Week 44 - Ezekiel 21-24, Revelation 15 (Oct. 29 - Nov. 4)
Notes
Ezekiel 21:27
Chapter 21 cements the finality of God’s judgment against the remnant of Jews living in Jerusalem under Zedekiah. In verse 26, he tells Zedekiah to remove his crown implying that he does not deserve to serve on David’s throne (which is not new news to the reader of Ezekiel). Then we get a verse that really points to the gospel:
27 A ruin! A ruin! I will make it a ruin! The crown will not be restored until he to whom it rightfully belongs shall come; to him I will give it.’
The Davidic kingdom, which God promised would rule eternally, is about to be snuffed out for a while. Although the Jewish people will be allowed to return from exile in the near future (under the Persian king Cyrus). The Davidic kingship will never truly be reestablished.
Zerubbabel belongs to the Davidic line and leads Israel after the return from exile, but is never made king because they are still regents of the Persian empire, and we are never told of any line of succession that follows from him.
The Maccabees achieved independence in the Hasmonian period, but they are not from David’s line and do not even belong to the tribe of Judah. Their rule is only brief and fizzles into foreign rule/occupation
So to whom does the crown rightfully belong? Who will God give it to? There is only one Davidic king left to rule after Zedekiah’s demise: Jesus. Recall the remarkable words of the angel Gabriel to Mary in Luke 1
32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
Ezekiel 23: an R-Rated Chapter
Ezekiel 23 contains some of the most graphic imagery in the Bible. Israel and Judah are described as two sisters who become prostitutes although (repeatedly throughout the chapter) God says that they should have belonged to him. This image of an unfaithful wife/woman is one of the most frequently employed metaphors by the prophets, but this portrayal - more than the others - features abject lewdness. The partners that these sisters are portrayed as prostituting themselves to are Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldeans (Babylonian ruling class). The Egyptians are included in this account, not because Israel and Judah came from there in the Exodus, but because of their dependence on Egypt as a deliverer (recall Isaiah) in the time of ascendancy for both the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.
The political jockeying for power between Egypt and Assyria meant that both Israel and Judah had to maintain contacts with these superpowers. The flirtations that Ezekiel condemned were reflections of the political accommodations forced on the smaller states.
There were numerous contacts between Israel, Judah and the pharaohs of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty in Egypt, including diplomatic exchanges and possible alliances (such as the one that temporarily brought Egyptian troops to the aid of besieged Jerusalem in 597 unsuccessfully). Evidence of Israel's ties with Assyria can be found in the portrayal of Jehu bowing before Shalmaneser III on the Black Obelisk and an inscription from the annals of Tiglath-Pileser III in which Menahem pays tribute. Judah also had to submit to Assyrian power, as in Ahaz's cry for help during the Syro-Ephraimitic War (2 Kings 16:7-9) and Hezekiah's ransoming of Jerusalem from Sennacherib's army (2 Kings 18:13-16). Additionally, most of Manasseh's fifty-plus years of reign were spent in submission to Assyrian overlords.
- IVP Bible Background Commentary, 709
EZEKIEL 24:16-17: poor Ezekiel
Ezekiel has not exactly had it easy.
He was exiled to Babylon
God told him to lay down on his side for over a year to convey a prophecy
God told him to cook all his food over human dung to convey a prophecy
Once again, God wishes to convey a message through the experience of Ezekiel - not just through his words. This is the most difficult of Ezekiel’s object lessons thus far:
16 “Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears. 17 Groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead. Keep your turban fastened and your sandals on your feet; do not cover your mustache and beard or eat the customary food of mourners.”
So, ‘your wife is going to die - don’t act sad.’ This was to portray the inevitable demise of Jerusalem and the temple (note that the siege has already begun 24:2) and also the callousness that the exiles feel about their loss. The exiles will have to move on from their tragedy and keep going, just like Ezekiel has shown them through the loss of his wife.
Revelation 15: A Song of Joy About Judgment
We’re introduced to the seven bowls of God’s wrath in chapter 15, but we don’t yet get to see what they are. Instead, we get the setting before which they will be poured out. It is a throng of those who had been victorious over the beast standing before a glassy sea glowing with fire. The victorious ones are singing joyfully about the judgment of God (not the first time we’ve seen this in revelation). We often think about God’s judgment as a matter of wrath, but judgment has two sides, the other being vindication. Judgment is good news to the redeemed because they will finally be vindicated instead of trampled.
For John, as for all the early Christians, there was one great act of judgment above all others which was already come pelling people from many nations to worship Israel's God. God had raised Jesus from the dead, after his condemnation as a false Messiah. God had reversed the verdict of the human court! He had done the unthinkable, and had demonstrated Jesus to be Messiah after all! What's more, the resurrection proved that the cross itself had been the great, spectacular act of judgment, in which sin and death were themselves being condemned and executed.
Now, having done all that in Jesus the Messiah, Israel's God was demonstrating that the followers of Jesus were his true people, not least through their faithful testimony to Jesus, even on peril of their own death. This is the further 'judgment' which flows from the judgment' revealed in the lamb.
It is therefore the martyrs, those who have 'won the victory over the monster and over its image, and over the number of its name, who have discovered that they have come through death, as the Israelites had come through the Red Sea, and are now standing, like Moses and Miriam in Exodus 15, singing a new song of praise for the fresh act of judgment which God had performed. (The song in this passage owes something to Deuteronomy 32 as well, but the focus of the passage is then on a different part of the Exodus story.) The plagues in Egypt have reached a crescendo, and Pharaoh and his people have consented to let the Israelites go. They have gone through the Red Sea, sung the song, and arrived at Mount Sinai. There with the fire and smoke of divine revelation, God gives Moses the instructions not only about the law itself but also about the Tabermade, the place or wiress or meeting, where God him-of would come to meet with his people. It was the forerunner of the Temple in Jerusalem.