Day 227: Ezekiel 1-3 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Hey, Bible nerds, this is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Family, welcome to day 227. We got a brand new book of the Bible today. We are in the book of Ezekiel. We're covering Ezekiel chapters one, two, and three. And yo, Ezekiel is wild. My man is known for strange visions, incredible visions. Whereas Isaiah and Jeremiah are more like speaking prophets. Like they hear God and then they say what God said. Ezekiel is more of a visionary prophet. So he's gonna get tons of visions. And like always, I'm gonna give you as much context as possible. Since it is our first day starting a brand new book of the Bible, we'll probably be heavier on the context clues than normal. And then after context clues, I'll try my best to give you at least one nerdy nugget for every chapter that we're gonna cover. And I'll always leave off with a timeless truth because we are not here studying history. We're studying theology. And although we have to learn a lot of history to put the Bible into context, we know that the Bible tells us about the character and the nature of God.

And so we'll always leave off with a timeless truth. If you have done the reading today, then you already have context for all the things that I'm gonna share. If you haven't done the reading today, then this may go over your head. So how about you stop the video, pause the audio, and actually do the reading. This is not designed to substitute your Bible reading, but to supplement your Bible reading. So stop the video, pause the audio, read Ezekiel chapters one and three, and then come on back. With no further ado, let's dive in. Let's get some context. All right, if you were rocking with us all the way through the book of Jeremiah, you know that I had everybody memorize the last five kings of Judah. And those last five kings of Judah are Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. Those last five kings of Judah are really, really, really important. And they are going to come up over and over and over again as we continue through the book of Ezekiel. All right, to give you historical context, I actually wanna give you three dates. And Ezekiel's gonna fit into one of those dates, okay? The deportation, let's just unpack that word, okay? The Babylonians are gonna have waves of deportations.

So they are gonna deport the people of Israel to Babylon in three separate waves. The very, very, very first wave happens in 605 BC. That wave is memorable because Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are on that wave, okay? They get deported into exile, and exile is in Babylon, okay? And I want you to think about deportation. Imagine somebody came to your hometown. Imagine a foreign nation came to the United States of America or your hometown, sieged your city, totaled the army, marched through your streets, ripped you out of your bed, took you out of your house, and deported you to Australia or Japan or South Africa. And imagine there's no smartphones, there's no maps, there's no way for you to get back home. You are totally enslaved, all right? We use the word deportation or exile, but really it's enslavery, okay? So the people are enslaved. So that first wave of deportation happens in 605 BC. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel are all on that first wave of deportation. This is under the reign of King Jehoiakim, okay? So Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim. When Jehoiakim is king, they're the first wave of deportation. The second wave of deportation is under Jehoiakim's son, Jehoiachin. This happens in 597 BC. This is a much more major wave of deportation.

I'm actually gonna read this account of deportation from 2 Kings chapter 24, okay? 2 Kings chapter 24, verse 10 says this. At that time, the officers of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, advanced on Jerusalem and laid siege to it, verse 11. And Nebuchadnezzar himself came up to the city while his officers were besieging it. Verse 12, Jehoiachin, king of Judah, his mother, his attendants, his nobles, and his officials all surrendered to King Nebuchadnezzar. In the eighth year of the reign of king of Babylon, he took Jehoiachin prisoner. As the Lord had declared, Nebuchadnezzar removed the treasures from the temple of the Lord and from the royal palace and cut up the gold articles that Solomon, king of Israel, had made for the temple of the Lord. Verse 14, he carried all Jerusalem into exile. So this is deportation wave number two. He carried them into exile, all of the officers and fighting men and all the skilled workers and artisans. A total of 10,000 people get deported to Babylon. Only the poorest people of the land were left. Remember, Babylon does not want poor people, okay? So Babylon is taking the best of the best of the best. This is why Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are desirable in Babylon.

That's why King Nebuchadnezzar wants to educate them, train them, because they are skilled, okay? In the second wave of deportation, 10,000 people are gonna get shipped off to Babylon. Verse 15, Nebuchadnezzar took Jehoiachin captive. So the king of Judah is gonna go off to Babylon as a political prisoner. Captive to Babylon, he also took from Jerusalem to Babylon the king's mother, his wives, his officials, the prominent people of the land. The king of Babylon also deported to Babylon the entire force of 7,000 fighting men, strong and fit for war, and 1,000 skilled workers and artisans. He made Mataniah, Jehoiachin's uncle, king in his place and changed his name to Zedekiah. Remember, the last five kings of Judah are Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. So we get those last two kings mentioned in this story in 2 Kings. Well, guess who's a part of this second wave of deportation? You guessed it. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Our prophet Ezekiel. So Ezekiel gets marched off into exile. Now, Ezekiel gets marched off into exile when he's 25 years old, 25 years old. That's huge, okay? This is massive context because he comes from a priestly family.

Ezekiel is a priest, and a Jewish man isn't allowed to start functioning as a priest until he's 30 years old. So he's 25 years old when he gets marched into captivity. Can you imagine being 25 years old knowing in five years, I'm finally going to be able to do the thing that I've been preparing to do my entire life? Well, dang it, but then it got ruined. It's almost like high school seniors who like their senior year was during COVID. It's like, I can't have a graduation. I can't go to prom. There's all this stuff that I have been waiting to do for four years, and now I can't do these things. So Ezekiel has been dreaming about the day he gets to actually practice as a priest. He knows that that's going to happen when he's 30 years old. He's been dreaming about this since the time he was 11, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. He's finally 25 years old. We got five years left before he can actually practice as a priest, and he shipped off into exile and stuck in Babylon. And what happens on his 30th birthday? This is where Ezekiel chapter one starts. In my 30th year, in the fourth month of the fifth day, this is Ezekiel chapter one, verse one, while I was among the exiles by the Kibar River,

that's in Babylon, the heavens were open and I saw visions of God. On the day where he's supposed to become a priest back in Jerusalem, God knows that I'm going to visit you and you're going to be more than just a priest. You're going to become my prophet. It's not a coincidence that Ezekiel's telling us that on my 30th birthday, I saw a vision from God. Actually, this is going to get into our timeless truth later, but God knows the dreams of your heart. God knows exactly where you think you should be. And God has a way of always giving you not a consolation prize, but actually giving you something better than the thing that you hoped and dreamed for. Let's get back to some context. Three waves of deportation, okay? Ezekiel is on the second wave. Obviously, we know, okay, if you've been rocking with our podcast or these episodes for any length of time, that 586 BC is the third wave of deportation. And this is when Jerusalem falls. This is when the temple is burned to the ground. This is when Nebuchadnezzar doesn't just deport people out of Jerusalem and set up some puppet king, but he absolutely demolishes the nation of Israel and the city of Jerusalem. So, for context, we have an exact date for when Ezekiel starts to prophesy, and it's five years after the exile or the second wave of deportation. So that second wave of deportation is 597 BC, which means Ezekiel begins his prophetic ministry in 592 BC on his 30th birthday. That is our context. Ezekiel is going to prophesy for approximately 20 years, and he's going to focus on themes of judgment, restoration, and the presence of God.

All right, with all that context, okay, now we can actually get into the text. We got three chapters. I'm gonna try my best to give you a nerdy nugget from each chapter of our Bible reading plan today. All right, let's start with chapter one. Here's a nerdy nugget, and this is real nerdy, okay? So, all the true nerds, you're gonna love this, okay? One of the things that you begin to see, like, in the middle of Jeremiah, you can see it a little bit in Isaiah as well, is that you go from years to months and years. Well, now that we're in Ezekiel, not only do we have months and years, but we have the day, the day, the month, and the year. The Babylonians had created the most advanced calendars in the ancient world, okay? So, now that we get into a book that's heavily influenced by Babylonian technology, we are going to get precise dates for everything in the Bible. So, this day where Ezekiel gets a vision from God is actually July 31st, 592 BC. Not only do we have, like, oh yeah, like, it was 592 BC, no, we actually have precise dates. So, this is what the opening of Ezekiel is gonna say. Verse two, on the fifth of the month, it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin, okay? And here's actually why we're able to do that. The Babylonians were more advanced in terms of astronomy, which gave them a far more precise calendar as they traced the movement of the sun, the moon, and the stars. The upshot of which is that from now on in the Bible, the dates become more precise, more definite. Ezekiel, since he spends his entire ministry in exile in Babylon, is the first writer in the entire Bible to fully benefit from a better calendar. It also means as the Babylonian system is more connected to astronomy, it is far easier for us to work out when Ezekiel prophesied on our own calendar, okay? Anything earlier than the Babylonian kingdom, then it's kind of hard for us to translate that into our modern calendars. So, obviously, Ezekiel's day did not have the month of July, okay? We have the month of July. He didn't have the month of July, but he's explaining to us what day on his calendar he starts prophesying, and that translates into our calendar as July 31st, 592 BC. I know that is super nerdy, but I loved it. Okay, let's keep rocking.

Second nerdy nugget is the living creatures. So, let's talk about these living creatures. Ezekiel's gonna get a vision. He's actually gonna get a vision of God's throne, of God's war chariot, and he's gonna describe it as wheels within wheels, whirling wheels, and there are four living creatures holding it up, and there's cherubim. And so, a couple things about these living creatures. First, the living creatures are a blend of human, eagle, ox, and lion. The New Testament writers are gonna pick this up big time, okay? And they're gonna say that Jesus is human, eagle, ox, and lion, okay? Human, meaning he's fully human. Eagle, meaning that he transcends, because he's also fully God. Ox, meaning that he's gonna bear the burden of our sins. And lion, because he's the lion of the tribe of Judah. Also, the human is going to represent the biblical book of Luke. The eagle is gonna represent the biblical book of John. The ox is gonna represent the biblical book of Mark. And the lion is gonna represent the biblical book of Matthew. So, these living creatures are gonna get a ton of fulfillment, if you were, in the New Testament as it relates to Jesus. But, there are... even cooler than that, okay? These represent all of creation, okay? Human, eagle, ox, and lion, as each are seen to be the king of their kind of animal, okay? The eagle is the king of the animals that fly. The ox is the king of the animals who would represent animals that can be sacrificed or farm animals. The lion is gonna be the king of all predator animals,

and then the human is going to be king of all the beings that walk on the soil of the planet. And so these living creatures represent the best of what the soil has produced. These living creatures are a common image in the ancient world. You will see these composition creatures in Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian art in guarding the gates to cities and thrones of kings. The most well-known would be like the sphinx that we have in Egypt. All right, let's keep moving. What you're gonna see a lot, as Ezekiel keeps explaining these visions, is this phrase, the appearance of the likeness. And it's like, the appearance of the likeness? What in the world? It's interesting because Ezekiel describes everything in detail. The living creatures are described in detail. The wheels are described in detail. The throne is described in detail, except when we get to God. Yahweh is not gonna get described in detail. One of the most interesting aspects of this vision is that there's great detail until we get to Yahweh. The detail ends and is replaced with phrases like the likeness of a throne, a likeness with a human appearance, the appearance of metal,

the appearance of his waist as it were, the appearance of fire. That is a literal quote taken from chapter one. The appearance of his waist that looked like the appearance of the resemblance of fire. And why? It's because Yahweh is the most indescribable thing, or Yahweh's not a thing, sorry. He's the most indescribable being in all of the universe. Everything else can be described. A desk can be described. Books can be described. iPads, laptops, mics, cameras. Everything can be described. Everything in creation can be described except God. We have no words to actually describe God. And Ezekiel gets a vision of God and can't describe God. Our job as communicators is literally to try to describe the indescribable. We are trying to describe a God that is wholly other than us. This is why we have to use anthropomorphic language. So the Bible will talk about the hand of God. Well, does God literally have a hand? No, he does not. He does not have a hand. But in order to translate him into language that we can even comprehend, we have to give him anthropomorphic language. Anthro, like anthropology, or like that means the study of humans, right?

Anthropomorphic means that we have to change, we have to morph God into human language to even translate him into a concept that we can understand. And the way that Ezekiel even describes God honestly should make us all bow down in reverence. That Ezekiel is looking at a vision of Yahweh and has no words. He's utterly speechless. His job as a prophet is to communicate what he sees. And he's just like, it was like the appearance of the likeness of fire. It was like the appearance of the likeness of like burning metal. It's like, he's just struggling. He can describe the seraphim perfectly. He can describe the whirling wheels perfectly. He can describe everything but the glory of God because the glory of God is utterly indescribable. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere. Books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book.

And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. Okay, next, let's get into chapter two. We're gonna get this phrase, and it's gonna be a repeated phrase all throughout Ezekiel, and it's gonna be the son of man. Yahweh is gonna refer to Ezekiel as the son of man. This is gonna actually happen around 90 times throughout the book of Ezekiel, that he's gonna be referred to by Yahweh as the son of man. This is strange at first, especially for Christian readers, as this is the title we associate with Jesus. Son of man simply means human or mortal. It's a little bit like son of Adam or daughter of Eve, if you're familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia. In Ezekiel, Yahweh uses it to emphasize Ezekiel's own human frailty and mortality. Ezekiel is only a man, but a man who speaks and acts in the power of the spirit. Now, I'm gonna add a lot of nuance here, because Daniel uses the same exact term, son of man, but uses it totally differently. In the book of Daniel, Daniel 7, verse 13, we see a heavenly figure

who rules over Yahweh's everlasting kingdom and stands next to the throne of God. This figure is described as one like the son of man. So Yahweh's calling Ezekiel the son of man to talk about his humanity, but Daniel is gonna describe a heavenly figure that's ruling over Yahweh's kingdom next to Yahweh's throne as the son of man. So Daniel and Ezekiel are using the term son of man very, very differently. For Daniel, son of man is a royal term. It's a human king. It's a ruler that's a Messiah-like figure. In Ezekiel, the son of man is the equivalent to son of Adam or daughter of Eve, mortal, okay? Let's keep tracking with this. The figure is described as one like the son of man in the book of Daniel, simply saying that there is a human being standing next to the throne who has the authority of God. Jesus, in a sense, uses the title, it's actually his favorite title, in both ways. He uses it to emphasize his humanity, but also to draw attention to who he was. He was the human with God's authority, the king of the kingdoms of God. So as you read through Ezekiel, you have to know that Ezekiel is not using the term son of man the same way that Daniel is using the word son of man.

And if you're familiar with how the New Testament uses the term son of man, then it could maybe cause some confusion as you read through Ezekiel, and you gotta have that nerdy nugget nuance if you're gonna read with lots and lots of clarity. Last nerdy nugget, then we'll get into our Thomas truth. Ezekiel chapter three tells about a watchman, Ezekiel is described as a watchman, who eats a scroll. Now, for the last couple of prophets, Isaiah sees God in his train, fills the train of his robe, fills the temple, he has a live coal that touches his mouth, and Isaiah chapter six is the moment of commissioning, of calling. For Jeremiah, we get this in Jeremiah chapter one, there's a moment, before I formed you, in your mother's womb, I knew you, I appointed you. As a prophet to the nations, what we're gonna begin to see is that prophets have a narrative where they're called. For Ezekiel, that moment is a moment where he's eating the scroll, and he's called into ministry to be a prophet of God. And man, that could almost be our nerdy nugget today, that our job, our goal, the reason that you would watch an episode like this, is because you believe that we should be eating the scroll. You believe that we should eat the word. Jesus actually says this perfectly,

he says, man doesn't live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And in a real way, you are what you eat. Like if you eat or consume content, if you scroll on social media and consume content that's toxic, that's negative, that is only feeding dysfunctional thoughts, then you will be what you eat. But if like Ezekiel, you take the scroll, you take the actual paper that the original biblical words are written on, and you consume that, and guess what? In hard times, what's in you is going to come out. You'll be what you eat. You are what you consume. Our real timeless truth for the day, that was kind of like our pre-timeless truth. Our real timeless truth for the day is this. Ezekiel had a life set out for him. He would be a priest serving in the temple. He would minister in the place where the glory of Yahweh dwelt on earth. This life was ripped away from him before it could even begin. All his dreams were shattered, yet in the exile, guess what appears? The glory of Yahweh. Yahweh that he thought was relegated to a temple that he was gonna serve in as a priest. Even though he could no longer serve in that temple, he still didn't miss out on the glory of God.

And not only is he allowed to minister in a priest-like fashion for the people, but he becomes God's spokesperson. He becomes a prophet. He saw the glory of God. He spoke to Yahweh. That would have never happened to him as a priest. We may have dreams, lives set up for us in our imagination. And sometimes those dreams are ripped away from us. But God is greater than our dreams and desires. We may lose everything, but he can still meet us in the middle of our exile and make the place of our suffering a far more glorious place than the lost dreams that we left behind. That's not just true for Ezekiel. Man, that's true for me. That's true for you. And that's a timeless truth that I think can add a lot of encouragement to our lives today. Yo, I'm so glad that you're rocking with us and that we got to walk through the first three chapters of Ezekiel together. Tomorrow, we've got the next couple chapters of Ezekiel. We've got Ezekiel chapters four, five, six, and seven. It's gonna be day 228. And I can't wait to see you tomorrow. I'm so proud of you, especially if you're on a streak. I'll see you right here tomorrow as we continue our trek through the book of Ezekiel.

See you right here. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.