The Bible in a Year – 11 June

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

11 June. Ezekiel chapters 38-41

Chapters 38-39 are totally unexpected after what came before, and seem out of place here. Just as Ezekiel has started describing God’s favour to the Israelites and promising them peace and security, here comes a prophecy of a future invasion by “Gog” against their unprotected towns and villages.   The Israelites would win, however, and God’s punishment would be on Gog.  So, unexpectedly, we are back to an older understanding of God pitting one country against another and judging whole peoples rather than individuals.

 

At the beginning of Chapter 40 Ezekiel is transported in the Spirit to Jerusalem for a second time (the first such experience, described in chapters 8-11, was to reveal the future destruction of the city). As I explained then [1 June], such experience of physical transportation from one place to another as a part of extreme spiritual experience is not unique in religious writings.   From here to chapter 45, Ezekiel is given a vision of a future temple.  Chapters 40-41 are concerned with the overall dimensions of the walls, gates and the buildings within the courtyard.

 

Although the basic concept of outer and inner courts, nave and “most holy place” are familiar both from Solomon’s earlier temple and in later Christian church plans, the description of this structure is not that of the temple that was actually built in the following generations under Nehemiah.  Depending on which websites you look at (Jewish or Christian) and on your understanding (if any) of the “Millennium” referred to by some Christians, it might have been a vision for how that temple should have been built, or for an actual physical temple that will, someday, be built, or it may be an allegory of some kind.  The latter view is taken by this website  which does include a helpful 3-D illustration of Ezekiel’s vision.

 

 

 

 

The Bible in a Year – 4 June

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

4 June. Ezekiel chapters 16-17

When Ezekiel was not acting out the prophecies he received, he couched them in terms of allegories or parables, much as Jesus did with his teachings.  The first of these chapters pictures the nation of Israel/Judah as a prostitute, or adulterous wife, who left her husband (the true god) who had loved her as an abandoned child, married her as a young woman and brought her up into a royal household.  She left him and slept with all her neighbours and strangers, even paying them for love.  This could be seen as relating to Israel’s political alliances or the people’s worship of false gods – probably both.  The use of this imagery is found elsewhere in the Bible, but never in such an extended form.

 

Chapter 17 pictures those who had been taken into captivity in Babylon in a very different way, as a cutting from a cedar (a very large, useful and long-lived tree, often used in the Bible as another image of God’s love).  The cutting was planted in Babylon by God’s will but tried to transplant itself again to Egypt (with which Judah had tried to form an alliance), but the attempt was doomed to failure.  The only successful transplant would be that initiated by God, who would take a further cutting and re-establish it to become a mature tree back in Jerusalem.

 

Whether you prefer the gentle gardening imagery of a tree and its cutting, or the bloodier and more shocking image of the prostitute, the lesson is clear: unfaithfulness to God is every bit as bad, or worse, than unfaithfulness to your own husband or wife; and no attempt at saving yourself will succeed, as God is the only one who can save you.