| EZEKIEL |
| page 3 |
| and the temple would be destroyed. Since Judah had ignored God's repeated warnings, God would use another means to get their attention: suffering. A New Jerusalem Yet even while punishing them, God's aim remained the same: to make himself known. God had warned Ezekiel that the Israelites were unlikely to listen (3:7), even from captivity. They preferred idols to the living God. Yet Ezekiel's messages and dramas and visions continued to come, year after year. It's as though God were saying through him, "Some way, some day, I will get through to them. If the mesage doesn't reach their hearts one way, I'll try another." Ezekiel ends with hope. The final chapters show a new Jerusalem rising from the ruins of the old. The renewed city would never die, for it would be built on an unshifting reality: "They will know I am the Lord." The buring vision of God that Ezekiel had seen would become accessible to all. God would make himself at home there forever. Ezekiel's last verse says it all: "And the name of the city from that time on will be, "The Lord is There." |
| How to read Ezekiel |
| The special difficulty in reading Ezekiel is the dizzying variety of forms he used to get his message across. The book is like a multimedia package - a mix of visions, messages, dramas, poems. But three remarkable visions of God bracket the package, beginning, middle, and end (1:1-3:15; 8:1-6 and 11:16-25; 40:1-4 and 43:1-9). And throughout, one line is repeated: "Then they will know that I am the Lord." All God's messages are meant to shock his people into restoring a living relationship with him. As you read Ezekiel, note down when each prophecy was made and its dominant image - Jersualem as a prostitute, as a spreading grapevine, as a shaved head, etc. (For insight into |
 |
 |