Ezekiel

This book is simply amazing. The majority of it is a textbook for showing the mindset of the Hebrew priests. This book fairly drips with fanaticism, hatred of backsliders and outsiders, and wishful thinking. Under this last heading is the last section of the book, giving a detailed description of an imaginary temple, which is supposed to be built in Jerusalem, including details of measurements, decorations and some furnishings. That part was pretty dry of good quotes, from what I could tell, and I must admit I skimmed past it. However, there's plenty of weird stuff in the rest of this book.

Eze 1:3 - ...the word of the LORD came to the priest Ezekiel son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the LORD was on him there.
Well, it looks pretty grim from the start - we know we're going to be hearing from a priest, the sort of person who was (according to Leviticus) set apart from the regular people, and considered to be "cleaner" than others. Fasten your seatbelts and make sure you have ready access to an air-sickness bag!

Eze 2:3-5 - He said to me, Mortal, 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 to this very day. The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, "Thus says the LORD God. Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them.
As we might have expected, we hear that God has a low opinion of the people of Israel. I would have expected no less in the opinion of a priest who felt that the people around him were leaving the religion that was his only means of support.

Eze 3:20 - Again, if the righteous turn from their righteousness and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before them, they shall die; because you have not warned them, they shall die for their sin, and their righteous deeds that they have done shall not be remembered; but their blood I will require at your hand.
There are a few things to comment on here. This is what Ezekiel wrote as being what God told him concerning the decision to act as a prophet. I think it's odd that at this late date, during the Babylonian captivity, we should hear that there are "righteous" people that God thought were likely to leave him. I thought that I read in Psalms that everyone is a sinner. Second, it appears pretty unfair and unjust that these "righteous" people, whoever they are, should be condemned; also, I wonder why God would consider putting a stumbling block in their path, when I thought he wanted people to turn from their evil ways. Lastly, why should all this mess be laid at Ezekiel's feet? This says Zeke will be held responsible for other peoples' actions (unless he tells them God's message). Unjust in the extreme is the statement that God will toss out all consideration for "good" deeds!

Eze 4:1-4 - And you, O mortal, take a brick and set it before you. On it, portray a city, Jerusalem; and put siegeworks against it, and build a seige-wall against it, and cast up a ramp against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around. Then take an iron plate and place it as an iron wall between you and the city; set your face toward it, and let it be in a state of siege and press the siege around it. This is a sign for the house of Israel. Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel on it; you shall bear their punishment for the number of the days that you lie there.
As with Jeremiah, we see that signs from God were often pretty goofy. In this case, we can just imagine Ezekiel playing at "Lay siege to Jerusalem" with his little make-believe play set. How this was going to convey a message clearly to the people who saw Ezekiel doing this, is beyond me. And, after all, isn't clear, unambiguous communication the whole point of making a sign?

Eze 4:10-12 - The food that you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; at fixed times you shall eat it. And you shall drink water by measure, one-sixth of a hin; at fixed times you shall drink. You shall eat it as a barley-cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.
Yummy! If Ezekiel was supposed to evoke a strong reaction from the people he was performing for, this was, if nothing else, memorable! Naturally, Zeke objected to eating food that was unclean. In later verses, God relented and allowed the use of cow dung as a substitute. I suppose the message was meant to be that the people were living in an unclean manner. I wonder how many people got the point while watching this performance?

Eze 5:9-11 - And because of all your abominations, I will do to you what I have never yet done, and the like of which I will never do again. Surely, parents shall eat their children in your midst, and children shall eat their parents; I will execute judgements on you, and any of you who survive I will scatter to every wind. Therefore, as I live, says the LORD God, surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations - therefore I will cut you down; my eye will not spare, and I will have no pity.
God promises to force the people of Israel to resort to cannibalism. Children will be punished, though I never would have thought God would get that angry at them. As an exercise in logic, please try to imagine how a god that is omnipotent and omniscient, who promises not to spare anyone, could possibly expect people to survive this?

Eze 6:6,7 - Wherever you live, your towns shall be waste and your high places ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense stands cut down, and your works wiped out. The slain shall fall in your midst; then you shall know that I am the LORD.
Isn't it interesting that according to the prophets of God, the thing that most consistently annoys God is when people get religions other than the "right" one? I would have thought that worshipping a god that was thought of as the creator of the universe would be OK by the actual creator, regardless of the name the worshipper used. Instead, we see this priest of Yahweh promising untold destruction and accusing the people of unimaginable evil, only on the account of having a religion of which he was not a priest! The words "jealousy" and "con artist" leap to mind at this point!

Eze 6:9 - Those of you who escape shall remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I was crushed by their wanton heart that turned away from me, and their wanton eyes that turned after their idols. Then they will be loathsome in their own sight for the evils they have committed, for all their abominations.
Well, there it is! God is "crushed" (KJV uses the word "broken") by people believing in the wrong things. Is this how you would expect a universe-creating, all-powerful being to react when people don't spend a couple hours of their week in the "right" temple? Or would you expect a preacher whose livelihood depends on the stuff brought in for sacrifices to preach that this sort of thing is "hurting" God?

Eze 8:14 - Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the LORD; women were sitting there, weeping for Tammuz. Then he said to me, "Have you seen this, O mortal? You will see greater abominations than these."
Puzzled as to why it should be an abomination to weep for this Tammuz? I was, until I found that Tammuz is supposedly the name given one of those "outsider" gods, possibly similar to the Egyptian Osiris. According to what I read, the believers would weep during a spring festival celebrating the death of their god, who was a short time later raised from the dead. Sound familiar?

Eze 9:3-6 - Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house. The LORD called on the man clothed in linen , who had the writing case at his side; and he said to him, "Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it." To the others he said in my hearing, "Pass through the city after him, and kill; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. Cut down old men, young men and young women, little children and women, but touch no one who has the mark. And begin at my sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were in front of the house.
What do you know? The Bible has a second Passover! Here, the danger doesn't come from being the first-born child. No, death comes because you have the wrong attitude. Just having religious tolerance is deadly here. Even the little children who have no clue what this religion thing is all about - zap 'em! Pity is not an option!

Eze 11:17-20 - Therefore say: Thus says the LORD God: I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. When they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
An awful lot of preachers, trying to convince their audiences that the end of the world is near, just love to quote the first verse of this passage! They will almost invariably avoid going further, though, because it says that when Israel returns, they will become perfect practitioners of the original religion, follow all the original laws and make God very happy by doing it. Does anyone accept that the rest of this prophecy is even close to being fulfilled?

Eze 12:26-28 - The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, the house of Israel is saying, "The vision that he sees is for many years ahead; he prophesies for distant times." Therefore say to them, Thus says the LORD God: None of my words will be delayed any longer, but the word that I speak will be fulfilled, says the LORD God.
I don't know. It seems to me that the prophecy of the return of Israel from being dispersed had quite a long delay, and it is still not completely fulfilled.

Eze 14:9 - If a prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the LORD, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.
This leads to all sorts of goofy logical twists! What would be the point of God fooling a prophet into saying something that's wrong? Does this mean that God is trustworthy, and that a prophet can be sure he's doing the right thing by telling people as he's commanded by this voice? On a more practical level, what should we think about God's promised response to a prophet doing as God commands? After all, even Zeke himself was wrong on the destruction of Tyre.

Eze 14:14 - ...even if Noah, Daniel and Job, these three, were in it, they would save only their own lives by their righteousness, says the LORD.
The interesting point here (to me!) is that Job is obviously a fictitious character in a morality play. Yet Ezekiel thinks he was a real person! Oddly enough, the other two mentioned are most likely myths, according to all that I've read, as opposed to David or Solomon.

Eze 16:35-37 - Therefore, O whore, hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the LORD God, Because your lust was poured out and your nakedness was uncovered in your whoring with your lovers, and because of all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, therefore, I will gather all your lovers, with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated; I will gather them against you from all around, and will uncover your nakedness to them, so that they may see all your nakedness.
Ezekiel seems to have had several emotional problems. This is common in religious zealots, I understand. He was obsessed with prostitutes and nudity, and put those elements all through this book. No wonder that you hardly ever hear of a comprehensive study of this book.

Eze 16:44-47 - See, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you, "Like mother, like daughter." You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children; and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. Your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. You not only followed their ways, but acted according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways.
I think it's interesting how Ezekiel tried every way he could to convey his displeasure toward his fellow Jews, like comparing them to Sodom and Samaria - two of the most hated names in their religion, along with the puzzling linkage with Hittites and Amorites.

Eze 16:53-55 - As for your sisters, Sodom and her daughters shall return to their former state, Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former state, and you and your daughters shall return to your former state.
Now, I wonder at this one. Sodom, so the Bible claims, was destroyed and now no trace of it exists. Can anyone reliably point to some place where this prophecy has or possibly can come true in a literal sense?

Eze 18:1-4 - The word of the LORD came to me: What do you mean by repeating the proverb concerning the land of Israel, "The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge"? As I live, says the LORD God, this proverb shall no more be used by Israel. Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine; it is only the person who sins that shall die.
I wonder why this was included in this book, when we know that in chapter 9, we saw God ordering the deaths of children, and later, in chapter 21, we'll see that God plans to kill the righteous as well as the wicked. Or could it be that God is planning to change his methods later?

Eze 18:32 - For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the LORD God. Turn, then, and live.
Gee, for someone who takes no pleasure in something, God certainly seems to have spent plenty of time arranging for it and doing the honors himself!

Eze 20:25,26 - Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live. I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the LORD.
This is supposed to be God talking about the early days, when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. Here, we read that the laws were meant to be unlivable and disgusting, in order to show the people, in some weird, undefinable way, that God is God.

Eze 21:2-5 - Mortal, set your face toward Jerusalem and preach against the sanctuaries; prophesy against the land of Israel. And say to the land of Israel, Thus says the LORD: I am coming against you, and will draw my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked. Because I will cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked, therefore my sword shall go out of its sheath against all flesh from south to north; and all flesh shall know that I the LORD have drawn my sword out of its sheath; it shall not be sheathed again.
The question occurs to me, if God is planning to wipe out the "righteous" as well as the sinners, what, in the end, is the advantage in being "righteous?" Of course, it seems to me that such an event - the invasion and defeat from a foreign power - is more correctly viewed as a purely human event, in which everyone is in danger, rather than something being ordered and directed by an insane god who plans to kill those he loves in with those who made him angry in the first place.

Eze 22:26 - Its priests have done violence to my teaching and have profaned my holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean; they have disregarded my sabbaths so that I am profaned among them.
My first reaction to this was "How could such violent teachings as those found in this book have violence done to them?" However, another possible way to see this is that it is similar to the verse in Jeremiah (chapter 8, vs 8), which says that the laws were falsified by the scribes. Here, the priests would be the ones who perverted God's message, changing it to the horror we have now. This is close to what I have contended - that the priests are the driving force behind most religion. However, if God was omnipotent, as we are taught, how could anything happen that was not acceptable to him?

Eze 23:19,20 - Yet she increased her whorings, remembering the days of her youth, when she played the whore in the land of Egypt and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose emission was like that of stallions.
Now, Zeke's getting just plain nasty here. I always thought that when the Hebrews were in Egypt, it was as slaves (not free in most things), and had no access to the religious training they later got. Yet he says that Israel "played the whore" while there. This crosses the line, I think, between misunderstanding history, and goes into the domain of demonization - the deliberate distortion of facts to put the worst possible view before one's listeners.

Eze 24:13 - Yet, when I cleansed you in your filthy lewdness, you did not become clean from your filth; you shall not again be cleansed until I have satisfied my fury upon you.
The obvious question here, logically, is if God set out to "cleanse" the people, how could he have failed? And exactly how would satisfying his fury against these people manage to "clean" them this time?

Eze 24:15-18 - The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes; yet you shall not mourn or weep, nor shall your tears run down. Sigh, but not aloud; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban, and put your sandals on your feet; do not cover your upper lip or eat the bread of mourners. So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died. And on the next morning I did as I was commanded.
Here was yet another "sign" from God, according to Ezekiel. His wife dies, and he keeps right on preaching without missing a beat. I used to think this was an example of how strong faith should be. But now, I view it as an example of how evil religious fanaticism can be.

Eze 26:7-14 - For thus says the LORD God: I will bring against Tyre from the north King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, king of kings, together with horses, chariots, cavalry, and a great and powerful army. Your daughter-towns in the country he will put to the sword. He shall set up a siege-wall against you, cast up a ramp against you, and raise a roof of shields against you. He shall direct the shock of his battering rams against your walls and break down your towers with his axes. His horses shall be so many that their dust shall cover you. At the noise of cavalry, wheels and chariots your very walls shall shake, when he enters your gates like those entering a breached city. With the hoofs of his horses he will trample all your streets. He shall put your people to the sword, and your strong pillars shall fall to the ground. They will plunder your treasures and loot your merchandise; they shall break down your walls and destroy your fine houses. Your stones and timber and soil they shall cast into the water. I will silence the music of your songs ; the sound of your lyre shall be heard no more. I will make you a bare rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets. You shall never again be rebuilt, for I the LORD have spoken, says the LORD.
OK. Here's a famous prophecy - the destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadrezzar (or Nebuchadnezzar, depending on where you look). The funny thing about this is that it never came true! Tyre was attacked by Nebby, but did not fall. In fact, Tyre was famous for standing against all attackers until it fell to Alexander the Great. In addition, this prediction says that Tyre would be wiped off the face off the map, and would never be rebuilt! If you look on a map of Lebanon, you'll see a city named Tyre - still standing (yes, it's the same one!). For a little in-depth look at this passage and its later companion, look at this page from a Christian scholar, and the response by the person being criticized.

Eze 28:20-23 - The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, set your face toward Sidon, and prophesy against it, and say, Thus says he LORD God: I am against you, O Sidon, and I will gain glory in your midst. They shall know that I am the LORD when I execute judgments in it, and manifest my holiness in it; for I will send pestilence into its streets; and the dead shall fall in its midst, by the sword that is against it on every side. And they shall know that I am the LORD.
According to this, God's justice and holy will are manifested by disease and war. From what I can tell, the only way that such things can be unmistakable signs of God is if God is responsible for all disease and all war. Otherwise, other, less sinister explanations (like microscopic organisms and human greed, respectively) would be better possible ways to account for them.

Eze 29:17-19 - In the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon made his army labor hard against Tyre; every head was made bald and every shoulder was rubbed bare; yet neither he nor his army got anything from Tyre to pay for the labor that he had expended against it. Therefore thus says the LORD God: I will give the land of Egypt to King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon; and he shall carry off its wealth and despoil it and plunder it; and it shall be the wages for his army.
This is an interesting conclusion to the prophecy from Chapter 26. Trying to cover up the fact that a major event that had been predicted 16 years previous failed to come through, Zeke has a little difficulty. He ends up saying that God gave Babylon a "consolation prize" to pay for the disappointment of their failure at Tyre. I thought it a little odd that such a "gift" as Egypt had to be fought over for several years before they could collect it, but I think it's even more odd that Ezekiel is not considered a false prophet, according to the rules set out in Numbers.

Eze 33:13-16 - Though I say to the righteous that they shall surely live, yet if they trust in their righteousness and commit iniquity, none of their righteous deeds shall be remembered; but in the iniquity that they have committed they shall die. Again, though I say to the wicked, "You shall surely die," yet if they turn from their sin and do what is lawful and right - if the wicked restore the pledge, give back what they have taken by robbery, and walk in the statutes of life, committing no iniquity - they shall surely live, they shall not die. None of their sins that they have committed shall be remembered against them; they have done what is lawful and right, they shall surely live.
Well, looky here! A small preview of Christian doctrine! And one of the least logical of the whole bunch that I'm currently aware of! This says that a person who lives an entire life according to God's wishes can die as a sinner if only one law is broken. None of the good deeds done in that lifetime will count. I don't think this is just. But wait - there's more! On the flip side, a sinner, one who lives a fierce, evil life can turn away from that evil just before dying, and his record of nastiness gets wiped clean! What sort of results do you think this system of justice might give?

Eze 36:37,38 - Thus says the LORD God: I will also let the house of Israel ask me to do this for them: to increase their population like a flock. Like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed festivals, so shall the ruined towns be filled with flocks of people. Then they shall know that I am the LORD.
In Jerusalem, in preparation for religious festivals, where many people would come, anxious to sacrifice animals at the temple, a major industry was raising animals for the express purpose of being killed to please God. What does this tell you about the mindset of the writer of this passage?

Eze 37:21-23 - ...then say to them, thus says the LORD God: 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. I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be over them all. Never again shall they be two nations, and never again shall they be divided into two kingdoms. They shall never again defile themselves with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. I will save them from all the apostasies into which they have fallen, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be my people and I will be their God.
This is a re-statement of an earlier passage, but repetition doesn't seem to be a problem for the writers of the Bible. It's interesting that this prediction of a return should concentrate on the concept of political unity, and the need for the returned Israel to be washed clean of its other religions. As I said before, this is the sort of thinking you'd expect from a priest who needs to get his livelihood from that religion.

Eze 39:17-22 - As for you, mortal, thus says the LORD God: Speak to the birds of every kind and to all the wild animals: Assemble and come, gather from all around to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you, a great sacrificial feast on the mountains of Israel, and you shall eat flesh and drink blood. You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth - of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bulls, all of them fatlings of Bashan. You shall eat fat until you are filled, and drink blood until you are drunk, at the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you. And you shall be filled at my table with horses and charioteers, with warriors and all kinds of soldiers, says the LORD God. I will display my glory among the nations; and all the nations shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid on them. The house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God, from that day forward.
As Yoda said, "Wars not make one great!" However, it appears here that might and enormous slaughter is to be taken as a characteristic of God's glory. I'm wondering, though, how a war executed by a foreign power was supposed to show the other nations who is the boss? I expect that the people of the other nations would just assume that the victor's gods were more powerful than those of Israel. There's a basic lack of logical thinking going on here.

Eze 43:7 - He said to me: Mortal, 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 whoring, and by the corpses of their kings at their death.
This is one weird statement. First, I think I read in 1 Kings that God planned to live among his people forever in the first temple. However, that didn't appear to have worked out. The next thing is that God mentions (in a future sense) kings (more than one) who will not defile his name by leaving the religion, though it looks like there were a few kings during Roman times that weren't exactly kosher. Lastly, what's this thing about God's name being defiled by royal corpses? Did God feel disappointed that David wasn't immortal?

Eze 43:10 - As for you, mortal, describe the temple to the house of Israel, and let them measure the pattern; and let them be ashamed of their iniquities.
This is confusing. Are these two ideas linked somehow? Is a detailed description of this temple supposed to make people feel ashamed of themselves in some weird way? Or is Zeke supposed to bad-mouth everyone until they are ashamed of themselves, and then tell them about this temple? Isn't it interesting that a priest would be so concerned about the details of a temple's structure?

Eze 43:18-21 - Then he said to me: Mortal, thus says the LORD God: These are the ordinances for the altar: On the day when it is erected for offering burnt offerings upon it and dashing blood against it, you shall give to the Levitical priests of the family of Zadok, who draw near to me to minister to me, says the LORD God, a bull for a sin offering. And you shall take some of its blood, and put it on the four horns of the altar, and on the four corners of the ledge, and upon the rim all around; thus you shall purify it and make atonement for it. You shall also take the bull of the sin offering, and it shall be burnt in the appointed place belonging to the temple, outside the sacred area.
So, after all the bother with finding that the old-time religion was not a good way to keep people in line, and all the trouble that was caused by people wandering off to find other religions, we get to the Psalms where we hear that God doesn't like sin offerings, and we hear from Jeremiah that God doesn't want burnt offerings and blood. After all this, Ezekiel comes along to tell us that God really, really wants blood splattered all over his altar, and burning dead carcasses is pleasing to God. It appears that these guys had some trouble getting together on what message needed to be sent!

Eze 43:27 - When these days are over, then from the eighth day onward the priests shall offer upon the altar your burnt offerings and your offerings of well-being; and I will accept you, says the LORD God.
In other (less mystical terms), Ezekiel the priest thinks everything will be pretty neat if we'll set up the old system where the people bring their choicest animals and all the other goods that the priests can - by pure coincidence, honest! - use. The fact that things never went perfectly for the people under this system before isn't important, compared to how well the priests were treated.

Eze 44:28-30 - This shall be their inheritance: I am their inheritance; and you shall give them no holding in Israel; I am their holding. They shall eat the grain offering, the sin offering, and the guilt offering; and every devoted thing in Israel shall be theirs. The first of all the first fruits off all kinds, and every offering of all kinds from all your offerings, shall belong to the priests; you shall also give to the priests the first of your dough, in order that a blessing may rest on your house.
Here, Ezekiel openly declares what I have been saying all along! All the food (animals, grain, bread, drink) given for "offerings to God" ended up in the hands and bellies of the priests. In other words, they did no work to support themselves. What's more , all things "dedicated" - referring back to booty captured in war and supposedly "dedicated to destruction" (see Deuteronomy) - were really to belong to the priests. It's only natural for the priests to be keen on such a deal. They still are to this day.