Day 230: Ezekiel 12–16 | 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 230. We are covering Ezekiel chapters 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16. We got a lot of reading today. Hopefully you had an amazing time doing the reading. If you've done the reading, you're gonna have context for all of the things that I am going to highlight in this episode. If you have not done the reading, then a lot of things are probably gonna go over your head. So you may wanna pause this video, stop the audio, and actually get the reading done. The Bible's good for you and we want you to read it. So read the chapters that are assigned for today before you continue watching. With that said, the context, I'm always gonna give context clues, nerdy nuggets, and I'm gonna leave you with a timeless truth. And so our context is actually really, really easy today. Our context is not different than yesterday's context, okay? So we are in 591 BC. 591 BC, and just to acclimate everybody, Ezekiel is prophesying to the exile community, a community of refugees. He's essentially in the refugee camp, prophesying to the group of exiles

who are living in Babylon, okay? He's actually saying a lot of the same things that Jeremiah is saying back in Jerusalem. And the things that Ezekiel is saying are not popular. He's saying things like Jerusalem's gonna burn to the ground, God is gonna judge Jerusalem, he's gonna destroy the temple, things that would be considered treasonous, unpatriotic, and so Ezekiel doesn't have a lot of followers. And one of the things that is gonna come up in today's reading is that the people are kinda tired of what Ezekiel has to say because he keeps saying that the temple's gonna be destroyed, but the temple is not destroyed. They're kinda like, you speak visions, but they don't come to pass. Little do they know, in 586, they're standing in 591, and they're probably, what, that's five years. They are five years away from Ezekiel's words coming to pass and little do they know that Ezekiel's words are actually going to be uncomfortably true in just a little while. So that's our context, okay? Ezekiel is prophesying to a group of exiles. He's prophesying to a group of refugees living in Babylon. Him and Jeremiah are saying a lot of the same things. Him and Jeremiah are contemporaries of each other, but simply communicating to different groups, obviously both communicating to a group that used to be one group, but now that one group

is split into two different places, and we'll say it, Jeremiah's the campus pastor of the Jerusalem campus, and Ezekiel's the campus pastor of the Babylon campus, all right? So same group of people. They've got a similar message, but those people have been separated by about 700 miles, and neither group really wants to listen to the really harsh truths that either Ezekiel or Jeremiah's got to say. I'm gonna focus most of our attention today. We're gonna transition into some nerdy nuggets. I'm gonna try to give you as many as I can. We're gonna transition into nerdy nuggets, but the focus today is really gonna be with chapter 12 and then chapter 16, so heads up, okay? Ezekiel is going to be one of the most sexually graphic prophets, so I'm just gonna, I'm gonna read from Ezekiel chapter 16. I'm personally not trying to be inflammatory or graphic or crude or inappropriate, but the Bible is gonna use very, very strong language, words like genitals, words like whore, prostitute, promiscuity, lewdness, all of these words are gonna be found in Ezekiel chapter 16, and we're gonna study it, we're gonna read it, and I just wanna give you a heads up. I don't know if that language is sensitive for you or to you, then I don't know, maybe today's not a good day to follow along on the journey,

but obviously, through the prompting of the Holy Spirit, Ezekiel chose these words because these are the words that Yahweh used, and so if these words are the words that Yahweh used, I think they're good enough for us. wanted to give that heads up. So we're gonna spend a lot of time in Ezekiel chapter 12, Ezekiel chapter 16. So Ezekiel's got another street performance, okay? This is kind of what he's famous for. He's got to dig through a wall in chapter 12. This one's really, really odd, and he gets the reaction. You actually go to Ezekiel chapter 12, verse 9. It says this, In the morning the word of the Lord came to me, mortal, has not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, said to you, what are you doing? Say to them, thus says the Lord. This oracle concerns the prince in Jerusalem and all the house of Israel in it. That prince is referring to a man by the name of Zedekiah. Remember the last five kings of Judah would be Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. Ezekiel does not even consider Zedekiah to be a true king. He considers him to be a prince because he considers Jehoiachin to be the last true king. So the people are like, what are you doing? So what is Ezekiel doing? Ezekiel is told to gather his possessions and carry them as if he was leaving in a hurry as a refugee. Obviously Ezekiel's actually lived this before, but he is prophesying or predicting that there are gonna be more refugees. There's gonna be another exile. Because remember, Ezekiel is part of the second wave of deportation, and there's gonna be a third wave of deportation in 586 BC. So before he left in the sight of his audience, he was told to dig through his own wall and then escape. This, essentially, this act, this street performance has a double meaning. On one hand, it is showing what will soon happen in Jerusalem. The people will leave as refugees with only what they can carry on their shoulders attempting to escape the Babylonians by digging through the wall. On the other hand, it is a sign of what will happen to the king or aka to the prince. That is Zedekiah. He too would attempt to escape, but he

would be captured. It is significant that Ezekiel only calls him a prince as he would see Jehoiachin as the true king, even though he was imprisoned in Babylon. This prophecy also hints at Zedekiah's fate, that he will be taken to Babylon as a prisoner but will not see, as Nebuchadnezzar took out his eyes when he was captured and will die in prison. This acted parable, or this street performance, ends with Ezekiel eating whilst trembling with anxiety, a sign of the fear within the refugees as they escape. So he's communicating to the refugees that are already there in Babylon, more refugees are coming, okay? This ain't getting better. This is definitely gonna get worse. This whole situation is gonna get worse. And you can see why he's not getting a lot of amens, okay? Not getting a lot of, not a lot of people wanting to give in this offering, you know? Like ain't nobody cashing up on Ezekiel after this message. This is not encouraging. Nobody's happy, all right? So the people are then kind of upset. We'll go to chapter 12, verse 21. The word of the Lord came to me, mortal, what is this proverb of yours about the land of Israel which says, the days are prolonged and every vision comes to nothing. Tell them therefore, thus says the Lord God, I'll put an end to this proverb and they shall use it no more as a proverb in Israel. But say to them, the days are near in the fulfillment of every vision. So you can hear that, the sense of the people, which is like, the days are long, man. These visions don't come to pass. It's easier to just listen to the prophets who have good things to say. Because like, a lot of days pass by between when you give a vision or a prophetic word of the fulfillment and God is like, let them know. The day, I'm being nice, like I'm being kind by not actually bringing devastation and destruction immediately. And here you are, like, adding insult to injury. Like, why not just be happy that it's not coming to pass? Why be like, well, you keep saying destruction's gonna happen, it's not happening. It's just so ridiculous, okay? All right, that means that Ezekiel in chapter 13 is gonna have to respond because, of course, false prophets are gonna rise up. There are plenty of false prophets giving an alternative message and an alternative

timeline. It seems that Ezekiel in Babylon was facing the same problem that Jeremiah was facing back in Jerusalem. Many were saying, thus says Yahweh, but he wasn't speaking through them. They were like a weakened wall that was covered in whitewash to hide its faults. But the storm was coming and would blow them down and reveal their falseness to everyone. So that's chapter 12 and 13, okay? It actually looks like some leaders are turning to what Ezekiel has to say, and we get a mention of Daniel. Now, Daniel was deported to Babylon in the first wave of deportations with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and scholars debate whether or not this is actually the Daniel that we know of, or if this is a pagan Daniel. The spelling is a little bit odd in the Hebrew. It could go either way, okay? The spelling that we have in Ezekiel actually fits a character in an ancient Ugaritic story called the Epic of Akat. He was a pious judge, and so that kind of fits better because Noah and Job are kind of examples of people from a long time ago. Like, a lot of people would say Job predates Genesis, okay? So Noah also has tons of Mesopotamian and Canaanite and Ugaritic equivalents, okay? The flood story, there were tons of flood stories all over the ancient Near East, so that could fit. Or maybe it's young Daniel who got deported, who is in Babylon. The only problem is that Daniel is so young

when Ezekiel is getting read that people wouldn't probably know who Daniel is yet. But Daniel is alive and living in Babylon at the exact same time that Ezekiel is prophesying, but Ezekiel's considerably older than Daniel, okay? All right, chapter 15 is a parable of useless vine. This same exact idea can be found in Psalm chapter 80, verse eight to 11. So this whole nerdy nugget is just, if you wanna go compare how this stuff gets used in other places, you can take Ezekiel chapter 15, and you can go compare it to Psalm chapter 80, verse eight and 11. That'd be a good homework assignment for you. You can compare it to Isaiah chapter five, verse one through seven, and you can compare it to Hosea chapter 10, verse one. So this idea of a useless vine is actually a well-known theme throughout the scriptures, which leads us to Ezekiel chapter 16. All right, Ezekiel chapter 16 is probably one of the most graphic, but honestly, like heart-wrenching portions of scripture, probably in the entire Bible, okay? This is an allegory of Yahweh and Israel, his faithless bride, okay? And I'm gonna read chunks that I actually do think that reading a lot of this stuff is helpful, and then I'm gonna kind of break down what it all means,

and then we'll get into our timeless truth. All right, chapter 16, verse one. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, or mortal. The NRSV loves the word mortal. I'll kind of jump back and forth between NIV and NRSV. I'm actually gonna get the NIV up on this laptop, and I'm gonna get the NRSV on this iPad so that we can go back and forth between them, because nothing is more helpful when studying the Bible than having things in multiple translations, okay? So NIV, all right, let's dive into Ezekiel chapter 16. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices, and this is what you're going to say, okay? I'm gonna skip all the way down to verse four. On the day you were born, your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. You were like a baby, you were a newborn baby, a newborn infant that your parents did not care about. You are an orphaned child, like left at the fire station. Nobody, they gave birth to you, nobody cared about you. Rather, you were thrown out in the open field. For on the day, you were an abandoned orphan. For on the day you were born, you were despised. Your parents looked at you and didn't want you. You were despised. Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood,

and as you lay there in your blood, I said to you, live. I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew and developed and entered puberty. It says in the NRSV, you grew up and became tall and arrived at full womanhood. Your breasts were formed, your hair had grown, and you were naked and bare. That hair here would be referring to pubic hair, okay? Verse eight, later I passed by and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your naked body. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you. Okay, so I became your husband, you became my bride. This would be referring to Mount Sinai. This would be referring to the Mosaic Covenant, okay? I led you out of the land of slavery, out of bondage. Again, this theme is all through the Old Testament, that Israel was not deserving of God's love, okay? You are a worthless, orphaned, abandoned baby who your parents despised. It's not like you were the wealthiest nation or the most powerful nation. Nope, you're just the one I loved. I saw you. I picked you out of all the nations of the earth and I made you my treasured possession. I loved you and I gave you my covenant. I gave you laws to help you so that you could mature

and you rebelled. And that rebellion is gonna be described, okay? So before that rebellion, here we go. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put sandals of fine leather on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry. I put bracelets on your arms, necklaces around your neck. I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. So you were adorned with gold and silver. Your clothes were a fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. It's like I took so much care to make you beautiful. I gave you ornaments and jewelry and clothes. Not only that, your food was honey, olive oil and finest flour. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen and your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty. That's good. God wants you to be beautiful. Why? Your beauty reflects his glory. So it's good. There are things that people are attracted to. God's like, I want you to be attractive. That's good. I want people to look at Israel and go,

man, why is she so attractive? And Israel should then in turn respond and say, ah, it's cause we follow the Torah. It's because we obey the Lord. That's why we're wealthy. That's why our families are prosperous. That's why these things happen. That's why we're blessed, because we obey the word of the Lord. But that's not what happened. Your fame spread on account of your beauty because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declared the sovereign Lord. Verse 15, but you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. That's verse 15 in the NIV. And it says this in the NRSV, but you trusted your beauty and played the whore because of your fame and lavished your whorings on any passerby. This is where Ezekiel 16 is now about to take a dark twist, all right, a dark turn. You took some of your garments. So all the stuff I gave you, your garments, and you made colorful shrines and on them played the whore. Nothing like this has ever been seen or ever shall be. You also took your beautiful jewels of the gold and silver that I'd given you and made for yourselves male images. And with them, you played the whore. And you took your embroidered garments to cover them

and set my oil and my incense before them. So you used the gifts that I gave you to create idols. And this is exactly what happened with the golden calf. Remember the people of Israel, they leave out of Egypt. They are getting delivered from slavery. And the Bible says they plundered the Egyptians, that God places it on the Egyptian's heart to give them gold. So they will be blessed as they left bondage. And what do they do with that gold? They melt it down and they create a golden calf. It's like, yo, the very idols you're making are based on the resources that I'm giving you. I remember I used to tell the kids in my youth group, hey, when you fail to just sing along with the songs that we're singing and worship God, it's actually the most arrogant act of defiance because he's giving you breath, he's giving you life. And with the breath he gave you, you're deciding to not open your mouth and sing, not open your mouth and worship. How dare you take the very resources that God gave you and use them to worship idols. 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. Oh, 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. It says this, you took your beautiful jewels, you took your garments, verse 19. Also the bread that I gave you, I fed you with choice flour and oil and honey. You set it before them as a pleasing odor. Verse 20, you took your sons and your daughters whom you had born to me, and these you sacrificed them to be devoured as if your whorings were not enough. As if your prostitution wasn't enough, you also sacrificed your children in the Valley of Hinnom to Molech and to Baal. Obviously, we've read in 1st and 2nd Kings how multiple people of Israel would burn their children in the fire, would sacrifice their children as a foreign practice, as a idolatrous practice.

And here's where it gets even more graphic, verse 26. You played the whore with the Egyptians, your lustful neighbor, multiplying your whorings to provoke me to anger. The NIV actually says it really, really interesting, and it's even more graphic in the NIV. It says this, verse 25. At every street corner, you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, spreading your legs with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by. You engaged in prostitution with the Egyptians, your neighbors with large genitals, and aroused my anger with your increasing promiscuity. Verse 28, you engaged in prostitution with the Assyrians too because you were insatiable. You were like a prostitute who couldn't even be satisfied. It's like your desire to worship other gods couldn't even be satisfied. And for God, idolatry is adultery. He's in a marriage covenant with his people. Because you were insatiable, and even after that, you still were not satisfied. Then you increased your promiscuity to include Babylonia, a land of merchants, but even then you were not satisfied. Verse 31, the very end of verse 31. Unlike a prostitute, you're even worse than a prostitute because you scorn payment. You don't even wanna be paid for the fact that you're unfaithful.

Verse 33, all prostitutes receive gifts, but you give gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors. So in your prostitution, you are the opposite of others. No one runs after you for your favors. You are the very opposite, for you give payment and none is given to you. And I mean, this goes on and on and on. How does it wrap up? The very idols or the very nations whose idols the people of Israel wanna worship, God is gonna say, I'm gonna raise those nations up to judge you, to exile you, to deport you, to go to war with you, to kill you. Like this is the moment of God will give you the desires of your heart. You want idols? Okay, cool, I'll give you idols. You wanna worship the God of the Babylonians? Guess what? Then the army of the Babylonians is gonna come to you. You wanna be Babylonian? Cool, you wanna be Assyrian? Cool, then the army of the Assyrians is gonna come. And so this whole thing culminates and I actually have a summary here. So there's a little outline for Ezekiel chapter 16. Number one, her father was an Amorite. That's actually Genesis chapter 15.

Her mother was a Hittite, Genesis chapter 27. She was a foundling, she was a baby, abandoned in her own blood, saved by Yahweh. She grew into a woman who Yahweh cared for and married. This is the covenant, okay, at Sinai. She was adorned in splendor. This is Solomon's temple. Yet she became a whore and a prostitute. This is all the worshiping of pagan fertility deities and making foreign alliances. She was like her sisters, but outdid them in lewdness. This is talking about Sodom and Samaria. So she was facing judgment. Her former lovers would all turn on her and God would use the very lovers who you've whored after to actually judge you. And then last, Yahweh would have to make a new covenant of marriage with her because the old covenant cannot be fixed. This is where Jeremiah and Ezekiel are both creating a theology of a new covenant. Obviously, Jesus is gonna pick up on this in the new covenant, that God can't fix this old covenant because Israel has been so unfaithful. And because Israel has been so unfaithful, he just has to form a brand new covenant for his people. Our timeless truth for today is that God actually gives us the desires of our heart. This is not. the active wrath of God.

This is the passive wrath of God. That actually one of the most powerful things that God can do is to go, all right, I'll give you what you want. I'll give you the very thing that you're chasing after. And so often, the very thing that God has said to us, hey, don't do that, don't desire that. Hey, don't chase after that. What ends up happening is that after a while, God goes, you know what? Go for it. And you have to learn lessons the hard way. That the very thing that God was trying to protect you from will actually turn on you and attack you and make your life a living hell. And you can either learn by wisdom or you can learn by experience. And for these people, they have to learn by experience. And here's my challenge to us. Can we let their experience create wisdom for us? They had to go through this, which means we don't actually have to. I don't wanna learn everything from experience. There are certain things I wanna learn from other people's wisdom. And I want the wisdom of other people to help me to avoid some potholes on the road. It doesn't do me any good to hit the same pothole that the car in front of me hit. If a car in front of me hit a pothole,

that's God allowing me to see the mistake so that I can avoid it. Can I tell you something? If God says no, can you just let the no be no? When you go after idols, you yourself actually become a victim of the idol when it turns on you. And the worst thing that God can do is just kind of give you what you want. And if you're in a situation where right now, God has kind of given you what you want and you feel hopeless, well, guess what? This passage of scripture is not without hope. God says, but if you repent and if you come back to me, I'll create a new covenant with you. I love this because it's kind of like, man, you can always repent. You can always seek the face of the Lord and there can always be restoration. But that requires that you turn away from idolatrous practices and you actually create within yourself and allow God to create within you a new heart where you love him with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. That's not just true for the people in Ezekiel's time, it's true for us today. Tomorrow, we've got day 231. We're gonna be covering Ezekiel 17, 18, 19, and 20. It's gonna be incredible.

I'll see you right here tomorrow as we continue our trek to the book of Ezekiel. If you're on a streak, I'm proud of you. Even if you're not on a streak, I'm proud of you. I'm so glad that we're studying this book together. I'll see you tomorrow. Love you guys, 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.