Reading: Ezekiel 5-8, Psalm 32
Well, this is a cheery set of prophecies. He who is far off shall die of pestilence, and he who is near shall fall by the sword, and he who is left and is preserved shall die of famine... Though they cry in my ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them... Ezekiel contains some of the most merciless predictions of doom for the people of God in the Bible. I think, on the whole, this is the worst book in the Bible in terms of the wrath of God on his own people. Of course, God’s wrath is never without a reason, and as it was in Isaiah and Jeremiah, we have little bits of hope woven into even the worst destruction that God will bring about.
Our reading opens today with a haircut. Ezekiel, who has been laying on his sides attacking a brick for the last 430 days, is told to get up and cut his hair. With a sword. Then he is to divide it carefully in thirds. One third he is to take and set fire to it. Another he is to attack with his hair-cutting sword. The last third he is to throw up in the air to be scattered by the wind. Finally he is to tie up a few strands and stick them in his robe.
Okay, imagine the scene here. Bearing in mind that this is how ancient prophets did their work- through a kind of street theater- this is still pretty extreme. Were we to see someone doing anything like this, even close to like this, today we would have serious concerns about their mental state. As I argued yesterday, I’m not sure that is the wrong take. Ezekiel is in a place and time where he might have been a little mad. That does not mean God wasn’t speaking through him. In this case, he is using his own hair as a picture of what is going to happen to the people in Jerusalem. They will burn, be killed by the sword, or be scattered around the world. A vanishingly small number will be recovered. Ezekiel is the God figure in this little story. He will preserve a few strands, not because they do not deserve the punishment everyone else got, but because God will be faithful to his promises to Abraham, Moses, and David.
Next Ezekiel is to shout at the mountains. This classic crazy old man motif may have gotten it’s beginning here. The point here is that the worship of Canaanite deities in the mountains of both the northern and southern kingdoms will be brought to a violent conclusion. God’s judgment on those practices, long delayed by the Israelite’s disobedience to God’s command way back in Deuteronomy and Joshua, will finally happen. The altars in the mountains will be destroyed. Then the cities will be destroyed. Then to the people will be destroyed. But not entirely. Even among the most disobedient of the far flung people of God, he will preserve some of the them, who will turn, believe, and obey. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them. God’s purpose in judgment is correction, and it will succeed.
Lest Ezekiel of his audience get any ideas about the “proper” worship of the God of Israel being their safety net against God’s wrath, they are given a rather dramatic vision of how the Temple worship has degenerated. Ezekiel is in his house with the elders of the people, another sign that they still respect him, when God shows up and drags him out into a vision. The description of the messenger that takes Ezekiel on this depression trip is similar to that of the person on the throne in his call. He shows Ezekiel idol worship in the Temple gates. Then he brings him into the courts and shows him through a hole in the walls of the Temple how there is secret idolatry going on even by the priests in the inner courts and rooms of the Temple. Then he shows him the public worship of the sun by the people outside the gates. There is no exception, everyone has abandoned the correct worship of the creator God.
This is all leading up to something dramatic. There are little clues in the text about it, and God is showcasing his justification for an even worse judgment, in the Israelite mind, than death. Tomorrow this will reach it’s natural conclusion in a way that would be quite surprising to the exiles in Babylon.