voice”. “When this comes – and come it will! – then they shall know that a prophet has been among them.”  A sad thing to say, at the moment Ezekiel is about as proven as true prophet as it will get. It also shows that they are ‘willfully unknowledgable’. It’s not that they can’t know, it’s that they refuse to know.

Chapter 34 – False shepherds, careless sheep and God’s shepherd

• See earlier: False prophets judged (Eze 13), women teaching idolatry, false hopes in charms judged (Eze 14).
• Chapter 34 Metaphor of Shepherd and sheep. Ever since David shepherd means leader (political, spiritual). Jesus picks up on this metaphor calling himself the ‘Good shepherd’ in John 10.
• Eze 34:1-6 Description of shepherds: ‘feeding themselves, not feeding sheep, eat fat, clothe themselves with wool, do not strengthen the weak, no heal the sick, not bound up the injured, not sought the strayed, rather harsh rule > scattered, food for wild animals’.
• Eze 34:7-10 God’s verdict: “I am against the shepherds, will demand my sheep at their hand”. Accountability of leaders for their greed, self-indulgence, carelessness, abuse of their role.
• Eze 34:11-16 Contrast with God, the good shepherd: ‘I will search for my sheep, rescue them, feed them, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured strengthen the weak.’ Only Jesus character is true leadership.
• Eze 34:17-19 Description of selfish sheep: tread down pasture, foul water with feet, pushing and butting the weak … God’s verdict: “I will judge the fat sheep because of the lean sheep”. Bad leadership is one problem, selfishness among followers is another. Choice, responsibility and accountability on both sides
• Eze 34:23-31 Restoration promise: God will “set up one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them … covenant with the wild animals … rain in season … You are my sheep and I am your God”. Promise of fellowship with God, of peace and blessing > Picture of Jesus, the church, eternity.
• As a leader: whether we are in charge of a small flock or a large flock, we must always remember that these are God’s people entrusted to us to care for them and point them in the direction of knowing God and living as His people.
• As God’s people: we have the assurance that we have Jesus as our shepherd always. Even when our leaders fall or fail me, I can still look to God as my shepherd, as the one who would care for me.

Chapter 35 – Judgment on Mount Seir

• see earlier

Chapter 36 – Blessing and renewal for Israel

• Eze 36:1-7 desolate mountains of Israel that became a possession of other nations > God is his ‘jealous wrath’ will reverse that
• Eze 36:8-15 Israel shall ‘come home’, mountains shall be tilled, sown, yield fruit. God says: “I am for you”
• Eze 36:16-21 Israel by its sin defiled the land > got thrown out (Lev 18:24-31).
• Eze 36:22-32 God will restore Israel’s fortunes, not because of them, but to vindicate his name.
• Eze 36:37-38 God is willing to increase the population. Again population growth is a blessing.
• Parallel to Eze 11:17-21. It’s a sovereign act of grace by God: 13x … “I will.”

Chapter 37 – Third Vision: Valley of Dry Bones, Enacted symbol of unified staff

Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones

• Eze 37:1-2 God’s hand come on Ezekiel and he is taken by the spirit (in a vision, presumably) into a valley of very many very dry bones. A picture of death, of a past disaster, but now still, gone.
• Eze 37:3 God asks: “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel is not confident enough to venture an answer “O Lord GOD, you know”. John in Revelation is asked the same question (twice, I think), and answers in the same way, humbly, unpresumingly, shyly, maybe smartly.
• Eze 37:4-6 God commands him to prophesy to the bones: ‘I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cove you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD.” Breath here is the Hebrew word ‘ruah’, breath, wind, spirit, the same word as used in Gen 1:2 for the Spirit of God (not in Gen 2:7) and Gen 6:3. when God limits human life span. Used 378x in the OT.
• Eze 37:7-8 Ezekiel obeys and prophesies. It starts happening partially: bones come together, sinews and flesh grows and are formed into lifeless bodies.
• Eze 37:9-10 God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the breath: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breath upon these slain that they may live”. And is so happens > a vast multitude of people.
• Eze 37:11-14 Message behind the vision: ‘These are the whole house of Israel. They say: ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely’. Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD … I, the LORD, have spoken and will act, says the LORD.”
• The whole vision is in answer to the exiles feeling abandoned, discarded, hopeless. God answers with a breathtaking promise of restoration: life from death. A new nation from the ashes. Exile was ‘death’, the return is ‘new life’. Metaphorically this was seen so, the reality was a bit different: exile wasn’t that bad and the return wasn’t that glorious (Ezra, Nehemiah)
• God’s willingness to restore after exile was already foreseen by Moses (Deu 4:29-31, Deu 30:1-10), and by later prophets, not least Isaiah and Jeremiah.
• Resurrection! The OT basically has death with no life after that (Gen 3:19). Sheol is not a ‘place to be’, it simply means ‘the dead’ and they don’t do anything and have no consciousness. Also here in Eze 37, the by far strongest OT Scripture on resurrection, the message is not so much ‘individual bodily resurrection’, but rather: a new start for Israel with then new upcoming generation.
• And yet it is the first and clearest Resurrection from the dead (bodies coming back to life) verse so far. Up to now only been shy hints. Dan 12:3 will have “those who sleep in the dust of the earth awaking” and
• Dan 2:13 has Daniel being told to “rest , you shall rise for your reward at the end of the days.” … but these lines are not written yet.
• Fulfillment Primarily fulfilled with Cyrus’ decree and the return of the Jews to their land in 536 BC.
• Eze 37:14 Yet there is something beyond: “I will put my spirit within you…” … expanded on later in the same chapter.

Enacted Symbol of the Two Sticks

• Eze 37:15-20 One stick, written Judah on it. Another stick, written Joseph / Ephraim (=Israel) on it. Join them into one stick.
• Eze 37:21-28 Message: “I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from every quarter, and bring them to their own land …. one king shall be king over them all. Never again shall they be two nations … They shall never again defile themselves with their idols … I will save them from all the apostasies … and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” God’s Exo 19:4-6 dream. So never fulfilled in history (some say: not yet), Israel doesn’t return, some 42’000 Judah-exiles return and there is no re-uniting that we know of. Also they never again have a king.
• “My servant David shall be king over them and they shall have one shepherd. They shall follow my ordinances … I will make a covenant of peace with them … everlasting … I will bless them and multiply them (Gen 1:28 revived), and will set my sanctuary among them forevermore (can’t refer to Zerubabbel’s temple, for that one is destroyed again in 70 AD). My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people…” These prophecies refer to Jesus, NT and the church: a new, everlasting covenant (gospel), a King David ruling (Jesus), the sanctuary in their midst (Jesus, God with us, the Holy Spirit inhabiting the believers and the church). Powerful words and pictures, grown out of the OT pictures, but going far beyond that.
• These prophecies also show the hearers and readers that God’s covenant with David (1 Kin 11:12-13, 2 Sam 7) is not forgotten, rather it will be fulfilled in a greater way.
• Parallels to Ephesians Amazing parallels of Ephesians 2:11-22 with Eze 37:15-28
  
  • Eph 2:12 alienated from the commonwealth              Eze 37:27 gather Israel from the nations
  • Eph 2:13 Gentiles who once were far off
  • Eph 2:14 He is our peace , so making peace               Eze 37:26 I will make a covenant of peace
  • Eph 2:14 made us both one (Jew and Gentile)          Eze 37:19,22 make them one stick
  • Eph 2:15 break down the dividing wall of hostility  Eze 37:22 no longer divided
  • Eph 2:15 by abolishing in his flesh the law                Eze 37:24 they shall follow my statutes
  • Eph 2:15 create one new humanity in place of 2       Eze 37:22 one nation; no longer divided, no longer 2 nations
  • Eph 2:19 fellow citizens, members of household      Eze 37:23 they shall be my people
  • Eph 2:20 structure joined grows into holy temple   Eze 37:26,27 set my sanctuary in the midst of them forever

Chapter 38-39 – Gog of Magog is invading and defeated

• Eze 38:1-6 Who? > Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, from the country of Magog, will make war with an alliance of nations: Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, Beth-togarmah from the remotest parts of the North, with horses, troops, a great horde.
• Eze 38:8 When? > In the latter years
• Eze 38:8 Against whom? > a land restored from war, where many people were gathered from many nations on the mountains of Israel, people brought out from the nations, now living in safety, living without walls, bars, gates
• Eze 38:12-13 Motivation? > to seize spoil, carry of plunder, cattle and goods, silver, gold
• Eze 38:16,23, 39:7-8 God will “display his holiness and greatness before the nations and make himself known in the eyes of many nations. ‘And they shall know that I am the LORD.”
• Eze 38:17-23 What will happen? > God himself will defeat Gog with a great shaking, sword sent against comrades, pestilence, bloodshed, hailstones, fire, sulphur.
• Eze 39:3-6 God himself will defeat Gog: strike his bow from our left hand, will make arrows drop out of your right hand, he will fall
• Eze 38:4, 39:1-2 It is God who will bring draw him out with hooks…’I will turn you around and drive you forward, and bring you from the remotest parts of the North, and lead you against the mountain of Israel.
• Eze 39:9-20 Aftermath of battle: From weapons, arrows, handpikes, spears > firewood for 7 years. Burying of the bodies will take 7 months (nobody left to do so). While burying is going on > birds and wild animals will eat their fill (as Rev 19:17-18 for Babylon).
• Eze 39:21-29 Restoration prophecy after exile (no visible link to Gog).

Background on Gog of Magog

• Ge 10:2, 1 Chr 1:5 Meshech, Tubal, Magog are descendants of Japheth
• Eze 27:13 Javan, Meshech, Tubal traded with Tyre
• Eze 32:26 Meshech and Tubal are in Sheol (place of the dead) together with Egypt
• General People of Meshech are Indo–European people who lived southeast of the Black Sea.
• Rev 20:7-8 Gog and Magog is used as a shorthand to denote all nations that will be deceived by Satan in order to gather for the last battle against God and his people.
• Joel 3, Zec 14 also described ‘final battles’

Interpretation

• In the future, in the latter days, God’s people living in safety and with no war-protection, probably a picture of the Jesus-like vulnerability of the believers living among unbelievers.
• Gog is a conglomerate enemy, a compound picture of all those who oppose God (humans and spirits?), inspired by Satan, a metaphorical representation of all that stands against God.
• God is in complete control, or even orchestrating it all. He will sovereignly and supernaturally save and deliver his people forever. God’s people can do and do do nothing in this battle, but one needs to be on the right side of the battle.
• Importance of these chapters: It’s an advance declaration of the defeat of God’s enemies, before the elaborate temple vision (Eze 40-48). This new temple will never again be threatened or destroyed. God’s people are reconstituted in their land and worship God in the perfection of his restored sanctuary.
• Parallel in Revelation: Defeat of Satan (Rev 19-20) before a vision of God dwelling with his people drawn from all nations in a new creation, worshiping the Lamb and needing no temple (Rev 21-22).
• Revelation is still the main goal, so that all will see God’s holiness and greatness and know, that he is God. Is there still repentance option for humans caught up on the wrong side? Or is this part of the final judgment, that all will have to face truth whether they want it or not?

Chapters 40-48 – Fourth Vision: A city, temple, people and land restored

The fourth and final vision is every bit as spectacular as his first vision.

• In 572 AD, Ezekiel the priest, now age 50 (which is the retirement age for priests), sees this vision of the re-establishing of the temple at the time of the Passover feast, which commemorated the historical event of God freeing his people from slavery so that they could ‘go and worship him’.
• Ezekiel had earlier pronounced God’s abandoning of his temple (Eze 8-11), the destruction of the temple (Eze 24), and witnessed it (Eze 33). He now gets to predict the re-establishing of a glorious temple.
• Eze 40:1-4 In the 14th year after Jerusalem fell, on that very day, Ezekiel sees this vision. He is in the land of Israel, on a high mountain and sees a city to the south. A man with a measuring reed guides through the vision.
• Eze 40:5ff Wall around temple area. 40:6 gateways and threshold. 40:14 Vestibule. 40:17 Outer court. 40:20 Gates of the outer court. 40:28 inner court. 40:32 gate to the inner court. 40:38 Chamber where burnt offering washed. 40:44 chambers for singers and priests. 40:48 pillars and pillasters of the vestibule. 41:1 nave (holy place) and most holy place. 41:5 wall of the temple with chambers. 41:12 buildings facing the temple yard. 41:15b panneling, cherubim (with 2 faces), palm trees. 41:21 doorposts of ave. 41:22 altar of wood and table. 42:1 chambers in the outer court.
• Eze 43:1-5 Ezekiel witnesses the Glory of the LORD (as seen by the river Chebar) enters the temple by the east gate, filling the temple (in exact reversal of the Eze 8-11 vision).
• Eze 43:6-9 Voice out of the temple (presumably Jesus on the throne) giving this message: “This is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet, where I will reside among the people of Israel forever. The house of Israel shall no more defile my holy name, neither they nor their kings … by their abominations … Now let them put aside their idolatry and the corpses of their kings far from me, and I will reside among them forever.”
• Eze 43:10-12 Command to Ezekiel: “Describe the temple to the house of Israel and let them measure the pattern; and let them be ashamed of their iniquities … so that they may observe and follow the entire plan and all its ordinances… The whole territory of the top of the mountain all around shall be most holy.”
• Eze 43:13-17 Altar of one cubic cubit, steps facing east.
• Eze 43:18-21 Dedication of altar: A bull for a sin offering on first day, a male goat for a sin offering on second till 7th day.
• Eze 44:1-3 Outer east gate is shut because God entered through it. Only prince can enter by vestibule.
• Eze 44:4-9 Admission to the temple: no abominations, no foreigners, uncircumcised in heart and flesh.
• Eze 44:10-14 Levites who were idolatrous may minister in sanctuary, but not come near God or serve as priests, not touching the most holy things.
• Eze 44:15-31 Descendents of Zadok, shall wear linen vestments, no shaved heads, no long locks, no widow or divorcee wives, shall teach people to distinguish between clean and unclean, shall keep festivals, … I will be their inheritance. They shall eat from grain, sin and guilt offerings and every devoted thing and first fruit is theirs. No meat that died of itself.
• Eze 45:1-9 Holy District, square plot for sanctuary, area for priests, are for Levites, area for the prince. Princes challenged to put away violence, oppression, evictions but rather do what is just and right.
• Eze 45:10-12 Honest balances, weights, standard measures. Civil justice.
• Eze 45:13-17 Offerings
• Eze 45:18-25 Festivals: monthly offering, Passover and offerings
• Eze 46:1-5 Sabbath day, East gate opened and prince may enter. People shall bow down at the threshold of the gate. Prince shall bring offerings.
• Eze 46:6-15 Prince’s offerings on New moon and other festivals.
• Eze 46:16-18 Case of prince giving gifts to son, inheritance laws. Prince can’t evict people from their land.
• Eze 46:19-24 Chambers where meat of sin and guilt offerings are boiled.
• Eze 47:1-12 Water flowing from beneath the threshold of the temple, towards the east, getting deeper and deeper, descending into the Arabah, making water fresh there (except some salt pits). On both banks of the river, many ever-green and ever-fruitful trees, bearing fruits all 12 months of the year. Fruit for food and leaves for healing.
• Eze 47:13-23, 48:1-14, 23-29 Tribal land allotments
• Eze 48:4-35 City in the midst of the tribes, with open land, fields for workers of the city, land belonging to the prince, land for the Levites and the sanctuary.
• Eze 48:30-35 City gates, 3 gates in each direction, with the names of the 12 tribes. And the name of the city from that time on shall be ‘There LORD is there’.

What to do with this vision?

• Some of the unusual features include:
  
  • much detail but not enough to draw it. Some detail missing compared to Moses / Solomon (bronze altar measurements, incense altar is from wood).
  • The holy district belongs to everyone
  • The temple is not in the but beside the city. The temple area is 18 acres, more than under Solomon.
  • Lack of height measurements – Ezekiel looking from above at a flat, one dimensional blueprint
  • The whole temple area is a square; then the whole mount is ‘Most Holy’ or a holy of holies
  • No ark of the covenant, no altar of incense, no golden lamp stand
  • a very limited sampling of civil law.
  • A great focus on the prince, which interesting as it has no precedent in the Law of Moses or in Kings / Chronicles, also as there is no son of David on the throne, so why now this focus?

Interpretations

• Literal temple plans for those who returned after exile to use. The massive amount of detail speaks for this interpretation. But: Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Haggai or Zechariah never even mention or think, far less build, Ezekiel’s temple. Though it has massive detail, there are also missing details like the height measurements. There is also no mention of God’s visible glory ever appearing at Zerubbabel’s temple. The river and the new tribal land distribution are nowhere.
• Literal temple plans for those during Christ’s millennial kingdom. The following of the temple vision after the ‘final battle’ could be understood that way. Again: tough it has massive detail, there are also missing details. But: the NT views the temple very different, not to speak of the re-establishment of a literal sacrificial system diminishing the importance of the cross.
• Symbolic temple plans to communicate the perfection of God’s restoration, pointing to Jesus, the church and the 2nd coming. This fits with NT interpretation of the temple.
• John has a repeat vision of a very high mountain and seeing a city (Rev 21:10). Other mountain passages: Isa 2:2, 25: 6-8, Joel 3:17, Mic 4:1 and Dan 2:35.
• Elements of Solomon’s temple are there but also quite different, discouraging anyone from taking it literally.
• Eze 47 with its water (a river) coming out of the temple and gives life everywhere it goes. The river is the picture of God’s blessings – progressively growing – the kingdom of God will overflow until the knowledge of the glory of God covers the earth. Other river or water passages: Rev 22:1,2, Joel 3:18, Zec 14:8. The river and the trees are a picture of creation being fully restored, the effect of sin has been wiped away.
• The entrances, gates illustrate controlled access. All who enter must be pure. The impure cannot enter.
• How to interpret the tribal strips of land > everyone has an inheritance.
• God’s glory returns to the temple (Eze 43:1-12). God’s presence is what makes the temple a place of worship. This doesn’t happen with Zerubbabel’s temple.
• The Tabernacle or temple means the very presence of God among his people, God dwelling in their midst (Immanuel), him being their God and they being his people (Exo 19). This is fulfilled in Jesus being among us, and in Jesus and the Holy Spirit living in each believer. At the end of Revelation there is a city with no temple because the temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.
• It is interesting that in Eze 40-48 the name Jerusalem or Zion doesn’t come. The city is never actually called that. Rather the name of the city is Yahweh Shammah which is ‘The Lord is there’. Ezekiel ends as does Revelation also does: with God dwelling with his people.

In summary

• The vision is on the one hand a re-establishing of all the things that the Jews were familiar with (temple, city priests, sacrifices, land allotment), yet nothing is quite as before, nothing is as it should be.
• The grandness of the vision and description of the temple was designed to blow the minds of the first hearers and readers. Things are so rearranged and changed that no Jew in Ezekiel’s day would have taken this as a literal physical temple that would one day exist in Israel. They would understand this vision to be symbolic.
• There is also no attempt by Zerubbabel to build the second temple according to Ezekiel, there is not mention or reference to it at all.
• Ezekiel’s vision is a symbolic description of a familiar yet greater thing: God dwelling with His people, temple filled with the glory of God and a redeemed, holy, cleansed people worshipping God with acceptable sacrifices.
• God’s ultimate goal is fulfilled: to dwell with His people forever.