A BURDEN WORTH BEARING PART IV

EZEKIEL

I made the generalization several lectures ago that the messages of the Hebrew prophets are rightly called burdens, but that they are burdens worth bearing. Your 2^nd study question for the final exam asks you to comment on this generalization with regard to Jeremiah and Ezekiel, two prophets who wrote just before, during, and just after the destruction of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah’s message is a burden for us, difficult in part because the messages aren’t put together in any obvious pattern.  The book in its current form jumps back and forth chronologically, so it doesn’t have the usual pattern history majors would look for.  Perhaps there’s a thematic reason for the current structure, the book arranged (maybe) using something like the “inverted parallel structure” formula where the main point of the message is in the middle, perhaps Jeremiah 31:31.

Ezekiel too, written about the same time and dealing with the same circumstances, is a difficult book for us too, but for different reasons.  The visions of Ezekiel are just plain strange, and the book hovers on the brink of some spiritually scary stuff.

The rabbis told their students not to study Ezekiel until they were at least 30 years old, perhaps because they didn’t want their students discouraged by the difficulties, or perhaps because they thought there was potential danger lurking in the book. 

But while this book was difficult for us, and while Ezekiel’s message was certainly a burden to him and those who heard him, there is much to make the burden worth bearing. 

I heard a sermon long ago where the preacher choose two parallel texts, Psalm 137 and the opening words of Ezekiel.  Psalm 137 laments, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yeah, we wept when we remembered Zion,” and it goes on to ask a sorrowful questions, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

But there’s Ezekiel, by the river Chebar, one of the rivers of Babylon. And what does he say?  “I saw visions of God.”

The preacher contrasted these verses in an unforgettable way, saying over and over again, “It’s not where you are: it’s what you see.”  And this, I suppose, gets to the heart of one of the most important redeeming characteristics of Ezekiel.  He sees some pretty horrible things, but, beyond that, he sees hope—yes, something we saw in Jeremiah, but even more emphatically emphasized here.

[By the way, the rabbis disputed over whether or not to “canonize” the book of Ezekiel.  The main objection: it wasn’t written in the Promised Land.  Could anything truly holy come from anywhere but the Holy Land, asked some.]

As Ezekiel’s book starts, it’s 597 or 596 BC.  Many Jews were already in captivity including the former king Jehoiachin (also called Coniah).  Back in Judah, Zedekiah is on the throne, plotting to use Egypt to cast off the Babylonian yoke.  He’s going to fail, and Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, but that hasn’t happened quite yet.

Ezekiel himself is perhaps 30 years old, the age at which priests commonly entered on their duties in the temple, something Ezekiel had prepared for all his life.  But there’s not much hope of this.  Jerusalem, Judea, and the temple itself are about to be destroyed, and one might have thought this would lead to the extinction of the Jewish faith.  The land seemed an essential part of the covenant with Abraham, and worship in the temple (as the successor to the tabernacle) seemed essential to Moses’ system of worship. 

Ezekiel shows that they are not, and, while the rabbis had difficulty with this, even God’s prophets can continue their work whether the temple and the land of Judah continue or not.  There is something deeper than temple worship and a relationship with God more fundamental than a land covenant, and that’s what this book shows.

The deeper experience of God Ezekiel points to, though, is a frightening thing.  The first chapter begins with what’s called the “Merkabah” (chariot) vision. Jewish (and Christian) mystics interpret this as a road map for a celestial journey, a dangerous journey that leads to the throne of God Himself.  The Kabbalah (a key book of Jewish mysticism, especially important to the Hassidic community) makes much of the vision here.  The Talmud, though (composed much earlier in the Jewish tradition) warns that this isn’t a safe path to attempt.  Of those who engaged with the Merkabah, it says, one died, one went insane, one turned apostate, and one—Ezekiel himself—was unscathed.

Now if that’s true, maybe there’s a ticket to Ezekiel’s ability to handle the vision.  If one looks at Exodus 25 (the construction of the Tabernacle) and I Kings 6 (the building of the Temple) one sees a lot of similarities with what Ezekiel sees here.  And notice that Moses is specifically told that the tabernacle design is modeled after a heavenly pattern.  What the tabernacle and later the temple represent, it seems that Ezekiel is seeing for real.  Scary?  Imagine, for instance, the images in your church (if you have them) coming alive!  Or, perhaps, the gargoyles of Notre Dame Cathedral!  But one might imagine for Ezekiel himself, it’s going to be a lot less troubling when the temple does get destroyed.  He’ll have the assurance that the real thing is still around, and no Babylonian army will ever be able to destroy it!

Seeing such things is perhaps what gives Ezekiel his strength.  Note that in Chapter Three he’s told that, while the Jews have foreheads of flint, God has given him a forehead of adamant, a much harder stone.  I suspect it’s seeing visions like this that make Ezekiel so absolutely sure he is in the right and not his opponents.

By the way, note that, in connection with the exam generalization, Ezekiel specifically says that his message is mournful (2:10) but, at the same time, sweet (3:3).

In addition to the odd sweetness of his message, Ezekiel’s burden is a little easier because he’s specifically told he’s only responsible for the message, not people’s reactions to it.  Note Ezekiel 3:17-21:

¹⁷ “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. ¹⁸ If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for^[ his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. ¹⁹ But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. ²⁰ Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand.   But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul.”

Even so, Ezekiel has plenty of difficulties:

Difficulties:

1.      Ezekiel has to do difficult things and live a very odd life.

He goes out and besieges a tile. [I’ve had theater students besiege a notebook to show how weird this would seem… but also how funny and memorable.  Thanks, Greg Parmeter.]  

He lies on one side 390 days, and on the other side 40 day.  He eats an odd sort of bread. [You can get Ezekiel Bread at Kessler’s.  It’s good stuff!].  He shaves his head and beard and destroys his hair in an odd way. 

He’s not allowed to show any sign of mourning when his wife dies—particularly difficult, I suppose, for someone who is so out-of-the-mainstream.

2.      Ezekiel has to see things he’d rather not see. 

He has a vision of what’s going on back in the Jerusalem temple.  And what does he see?  Progressively worse things.  He sees idolatry in the temple, the elders of Israel claiming that God doesn’t see and worshipping instead every form of idol imaginable.

Can it get worse?  It does.   

At the gates of the temple, Ezekiel sees women “weeping for Tammuz.”

What’s that about?  Well, throughout the ancient world, there are myths of dying and rising gods associate with the harvest.  There are different names for these gods (Baal, Tammuz, Dumuzi) but the worship pattern is the same.  Here’s a link to one ancient text describing the mourning for Baal:

https://archive.org/details/documentsfromold00insoci/page/130/mode/2up

[If the link just goes to the book, flip to pp. 130-131.  By the way, there is much in this book worth your time if you are interested in the links between ancient Israel and other Near Eastern cultures.]

The weeping is just the first part of the Tammuz/Baal/Dumuzi observance.  What comes next is a wild celebration which includes men cavorting with temple prostitutes.  These weeping women, then, are very likely to be getting ready to play the prostitute’s role—in the temple of God. 

Can it get worse?  It can and does.  In the innermost part of the temple, right at the altar of God.  There are twenty five men assembled. But they’ve turned to the east worshiping the son, and they’ve turned their backs on God.

And I suppose it’s no great surprise to Ezekiel to see the Glory [Kabod] of God depart from the temple, accompanied by the Cherubim (that Merkabah vision once again).

Now all this probably did make it easier for Ezekiel to accept the message of God’s judgment. But his lot still isn’t a happy one. 

Like Jeremiah, he has to contend with prophets with a soft message and he responds with that famous line about their saying “peace, peace” when there is no peace (13:1-2). 

Ezekiel sees that the few good people left, while they might be delivered themselves, aren’t going to be able to do the Rahab the Harlot thing and deliver at least a few of those around them.  Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were around (14:20), that wouldn’t be enough to avert the judgment on Jerusalem.

Now this sounds like there is nothing that can avert the judgment.  But as so often with the prophetic message, the “absolute” message of judgment isn’t quite what it seems.  Chapter 18 specifically says it’s wrong to view the situation as the inevitable consequence of the sins of earlier generations.

18 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge’? 3 As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. 4 Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.”

Ezekiel does his best to try to make his message strong enough to change people’s hearts.  Like many of the other prophets, he compares the infidelity of Israel and Judah to the infidelity of a wife.  There’s the “Aholah” and “Aholibah” image in Chapter 23, for instance.   And then there’s the painful passage in Ezekiel 16.

Ezekiel compares Judah to an abandoned baby girl left to die of exposure (as many unwanted children, girls especially, were in the ancient world) She’s saved from this fate, and then taken care of in every possible way, given every gift, and every way to adorn herself.  But then, instead of playing the royal role intended for her, she becomes a whore. 

Ezekiel description here is incredibly painful, and your ESV translators do an excellent job getting this across in their translation of Chapter 16.  But even the ESV translators draw back a bit in vs. 25.   Their version, “At the head of every street you built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, offering yourself to any passerby and multiplying your whoring.”  But then they footnote the “offering yourself” phrase with the literal translation, “spread your legs.” 

About as vivid a denunciation of Judah’s behavior as one can imagine!

Like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and some of the other prophets, Ezekiel includes in his prophetic message warning to nations other than Israel including especially Egypt and Babylon [Ezekiel 24-32].  I don’t generally have students read those verses, but it’s worth noting that Ezekiel has a “burden” for nations other than Judah.

Chapter 33 of Ezekiel is another turning point.  In the earlier chapters, Jerusalem and the temple were on the brink of destruction, but not yet destroyed.  From Chapter 33 onward, Ezekiel is preaching in the time after the destruction, and his mission changes just a bit.  There’s a repetition of Ezekiel’s call, but with a new twist.  There’s this addition to the call in vs. 14-16:

Again, though I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ yet if he turns from his sin and does what is just and right, 15 if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has taken by robbery, and walks in the statutes of life, not doing injustice, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 16 None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he shall surely live.

This is another chapter important to understanding Ezekiel’s burden and what makes it worth bearing.  I really like this section in terms of understanding Ezekiel’s experience:

30 “As for you, son of man, your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, say to one another, each to his brother, ‘Come, and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.’ 31 And they come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear what you say but they will not do it; for with lustful talk in their mouths they act; their heart is set on their gain. 32 And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it. 33 When this comes—and come it will!—then they will know that a prophet has been among them.”

Note that, as with Isaiah, Ezekiel’s earlier preaching is largely judgment mixed with some hope, while his later message emphasizes much more the hope: Here’s part of Chapter 36:

24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

Note here the similarity to Jeremiah’s message about a changed heart.

Another example of hope, Ezekiel 37, the Valley of the Dry Bones.  “Can these bones live again?” Ezekiel is asked.  Well, they can, and Ezekiel sees the bones take on flesh and live.  There is some dispute over what this symbolizes, some saying it represents only the restoration of Judah, others the resurrection from the dead.  Seems to me it’s obviously both: the hope of national restoration and of the resurrection as well.  In either case, though, it’s a great image of hope.

The message of hope continues…but in passages that are *very* difficult for us. 

First, we have the story of “Gog” and “Magog.”  What’s this about?  Most of you have probably heard some complicated end-times teachings involving Gog and Magog, and maybe there is something to this.  But the original names and images had to mean something to Ezekiel himself, and so it’s best to take a guess at what the images would have meant for Ezekiel’s original audience.

First clue: the name Gog itself.  This is very likely a reference to Gyges, the king of Lydia. “Gyges” is “Γυγος” in Greek, and then ending “os” ending would have been a Greek addition or a carryover from a Semitic dialect that preserves “extra” syllables.  The Hebrew dialect does tend to drop syllables at the end.  “Sumer” become “Sum” or “Shem.”  “Kemet” (Egypt) becomes “Kem” or “Ham.”  “Babylon” becomes Babel. So “Γυγος” becomes “Γυγ” or “Gog.”

If this is right, then “Magog” is just the people of Gog/Gyges: the Lydians.

Very unfortunately for us, we don’t have really solid information about Gyges. There’s the Herodotus story about Gyges I tell in my introductory lecture in History 121 and 122.  There’s the story in Plato of Gyges and a magic ring that makes him invisible.

There are, however, some details Herodotus and the other Greek sources probably have right.  The Lydians, they tell us, were the first people to coin money, and, with this advantage, they became quite wealthy, extensively involved in trade.  You have maybe heard the expression “rich as Croesus.”   Well, Croesus was a descendent of Gyges.   

The Greeks also tell us that the Lydians prostituted their daughters.  Why would this have been?

Note that Gyges himself claimed descent from “Atys.”  That’s Attis, the equivalent of Tammuz/DumuziBaal.  The worship of the equivalent of Tammuz then was a hallmark of Lydian religion, and part of this tradition involved temple prostitution.

So what do we have here?  The Lydians are the representatives of the two primary sins tempting Judah.  There’s the way the wealthy exploit the poor through financial manipulation (note that coined money can and often does amplify this).  And there’s also the idea of turning prostitution into an act of worship.

So down come the Lydians to invade.  Did this really happen?  We don’t know.  Herodotus tells us that Gyges did nothing of note in his 38-year reign, and Gyges himself lived around 50 years before Ezekiel anyway.  But Ezekiel was living in Babylon at a time one of Gyges successors was involved in conflicts with the Medes and the Babylonians intervened.  Here’s the Wikipedia account of Alyattes, the man who would have been king of Lydia at the time Ezekiel is writing:

Alyattes (c. 591–560 BC). One of the greatest kings of Lydia. When Cyaxares attacked Lydia, the kings of Cilicia and Babylon intervened and negotiated a peace in 585 BC, whereby the River Halys was established as the Medes' frontier with Lydia.^[35] Herodotus writes:

On the refusal of Alyattes to give up his supplicants when Cyaxares sent to demand them of him, war broke out between the Lydians and the Medes, and continued for five years, with various success. In the course of it the Medes gained many victories over the Lydians, and the Lydians also gained many victories over the Medes.

The Battle of the Eclipse was the final battle in a five year^[36] war between Alyattes of Lydia and Cyaxares of the Medes. It took place on 28 May 585 BC, and ended abruptly due to a total solar eclipse.

Note that the source for some of this Herodotus who is not very reliable.  One can speculate on what the “real” story is, and it’s possible that archaeologists will someday give us something that sheds light on Ezekiel.  In their later war with Persia, the Lydians made alliances with the Egyptians and even the Spartans, so it’s not inconceivable that, during the five years of their earlier war with the Medes, the fighting spilled over toward Egypt and into the valley of Megiddo.

No matter what the specifics of this particular section refer to, there is in this passage one of those things that makes Ezekiel’s message more hopeful and more worth bearing.  God’s people and the forces opposed to God will meet: and God’s people will be victorious.

After this, we get into another difficult passage in Ezekiel, a long, long description of a new temple, and then extended vision of a restored Jerusalem.

 Most people find these closing chapters tedious, but, for Ezekiel himself, this might just be his favorite vision…saving the best for last.

How do we understand this passage?  Well, most of you have an idea of a dream house.  Past students have told me what they would want.  The music majors all want a music room with a grand piano.  The athletes want their own basketball court and a fantastic weight room.  The English majors want a library.  When I was growing up, my dream was a house where you could swim from one room to another…you never had to get out of the pool.

Many of us also have an imaginary country of the kind C.S. Lewis describes in the Chronicles of Narnia—the place we’d *really* like to live.

Ezekiel, remember, was a priest.  He had once had a *real* dream house—the Temple in Jerusalem.  And he had a had a *real* dream city, Jerusalem, the city one Psalm describes as “beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth: mount Zion, the sides of the north, the city of the Great king.”

 Ezekiel’s dream house and his dream city are gone.

But in these last chapters, he sees an even better dream house.  He gives us all the details, describing the decorations, the worship, the rooms for the priests—everything would could want in a temple.

He sees an even better dream city.  He describes for us its magnificent walls and gates and all the wonderful thing inside.

But then he gives us the most important thing about his dream house and his dream city.  The final words of Ezekiel:

The LORD is there.