Without a doubt if there is anyone in the Bible any more dramatic than Ezekiel it has yet to be seen. His vision, making maps of Jerusalem, eating scrolls, lying on his side for over a year, then flipping over and lying on the other for 40 days, eating Ezekiel 4:9 bread, shaving his head with a sword, cooking with human dung (changed to cow fortunately), cooking pots and meat, repetition of words and pictures, not mourning for his wife’s death, useless vines, comparing Jerusalem to prostitutes, it goes on and on.
No other author is more exact than Ezekiel. Everyone of his stories is in perfect order chronologically, unlike Jeremiah. There are thirteen date stamps recorded by Ezekiel through out the book. Nearly each one of them can be narrowed to an exact day.
Ezekiel is part of the second wave of deportees who make the trek across the desert to Babylon. Daniel and his friends are in the first one around 605 B.C. after the first attack by Nebuchadnezzar. Ezekiel goes around 598 B.C. and speaks from Babylon to his friends there regarding what happened to them and what will happen in the next thirteen years back home, precisely what Jeremiah is living through. Ezekiel names names and places with uncanny accuracy.
Whenever one studies a book, patterns are looked at, words, combinations of words, structure, etc.. Those different studies provide information on purpose and intent of the author. And as we have seen and focused on throughout B90X, what is being said about Father in all of these words? There is a signature statement found 53 times in Ezekiel of the 63 uses in all of the Old Testament- those words are “will know that I am the LORD.” It is super obvious to us that Father is loud and clear in His message of covenant and faithfulness between He and His nation. But for some reason, to them it was not so clear. Ezekiel is making it as obvious as possible the God is God and attention should be paid His direction. Knowledge leads to response. When one truly knows Father, hopefully, an appropriate response follows.
“Ezekiel is ruthless in his exposure of sin in all its gruesome abhorrence. Reading his language from the comfortable distance of those not directly targeted by his rhetoric, we may at times wince at the coarseness of his imagery or query the one-sidedness of his portrayal of Israel’s whole history (e.g. in chs. 16, 20, and 23). Once we recognize, however, that Ezekiel was engaged, not in a detached academic debate, but in passionate evangelistic persuasion, we can understand his tactics. He was faced with people who refused to acknowledge their own sin,… Ezekiel’s tirades against Israel’s sin was necessary to bring at least some of his listeners to a more realistic assessment of their condition, and thereby to a genuine repentance.” Christopher J.H. Wright, “The Message of Ezekiel” in The Bible Speaks Today. (Leicaster, IVP: 2001), p. 32.
