Good morning! Today’s passage is Ezekiel 39-41, and much of it will make an architect’s heart go pitter-patter, for it contains dimensional information about a restored temple in a new Jerusalem that God is set to establish. The rest of us might find some of the descriptive details boring, but they deliberately connect Ezekiel’s vision to earlier descriptions of the tabernacle in the Torah, the temple that Solomon built, and the restored Jerusalem at the end of the book of Revelation.

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Good morning! Today’s passage (Ezekiel 35-38) takes on a more hopeful tone, at least from the perspective of Israel. For those who neighbor on or threaten Israel (like Edom—symbolized by Mount Seir in chapter 35—or Gog in chapter 38), this is very bad news indeed because they will suffer in the shadow of a stronger Israel. But for those who follow the ways of God, Israel’s unforeseen and undeserved restoration will take the form of dry bones, resuscitated into living flesh again.

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Good morning! In today’s passage, Ezekiel 32-34 continues for one chapter the themes of yesterday, but then changes direction to focus on a time after punishment when Israel is restored. Chapter 32 follows closely on the heels of other anti-Egypt chapters like those we read yesterday. Here, Ezekiel focuses on the death of Pharaoh and the synonymous decline of Egypt. With vivid and grotesque descriptors, the prophet emphasizes that when death comes for the Egyptians, they will not go down to eternal rest with those who have honorably died, but instead will inhabit another portion of the afterlife reserved for those who are slain by the sword.

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Good morning! If there’s one theme that flows through today’s passage (Ezekiel 28-31), it’s that line from the book of Proverbs: pride goes before a fall. By turns one nation after another is called out for getting “uppity”, and each time it ends in disaster. Tyre, Egypt and Assyria are all characterized as being so cocky that they need to be humbled by God, acting through the means of Babylon. That confident and successful nation will have its reckoning too though, since its pride too will lead to a fall.

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Good morning! Can you believe we are nearing the end of the Hebrew Scriptures? It seems like we’re just going along as steadily as ever, but in truth we’ve got only a few more weeks of Old Testament texts before we turn the page to Matthew’s gospel and the stories of Jesus. That’ll start on October 1^st, and all are welcome to join in reading through the New Testament in the last three months of the year, even if it’s been a struggle to keep up through the Old Testament.

Continue reading “Ezekiel 24-27” →

Good morning! Today’s passage (Ezekiel 21-23) heavily inveighs against Judah for a long list of sins and wrongdoings committed contrary to God’s law. Some of these are moral flaws, but others are ritual failures, which Ezekiel is somewhat unique among the prophets for pointing out. Priests have colluded with sinful kings and everyday people to bless misbehavior. They have failed to uphold rituals, “made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my sabbaths” (22:26). Because of these and many other sins, Ezekiel declares in chapter 21 that God’s sword is preparing to wipe out every living thing in Judah. Think of this as an ancient form of the “doomsday clock” updated regularly by atomic scientists to show how close nuclear weapons and other threats are to wiping out human life on earth.

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Good morning! Today’s passage (Ezekiel 18-20) continues both themes from the past several days. We see here a description of divine justice that only takes into account the righteousness or wrongdoings of a given person, freeing subsequent generations from paying the burden incurred by sinful ancestors. We also see several parables in Ezekiel 19, though neither of them plays on the distasteful assumptions of domestic violence that were the cornerstone of yesterday’s texts. The parables speak for themselves, so I’ll focus on the new order of things, as presented in Ezekiel 18 and 20.

God announces in Ezekiel 18 the retirement of a punishment system whereby children bear the brunt for sins their parents commit. Now, according to the prophet, each person is responsible for the hardship them themselves cause. A new maxim comes to the fore: “The person who sins shall die.” Therefore, a person has greater control over their happiness, since their only responsibility is for their own actions. By maintaining the moral code epitomized in the ten commandments, and the purity code laid out in Leviticus and Numbers, a person “shall surely live, says the Lord God.” Furthermore, God recognizes the honest repentance and redemption of sinners, equipping everyone who asks to grow in a new way.

How ironic then that in this dawning age of “personal responsibility”, Ezekiel 20 suggests the sins of ancestors are what keep God from having mercy on Israel! This suggests the overlap of competing narratives, not all of which are settled at the time of Ezekiel’s final composition. I find fascinating the suggestion that some of the laws and commandments given to Israel were false ones, made to test the obedience of the Hebrew people. I hope this applies to child-sacrifice practices in particular! Through further obedience, God promises a regeneration of Israel and their old ways. The chapter ends with a curious little curse from Ezekiel on the land of the Negeb, following God’s orders. Happy reading

Read Ezekiel 18-20.

Please join discussion of this passage at the Daily Bible Facebook group, or comment below. The passage for tomorrow is Ezekiel 21-23. Thanks for reading!

Good morning! Today’s three chapters (Ezekiel 15-17) deploy detailed metaphors to describe Jerusalem’s relationship to God. Prophets use metaphors and analogies with some regularity. They are accessible to more people and have a way of sticking in the imagination. Jesus himself used metaphors often in teaching—he used them in stories that we now call “parables”. They play on everyday experiences and knowledge (such as that of vines, eagles and trees in chapters 15 and 17) to illumine and persuade in the course of a conversation. This is how vines, eagles and tress in chapters 15 and 17 convey feelings about Jerusalem’s disobedience of God and conduct during Babylonian occupation. So far, so good. However, the metaphor that gets such detailed exposition in Ezekiel 16 plays on anti-woman stereotypes that (thankfully) have diminishing traction in communicating anything about the divine. Comparing Judah to a loose woman ignores the actual experiences of “comfort women” and others whose bodies and souls suffered from the conquest of one invading army after another. Furthermore, such a construct limits how we understand the roles that God might play in liberating all who are oppressed, women especially.

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Good morning! Today in Ezekiel 11-14 we hear retold many of the same narratives we’ve read before, just from a different prophet’s mouth. We see a sign-act that dramatizes the desertion of Zekediah and the succeeding events that ended his reign, as demonstrated in Ezekiel’s highly visible departure from Jerusalem. We hear also about divine judgment, false prophets, and God determining to put hearts of flesh in place of stone hearts. All these have been shared before in different contexts. But what strikes me as different in these chapters of Ezekiel is an emphasis on the individual over against the community—first the prophet himself, and then other exemplary individuals from Hebrew history.

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