Nancy: Welcome to immerse: the daily bible reading experience.
day 200 and 70
immersed in Ezekiel.
The prophecies of Ezekiel, like those of Jeremiah, revolve around the Babylonian
threat to Judah, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem.
But unlike Jeremiah, Ezekiel was not in Jerusalem.
Instead as he tells us, he was in the land of Babylonia, living in a colony of Judean
exiles in Tel eBib beside the Kibar River.
In 597 BC the Babylonians forced Judah to become a vassal state.
They took King je Hoya kin, and many of the nation's
elites into exile as hostages.
Ezekiel was from a priestly family, so he was among these earlier exiles because
he saw the world through the eyes of a priest associated with the temple.
He was concerned with issues of purity and holiness, and especially
with God's presence or absence.
The people of Judah wrongly assumed that the exiles wouldn't
stay in Babylon for very long.
So God sent messages to the residents of Judah and Jerusalem
through Jeremiah and to the exiles in Babylonia through Ezekiel.
The messages of both prophets make it clear that this time of judgment is the
one God had long promised was coming.
Ezekiel confirms that God was going to continue to judge Judah for its
idolatry and oppression of the powerless.
These practices were corrupting the kingdom from top to bottom.
Everyone from the political and religious leaders to the common people
were ignoring God's instructions.
Ezekiel is particularly emphatic about the failure of Israel's leaders to guide
the people in keeping God's covenant.
As a result, Israel is unclean and God is going to remove
his presence from the land.
Used some extraordinary means to demonstrate that he was speaking
through Ezekiel, for example, just before the destruction of Jerusalem,
he took away Ezekiel's ability to speak except on occasions when
he received a message from God.
But then just before news of the city's destruction reached the exiles, Ezekiel
was able to speak freely once again.
Ezekiel sometimes engaged in symbolic actions to illustrate
what his prophecies meant.
For example, God told him to dig a hole through a wall and go through it
with a pack showing how King Zedekiah would soon try to flee from Jerusalem.
God also gave Ezekiel remarkable powers of literary expression.
His prophecies contain parables, stories with a symbolic meaning.
Memorable poetic images such as a vine, an eagle, a lion, and two sisters.
Despite all this, the judeans in exile wouldn't listen to Ezekiel any more than
those in Jerusalem listened to Jeremiah, but the time had come for all the
prophecies against Judah to be fulfilled.
One of Ezekiel's most desolate visions was of the Lord's glory
and presence leaving the temple.
This provides further confirmation of what Jeremiah was saying.
No longer could anyone promise safety in Jerusalem because
the Lord's temple was there.
God had left, and there was no more protection against the invasion.
This judgment was disorienting for God's people, but it was a necessary
first step toward the bigger goal.
The reorientation of the people to a new future with God Overall, the Book
of Ezekiel follows the same threefold pattern as the earlier and much
shorter book of Zephaniah, Oracles of Judgment against Israel, Oracles
of judgment against other nations and promises of Israel's restoration.
Again, like Jeremiah, Ezekiel was granted visions of the
restoration of God's people.
His visions of Israel's coming renewal are some of the most
memorable in the prophets.
Since Israel's shepherds leaders have destroyed their own people, God himself
will come and be their good shepherd, leading, protecting, and feeding them.
The Lord also makes the amazing promise that he will transform his people From
the inside out, I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you.
I will put my spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful
to obey my regulations while in exile.
Israel is like a valley of old dry bones.
The creator of life will revive his people and bring them back home.
The book closes with a lengthy vision of a new temple In a restored Jerusalem,
a river will flow from this temple like the rivers in the Garden of Eden, and
life will flourish wherever it goes.
When all things leaders, people, hearts, and land are healed.
Then God himself will once again come to live there among them,
the prophet Ezekiel,
on July 31st of my 30th year, while I was with the Judean exiles beside the
Kibar River in Babylon, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
This happened during the fifth year of King Je Hoya Kin's captivity.
The Lord gave this message to Ezekiel son, abuse I, a priest beside the
key Bar River and the land of the Babylonians, and he felt the hand
of the Lord take hold of him.
As I looked, I saw a great storm coming from the north, driving before it, a
huge cloud that flashed with lightning and shone with brilliant light.
There was fire inside the cloud and in the middle of the fire glowed
something like gleaming Amber from the center of the cloud came four living
beings that looked human, except that each had four faces and four wings.
Their legs were straight and their feet had hooves, like those of a calf, and
shown like burnished bronze under each of their four wings, I could see human hands.
So each of the four beings had four faces and four wings.
The wings of each living being touched, the wings of the beings beside it.
Each one moved straightforward in any direction without turning around.
Each had a human face in the front, the face of a lion on the right side.
The face of an ox on the left side, and the face of an eagle at the back.
Each had two pairs of outstretched wings.
One pair stretched out to touch the wings of the living beings on either side of
it, and the other pair covered its body.
They went in whatever direction the spirit chose, and they moved straightforward
in any direction without turning around.
The living beings looked like bright coals of fire or brilliant torches, and
lightning seemed to flash back and forth among them, and the living beings darted
to and fro like flashes of lightning.
As I looked at these beings, I saw four wheels touching the ground beside them.
One wheel belonging to each, the wheels sparkled as if made of barrel.
All four wheels looked alike and were made the same.
Each wheel had a second wheel turning crosswise within it.
The beings could move in any of the four directions they faced
without turning as they moved.
The rims of the four wheels were tall and frightening, and they
were covered with eyes all around.
When the living beings moved, the wheels moved with them.
When they flew upward, the wheels went up too.
The spirit of the living beings was in the wheels.
So wherever the spirit went, the wheels and the living beings also went.
When the beings moved, the wheels moved.
When the beings stopped, the wheels stopped.
When the beings flew upward, the wheels rose up.
For the spirit of the living beings was in the wheels spread out above them was
a surface like the sky, glittering like crystal beneath this surface, the wings
of each living being stretched out to touch the other's wings, and each had
two wings covering its body as they flew.
Their wings sounded to me like waves crashing against the shore, or
like the voice of the Almighty, or like the shouting of a mighty army.
When they stopped, they let down their wings as they stood with wings.
Lowered a voice spoke from beyond The crystal surface above them.
Above this surface was something that looked like a
throne made of blue lapis lly.
And on this throne high above was a figure whose appearance resembled a man
from what appeared to be his waist up.
He looked like gleaming amber, flickering like a fire, and from his waist
down, he looked like a burning flame, shining with splendor All around him
was a glowing halo, like a rainbow, shining in the clouds on a rainy day.
This is what the glory of the Lord looked like to me.
When I saw it, I fell face down on the ground and I heard
someone's voice speaking to me.
Stand up, son of man, said the voice.
I want to speak with you.
The spirit came into me as he spoke and he set me on my feet.
I listened carefully to his words, son of man he said.
I am sending you to the Nation of Israel, a rebellious nation
that has rebelled against me.
They and their ancestors have been rebelling against me to this very day.
They are a stubborn and hard-hearted people, but I am sending you to say to
them, this is what the Sovereign Lord says, and whether they listen or refuse
to listen for, remember, they are rebels.
At least they will know they have had a prophet among them.
Son of man, do not fear them or their words.
Don't be afraid, even though their threats surround you.
Like nettles and briars and stinging scorpions do not be dismayed by their dark
scowls, even though they, they're rebels.
You must give them my messages whether they listen or not, but they won't listen.
For they are completely rebellious.
Son of man, listen to what I say to you.
Do not join them in their rebellion.
Open your mouth and eat what I give you.
Then I looked and saw a hand reaching out to me.
It held a scroll, which he unrolled, and I saw that both sides were
covered with funeral songs, words of sorrow and pronouncements of doom.
The voice said to me, son of man, eat what I am giving you.
Eat this scroll, then go and give its message to the people of Israel.
So I opened my mouth and he fed me the scroll.
Fill your stomach with this.
He said, and when I ate it, it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.
Then he said, son of man.
Go to the people of Israel and give them my messages.
I am not sending you to a foreign people whose language you cannot understand.
No, I am not sending you to people with strange and difficult speech.
If I did, they would listen, but the people of Israel won't listen
to you anymore than they listen to me for the whole lot of them
are hard hearted and stubborn.
Look, I have made you as obstinate and hard hearted as they are.
I have made your forehead as hard as the hardest rock.
So don't be afraid of them or fear their angry looks even though they are rebels.
Then he added son of man.
Let all my words sink deep into your own heart first.
Listen to them carefully for yourself.
Then go to your people in exile and say to them, this is
what the sovereign Lord says.
Do this whether they listen to you or not.
Then the Spirit lifted me up and I heard a loud rumbling sound behind me.
May the glory of the Lord be praised in his place.
It was a sound of the wings of the living beings as they brushed
against each other and the rumbling of their wheels beneath them.
The spirit lifted me up and took me away.
I went in bitterness and turmoil, but the Lord's hold on me was strong.
Then I came to the colony of Judean exiles in Tel Abi beside the Kibar River.
I was overwhelmed and sat among them for seven days.
After seven days, the Lord gave me a message.
He said, son of man.
I have appointed you as a watchman for Israel.
Whenever you receive a message from me, warn people immediately.
If I warn the wicked saying, you are under the penalty of death, but you fail
to deliver the warning, they will die in their sins and I will hold you responsible
for their deaths if you warn them and they refuse to repent and keep on sinning.
They will die in their sins, but you will have saved yourself because you obeyed me.
If righteous people turn away from their righteous behavior
and ignore the obstacles I put in their way, they will die.
And if you do not warn them, they will die in their sins.
None of their righteous acts will be remembered, and I will hold
you responsible for their deaths.
If you warn righteous people not to sin and they listen to you and
do not sin, they will live and you will have saved yourself too.
Then the Lord took hold of me and said, get up and go out into the
valley and I will speak to you there.
So I got up and went, and there I saw the glory of the Lord, just as I had
seen in my first vision by the Key Bar River, and I fell face down on the ground.
Then the spirit came into me and set me on my feet.
He spoke to me and said, go to your house and shut yourself in there, son of man.
You will be tied with ropes, so you cannot go out among the people and I will make
your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be speechless and
unable to rebuke them for they are rebels.
But when I give you a message, I will loosen your tongue and let you speak.
Then you will say to them, this is what the sovereign Lord says.
Those who choose to listen will listen, but those who refuse,
will refuse for they are rebels.
And now, son of man, take a large clay brick and set it down in front of you.
Then draw a map of the city of Jerusalem on it.
Show the city under siege.
Build a wall around it so no one can escape.
Set up the enemy camp and surround the city with siege ramps and battering rams.
Then take an iron griddle and place it between you and the city.
Turn toward the city and demonstrate how harsh the siege will be against Jerusalem.
This will be a warning to the people of Israel.
Now, lie on your left side and place the sins of Israel on yourself.
You are to bear their sins for the number of days you lie there on your side.
I am requiring you to bear Israel's sins for 390 days, one
day for each year of their sin.
After that turnover and lie on your right side for 40 days, one day for
each year of Judah's sin meanwhile keeps staring at the siege of Jerusalem.
Lie there with your arm beared and prophesy her destruction.
I will tie you up with ropes so you won't be able to turn from
side to side until the days of your siege have been completed.
Now go and get some wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and emer wheat
and mix them together in a storage jar.
Use them to make bread for yourself during the 390 days.
You will be lying on your side.
Ration this out to yourself.
Eight ounces of food for each day and eat it at set times.
Then measure out a jar of water for each day and drink it at set times.
Prepare and eat this food as you would barley cakes while
all the people are watching.
Bake it over a fire using dried human dung as fuel, and then eat the bread.
Then the Lord said.
This is how Israel will eat defiled bread in the gentile
lands, to which I will banish them.
Then I said, oh, sovereign Lord must I be defiled by using human dung for
I have never been defiled before from the time I was a child until now.
I have never eaten any animal that died of sickness or was killed by other animals.
I have never eaten any meat forbidden by the law.
All right.
The Lord said you may bake your bread with cow dung instead of human dung.
Then he told me, son of man, I will make food very scarce in Jerusalem.
It'll be weighed out with great care and eaten fearfully.
The water will be rationed out, drop by drop, and the people will drink it With
dismay lacking food and water, people will look at one another in terror.
They will waste away under their punishment.
Son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a razor to shave your head and beard.
Use a scale to weigh the hair into three equal parts.
Place a third of it at the center of your map of Jerusalem.
After acting out the siege, burn it there, scatter another third across
your map and chop it with a sword.
Scatter the last third to the wind for I will scatter my people with the sword.
Keep just a bit of the hair and tie it up in your robe.
Then take some of these hairs out and throw them into the fire.
Burning them up.
A fire will then spread from this remnant and destroy all of Israel.
This is what the sovereign Lord says.
This is an illustration of what will happen to Jerusalem.
I placed her at the center of the Nations, but she has rebelled against my
regulations and decrees and has been even more wicked than the surrounding nations.
She has refused to obey the regulations and decrees I gave her to follow.
Therefore, this is what the sovereign Lord says.
You people have behaved worse than your neighbors and have refused to
obey my decrees and regulations.
You have not even lived up to the standards of the nations around you.
Therefore, I, myself, the sovereign Lord, am now your enemy.
I will punish you publicly while all the nations watch because
of your detestable idols.
I will punish you like I have never punished anyone before or ever will again.
Parents will eat their own children, and children will eat their parents.
I will punish you and scatter to the winds the few who survive.
As surely as I live says the sovereign Lord.
I will cut you off completely.
I will show you no pity at all because you have defiled my temple with your
vile images and detestable sins, a third of your people will die in
the city from disease and famine.
A third of them will be slaughtered by the enemy outside the city walls.
And I will scatter a third to the winds, chasing them with my sword.
Then at last, my anger will be spent and I will be satisfied.
And when my fury against them has subsided, all Israel will know
that I, the Lord, have spoken to them in my jealous anger.
So I will turn you into a ruin, a mockery in the eyes of the surrounding
nations, and to all who pass by.
You will become an object of mockery and taunting and horror.
You will be a warning to all the nations around you.
They will see what happens.
When the Lord punishes a nation in anger and rebukes, it says the Lord,
I will shower you with the deadly arrows of famine to destroy you.
The famine will become more and more severe until every crumb of food
is gone and along with the famine.
Wild animals will attack you and rob you of your children.
Disease and war will stalk your land, and I will bring the
sword of the enemy against you.
I, the Lord, have spoken again.
A message came to me from the Lord, son of man.
Turn and face the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them.
Proclaim this message from the sovereign Lord against the mountains of Israel.
This is what the sovereign Lord says to the mountains and hills
and to the ravines and valleys.
I'm about to bring war upon you, and I will smash your pagan shrines.
All your altars will be demolished and your places of worship will be destroyed.
I will kill your people in front of your idols.
I will lay your corpses in front of your idols and scatter
your bones around your altars.
Wherever you live, there will be desolation and I will
destroy your pagan shrines.
Your altars will be demolished, your idols will be smashed.
Your places of worship will be torn down, and all the religious objects
you have made will be destroyed.
The place will be littered with corpses and you will know that I
alone am the Lord, but I will let a few of my people escape destruction.
They will be scattered among the nations of the world.
Then when they are exiled among the nations, they will remember me.
They will recognize how hurt I am by their unfaithful hearts and lustful
eyes that long for their idols.
Then at last, they will hate themselves for all their detestable sins.
They will know that I alone am the Lord, and that I was serious when I said
I would bring this calamity on them.
This is what the Sovereign Lord says.
Clap your hands in horror and stamp.
Your feet cry out.
Because of all the detestable sins the people of Israel have
committed, now they're going to die from war and famine and disease.
Disease will strike down.
Those who are far away in exile war will destroy those who are nearby and anyone
who survives will be killed by famine.
So at last I will spend my fury on them.
They will know that I am the Lord when their dead life scattered
among their idols and altars on every hill and mountain.
And under every green tree and every great shade tree, the places where
they offered sacrifices to their idols, I will crush them and make their
cities desolate from the wilderness in the south to rib lie in the north.
Then they will know that I am the Lord.
Then this message came to me from the Lord, son of man.
This is what the sovereign Lord says to Israel.
The end is here.
Wherever you look, east, west, north, or south.
Your land is finished.
No hope remains for I will unleash my anger against you.
I will call you to account.
For all your detestable sins, I will turn my eyes away and show no pity.
I will repay you for all your detestable sins.
Then you will know that I am the Lord.
This is what the sovereign Lord says, disaster after
disaster is coming your way.
The end has come, it has finally arrived.
Your final doom is waiting.
Oh people of Israel, the day of your destruction is dawning.
The time has come.
The day of trouble is near Shouts of anguish will be heard on the
mountains, not shouts of joy.
Soon I will pour out my fury on you and unleash my anger against you.
I will call you to account for all your detestable sins.
I will turn my eyes away and show no pity.
I will repay you for all your detestable sins.
Then you will know that it is I the Lord who is striking the blow.
The day of judgment is here.
Your destruction awaits.
The people's wickedness and pride have blossomed to full flower.
Their violence has grown into a rod that will beat them for their wickedness.
None of these proud and wicked people will survive.
All their wealth and prestige will be swept away.
Yes, the time has come.
The day is here.
Buyers should not rejoice over bargains nor sellers Grieve over losses for all of
them will fall under my terrible anger.
Even if the merchants survive, they will never return to their business.
For what God has said applies to everyone, it will not be changed.
Not one person whose life is twisted by sin will ever recover.
The trumpet calls Israel's army to mobilize, but no one listens.
For my fury is against them all.
There is war outside the city and disease and famine.
Within those outside the city.
Walls will be killed by enemy swords.
Those inside the city will die of famine and disease.
The survivors who escape to the mountains will moan like
doves weeping for their sins.
Their hands will hang limp.
Their knees will be weak as water.
They will dress themselves in burlap, horror, and shame will cover them.
They will shave their heads in sorrow and remorse.
They will throw their money in the streets, tossing it
out like worthless trash.
Their silver and gold won't save them on that day of the Lord's anger.
It will neither satisfy nor feed them for their greed can only trip them up.
They were proud of their beautiful jewelry and used it to make
detestable idols and vile images.
Therefore, I will make all their wealth disgusting to them.
I will give it as plunder to foreigners to the most wicked of
nations, and they will defile it.
I will turn my eyes from them as these robbers invade and defile my treasured
land, prepare chains for my people for the land is bloodied by terrible crimes.
Jerusalem is filled with violence.
I will bring the most ruthless of nations to occupy their homes.
I will break down their proud fortresses and defile their sanctuaries, terror,
and trembling will overcome my people.
They will look for peace but not find it.
Calamity will follow calamity.
Rumor will follow rumor.
They will look in vain for a vision from the prophets.
They will receive no teaching from the priests and no counsel from the leaders.
The king and the prince will stand helpless, weeping in despair, and the
people's hands will tremble with fear.
I will bring on them the evil they have done to others.
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They will receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
Then they will know that I am the Lord.
This concludes today's immerse reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.
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