Fear No Fear

(All scripture from Lexham English Bible, Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software)

Ezekiel is Jeremiah’s opposite number. Jeremiah prophesied to the Judeans and Jerusalem while IN Judea. Ezekiel prophesied to the Israelites who were in captivity in Babylon. Both men were told the people would not truly hear their message and there would be no change in spite of the prophetic warnings and promises. The book was written between 593 and 565 B.C. His ministry in the prophetic is characterized by judgment and God’s glory. Together they show that God and God alone has the ability AND the desire to restore His people to their proper place – a place they forsook. God’s desire in this book is NOT judgement, but RENEWAL.

Ezekiel had a vision that came in the ‘thirtieth year’. He doesn’t say what he is counting from, and we aren’t entirely sure. The best explanation I have heard is that he was counting from the beginning of the jubilee cycle. This can be corroborated by Ezekiel 40:1 where he cites the twenty-fifth year of exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth of the month. The only ‘year’ that starts on the tenth of the month is the jubilee year (Leviticus 25:9). The last jubilee started in Josiah’s reign when the scroll of the Law was found (2 Kings 22). If we math it: Josiah reigned 31 years, scroll found in the 17th year. That starts our count. 14 years until the next king. Next king reigned 11 years giving us 25 years. Next king reigns 3 months and the exile occurs (when Ezekiel was taken to Babylon). Ezekiel then is writing in the fifth year of the exile, which was the thirtieth year of the jubilee. Complex, yes, but it fits and makes the most sense of anything I have heard.

Ezekiel’s vision was not of God. It was of God’s GLORY. Everything he saw pointed to the glory of the Lord. All of it. He saw some details, others were obscured, and everything proclaimed the VAST glory of God in both spectacle, power, wisdom, and mercy. Out of the north came a whirlwind. Inside it were four LIVING CREATURES – not angels. They had four faces (one in each direction) and four wings (two outspread and two covering their bodies). They were roughly human in form. They didn’t turn, but travelled as one in whatever direction they needed to go (and one of their faces were facing, I suppose). Beside them were living wheels connected with them in the sense that they shared a spirit (Ezekiel 1:20). The wheels had wheels within the wheels (like a gyroscope, maybe) so that they didn’t need to turn but were able to go in any direction the living creatures went. They moved together and in sync. There was fire between the creatures. And their voices were like thunder and rushing wind. Above them was a crystal sea – a flat, crystal disc. On it was a sapphire throne. On that was a man-like being glowing like bronze and living fire. The brightness all around the figure was rainbow-hued dazzling glory. [VERY similar to how Jesus is described in Revelation. This *could* be a pre-incarnate Jesus. He IS God, after all.]

The figure spoke, telling Ezekiel to stand. He had collapsed. Just like John in Revelation 1:17. The Holy Spirit entered Ezekiel and enabled him to stand. God was sending Ezekiel on a mission. He was to go to the rebellious nation of Israel, impudent and stubborn children that they were, and speak to them the Lord’s words. They wouldn’t listen. They’d abuse him. But they would KNOW that a prophet had been among them. God told him to open his mouth and eat what the Lord gave him. Ezekiel saw a scroll stretched out on a hand (one of the Living Creatures). He took it and ate it, and it was sweet like honey (Psalm 19:10). He told Ezekiel not to be afraid, that God had hardened his forehead. That Ezekiel was to receive in his heart all that the Lord spoke and to hear with his ears. The Spirit lifted him and took him to the captives at Tel Abib. There Ezekiel sat, remaining there for seven days in shock and awe at what he had seen.

After seven days, the Lord spoke to him and told him to start speaking. If Ezekiel knew he had a warning for the wicked and did not speak it, HE was responsible for their deaths. If he spoke it and they refused it, HE was NOT responsible for it. If he had information for the righteous and held it back, HE was responsible for them. If he spoke it, but they ignored him or refused it, HE was NOT responsible. God told him to go out onto the plain so that God could talk to him. He went. God spoke. He told Ezekiel to shut himself inside his house. That his enemies would bind him so he could not prophesy. When they did, God would make him incapable of speaking their destruction. But when God had a word for them, He would open Ezekiel’s mouth and he would speak God’s word and what they did with that was THEIR problem/business. God knew they were a rebellious house.

“Now, son of man, take for yourself a brick, and you must put it before you, and you must portray on it a city, Jerusalem. And you must build against it siege works, and you must build against it a bulwark, and you must heap against it a siege ramp, and you must set up against it camps and put against it a battering ram all around. And take for yourself a plate of iron, and you must place it as a wall of iron between you and the city, and you must set your face against it, and it must be under siege, and you must lay the siege against it; it is a sign for the house of Israel.” (Ezekiel 4:1-3)

Like many of the prophets, Ezekiel walked through the symbols of the judgment God was warning the people about. He would draw Jerusalem on a brick, to symbolize the city. Use iron to show that the siege was a sure thing, not something that could be avoided. He would lie before it for 390 days on his left side for Israel and 40 days on his right side for Judah to symbolize the years of their iniquity – one day per year. First, it doesn’t say if he was lying there 24/7 or went home at night or what. But it was VERY public, he could NOT shift sides, and would have been noticeable (and uncomfortable). Second, if it was 430 years of iniquity. From the time of King Saul until the fall of Jerusalem was 513 years. So 430 years from the fall would put the iniquity as starting in the first few years of Solomon’s reign. The only thing that occurred there was that Solomon married the daughter of Pharoah, king of Egypt in the first years of his reign. The Israelites were forbidden to marry non-Jews (non believers in Yahweh, not a racial ban. Rahab and Ruth were both non-Jews who converted and became part of the nation.) by the Law – Deuteronomy 7:1-6; Exodus 34:11-16; Ezra 10:2; and Malachi 2:11. Solomon did, his nation eventually followed his example, and Solomon himself didn’t stop with one foreign wife – eventually having hundreds and falling away into idolatry because of their religious practices that he allowed. It is LOGICAL that this was the start of the iniquity year count, but it may NOT be. It COULD be something totally different. The scripture is silent on the exact iniquity.

During this lying down, he was to eat according to strict rations. Drink according to strict rations. And cook all his meals using animal dung, not wood. This was symbolizing the conditions that the residents of Jerusalem would go through. This was BEFORE the siege started and people wouldn’t like this message, even if they believed it was possible at all – many wouldn’t.

In addition, Ezekiel was to take a sword and shave his beard and head – signs of disgrace (2 Samuel 10:4-5). He was to weigh and divide the hair carefully. A third would be burnt in the middle of the city. A third would be struck with the sword. And a third would be scattered in the wind like chaff. Declaration: a third would die of pestilence and starvation, a third by the sword, and a third scattered to the nations. A small number of hairs would be kept back and tied to his garment showing that a few of the Jewish people would survive. Then he was to collect some of the hair again and throw it into the midst of the fire and burn them too. It would symbolize a fire that would rise up and consume the whole House of Israel. We saw this total destruction in Jeremiah when they fled to Egypt and God TOLD them their destruction would catch up to them and they would all die. They did.

Jerusalem had been set in the midst of nations and countries. She had rebelled against God’s judgments, did wickedness more than the nations that surrounded her, and refused His statutes more than the nations surrounding her. Because they had not walked with Him, but had despised Him and made their disobedience more than all those other nations, God would execute judgment in plain sight of those nations. He would do among them what He had never done and would never do again BECAUSE of their abominations – and their refusal to repent and turn back to Him. He had no pleasure in it. He didn’t WANT to do it. But He was righteous and judgment was merited. When it came, they would all realize the prophets had been speaking the truth to them about it – but it would be too late. They would be an example. A lesson. And an astonishment at His fury in rebuking them for their practices. Famine, destruction, and wild beasts would be set against them. Pestilence, blood, and the sword would move among them. The Lord was promising it to them as a fact because of their behaviour.

Summary

Key Players: God, Ezekiel

Key Verse(s): Ezekiel 1:4-9, 28; 2:1-5, 9-10; 3:1-9, 16-19; 4:1-8, 16-17; 5:1-4, 14-17