Bible Studies

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Ezekiel

Ezekiel – in Biblical Hebrew means “God will strengthen (Strong’s 3168)

Theme: Yahweh-Israel's God, was making a New Covenant with individuals, rather than the physical nation. In the future His people would worship him in Spirit and Truth. The old covenant would remain as a teacher.

Ezekiel was a priest of Israel serving in the Jerusalem Temple. In 597 BC he was among the group of younger men taken to Babylon in the first captivity(Daniel 1:1-2). In 593 BC he had been called to prophesy. This lasted to just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BC.

Ezekiel was given powerful, intense messages and visions. So intense that he went away in “bitterness of spirit, for the hand of the Lord was heavy upon him (Ez 3:14). So intense was one experience that it took him seven days to recover. God then told him he was to be a watchman over Israel.

His mission was to encourage the people and convince them that God was still working as always, in spite of the pending Temple destruction and present and future captivity and dispersion of Israel. Yahweh God was still speaking with power and authority. But no longer was he confined to a building or special priests. Forcibly, Ezekiel taught that God is sovereign over all nations, times, and peoples. And he would work spiritually with individuals from this time forward.

Ezekiel was the first prophet to speak to the people without the Temple or the visible Promised Land. His visions of God and the New Temple had to be high and lifted up to inspire the exiles to continue to believe that God was still in control and had a plan for their future salvation.

The Book of Ezekiel appears to be a well-constructed whole. Chapters 1-3 describe the prophet’s mission from God. The body of the book is divided into four sections:
1. Chapters 4 – 24, consists almost exclusively of reproaches and threats addressed to the Israelites before the siege of Jerusalem
2. Chapters 25-32, include oracles against the nations, in which the prophet widens his anathema to include those who have influenced the faithless Israelites and urged them on;
3. Chapters 33-39, of comfort for the nation during and after the siege, with a promise of a brighter future
4. Chapters 40-48, of provisions for the political and religious constitution of the future community, once re-established in Palestine.

Beneath this systematic arrangement nevertheless there are noteworthy irregularities. There are numerous duplicate passages. References to Ezekiel’s being struck dumb by God are separated by protracted discourses.

As the text stands, Ezekiel’s entire ministry is among the exiles in Babylon between 593 and 571. He seems to have had a two fold ministry;(1) remaining in Palestine and preaching there until the fall of Jerusalem in 587 and (2) joining the rest of the Babylonian exiles after this event. The text implies that he lived outside Jerusalem and only was transported there in visions.

Because he was a priest, the temple was his ruling interest. Both the temple of his present day defiled by impure rites and men (ch 8) and deserted by the Glory of Yahweh.(ch 10), or the Temple of the future, the plan of which he describes in meticulous detail, (ch 40-42), and to which he sees God returning. For those days to come he describes the functions of the Temple ministers, the details of public worship, the sacred calendar (ch 44-46). He holds the Law in veneration, and the accusation of ‘profaning the sabbath’ (ch 44-46) is the constant refrain of his indictment of Israel. (Ch 20). He detests legal impurity, and is scrupulous in distinguishing the sacred from the profane. His outlook and vocabulary are akin to the Law of Holiness in Leviticus 17-26; this he knew and meditated, but he goes beyond it.

But this priest is also a prophet of action. More than any other he resorts to symbolic gestures. He mimes the siege of Jerusalem, the departure of the exiles, the king of Babylon at the parting of the ways (21:23f),the union of Judah and Israel (37:15f). Even in his own personal trials sent him by God he is a ‘sign’ to Israel (24:24).

Ezekiel is primarily a visionary. His book contains only four formal visions. But they occupy a substantial part of chapters 1-3; 8-11; 37; 40-48. They admit us to a fantastic world: the four living creatures of Yahweh’s chariot, the monstrous performance of worship in the Temple with its swarms of beasts and of idols, the dry bones that come to life, the blueprint of a future Temple from which an imaginary river flows through a geographic Utopia.

Ezekiel breaks new ground contrasted with other prophets. He makes no appeal to the past history of his people. Recalls to the promises made to the patriarchs and Sinai covenant occur occasionally, but even if God has so far preserved a nation that was defiled from birth (ch 16), this is not to fulfill the promises but to vindicate His Name. (Ch 20) The substitution of an everlasting covenant for the old one is not described as a reward for the people’s return to God but rather as an act of pure benevolence- Grace.

The messiah of Ezekiel, of whom little is said, is no longer a glorious National king. True he is to be a new David, but as a shepherd of his people (ch 34:23; 36:24); a ruler rather than a king (34:24). The prophet also breaks with tradition when he asserts the principle of individual and not collective retribution. (Ch 18). He also breaks with tradition that God is inseparable from the Temple. This despite Ezekiel’s own priesthood and affection for the sanctuary. Ritual remains, but derives its value from the dispositions of the participants.

Ezekiel’s entire teaching centers on inner conversion; man must achieve a new heart and a new spirit (Ch 18:31), or rather, God will himself bestow ‘another’, a ‘new heart, and infuse a ‘new’ spirit (11:19; 36:26). Here, as with the free gift that precedes repentance, we are very near the theology of grace later developed by St. John and St. Paul.

With Ezekiel, the elements of Israelite religion are raised to a high spiritual level. This is Ezekiel’s great contribution. He initiates a tradition of unworldly spirituality persisting through Judaism and emerging in the New Testament.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd foretold by Ezekiel and the founder of the worship ‘in spirit’ that Ezekiel had preached.

References:
1. Alexander Jones, general editor, The Jerusalem Bible, Doubleday & Company, Inc, New York: 1966
Bratcher, Dennis: The Voice: The Book Of Ezekiel, http://www.cresourcei.org/books/ezekiel.html 4/9/2006
F. Wayne MacLeod, Ezekiel: Light to my Path Devotional Commentary series, Authentic Media, Waynesboro, Ga, 2003
Boadt, Lawrence, Reading the Old Testament, Paulist Press, New York, NY, 1984
Price, Randall, the Temple and Bible Prophecy, a definitive look at its Past, Present and Future, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 1999/2005

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