Day 232: Ezekiel 21–24 | 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 232. We're in the book of Ezekiel today. Ezekiel chapters 21 to 24. I would say that these chapters are a cohesive unit. The theme of these chapters is judgment on Jerusalem. As soon as chapter 21 opens, we're gonna get a word of prophecy against the city of Jerusalem. The word of the Lord is gonna come to Ezekiel and say, the sword of Yahweh is coming against Jerusalem to cut it down. And then in chapter 24, we're actually going to get the beginning of the siege that is going to lead to the downfall of the city of Jerusalem. So that is the theme of all of these chapters is judgment against Jerusalem. If you have done the reading, then everything that I am gonna say in today's episode is gonna make total sense. If you haven't done the reading, you may be a little lost. And so you may wanna stop the video, pause the audio, and actually get the reading done. Ezekiel 21, 22, 23, and 24. I would actually contend today's reading

is rather entertaining. And we're gonna get into that, especially as we get into chapter 23, because God's gonna be a little graphic and always fascinating when God's graphic. This Old Testament, Yahweh, he don't be playing games, man. Anyway, we'll get into it. Like always, gonna start with context clues, then we'll get into nerdy nuggets. I'll try to give you at least one nugget per chapter, and then we're gonna leave off with the timeless truth. And I'm actually really, really, really excited about our timeless truth today. So let's dive into some context. All right, chapter 21 immediately starts. We get kind of placed in the context of what Ezekiel's talking about for these chapters. Chapter 21 starts out with these words. "'The word of the Lord came to me. "'Son of man, set your face against Jerusalem "'and preach against the sanctuary, "'prophesy against the land of Israel, "'and say to her, this is what the Lord says, "'I am against you. "'I draw my sword from its sheath "'and cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked.'" So that's how chapter 21 starts. And then chapter 24 is actually going to give us the day that the siege begins, okay?

And in our calendar, if you translate these words into our calendar, this would actually translate to January 15th, 588. Remember, Jerusalem is gonna fall in 586. So this siege is going to last for a long time. So from chapter 21, all the way to chapter 24, all of these chapters are focused on God's judgment against the city of Jerusalem, the sanctuary, the temple, the entire city, okay? The leaders, all of it, and we'll kind of get into detail. Chapter 24 is a hinge point for the entire book. And we could even say, once we hit chapter 24, the first half of Ezekiel is over, okay? So chapter 24 is the hinge point. This chapter marks the end of the first half of the book with its focus on the judgment on old Israel. The judgment that Ezekiel had been warning them about in his role as the watchman on the walls has arrived. From 25 onwards, the focus will totally shift. So this is our last day to really experience Ezekiel prophesying against Jerusalem, against old Israel. From chapter 25 on, Jerusalem's destroyed, okay? Jerusalem is burned to the ground, totally destroyed. All right, let's kind of give some nerdy nuggets and kind of march through the book. The big theme in chapter 21 is the sword, okay? The sword of Yahweh. Then we get into chapter 22, and we're gonna get three images that are all gonna be judgmental pictures, word pictures,

that God is gonna use to describe Jerusalem. The first one is from chapter 22, verses one to 16, and the city is gonna be described as the bloody city. Jerusalem is the bloody city. Ezekiel is gonna portray... Jerusalem and talk about the blood and violence that has been committed in Jerusalem. This involved child sacrifice, the death of the prophets, the oppression of its citizens, and menstrual blood which represented sexual impurity. Okay, so the entire theme of these verses is that Jerusalem is a bloody city. Not a glorious city, not the redeemed city that God had called it to be, but a bloody city. That the blood of children that have been sacrificed in the Valley of Hinnom, the blood of oppressed prophets, and then menstrual blood which represents the sexual impurity that was rampant in the city. Okay, so the bloody city. Second, the second image that represents Jerusalem is the dross in the furnace. Now, this is a little different than other prophets, okay. When Isaiah or Jeremiah are gonna talk about the refiner's fire, they're actually gonna say that exile or punishment or God's fire of judgment is actually there to eliminate the dross so that the remnant of Israel can come forward refined in the fire. Okay, so that God is eliminating the dross and what's left behind is pure gold, and that pure gold actually represents Israel. Ezekiel, not so positive, okay. Ezekiel's gonna use the same exact image, however he's gonna flip it. So this is chapter 22 verses 17 to 22. The image here is that rather than being precious metal, Jerusalem is the dross of base metals. The leftover worthless impurity of the cheapest metals. So instead of Israel being the pure gold, and I don't know if anybody needs this context, but for anyone who worked in metals, you essentially had to burn the metal and everything that was impure kind of floated to the top and it became dross. And you would scrape that away and what you were left with was pure silver or pure gold. And so multiple prophets are actually gonna use this image and say, the fire of judgment is actually just here to make us better, to eliminate the sin, to eliminate the dross, and to

purify us, to cleanse us. Ezekiel's gonna flip this on his head and actually say, nope, you think you're the pure gold that's been refined? Uh-uh, you're actually the dross, which means God is going to eliminate you. Next, the third image that represents Jerusalem is the spiritual desert. So the first is a bloody city, the second is the dross in the furnace, and the third is the spiritual desert. This is chapter 22, verses 23 to 31. The sin committed has made the land lifeless. Okay, it's supposed to be a flourishing, fruitful oasis, but it has become a wilderness wasteland. It has become desert. It has become barren. Okay, the land is lifeless, and those who were to protect and care for it did not warn against the coming judgment. This is prophets and leaders that should have been speaking the same exact message that Ezekiel is speaking to the exiles and that Jeremiah is speaking to the people of Jerusalem, but instead of saying what God actually told him to say, they said the things that tickling ears wanted to hear, what itching ears wanted to hear, and that that is unfortunate because they lied to the people, and the reality is that judgment is coming. So these are the three images that God is gonna give Ezekiel to describe Jerusalem. A bloody city, dross in the furnace, and a spiritual desert. Obviously, God's goal is that Jerusalem would be the exact opposite, that it would be a righteous city, a glorious city, a magnificent city, that it would be pure silver, pure gold, and that it would be a flourishing, fruitful oasis, that everything around it would be a desert, but that it would be a garden, that it would be a flourishing and fruitful garden. Okay, that's chapter 22. Gave you a lot of nerdy nuggets for chapter 22. Chapter 23, this is intense. We're gonna get the parable of the two sisters. Now, this is gonna feel a lot like, I believe it was Ezekiel chapter 16. Ezekiel chapter 16 was just a lot of like, I don't want to say vulgar, because it's coming from God, but intense language, like graphic. I would say graphic. And Jerusalem was described as an adulterous wife, okay? And you know, if you need to be reminded of chapter 16, like essentially, Chapter 16, verse four, said 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. Rather, you were thrown out in the open field for on the day you were born, you were despised. Then I passed by. I saw you kicking about in your blood. And as you lay there in your blood, I said, live. I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed an inner puberty. Your breasts had formed and your hair had grown, yet you were stark naked. And what happened? Even though I put garments on you and I put jewelry on you and I parented you through puberty, you became a whore. You became a prostitute. You actually wanted to sleep with the Babylonians and the Assyrians. And remember, for Yahweh, idolatry is adultery. Worshiping other gods is the same as cheating on the marriage covenant that they made at Sinai, okay? So the marriage covenant at Sinai was not just, I'm gonna be your God, you're gonna be my people. It was, I'm gonna be your husband and you're gonna be my wife. God was the husband and Israel was the bride. This is why Jesus has the authority to say that he's the groom and the church is the bride.

This is not a new image. This is actually Jesus simply saying, the church is the true Israel. Not necessarily the new Israel, but the true Israel. We don't believe in a replacement theology. That's a key nuance. Not the new Israel, but the true Israel. So the reason that Jesus can actually say that is because he's simply being who his father was. And his father was the faithful groom throughout the old covenant. And what was that covenant? A marriage covenant between him and the people of Israel. So when God sees his people practicing idolatry, worshiping Baal, worshiping Asherah, worshiping Molech, worshiping Egyptian gods, Babylonian gods, Assyrian gods, Yahweh's response to this is, oh, you're a whore, you're a prostitute. You are an adulterous wife. This is how God describes idolatry. You have broken covenant with me. You are no longer faithful to me. You pledged allegiance to me in a marriage covenant and you broke allegiance. So all of the prophets, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel down through the list are all going to describe spiritual idolatry as adultery. With that context, now let's go to Ezekiel chapter 23. Just brace yourself for, you know, graphic language.

God describing the reality of whoredom, adultery, prostitution in very, very graphic language. All right. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, there were two women, daughters of the same mother. They became prostitutes in Egypt. That means they started worshiping foreign gods while they were enslaved in Egypt. This is what they learned while they were in Egypt. Again, this gives context to this statement. I want you to memorize this, that it took the exodus to get Israel out of Egypt. Okay, that's the exodus. That's the story of the exodus that we find in the second book of the Bible. It took the exodus to get Israel out of Egypt. However, it took the exile to get Egypt out of Israel because what did they learn in Egypt? Idolatry, polytheism. And God is going to see polytheism as polygamy. You're trying to be married to me and to other gods at the same time. Who you worship is who you are in covenant with. So idolatry is not just, oh, it's a sin of my heart. No, no, no. Idolatry for God is unfaithfulness. It is adultery. And honestly, that's not a timeless truth for the day, but that is a timeless truth. Like at no point has God changed his stance on that, okay?

Idolatry still is unfaithfulness. It is an inability to be faithful to the covenant that you've made with God, with Jesus. Okay, that's true today if you are a Christian. 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. 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 going to 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. The two sisters are immediately going to get identified in verse four. Ohola is Samaria and Oholibah is Jerusalem. Now these words Ohola and Oholibah are actually a play on words. They are similar words that both mean tent. What was the tent? It was the sanctuary. It was the dwelling place of the glory of God. And what Ezekiel is going to do is he's going to say, instead of being faithful to the tent

that God set up a system to worship him, you decided to set up tents to Baal, tents to Asherah, tents to Molech, and worship other gods. All right. So Samaria engaged in prostitution while she was still mine and she lusted after her lovers. The NRSV is going to say whore instead of prostitute. The NIV is going to use gentler language. Prostitute is probably gentler language than whore. But the, you know, I can see both. The NRSV is trying to conserve the strength of the language because Yahweh is indeed like passionate, and passionate encapsulates love and anger. Okay. He's passionate. And it's kind of going to really reach a plot climax in terms of chapter 20. And so Judah is going to get judged as the younger sister. And essentially Yahweh is going to say, you saw what happened to your older sister. She lusted after the Assyrians. So I brought the Assyrians in to kill her, to pillage her, because God will release you to the thing you want to worship. The worst thing God could do, this is Romans chapter one, is to give you over to the lust of your heart, to the desires of your heart. And when God gives you over, he allows the thing that you are lusting after to destroy you. That's exactly what happens with the Northern Kingdom of Samaria. At this point, the Southern Kingdom of Judah should have went, uh-oh, we should probably stop lusting after the Babylonians because God's going to bring the Babylonians in to destroy us. And that's exactly what happens. So Judah is going to get judged more harshly because Judah had an older sister that she was able to look towards. But instead of using wisdom, she allowed her lack of self-control to cause her to go after

other gods. And God is going to call that lust. And then verse 20, this is where it gets the most graphic. Verse 20 of chapter 23, there she lusted after her lovers whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose omission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth when in Egypt. So the thing that you fell in love with in Egypt is idolatry and that is the lewdness of your youth and you never got away from it. When in Egypt, your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled. That could be you got awakened, you got sexually aroused before time, or it could mean you got molested. Either way, the imagery here is you're supposed to be mine and you allowed other people to touch you, to fondle you, to caress you, and to woo you away from me. And now you are in love with foreign gods. And so this is just graphic language. And I think that we have to begin to be okay with a passionate God, that God is passionate, that that means he's loving, that means he's angry. But I want to also redefine passion because I don't know if anybody's ever seen the movie, The Passion of the Christ. When we think passion in our American or modern or Western context, I think we just think excited. If somebody's passionate, it means they're excited. But that's actually not what passion means. When people talk about the passion of the Christ, that means that Jesus was willing to suffer and die for the thing that he loved. So passion is not just love or just anger, but it is the commitment to suffer to see something come to pass. So when people tell me, well, I'm passionate about preaching. I'm like, got it. So how much are you willing to suffer for it then?

Because the true test of passion is not how they come to pass. excited you are, but how much you're willing to suffer. If you are not disciplined, but you are very excited, then you're not passionate, because passionate involves discipline. If I'm passionate about something, then I will go through the suffering of discipline so that I can be great at the thing that I'm passionate about. There is no athlete that's passionate about their sport that have not suffered through the combine of discipline so they can be great at that sport. When we think about passion, we just think excitement, but God says, I'm so passionate about you as a husband that I will get on a cross and die so that I can redeem you. And that is true passion. And we're gonna see God's, the language here is passionate language. It is the language of a scorned lover, of someone who has real love, real anger, and is willing to go through the greatest lengths to win his bride back, which is sacrifice his life for his bride's redemption. All right, let's get to our last chapter. For Ezekiel 23, verses five to 10 are all about Samaria, verses 11 to 20 are all about Judah. I hope that helps you. Chapter 24 is the second siege, okay? And at this point, a couple of things are gonna happen. The big picture or word picture here

is actually gonna be a pot or a cauldron, a rusty pot. It was actually thought that this song might be a children's song, like a kitchen song that kids would sing about cooking. This song is expanded to show the fate of Jerusalem and those who were in it. This can actually be compared to chapter 11, verse three, which is talking about Jerusalem that says, this city is the cauldron and we are the meat. The first saying was the people of Jerusalem say that they were the choice meat, safe in the cooking pot, but the exiles were the food that had been thrown on the floor. But here the picture is very different. The meat that was being poured out onto the floor was actually safe. So the exiles were actually safe, so it's reversed. And the meat getting cooked in the pot are people who are about to suffer and die. So there's a whole reversal of the image. The pot was unclean and beyond use, and so it'll be burnt as useless. And any meat left inside will be charred and burnt to waste. This is obviously not even a prophecy anymore. Siege has begun on Jerusalem. And the image that Ezekiel wants to, well, the image that Yahweh wants to use through Ezekiel to communicate to the exiles the reality of what's happening is a cauldron. The last part that I wanna get into,

which will lead us into our Talmud's truth, is that Ezekiel's wife is actually going to die in chapter 24. And Ezekiel is not allowed to mourn. He's not allowed to weep. He's not allowed to cry. He's not allowed to put on mourner's clothing. He has to dress in normal garb, and he cannot mourn for his actual wife. Now, this brings a massive theme back, which is that for the prophets, their message was not simply their words, but their message was also their life. So let me remind you that Isaiah, the prophet, Isaiah's sons, his children, are all named based on prophecies against Israel. So he has to name one of his sons, Mahershal Hajbaz, which is like not a dope name, okay? Like it legitimately means that Israel's gonna be judged. So this is a real human that is really named Mahershal Hajbaz. Hosea, a real person, has to really marry a prostitute because his message is not just his words, but his life. So he has to marry a prostitute in order to show the people of Israel that they've prostituted themselves to foreign gods. Jeremiah has to walk in dirty underwear 700 miles all the way to the Euphrates, bury those dirty underwear to communicate to the nation of Israel

that of all the nations, God put you on his most intimate parts. You were not a shirt. You weren't pants. You weren't shoes. You were God's underwear. You were in the most intimate realm of relationship with Yahweh, but you dirtied yourself. You're not clean anymore. You're dirty underwear. And where does Jeremiah have to bury those underwear? On the other side of the Euphrates. What's on the other side of the Euphrates? Babylon. So communicate because you are now dirty, I have to bury you in exile. So the prophets are not just prophesying with their words, they're also living life. And their life. becomes part of the prophetic message. For Ezekiel, the reason he cannot mourn for his wife, or cry, or shed a tear, or moan, or groan, or anything he can't he can't put on mourner's clothes is because Yahweh is communicating to the people of Israel, you were my bride, you were my wife, and now I am going to judge you, and or the I've sent the king of Babylon to Jerusalem to judge you, the temple is gonna get burned down, Jerusalem is gonna get, I mean, totally destroyed, and I will not mourn. I will not mourn. And so Ezekiel is not allowed to mourn for his actual wife because he has to reflect the fact that Yahweh has refused to mourn for his bride, Israel. And that is where we leave off in chapter 24, which leads us to our Thomas truth. Our Thomas truth is this, that as Christians, that our words are not simply our message, but our life is our message.

If you want people around you to know God, it's not just about what you say, but how you live life. For Isaiah, his life was just as much his message as the words that he spoke, and we would call that integrity, that God wants your whole person. He wants your whole being. He does not just want you to be an orator who stands up on a pulpit on a Sunday and preaches a good message. No, but the people around you are transformed not just by the things you say, but by the life you live. And just like Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are confined to living a kind of life that is consistent with the words that they preach, you and I, whether you're in ministry or not, we're all in ministry. Let me say that. Every Christian is in ministry. Whether you get paid to do ministry or whether you are not vocationally paid to do ministry, your life is your message in addition to your words. So for Ezekiel, he's not allowed to mourn for his wife, and that's the context of Ezekiel's life. For us, our context is different, but the timeless truth does not change. Our words have to match up with our life because both our words and our life becomes our message to the people that God has appointed us to minister to. That's our timeless truth for the day. Tomorrow, we've got day 233. We're going to be in Ezekiel chapters 25 to 29. Man, from here on out, the tone of the book of Ezekiel is going to change, and so I'm going to help lead us through that pivot. I can't wait to continue our trek through the book of Ezekiel with you tomorrow. If you're on a streak, I'm proud of you. I love you so much. I'll see you tomorrow. 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.