Ezekiel
Major Prophets · Old Testament · Book 26 of 66- Author
- Ezekiel the priest, son of Buzi
- Written
- c. 593–571 BC
- Time covered
- From five years before Jerusalem fell to sixteen years after
- Where
- Babylon, by the river Chebar
- Written to
- Exiles who thought Jerusalem could not fall, and then that God had finished with them
- Genre
- Prophecy
- Chapters
- 48
“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”Ezekiel 36:26 KJV
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Overview
Ezekiel was a priest who never got to serve; he was deported at twenty-five and called as a prophet at thirty, the age his priesthood would have begun. His visions are the strangest in Scripture: wheels within wheels, creatures with four faces, and the glory of God leaving the temple by degrees.
His messages are acted as often as spoken — lying on his side for months, shaving his head, packing baggage for exile in daylight. Before the city falls he says it will; after it falls he turns entirely to restoration.
Background
He was taken in the second deportation of 597 BC with king Jehoiachin, eleven years before the final destruction. The exiles around him were being told by false prophets that they would be home within two years.
The dates in the book are unusually precise, counted from Jehoiachin’s captivity, which lets his ministry be laid out almost year by year.
Key themes
- They shall know that I am the LORD — repeated more than sixty times.
- God’s glory is not confined to a building; it comes to Babylon and it departs Jerusalem.
- Each person is accountable: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.
- The watchman must warn, whether or not anyone listens.
- God gives a new heart and a new spirit, and raises dead bones to life.
Outline
- The callChapters 1–3
The whirlwind vision, the scroll eaten and sweet as honey, and a watchman appointed.
- Before the fallChapters 4–24
Signs acted out, idolatry in the temple, the glory departing, and the day the city is struck.
- The nationsChapters 25–32
Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre and Egypt — judgment on those who gloated.
- After the fallChapters 33–39
The watchman again, shepherds who fed themselves, a new heart, dry bones, and Gog.
- The temple restoredChapters 40–48
A measured temple, a river rising from it, and the city named: THE LORD IS THERE.
Key passages
- Ezekiel 1:28 This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.
- Ezekiel 3:17 I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel.
- Ezekiel 10:18 The glory of the LORD departed from off the threshold.
- Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die.
- Ezekiel 34:11-12 I will both search my sheep, and seek them out.
- Ezekiel 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.
- Ezekiel 37:3-5 Son of man, can these bones live?
- Ezekiel 47:9 Every thing shall live whither the river cometh.
Christ in Ezekiel
Chapter 34 rebukes shepherds who fed themselves and promises that God Himself will shepherd the flock and set one shepherd over them — which is the background to Jesus saying I am the good shepherd. The new heart of chapter 36 is what the new birth gives, and the river flowing from the temple runs on into the last chapter of Revelation.
Reading it
- Read chapter 1 without trying to draw it; Ezekiel himself piles up likenesses because it resists description.
- Track the glory: it arrives in chapter 1, leaves in 10–11, and returns in 43.
- Read 37 after 36 — the dry bones are the answer to the new heart.