Ezekiel, Book of – Seeking the kingdom

The valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37)

When did God fulfil his promise to raise the bones to life?

Exiled in Babylon, Ezekiel receives news that Jerusalem has fallen (Ezekiel 33). It’s the last gasp of a nation that is no more. Assyria had taken most of the land, and Babylon has taken what remained. There is no house where God is present in the world. There’s no anointed king representing heaven’s reign on earth. The bodies of those who tried to defend it lie unburied in what people were calling the Valley of Slaughter (Jeremiah 7:32; 19:6). What God intended to be his Holy Land lay defiled with their dead bones.

“Can these bones live?” God asked Ezekiel (37:3). The man has no answer. Death is so final. Ezekiel has already been lamenting, “The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land!” (Ezekiel 7:2). Who could argue? Speaking as a human, who could overturn death?

But Ezekiel is not speaking as a human. He’s speaking for his Master, the Sovereign Lord who breathed his breath into the human in the beginning, raising a human from the dust as a living being (Genesis 2:7).

Can this Valley of Slaughter become a new Eden? Is the Lord to breathe his breath into these bones, raising a body of people from the dust to stand as a great force under him? (Ezekiel 37:10)

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“You were in Eden” (Ezekiel 28)

Is Ezekiel 28 telling us about Satan’s origins?

Image: The Bible Project, 2019.

This text from Ezekiel and a related one in Isaiah 14:12-14 are often referenced in studies on the origin of Satan. What do you think?

Ezekiel 28:12–16 (NIV)
¹² “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. ¹³ You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: carnelian, chrysolite and emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. ¹⁴ You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. ¹⁵ You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. ¹⁶ Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.”

The problem is that Ezekiel says it was about the king of Tyre, a wealthy trade city just up the coast from Israel. Here’s the immediate context:

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What did Ezekiel mean by “The end is nigh”?

It’s ninety seconds to midnight according to the atomic scientists’ doomsday clock. Their weapons fuel our insecurity. How long before the world ends?

My parents and grandparents lived through world wars I and II. I grew up with images of doomsday prophets and their sandwich boards proclaiming, “The end of the world is nigh.” I think they were copying Ezekiel:

Ezekiel 7:2-3 (NIV)
² Son of man, this is what the Sovereign Lord says to the land of Israel: “The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land! ³ The end is now upon you.

But Ezekiel was no weirdo. He wasn’t talking about the end of the world.

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The enigma of God’s throne (Ezekiel 1)

Ezekiel didn’t know where he fitted on earth until he saw the wheels within wheels in the heavens.

By the rivers of Babylon, Ezekiel sat like a fish out of water. Despite all the glitz and glamour of Babylon, he didn’t fit here. He was living in a world that didn’t match his identity. It’s a feeling many of us can relate to.

But what could Ezekiel do? He didn’t really want to be there. Everything he valued was falling apart. A huge storm was brewing, about to blow everything away. It had already swept westward, and now it was turning south towards Egypt, with Ezekiel’s city (Jerusalem) in the firing line. It felt like a hurricane no one could survive.

That’s when Ezekiel looked up and saw another storm in the heavens, north of Babylon:

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