Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 5-8.
In today’s passage Ezekiel prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem and the people living there. His prophecy calls for almost complete destruction of everyone living in and near Jerusalem, which seems somewhat frightening when we think about how closely our society fits his condemnation of the people of Jerusalem. However, as we read a little further we see that this destruction came about because of their actions. God promised to repay them for their detestable conduct. He would bring judgement on them according to their own standards. In the same way, God will bring judgement upon people today…they will be judged by their own standards.
God then gives Ezekiel a vision of the people in Jerusalem. The first part shows Ezekiel the idolatry and sin which the people of Jerusalem were doing in full view of the public, but God tells him the people are committing even more detestable acts in private than what they do in public. God shows how the leaders of Jerusalem each pursued their own idolatry, their own agenda, in private. Publicly, these leaders proclaimed themselves servants of the people and sharing common values with the people, but in private they pursued their own interests, interests which the fact that they kept them private suggest the people would have found reprehensible. We see the same thing among our leaders today; in public they say one thing, but in private they do another. What they say in public is bad enough, but what they keep hidden is worse.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 5-8.
The first thing I want to note about today’s passage is that although Ezekiel’s prophecy was about the fall of Jerusalem and the devastation which the people living in the land of Israel would experience, it was given by him to those already living in Exile. We know from elsewhere that among the exiles there were those bemoaning their fate of being in exile while some others remained in Jerusalem. So, in part, this prophecy was to tell them that their being in exile meant that they would avoid the suffering still to come one those remaining in Jerusalem. However, it also contained a warning about what would befall them if they followed the idolatrous example of those still in Jerusalem.
There is another aspect to the warning which Ezekiel gives here, really a two-fold warning. First, he warns those who believe that their wealth will allow them to avoid the suffering which others will face. Some of those who put their trust in their wealth, make things worse for others in order to amass more wealth. They have no concern for how their actions bring the fall of Jerusalem closer because they believe their wealth will shelter them from the consequences. Others, gather wealth by acting to advance the interests of the enemies of their country…again, believing that their wealth will shelter them from the consequences, or perhaps believing that God will protect their country even though they weaken it by aiding its enemies.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 5-8.
Before I start to comment on today’s passage I want to remind my readers that Ezekiel was making this prophecy from among the Jews already in Exile near Babylon. Ezekiel reminds his listeners that God had established Jerusalem as a place to model obedience to Him, but that the people had rebelled against His laws even more than the nations which surrounded it. Not only had the people of Israel failed to live up to the standard of righteousness to which God had called them, they had not even lived up to the standards which the nations around them met. Looking at the ways in which Ezekiel’s condemnation of the people of Jerusalem apply to many in our society today, one could easily fear for the future, and rightly so. However, one should also note that Ezekiel’s prophecies specify that each one of those who suffered did so because of their own sins. Usually when I read this passage I spend some time going over the idolatry which Ezekiel describes as going on in the Temple. All I am going to say about it today is that, according to the New Testament, our bodies are now God’s Temple and we should consider in what ways any sins which we commit resemble those which Ezekiel describes.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 5-8.
The first thing which struck me in today’s passage was when God told Ezekiel that the people of Judah had not even lived up to the standard of righteousness of the nations around them. I was not quite sure what to make of that until I considered that most nations have laws restricting abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Then I read further into the passage where Ezekiel was shown the idolatry going on in the Temple, both that which was going on publicly and that which the leaders were doing in secret. This reminded me of the sexual deviancy of which our society publicly approves and the sexual abuse of children which some number of our society’s leaders practice in secret. As I read it, the practices which Ezekiel saw practiced secretly would have been “a bridge too far” for the general populace of Jerusalem, yet they refused to condemn the practices conducted in public which led people down the path to those vile secret practices. Such is where I find our society to be.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 5-8.
Ezekiel prophesied among the first set of Exiles who had been taken to Babylon before the fall of Jerusalem. We know from the Book of Jeremiah that there were false prophets who were telling them that Jerusalem would not fall and that they would soon return home. Ezekiel warned them that it would not happen that way. Indeed, he prophesied that Jerusalem would fall because of the idolatry and other sins of its people. His prophecy was designed to counter those who claimed otherwise and to turn those already exiled from the sins which had led to their exile. His prophecy also serves to remind us today that, if we continue in sin and idolatry, we will suffer the same fate as the people of Jerusalem.
Then Ezekiel has a vision about the idolatry and other detestable practices in Jerusalem. Ezekiel describes idolatry committed by those who claim to be religious in Jerusalem. First, he describes an idol which is set up in the courtyard of the Temple. Next, Ezekiel describes how the leaders of Jerusalem (or, at least, a large group of them) worshiped disgusting things in secret, things which even the idolatrous general public would have found horrifying. Next, Ezekiel witnesses a group of women weeping over the death of a Mesopotamian god. Finally, he describes how even the religious leaders, those with access to the Temple sanctuary, had turned their backs on God to worship the East.
I really think this vision is relevant today, although I am not sure I can make a coherent whole out of the various ways in which I think this is true. First, all of this idolatry took place among those who either thought they were worshiping God or who presented themselves as worship God. Those who the common people turned to for guidance on what it means to be righteous directed them to idolatry rather than to God. The first part of the vision shows that there was nothing subtle about that idolatry. When people went to the Temple, they were confronted by an idol front and center. To what degree are we doing the same thing today when our Churches encourage people to be politically active? All too often that political activism places government where God belongs. We need to be careful that we, who consider ourselves Christians do not allow idolatry to replace our worship of God.
But there is more to it than that. When I read the part about the leaders worship detestable things in a hidden room I was reminded of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein. Not so much those individuals as the people around them, the people who were aware of and took part in their depravity. Many of these people are among those who form the opinions which are held up as what we should believe. They guide public thought about what it means to be “righteous” in our society (although they would never use the word “righteous”). Related, and abetting, this group are the “women” weeping for the god Tammuz. They are caught up in “the feels”. They do not want to talk about facts and logic because they feel the sadness of the death of Tammuz and that is more important than anything else. These are the people caught up in the emotional. They want to avoid confrontation and go into their safe space. Finally, there are the religious leaders who instead of pointing people towards God point them away towards self-destructive behavior.
I want to close this out by pointing out that our society has two competing groups which are trying to lure us into idolatry. One tries to get us to throw away Christianity all together, and most of those who read this are on to them. But the other group is more subtle and attempts to convince us to set up the Church, or “traditional values”, or other positive things as idols in place of God.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 5-8.
I had commented on Jeremiah’s use of physical symbols and acting out his prophecies. Ezekiel took this even further. In chapter 4, he spent 390 days lying on his side in front of a model of Jerusalem under siege. In chapter 5, at the end of that time he shaved his head and beard. He took a third of the hair and burned it in the middle of his model of Jerusalem. Another third he chopped up with his sword (or, at least laid it on the ground and chopped at it with his sword). The final third of his hair he scattered to the wind. All of this was to indicate what would happen to the people of Israel still left in Jerusalem. All of this, Ezekiel said, would happen because of the sins of the people.
Some time after this (the dates are given, but I don’t think they are relevant to what I am going to write today), Ezekiel had another vision from God. This one occurred while some of the leaders of the Exile community were visiting his house. In this vision he sees three separate forms of idolatry being committed by the people of Jerusalem. The first was an idol in the Temple courtyard. Several sources I found suggest that this idol was a statue of Astarte (also known as Ishtar). Several things I have read suggest that this may have actually been an amalgamation of Astarte and Asherah. In any case, it would have been a goddess which the people of Jerusalem placed as God’s equivalent (possibly even higher than God) and possibly as His consort. It is likely that Ezekiel is referring to the worship of the Queen of Heaven mentioned in Jeremiah. Then Ezekiel is taken to witness leaders of the people worshiping what are likely Egyptian gods in secret. From there he is taken back out to the north gate where he witnesses some women weeping over the god Tammuz, a fertility god associated with Astarte and the seasonal rebirth cycle. Finally, Ezekiel sees 25 men with their backs to God’s altar worshiping the sun.
As I was reading this, and writing about it, it struck me that all of this represents the people of Jerusalem worshiping various, incompatible gods rather than remaining faithful to God. In many ways I see similarities to our society today, in that there was no unifying worship of a single deity. Everyone took their own interpretation of proper worship. There were those who worshiped Astarte in the form of a fertility goddess, where the focus was on sexual desire. Then there were those who worshiped other gods more secretively, where the focus was on power. Then we had those who worshiped Astarte and Tammuz, where sexual desire took a darker turn with the sacrifice of children. Finally, there were those who turned their back on God to worship nature in the form of the sun. I will leave you to your own thoughts about how these might connect to modern idolatry. We need to ask ourselves if we are guilty of any of these forms of idolatry.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 5-8.
Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel frequently used metaphors, although Ezekiel’s are a little more performance art than Jeremiah’s. In today’s passage, Ezekiel had just spent almost a year laying on his side facing a map of Jerusalem which he had drawn. At the end of that time, he shaved his head and divided his hair into portions. One portion he burned, one portion he scattered on his map and chopped with a sword, and the final third he scattered on the wind. I can just picture him standing there chopping at the hair with a sword.
However, it is the message about why the predicted destruction is coming to which we need to pay the closest attention. Through Ezekiel God tells the people of Jerusalem, who considered themselves to be the People of God, that they had behaved worse than their neighbors. Despite having the laws of God to give them a true standard of righteousness they had failed to live up to the standard to which the people around them held. Not only had they failed to live up to God’s standard of righteousness, they had failed to live up to the standard of those who made no claim to being righteous. Actually, it was worse than that. They did not FAIL to live up to the standard of their neighbors, they intentionally violated it. Then in Ezekiel’s next vision, God calls out the spiritual leaders of Jerusalem who are secretly practicing idol worship. The passage does not spell it out, but it seems to suggest that this idol worship involved detestable practices (sex acts, mutilation of both self and sacrificial victims, sacrifice of children). The important part is that the people of Jerusalem were publicly declaring themselves to be serving God, but were privately serving other gods. The message here is similar to Paul’s message about the qualifications for leadership in the Church. Those we appoint to positions of leadership should be living a truly righteous life, not merely talking about doing so. There is a second message as well (actually, this message came first). If we consider ourselves to be the People of God we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the culture around us. We need to set an example of what it means to do as God instructs.
