The Tenth Leper

My next entry in this whole Ezekiel series will be cover the first chapter of the book.  But before we get there, I wanted to note a few things about Ezekiel’s ministry, particularly the climate he was called to minister in and the roles God called him to take on as a prophet.

The Climate of His Ministry

I’ve already covered some of this a couple entries back, but it’s worth revisiting.  Ezekiel had been carried off to Babylon in 597 BC as part of the first deportation (second if you count the smaller deportation in 605 which included the prophet Daniel).  There was another deportation in 587 when Babylon finally crushed the southern kingdom of Judah and destroyed the temple of the Lord.  The first part of Ezekiel’s ministry was from about 593-587 and was directed to the exiles who had been taken in 597.  These people had naturally suffered much trauma.  They had been relocated far away from their homes and from loved ones who had been left behind.  Yet amidst such harsh realities, there was still a glimmer of hope in some.  No matter how bad things were for them, Jerusalem could never fully be destroyed.  Or so they thought.  When the city was destroyed with many more exiles to show for it, that glimmer of hope was shattered.

The fall of Jerusalem resulted in spiritual and psychological trauma for the exiles.  They simply couldn’t believe it.  The temple and city of their God had been destroyed.  Were the Babylonian gods more powerful than the God of Israel?  Had he been shamed as they had by a superior force?  Was there any future left for them as a people?  Where was God?  Does he even have the ability to rescue them from the apparently superior Babylonian deities?  How should they make sense of this catastrophe?  ”Ezekiel, then, was called to serve God in the midst of a shattered and shell-shocked people, a context not far removed from many contexts of mission today.” (Christopher Wright)  Psalm 137 remembers Jewish life in exile:

By the water of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!
Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!”
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! 

Ezekiel’s call was to preach to people who felt abandoned by their God.

The Roles of His Ministry

Ezekiel was called to be a pastor to his people.  The trauma of exile and of Jerusalem’s fall took many forms for the displaced people of God.  Some rejected their faith outright.  Others maintained baseless optimism.  There were those who protested that God’s judgment was unfair.  And some sank into despair.  As pastor, Ezekiel labored to bring his people to a right understanding of their situation.  They needed to understand that they were going to be in exile for a while, that their judgment was just, yet also that God’s judgment would one day end.  A restoration would come.  ”The emphasis on newness is overwhelming: a new shepherd, new hearts, a new spirit, new breath, new unity.  Ultimately only the language of resurrection (37:1-14) can really do justice to the river of hope being poured out over the languishing dead bones of the exiles.” (Christopher Wright)

Ezekiel was also called to be an evangelist.  As a watchmen meant to warn the people, his warnings were to prompt them into repentant action.  Aspects of this included:

-Conviction of sin.  Ezekiel was ministering a very entitled people who felt proud of their heritage and who felt that they had “an absolute and eternal right to the privileges of land, city and temple.” (Wright)  Some of the people adamantly refused to acknowledge that they were sinners and thus had brought judgment upon themselves.  Because of this, Ezekiel gives perhaps the most graphic depictions of sin found in Scripture (chapters 16, 20, 23) in order to shock them out of their false innocence.

-Apologetics.  Particularly, Ezekiel engaged in what’s called theodicy, or the field of apologetics that addresses the seemingly unjust actions of God. (A classic example of theodicy is answering why a good God would allow evil in the world.)  Many of the exiles were grumbling and complaining that God was not fair to inflict such judgment upon them.  Ezekiel needed to correct these false assumptions.

-Divine Grace.  Ezekiel complements his horrific depictions of sin with some absolutely beautiful depictions of grace.  Israel had continually sought to be like the nations around them (20:32), but God would have none of it.  Through his judgment, he would redeem them.  For his own sake he be merciful to his people.  Christopher Wright beautifully sums this up: “Yahweh will gather and cleanse his people, do some radical heart surgery, and grant his own Spirit to enable full obedience.  The great gospel language of the New Testament is hardly more inspiring, and indeed owes some of its most precious imagery to Ezekiel’s eloquence.”

-Appeal for Repentance.  When conviction of sin has settled in the heart, the next step is to repent.  Ezekiel reminds the exiles that repentance will result in salvation. (18:21-23)  Confessed sins are sins that will not be remembered.

-Assurance of Life.  God’s grace is freely and abundantly offered for all who turn to him and repent.  For those who did, God promised to bring them back to life. (37:12-14)

The darkness was great for the exiles, but the God who spoke brought light into the darkness at creation wouldn’t let the story end there for the people he loved.  This kind of darkness needs a greater light than stars can give, and he was prepared to give it.  When God speaks, darkness scatters.  That brings us to the first chapter of Ezekiel’s prophecy.

When we think of Ezekiel we tend to think of a prophet. Rightly so.  After all, he is included in the prophetic section of the Old Testament.  But in Ezekiel 1:3 we learn that before he was called by God to be a prophet, he was a priest-in-training.  Up to this point, his life would have been one of rigorous training, including matters of animal sacrifice as well as teaching and administering the Torah.   His writings also display a broad knowledge of international affairs, politics, and ancient near-eastern mythology.

As a priest, Ezekiel’s role was to represent God to the people, and the people to God.  God stood at the center of his existence and utterly defined his life.  Thus, the glory of God is a huge theme in his ministry, and this God-centeredness colored the way he saw everything around him.  For example, some of the most graphic language used to describe sin in the Bible is found in this book.  As a priest who was deeply concerned with seeing things through God’s eyes, Ezekiel boldly proclaimed the filthiness and disgust of sin, especially idolatry.

In addition to seeing sin through God’s eyes, Ezekiel saw salvation from the same perspective.  What is it that motivates God to save sinful human beings?  Two common (and biblically supported) responses are that of “human need” and “divine emotion.”  A classic example of this is the exodus when God saw the suffering of his people in Egypt and intervened (Exodus 3:7-8).  But for Ezekiel, the ultimate motive for God to save sinful human beings is the desire for his own glory. God will glorify himself, and he will do so through the salvation of his people who are in exile.

As someone who was in training to be a priest, God’s call for Ezekiel to be a prophet was a radical career change.  It was, in Christopher Wright’s words, “disorienting” and was a major theological and professional shift for him.  As a priest, his theological worldview saw everything through the lens of Zion’s temple.  After all, Jerusalem was God’s city, where he had chosen to dwell.  And as a priest, his profession was to serve in that temple.  He would offer sacrifices and represent the people before God.  The problem with a guy like this being called to be a prophet was…well, priests and prophets weren’t exactly getting invited to each others’ parties.  Whereas the priests were to take care of all the sacrifices, the prophets were the guys who had the God-given audacity to call out corrupt priestly practices.  Or to say it another way, God’s true prophets were the guys always standing over the corrupt priests’ shoulders saying “You’re doing it wrong.”  Annoying?  You bet.  Jeremiah does this is Jeremiah 2:8 (though to be fair he also called out false prophets there).  In Jeremiah 20:1-9 we see the tension between prophets and priests when Pashur the priest had Jeremiah beaten and put in stocks.  And in 26:20-23, we read of Uriah the prophet who spoke “in words like those of Jeremiah” and was killed by King Johoiakim.

In light of the schism between prophets and priests, it’s worth appreciating Ezekiel’s sudden career change from a priest to the “lonely, friendless, unpopular role of being a prophet, the mouthpiece of Yahweh.” (Wright)  He’d been preparing his whole life for priesthood and in his thirtieth year, the year that he would have been eligible to begin his priestly duties (Numbers 4:3), not only was Ezekiel far from the temple in Jerusalem, but God called him to a different task, proving that in God’s economy it’s never too late for a career change.  God would certainly use all that he had prepared him for in his priestly training, but he would use it in a far different way than Ezekiel could have anticipated.

Oh, and he had a wife who died ten years into the exile.  (Ezekiel 24:18)  That’s all.

Structure

For all its weirdness, the Book of Ezekiel has a mercifully easy structure to follow.  There’s basically two to three-ish categories to divide up the 48 chapters into: before Jerusalem’s fall, after it, and a few chapters during it.  Chapters 1-24 chronicle the first five years of Ezekiel’s ministry, from his calling in 593-592 to the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 587.  There’s an interlude section of the book (chapters 25-32) which are directed against the nations at large, and this was delivered mostly during the Jerusalem siege, though some of it came after.  The remaining chapters (33-48) cover the last fifteen years of Ezzy’s ministry.  Here’s two very basic structures of the book-

Super Easy Outline:

1. Ezekiel 1-24       Oracles of judgment before Jerusalem’s fall in 587
2. Ezekiel 25-32     Oracles against the foreign nations
3. Ezekiel 33-48     Oracles of hope after Jerusalem’s fall (587 – 571)

(Adapted from Christopher Wright, The Message of Ezekiel)

Slightly Less Easy Outline:

1. Ezekiel 1-3         Ezekiel’s call/ The first vision
2. Ezekiel 4-24      Judgment on Jerusalem and Judah
3. Ezekiel 25-32   Oracles against the foreign nations
4. Ezekiel 33-39   After the fall of Jerusalem
5. Ezekiel 40-48   Vision of restoration

(Adapted from the ESV Study Bible)

Easy enough, right?

Scope

A brief word here about the reaches of this book.  Ezekiel’s ministry was to a small community of his fellow exiles in Mesopotamia, but theologically speaking, his message was vast in that was aimed toward all nations.  He stands firmly on God’s promise to Abraham to bless all the nations through him (Genesis 12:1-3).  But if this was Israel’s purpose then the exile created some pretty weighty questions.  How could they still fulfill this role?  How could God bless the nations through Abraham’s descendants when those descendants themselves didn’t know him?  As Christopher Wright observes, “This question lies behind one of Ezekiel’s most characteristic expressions…’Then you will know that I am Yahweh’…”

Even more weighty than this question is the question of God’s glory.  The exile seemed to spit on the honor and reputation of the God of Israel.  When Babylon besieged Jerusalem and carried off captives in 597, and especially after the fall of Jerusalem a decade later, it looked like the gods of Babylon had defeated the God of Israel.  His name apparently had been disgraced.  But as we’ll see in this book, God wasn’t defeated.  In fact, he was the reason his people were exiled.  The honor of God’s name is a theme that gets taken up frequently in Ezekiel as a response to the crisis of faith many of the Israelites were having (for example, see Ezekiel 20:9,14,22; 38:23; 39:7, 21-23).  God cares about his glory, and he glorifies himself in the welfare of his people- a truth that is immensely comforting for believers today.  To glorify himself by making himself known among the nations, God must first restore his people who are to be the means of such world-wide salvation.  D.A. Williams says it very well:

“Ezekiel is true to the broad thrust of the Old Testament in developing a concern for the foreign nations that depends upon a covenantally obedient Israel…[He] can only offer hope to the nations through the restoration of Israel, a restoration that itself seems almost impossible.  Ezekiel stresses the importance of Yahweh’s reputation in the sight of the nations, and then points towards the restoration of Israel as the means by which Yahweh’s reputation in the eyes of the world will be restored…Ezekiel echoes the broad sweep of the Old Testament in pointing towards the restoration of Israel as Yahweh’s means of honouring his name amongst the nations.”

In short: God needs to fix the owies on Israel’s heart so that he can in turn fix the owies on the world’s heart. Bam. That last sentence just summed up the entire book for you.

“In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw vision of God.  On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal, and the hand of the LORD was upon him there.“
-Ezekiel 1:1-3

The book of Ezekiel opens with two time references which provide a ton a contextual clues.  The first reference, “the thirtieth year”, is believed by many to refer to Ezekiel’s age.  The second (“the fifth day of the month” and “the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin”) provides us with enough info to say that this thirtieth year is referring to either 593 or 592 BC.  If Ezekiel is indeed referring to his thirtieth birthday, that would place his birthday somewhere in 623 or 622, which was a significant time for the southern kingdom of Judah.  622 was the year that the book of the law was discovered in the temple.  King Josiah, who had been ruling for eighteen years at that point, had begun religious reforms five years earlier, and the discovery of the law intensified those reforms (see 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34:1-21).

It was an exciting time for Judah.  For over a century (735 BC) they had been a vassal state of the Assyrian empire.  During Isaiah’s time, King Ahaz had made an alliance with Assyria in order to protect Judah from an alliance between the northern Kindgom of Israel and Syria.  By King Josiah’s time, the Assyrian empire was beginning to show cracks, and many of the empire’s western states were getting restless and beginning to desire independence.  So while there was legitimate, heartfelt desire on Josiah’s part for religious reform, nationalistic reform was also sweeping throughout the land as Judah sought freedom from Assyria.

King Josiah was killed in action at Megiddo in 609 when his army intercepted the Egyptian armies of Pharaoh Neco, who were on their way to help Assyria against the rising threat of Babylon.  Josiah’s son Jehoahaz took his father’s place on the throne and reigned a whopping three months before Neco deposed him and exiled him to Egypt.  In his place Neco installed another son of Josiah, Jehoiakim, thus ushering in a brief period of time in which Judah was under Egyptian control.  Jehoiakim fully complied with Egypt and reversed Josiah’s earlier reforms, and he was frequently the prophetic punching bag of Jeremiah.  In 605 he burned a scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies (Jeremiah 36).  Ezekiel would have been a teenager at this point, and his writings indicate that he was familiar with Jeremiah’s prophecies.

In the same year, 605 BC, Egypt and Babylon, who were both in a power grab over the collapsing Assyrian empire, met in battle.  Under Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonians defeated Egypt.  Nebuchadnezzar seized control of Judah and other smaller states and took some of the nobles of Judah into captivity in Babylon (Daniel 1:1) and made Judah a vassal state.  Jehoiakim rebelled in 598-597, prompting a seige of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. (2 Kings 24:1-2)  Sometime during the seige, Jehoiakim mysteriously died, and his son Jehoiachin ascended to his father’s throne only to surrender the city to Babylon three months later.  Nebuchadnezzar didn’t destroy Jerusalem, though he did cart off to Babylon the temple treasures, Jehoiachin himself, the royal family, and many important people. (2 Kings 24:8-17)  The Babylonians installed Jehoiachin’s uncle Matthaniah as a puppet king and changed his name to Zedekiah.  Though Nebuchadnezzar had already deported some Jews like Daniel in 605, 597 is generally referred to as the first deportation.  Among this group was a 25-year-old priest-in-training named Ezekiel.

The prophet Jeremiah’s ministry continued through the reign of Zedekiah.  During Zedekiah’s reign anti-Babylonian sentiment grew strong, and despite the prophet’s warnings, the king (who had been instilled by Nebuchadnezzar himself) started another rebellion against Babylon.  Finally fed up, Nebuchadnezzar launched a massive seige against the city which lasted eighteen long months.  Eventually the walls were breached, the army was killed, and much of the city, including God’s temple, was burned to the ground.  Zedekiah’s sons were executed in front of him, and then he was blinded.  He and most of the population of the city were carried off in disgrace to Mesopotamia to join the exiles who had already been there for ten years. (2 Kings 25:1-12)  As Christopher Wright says, “[t]he year was 587, the beginning of the most traumatic event in Israel’s whole biblical history.”

By the time Jerusalem fell, Ezekiel had been ministering to his fellow exiles in Babylon for five years.  He’d been ministering to people who never, ever believed that Jerusalem could finally fall.  When it did, with many new exiles to show for it, Ezekiel then spent the next fifteen years ministering to people who were completely and utterly demoralized, shattered, and hopeless.