15. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel: Crying Out for God’s People
15
ISAIAH, JEREMIAH, EZEKIEL, AND DANIEL
If they were active in ministry today, the Major Prophets, with the possible exception of Daniel, would be regarded as seriously demented. They were not merely those who appear at outdoor festivals with placards declaring TheEndIsNear! Such activity would have been far too tame. Isaiah walked around naked for three years. The weeping Jeremiah wore a yoke around his neck and broke clay jars and was mocked and ridiculed day and night. Ezekiel lay on his side for more than a year (and that is the least of his apparent antics). Indeed, were they making their rounds today, the prophets would be deemed certifiable.
They hear the voice of God and comply with the directives no matter how bizarre they appear to be. And for all the indignity they endure, their reward is mockery. God in past times had often made strange demands on the patriarchs and judges and kings, but they witnessed the results in military victories and eye-popping miracles. Such was not typically the case with these prophets. Zealous in their faithfulness to God, they fueled their engines on high-octane humiliation.
Isaiah and Ezekiel
Prophets foretell things to come, sometimes in plain Hebrew, other times in religious riddles. Sometimes their words seem to make perfect sense only centuries later in light of subsequent events. Isaiah prophesied words that speak to the military maneuvers and human conditions of his own day and are also fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Jeremiah lamented the destruction of Jerusalem, and today in the Old City, Jews on Fridays read his Lamentations at the Wailing Wall, vowing never to forget the anguish of God’s people so many centuries ago.
Ezekiel’s bizarre visions are so complex as to confound both seers and ordinary citizens of any generation. Daniel, courageous and uncomplicated, is everyone’s favorite prophet, though he too has baffled his readers through the ages, though some zealous present-day Christians confidently use his visions to predict the very day of Christ’s return.
The era of the Major Prophets roughly coincides with the events leading up to the exile and the exile itself. Isaiah (whose contemporaries include Amos, Hosea, and Micah) is the most renowned prophet during King Hezekiah’s reign over Judah prior to the exile, when the Assyrian forces were conquering Israel and preparing to lay siege to Jerusalem. Isaiah’s prophecies relate to the fall of Jerusalem and the subsequent Babylonian captivity, as well as the future return of the Israelites to their land.
How deserted lies the city,
once so full of people!
How like a widow is she,
who once was great among the nations!
She who was queen among the provinces
has now become a slave.
Bitterly she weeps at night,
tears are on her cheeks.
Among all her lovers
there is no one to comfort her.
All her friends have betrayed her;
they have become her enemies.
After affliction and harsh labor,
Judah has gone into exile.
Lamentations 1:1–3 (NIV)
Jeremiah preaches in Judah during the reign of King Josiah. The word of the Lord comes to him more than 150 times during his some sixty years of prophesying. Amid the chaos of foreign occupation, he flees to Egypt in his old age.
The setting for Ezekiel is Babylon, where he is relocated as a result of the second deportation of Jews. Daniel, however, is among the first of the Israelites carted off to Babylon, and King Nebuchadnezzar factors significantly in his story.
Isaiah: Reluctant Prophet
He is a prophet, son of Amoz, whose voice was heard during the reigns—or partial reigns—of four kings of Judah: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. He also delivers prophetic messages beyond the borders of Judah—to enemy tribes as well as the Northern Kingdom of Israel. His wife is also a prophet, and they have two sons: Shear-jashub and his younger brother Maher-shalal-hash-baz, a name bestowed by God—surely not by his mother.
In the year that King Uzziah dies, Isaiah’s prophetic call is confirmed. He sees a grand vision of the Lord high on a throne, dressed in splendor, the train of his robe filling the whole Temple and his shining brightness covering the entire earth. Six-winged angels hover above, singing praises to God. It’s almost too spectacular to look at, until suddenly everything is covered in a cloud of smoke.
Here is Isaiah in the midst of God’s glory, and in an instant it’s gone. The glorious face of God is enveloped in smoke. Isaiah’s first words: “Doom! It’s Doomsday! I’m as good as dead! Every word I’ve ever spoken is tainted—blasphemous even!” He is interrupted by an angel who flies down to him and touches his lips with a burning coal. The angel’s words explain the significance: “Gone your guilt, your sins wiped out.” Then the Lord calls out: “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” With no hesitation, Isaiah responds: “Here am I; send me.”[1]
Only then does Isaiah learn how filled with doom his message will be. He is to warn the people of Judah that both their towns and their countryside will be devastated because of their evil behavior. Later on, after Jotham is no longer on the throne and his son Ahaz is ruling, God speaks to Isaiah again, telling him that he is to meet with Ahaz, accompanied only by his son Shear-jashub. Isaiah conveys to Ahaz he should not be threatened by what he is hearing about planned attacks from his enemies, the Arameans, allied with Israel, the Northern Kingdom.
Ahaz is less than convinced by these prophetic words from Isaiah. He’s preparing for a counterattack and is not about to just sit back and do nothing. Isaiah tells Ahaz to ask for a sign from God to confirm his prophecy. Ahaz demurs. How dare he demand a sign from God? So Isaiah tells him that God will give him a sign anyway, whether he wants one or not. Here is the sign:
A girl who is presently a virgin will get pregnant. She’ll bear a son and name him Immanuel (God-With-Us). By the time the child is twelve years old, able to make moral decisions, the threat of war will be over. Relax, those two kings that have you so worried will be out of the picture. But also be warned: GOD will bring on you and your people and your government a judgment worse than anything since the time the kingdom split, when Ephraim left Judah. The king of Assyria is coming!”[2]
Here Isaiah has prophesied that the lands of Aram and Israel will be destroyed by the mighty Assyrians, but the king and the people of Judah largely ignore him, while at the same time they worry about trivial matters. Isaiah himself might be tempted to dismiss his own words but for God’s continual prodding. “GOD spoke strongly to me,” he testifies, “grabbed me with both hands and warned me not to go along with this people.”[3] Yet there is also a word from God concerning the impending destruction of those same Assyrians.
Isaiah receives another message from God in the year King Ahaz dies—this time, however, not the glorious vision of the Almighty on a throne. Rather, it appears to be a warning to the Philistines not to celebrate too soon the end of their own oppression. There will be a terrible famine, and the population will be decimated. And neither will Moab be spared, nor Damascus (Syria).
In the end Judah will emerge victorious, with a new government that harks back to the time of David. The new leader (possibly King Hezekiah) will be known for compassion and justice. A time of peace will follow. But before then, times will be hard, not for Judah only but also its neighbors Ethiopia and Egypt. Indeed, Isaiah is an international prophet, for he speaks God’s judgment on entire peoples across a vast region.
Isaiah is not one to talk back to God as Job did. He takes God’s orders seriously even when he would no doubt rather run away and hide like Elijah. So when God instructs him to strip naked and go out about town prophesying, that’s exactly what he does—for three years no less. This is God’s way of warning Ethiopia and Egypt of their coming enslavement by the Assyrians. But to people around town it no doubt seems ridiculous—or worse. Indeed, it is amazing he was not arrested for indecent exposure.
Everyday Life
Ailments and Remedies
When Hezekiah is sick unto death with a boil, the remedy of choice is a lump of figs. The Israelites utilized a variety of herbs and roots and other folk medicines. The most frequently referenced healing substance in the Old Testament is the balm of Gilead, used for a variety of ailments. This balm, or balsam, is a gum resin that is found in a thorny flowering shrub native to the Near East. It was used as a healing salve as well as in the making of perfume. Jeremiah uses the term metaphorically: “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?” (Jer. 8:22 NIV).
Few illnesses mentioned in the Old Testament are clearly identified. For example, King Asa suffered from a disease of his feet. His ailment is often presumed to be gout, but it could have been no more than a bad case of athlete’s foot. Nor are Job’s dreadful boils diagnosed apart from the burning itch. Leprosy was a common biblical malady—a most frightful skin disease with no cure, often viewed as a curse from God. And indeed it was so in the case of Moses’ sister Miriam, Elisha’s servant Gehazi and his family, and King Uzziah and his family and descendants.
Sometime later, in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Judah faces a dire political situation due to Assyria’s attack and the capture of Judah’s fortified cities. At one point, Assyrian king Sennacherib sends his top military general to warn Hezekiah not to depend on Egypt for protection. Even with such an ally Judah doesn’t stand a chance against the mighty Assyrian army. The general tries to influence the people to simply give up and make peace with Assyria.
Hezekiah hears the news, and he tears his clothes in anguish, thinking this is Judah’s darkest day. He sends for Isaiah, who brings him a message from God: Calm down. The news isn’t bad after all. Indeed, it is not. God sends his angel of death to decimate the Assyrian camp. Nearly two hundred thousand soldiers die in one day, and the king, after fleeing home to Nineveh, is murdered by his sons.
But no sooner does Hezekiah think things are going his way than he becomes seriously ill. Isaiah shows up with a message from God that this is a terminal illness and Hezekiah should get his affairs in order. As Isaiah leaves, Hezekiah turns to face the wall, and he weeps and prays, begging God to spare his life. While he is still praying, God is speaking to Isaiah, telling him to go back to Hezekiah, for he has heard Hezekiah’s prayer and will give him fifteen more years. In addition he will save Judah from the grip of Assyria. As a sign of God’s promise, the shadow of the sundial moves backward as the sun sets.
Later, when Hezekiah gives the son of the king of Babylon a tour of the palace complex with all its royal treasures, Isaiah reproves him for showing off and prophesies dire consequences. Everything Hezekiah has proudly displayed to the Babylonian delegation will one day be confiscated by the Babylonians themselves.
Isaiah’s prophecies are not all doom and gloom and judgment. He is a good-news prophet with a message of hope and salvation who foretells a glorious Messianic age when God’s Kingdom will rule upon the earth.
Arise, shine, for your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth
and thick darkness is over the peoples,
but the LORD rises upon you
and his glory appears over you.
Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.[4]
And he reminds his hearers of God’s constant faithfulness toward his chosen people despite their betrayal of him.
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you![5]
Jeremiah: Weeping Prophet
Born into a priestly family in the Benjamite town of Anathoth, Jeremiah first hears and delivers God’s word in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah, king of Judah. His prophetic ministry lasts through the reigns of Judah’s two succeeding kings, Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. In addition, God briefly sends him to the northern kingdom as well. He is the son of Hilkiah, who found the lost copy of the Book of the Law and encouraged King Josiah to have it read before the people.
More than any other prophet, he is the one remembered for prophesying the exile. The first message Jeremiah hears from God is very personal: he had been tagged for ministry even before he was born. His response is reminiscent of that of Moses, though in this case, the excuse is youth: “I don’t know anything. I’m only a boy!”[6]
God is tender with him, telling him not to be afraid. Then going a step further, he touches his mouth and says: “Look! I’ve just put my words in your mouth—hand-delivered!”[7] The words Jeremiah is to deliver are declarations of doom on Israel. His assignment is not easy. Among other things, he is to compare Israel with an unfaithful wife who runs off with another man—maybe more than one. “And isn’t that what you’ve done—‘whored’ your way with god after god? And now you want to come back as if nothing had happened.”[8]
Calling out this message of doom sometimes really gets to Jeremiah. Nobody is listening: “It’s hopeless! Their ears are stuffed with wax—deaf as a post, blind as a bat.”[9] He is convinced the message is all too true and becomes depressed and wishes he could get away from it all. He laments,
I wish my head were a well of water
and my eyes fountains of tears,
So I could weep day and night
for casualties among my dear, dear people.
At times I wish I had a wilderness hut,
a backwoods cabin,
Where I could get away from my people
and never see them again.[10]
Yet Jeremiah is told not to pray for his dear, dear people. Later on Jeremiah is less inclined to think of his audience as dear people. He realizes that they are out to get him. Indeed, God confirms to him that conspirators in his hometown of Anathoth are plotting his murder.
In this context, Jeremiah raises the fairness issue with God. He lives with death threats while the wicked prosper. Why? he wonders. And much more personally, it seems God doesn’t overlook any of his flaws. God essentially tells him not to be so impatient. Their time is coming. In the meantime he must continue preaching. He hasn’t seen the worst of it. As for Jeremiah himself, he must keep his wits about him and remain calm.
Sometimes God gives Jeremiah object lessons to prove his point. On one occasion Jeremiah is instructed to purchase a pair of linen undershorts and to wear them, not removing them for washing. Later he is told to take the shorts to Parath and hide them between two rocks and after a period of time go and fetch them. They are nearly decomposed. So it will also be, God tells him, with Judah—a one-time proud nation that will become as soiled and decayed as his underpants.
Things will be so bad that God warns Jeremiah not to get married, not to even think of having a family. The doom is deserved—so much so that Jeremiah is told not to attend burials or grieve with those who have lost loved ones. In fact, he is to abandon any social get-togethers. No feasting or celebrations. Rather, he should stand out in the marketplace and preach the necessity of Sabbath keeping.
Again on God’s orders, Jeremiah goes to a potter’s shop. As he observes, he notices a piece turning on the wheel that has flaws, so the potter starts over with the same hunk of clay. This is how it is, God tells him. If the people repent, he won’t cast them out; rather, he will mold them into a fine piece of pottery. But God is not done with his pottery object lesson. He tells Jeremiah to go back and purchase a clay pot. Then he is to gather together some of the leaders and preach God’s call to repent, culminating with a warning of what will happen if they do not. He smashes the pot right before their eyes. That is their doom.
Jeremiah in deep contemplation
The leaders—priests included—are not amused by such dire threats. They blame the messenger. The chief Temple priest, after listening to one of Jeremiah’s sermons, lashes him and locks him in stocks at one of the Temple gates. But even when locked up, Jeremiah keeps preaching God’s doom on the priest and his family and all of Judah. They will all be hauled off into exile.
Jeremiah’s outward confidence contrasts with his private humiliation. It’s awful. Why does God do this to him?
You pushed me into this, GOD, and I let you do it.
You were too much for me.
And now I’m a public joke.
They all poke fun at me.
Every time I open my mouth
I’m shouting, “Murder!” or “Rape!”
And all I get for my GOD-warnings
are insults and contempt.[11]
Jeremiah wants to give up. He’s exhausted. It’s painful being a prophet. Friends from long ago are scorning him. Yet he is of two minds. God is powerful and is on his side. Praise God! But then again, life is grim. Like Job, he curses the day he was born. No, rather it would have been better if his mother had miscarried and he would have had the good fortune of having died in the womb.
Like Nehemiah and others before him, Jeremiah speaks God’s message of justice. To Zedekiah, the king of Judah, he declares: “Attend to matters of justice. . . . Rescue victims from their exploiters. Don’t take advantage of the homeless, the orphans, the widows. Stop the murdering!”[12] Only then will Zedekiah follow in the line of King David. And later Jeremiah rails against Zedekiah and the residents of Jerusalem for reneging on their covenant promise to free their slaves.
On another occasion God gives Jeremiah an object lesson, showing him two baskets of figs, one filled with the best available on the market, the other with spoiled figs. The first is God’s assurance of good treatment to those in exile in Babylon; the second is how God will treat the king, his henchmen, and all the rest who have stayed behind in Judah.
Everywhere Jeremiah goes he faces opposition. Later he is preaching a sermon of doom in the Temple. Hardly has he given the benediction when he is attacked by the crowd—priests, prophets, and ordinary people. They charge him with blaspheming the Temple because he is saying it will become a pile of ruins. They have no other choice. He must die. But in the end he is spared by officials who take him at his word, convinced that he is preaching God’s message.
Jeremiah is certainly not the only prophet in the land. Time and again he faces off with them, each claiming the other is preaching a false message. Hananiah is one such opponent. When Jeremiah is going around wearing a harness and yoke to show how the king and the people will be under the yoke of Babylon, Hananiah yanks it off Jeremiah’s shoulders and shatters it on the ground—telling the crowd that the yoke of Babylon will be smashed in the same way. But God, through Jeremiah, has the last word. Within a year Hananiah will be dead.
While warning of doom to fall on the king and others who have remained behind, Jeremiah sends words of hope to those in exile. They are to settle in and establish homes and gardens and families—and be loyal to Babylon. They should look forward to coming back home, but not before the prophesied seventy years in exile.
At one point in his prophetic ministry, Jeremiah travels from Jerusalem to a region in the tribe of Benjamin for personal matters. There his political loyalties are questioned, and he is hauled in by law enforcement and incarcerated in an underground dungeon. After a lengthy imprisonment, King Zedekiah, fearing Jeremiah may actually have a pipeline to God, frees him from the dungeon and places him under palace house arrest.
But Jeremiah is surely not yet out of the woods. The king’s highest officials want him put to death for prophesying the imminent destruction of Jerusalem. The king gives in to their demands and turns Jeremiah over to them. They are not satisfied with merely killing him. Torture is their aim. They take him out to an old cistern no longer in use. With ropes they lower him deep down into the mud, which will serve as his tomb.
When the king learns of this plot to torture him, however, he orders his Ethiopian palace officer to procure a small team of men to rescue Jeremiah and bring him back to the palace. Taking Jeremiah aside in private, the king questions him about his prophecies. Jeremiah pointedly tells him to surrender to the forces of Babylon in order to prevent his own destruction and that of his family and the entire city.
The king ignores his counsel and suffers the consequences. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon attacks Jerusalem, overrunning the city. Zedekiah, his sons, and his top officials escape but all are hunted down and killed, except the king, who is tortured and taken captive to Babylon. Before the carnage is over, Jerusalem is in ruins and its citizens are taken into exile. Jeremiah, however, is given special treatment.
In addition to his prophecies against Judah and her kings, Jeremiah preaches destruction and doom against nearly every other nation and people in the region—even the Babylonians, their captors.
When given the opportunity to go with the exiles to Babylon or to remain in Judah, Jeremiah decides to remain. Jerusalem had met its destruction, but the towns and countryside are largely unaffected. He is free to reside wherever he wishes. He speaks, with God’s authority, informing the leaders remaining in Judah that they and the people should not make an exodus to Egypt.
But, par for the course, they ignore Jeremiah’s prophecy, and many make their way to Egypt, taking Jeremiah with them. There he sets up stones and declares God’s word: “I’m sending for and bringing Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon—my servant, mind you!—and he’ll set up his throne on these very stones that I’ve had buried here and he’ll spread out his canopy over them. He’ll come and absolutely smash Egypt.”[13]
Jeremiah goes on to prophesy that those who had come to Egypt against God’s command would be slaughtered or die of starvation. At the same time, those in exile will soon be able to return home safely and rebuild all that is in ruins. This is good news, and Jeremiah does remind them that God still is their covenant Lord despite their ruined cities and their own exile. But most of what Jeremiah has prophesied is bad news—particularly the destruction of Jerusalem. For this terrible series of events, he writes his Lamentations, the words of the “weeping prophet,” the name by which he has become most well known. But more than weeping, Jeremiah should be remembered as the suffering prophet. There is no record of his death, but it is presumed that he died while in Egypt.
Ezekiel: Visions of Wheels and Dry Bones
Ezekiel’s fantastic visions are what distinguish him from the other prophets. At the age of thirty, the heavens open up and he sees God. Not the magnificent, anthropomorphic God of Michelangelo’s paintings. Rather, an undomesticated, electrifying God of a special-effects action film. Ezekiel is not necessarily the kind of person one would associate with such visionary spectacles. He is no wild and crazy prophet living in desert caves. Ezekiel is a priest, the son of Buzi. His waterfront residence is on the Kebar River in the beautiful city of Babylon, where many of his fellow Jews are in exile.
The task that was assigned to Ezekiel was to prophesy to the exiles of Judah, who had been carried away into captivity in distant Babylonia. It was an audience close to despair, asking why this disaster had come on them and where God was in the middle of their personal holocaust. Their assessment of their own conditions was: “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off” (Ezek. 37:11). What use was a God who seemed unable or unwilling to protect his own land? What use was a God who allowed his own temple in Jerusalem to be defiled? What use was a God who allowed his own people to be carried away from the land he had promised to the patriarchs? Even if he were to intervene now on behalf of his land, how would that help those who were far away in exile? These were the questions with which the exiles struggled.
The answers to these questions permeate the book.
The vision God sets before him is spectacular, if not scary. He looks up and sees a fireball within a tornado, and inside the fire are four figures with columned legs, each creature with four wings and four faces, part human and part animal. Fire and lightning are everywhere, and beside these figures are wheels—and more wheels flashing and spinning like helicopter blades. And above all this there is a huge, skylike dome. The flapping wings of the creatures are deafening, like the roar of a waterfall and the booming of battlefield cannons.
Ezekiel falls on his face and hears a voice calling him to preach to the rebellious house of Israel. God tells him he will be treated very badly, making him feel as though he is being attacked by scorpions. Then he is told to open his mouth and eat what is handed to him. No tasty food for Ezekiel to inaugurate his ministry. Rather, a scroll with a message of doomsday. But amazingly enough, the book tastes like a honeycomb.
God gives Ezekiel, whom he calls Son of man, the message. But Ezekiel is to make the words his own as though he is carried away by the spirit. Such a condition might have filled him with the joy of the Lord. It doesn’t; he’s outraged and distraught. Why couldn’t God have picked on someone else? His life is routine and peaceful. The last thing he wants is controversy and conflict. He goes out along the Kebar River and sits there for a week. Then God speaks to him again. More than that, he yanks him up by the shoulder and tells him to get out into the country on the plain, where God can talk to him again.
Again he sees God’s glory like he had seen before. He falls before God, and the Spirit comes on him and tells him to go home, where he will be bound with ropes and will be tongue-tied. When God unties the ropes and his tongue, he will be ready to preach. Then God tells him to do something truly bizarre. He is to lie on his side for 390 days, representing the same number in years that the Israelite exiles have been living in sin. By this enactment God is telling him that he must bear the sin of Israel and that he is responsible for their salvation.
God goes on to give him instructions on preparing his food during this more-than-yearlong confinement. Ezekiel protests. God relents on one issue, agreeing that he will not be forced to bake his bread over human dung. All this is done in preparation for God’s warning of an impending famine.
Sometimes Ezekiel prophesies terrifying events that make the people shudder, as when he declares: “I’m going to do something to you that I’ve never done before and will never do again: turn families into cannibals—parents eating children, children eating parents!”[14] After that God decrees that all but a few of the people will die one way or another. Only then will God’s wrath be assuaged.
Again Ezekiel is swept into the heavens by the Spirit. There he sees more visions, including pornographic images of Asherah, the sex goddess. More visions appear of people worshiping false gods, and still more of angels and people being slaughtered. All the while the Spirit of God is sweeping him off his feet and taking him from one place to another in Jerusalem and then back to Babylon.
Ezekiel receives more visions and pursues his thankless task, but the people are unmoved. In their mind he is no more than a crank, and his message a broken record, same old, same old. But God does not let up on him. He is to preach whether the people listen or not. To complicate matters, there are competing prophets—both men and women—with popular appeal. Ezekiel is commanded to oppose them to their face.
Poor Ezekiel. God continues to make severe demands of him. He is told to endure the death of his dearly beloved wife, but not to mourn. What an awful sacrifice this is. For the Jewish people, mourning is not simply the shedding of tears. It is a long-established, ritualized custom. He is to use this shocking cultural faux pas as an illustration of how God regards Israel’s spiritual death.
Sometimes Ezekiel’s prophecies are parables, as in the case of the two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah, representing Samaria and Jerusalem, capitals of Israel and Judah. The sisters became “whores from a young age. Their breasts were fondled, their young bosoms caressed.” Oholibah, the youngest, is looser than her sister, “crazy with lust” and “incredibly filthy,” going “public with her fornication” and displaying “her sex to the world.” All this “whetted her appetite for more virile, vulgar, and violent lovers—stallions obsessive in their lust.” In the end both sisters are “worn-out whores,” having been abused by their Assyrian and Babylonian lovers.[15]
Ezekiel preaching and prophesying
At other times Ezekiel soars into poetic ecstasy:
A great eagle
with a huge wingspan and long feathers
. . . took a cutting from the land
and planted it in good, well-watered soil,
like a willow on a riverbank.[16]
Again, he writes:
Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard,
transplanted alongside streams of water,
Luxurious in branches and grapes . . .
fit to be carved into a royal scepter.
It grew high, reaching into the clouds.[17]
Clearly the most colorful of the prophets, Ezekiel is not only a priest but also a preacher and an actor. The images he sees in the heavens are displays of spectacular wonder, but it is his own creative genius that allows him to transmit God’s message to the people in such multilayered richness. His pleas and accusations are filled with metaphors and glittering images of emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, and costly silks. Perfume, incense, and oil serve as aroma therapy. But then with no warning, the listeners gag over an image of a bloody infant, and they cringe as he spews forth invective on whores, fornication, brothels, and pornography.
Ezekiel’s most memorable vision calls forth the valley of dry bones. Imagine peering into a valley—once a city—whose only residents are bones. God instructs him to prophesy to these bones. Bones? They are the remains of dead people. How could bones possibly hear his voice? But the bones are a metaphor for the people. They have no life left in them. They have simply dried out. Now Ezekiel is telling them that they can live again—a message for God’s backslidden people of any time or place.
Daniel: Surviving a Furnace, a Lion Den, and Bad Dreams
An Israelite in exile, he might have gone unnoticed and blended in with all the other young men of the city. But King Nebuchadnezzar is looking for the cream of the crop—young men who meet the qualifications for leadership positions. They will receive the best Babylonian training—and propaganda—money can buy. Daniel is one such young man. He is from a blueblood family in Judah with ties to nobility. Possessing a brilliant mind and the recipient of a rigorous education, he is athletic, good-looking, and brimming with health.
Transformation is what the king has in mind. A Babylonian name change is a requisite. From that point on he will be known as Belteshazzar. Also necessary is language and cultural immersion—no more confining himself to the Jewish ghetto. He needs to become part of Babylonian society, and, in particular, he must develop a deep familiarity with the magic arts. Finally, a special diet. The menu will be the same as that of the king—the most delectable dishes and the most expensive wines.
It is an opportunity of a lifetime. Daniel, along with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, is chosen out of all the young male Israelite exiles. But he balks—particularly over the required diet. The cultural immersion program he can deal with—so also the name change. But he is determined not to eat the king’s food, heavy on meat and sweets. It simply is not the proper diet for a Jewish youth devoted to God.
Defying the king, however, does not seem to be in his own best interest. But he has found favor with the palace director, who is willing to comply with Daniel’s dietary preferences. He is concerned, however, that such a diet might make him weak and pale in comparison to those who eat the king’s food. Daniel talks to the head of food services and arranges for a plain and simple vegetarian fare for him and his three friends.
At the end of ten days these four young men look healthier than those eating from the king’s menu. So they carry on with their diet. But they do not only stand out in matters of health. They learn quickly and pass all the tests with flying colors. In fact, Daniel and his friends rank highest in everything. Moreover, they excel in knowledge of visions and dream interpretation. The king finds them far more capable than his own magicians and seers.
Daniel’s reputation catches the attention of King Nebuchadnezzar, who is having nightmares so troubling that he can hardly sleep at all and cannot remember in the morning what he had dreamt. His own magicians are at their wit’s end. The king is furious. If they are truly fortune-tellers, why can’t they tell him what his dreams were and what they mean? He is so outraged that he orders the execution of all so-called diviners, including Daniel and his three friends.
Daniel immediately sends a message to the king that he wants a shot at interpreting his dreams. When the king questions Daniel’s competency, wondering why he thinks he can do what the royal diviners cannot, Daniel tells him that no human being possesses such psychic powers. Only God. He then proceeds to tell the king that his vision was of a giant statue of a man made from head to toe of various metals—gold, silver, bronze, iron. In the dream a boulder hits the statue and crumbles it to bits, while the boulder becomes a massive mountain.
The interpretation, Daniel informs the king, is that the statue stands for a series of empires, including his own, which will be overcome by other kingdoms. Eventually the realm will deteriorate and crumble altogether. In the end, however, God’s kingdom will rule forever. Amazingly, Nebuchadnezzar not only accepts Daniel’s words as true but falls before him and worships Daniel’s God.
Now in the king’s favor, Daniel is put in charge of the palace complex, with his three friends in lesser positions. Things go well until the king decides to have his sculptors erect a ninety-foot gold statue. It is a sight to behold, but it has more than aesthetic qualities. On the day of its dedication the people are expected to fall on their knees and worship it. The penalty for defying the order is time-out in a furnace.
Not surprisingly, Daniel and his three friends do not comply. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are reported and brought before the king. When threatened, they stand their ground, insisting that God will keep them safe—even in a furnace.
The king is upset with their defiance and orders that the furnace be stoked up much hotter than usual and that the men be tied up. But getting the three young men inside turns out to be such an ordeal that the guards commissioned to carry out the dastardly deed are scorched to death. Daniel’s three friends, however, are not even singed.
But what happens next is most stunning. The king looks into the fire and declares that he sees four men walking around in the fire unharmed, one of whom has the appearance of a god. The king orders them to come out of the furnace, recognizing that their God has saved them. In fact, he makes a proclamation forbidding any abuse of their God.
More than that, Nebuchadnezzar becomes a short-term evangelist, telling people what God has done for him. He praises God for his miracles and for his kingdom, which will last forever. But the king soon realizes that his commitment to God doesn’t mean that he will have no more nightmares. Hardly has his praise of God spread over the land before he endures another frightful night of dreaming. Again he summons his diviners. None can interpret his dream. So he calls for Daniel.
In the dream a magnificent fruit tree is growing toward the sky, with limbs stretching across the world, giving shelter to birds and animals of all kinds. A man is coming down from heaven, ordering that the tree be cut down and denuded. The birds and animals are to be scattered. All that is to remain is a stump along with the roots. And something else: there’s a man in the dream acting and looking like an animal.
Daniel interprets it. Immediately he knows this dream is not about foreign empires and kings. It is about Nebuchadnezzar himself. The tree, Daniel tells the king, represents his rule over his vast realm. God, however, has put judgment on him. Not only will his realm be chopped down, but he himself will essentially be driven insane, living with wild animals and grazing on the grass of the field. This will continue for seven years.
Daniel is bold in delivering God’s message and advises the king to turn from his wicked ways and look after the needs of the poor. Nebuchadnezzar is indeed punished. He does lose his mind, eat grass, and look less than human with his disheveled hair of feathers and his clawlike feet. Once his seven-year sentence is over, however, he is a reformed man, back to ruling his expanded kingdom, but now again singing praises to God.
Visions and dreams are not the stuff of royalty alone. Daniel is a dreamer himself—though hardly of what might be described as sweet dreams. The first dream he records is a night terror. Four beasts rise out of the sea—a winged lion, a bear, a panther with four wings and four heads, and a ferocious ten-horned dragon. As the dream progresses, flaming thrones come into view, and also an Old One dressed in white with a vast multitude of servants. Then there is a trial of sorts, with the monster thrown into the fire. Finally, a man descends from the clouds, and the Old One bestows on him the power to reign eternally.
So troubled is Daniel that he asks a passerby what his dream means. The fellow offers an elaborate interpretation without any prodding. One ruler will displace another until finally the people of God will reign forever. The interpretation terrifies Daniel as much as did the dream itself, but he tells no one about it.
Two years later Daniel records another dream. This time he sees a ram with large, uneven horns. It charges in all directions, defeating every foe. Then Daniel sees a single-horned, flying billy goat charge and overcome the ram. After that the billy goat increases to a massive size, all the while sprouting new horns, one of which reaches to heaven and throws stars down and tramples them in defiance of God. Daniel learns from an angel that this desecration will last twenty-three hundred evenings and mornings.
Daniel is befuddled. This vision, he learns, relates to the end times, but he cannot make sense of it. He is very much troubled as he fasts and prays and repents, not for himself only but for all of God’s people. He is in the midst of his intense devotional time when suddenly the angel Gabriel comes flying in. Gabriel’s mission is to visit Daniel and clarify the future, particularly the seventy sevens of time (sixty-two of which the people will be spending rebuilding Jerusalem and getting right with God). This vision will intrigue end-time preachers into the twenty-first century.
When Nebuchadnezzar dies he is succeeded by his son Belshazzar, who continues the worship of false gods. During a lavish banquet, when he and his guests are more than merry with wine, he sees a ghostly hand writing on the wall. Terrified, he recognizes this immediately as an evil omen. Remembering his father’s troubles, announced by visionary warnings, he summons all the court magicians. They come up dry—no clue as to what the writing portends. When the queen hears of the king’s alarm, she hurries to the ballroom to remind him of Daniel.
Belshazzar seems to have forgotten all about him. When Daniel is summoned, the king inquires if he is the same Daniel who had interpreted his father’s dreams. If so, Belshazzar is confident the mystery will be solved. He requests a repeat performance and offers generous compensation—a royal robe, complete with a gold necklace. Daniel will also be restored to his high position of power.
Daniel eagerly accepts the challenge, but he tells the king that he desires no remuneration. Then he begins dressing down the king, pointing out that he is just as bad as, maybe even worse than, his father had been. Indeed, his guests are drinking from chalices pillaged from the Temple in Jerusalem, offering toasts to their false gods.
So what is the meaning of the writing on the wall? First of all, God is saying that King Belshazzar’s days are numbered. Secondly, when his worth is weighed on the balancing scale, it is not impressive. Thirdly, his realm is now to be divided between the Medes and Persians.
Another king might have locked Daniel in prison. Not Belshazzar. He carries out his promises of remuneration to Daniel, who backs down and accepts. Now donned in a royal robe and a gold chain necklace, he steps into his high court position. But he wakes the next morning to learn that the king has been murdered. The Medes are now in control, and Darius is king.
With the changing of the guard, Daniel might have easily found himself on the losing end. But he is one of three top administrators who supervise regional governors. So resourceful and competent is he that Darius promotes him to second in command. The other administrators and governors resent him and vow to undermine his efforts. They know where Daniel is vulnerable. He is unconventional, insisting on worshiping his God and none other.
So they plot together and request an audience with the king. They praise him as though he is a god and then suggest that he issue a proclamation dedicating thirty days of prayer to one god only. The god they have in mind is Darius himself. Defiance of the decree, they propose, will mean time-out not in a fiery furnace, but something more interesting—a lions’ den. Darius snaps at the proposal, and marks it with his irreversible stamp of approval.
No sooner has Darius stamped the decree than Daniel is reported for defying the king’s irreversible proclamation—praying to his own God publicly no less than three times a day. The king is beside himself and seeks to weasel out of his irreversible decree. Surely he can figure out some way to exempt his most trusted advisor. But the conniving administrators hold him to the law—his own law. So Daniel is unceremoniously ushered into a dungeonlike cave occupied by hungry lions, heavily secured on all sides. There is no way of escape.
Daniel realizes that his friend Darius is guilty of gross arrogance, but surely not malice. Unbeknownst to Daniel, the king is so upset he refuses any food in order to fast and pray through the night. At dawn he rushes to the lions’ den, fearing the worst. Instead he hears Daniel’s greeting and his story of how an angel of the Lord entered the den and clamped shut the mouth of each and every lion.
Darius celebrates the occasion by ordering all those involved in the scheme against Daniel to try their own hands at taming lions—the administrators, their wives, and their children. Within a matter of minutes they are all ripped apart and eaten by the ravenous beasts. With that accomplished, he decrees that everyone in the realm is required to worship Daniel’s God. Life continues to go well for Daniel in the years that follow, even on through the reign of Cyrus.
Daniel continues to have visions, the interpretation of which comes by special revelation from God. Daniel spends three weeks mourning over Jerusalem’s sin, depriving himself of tasty food and taking no baths. As this period comes to an end, he is with some companions on the bank of the Tigris River. Suddenly a larger-than-life human figure with a deep voice appears in front of him, his legs straddling the river. His companions see nothing, but they scatter in great fright.
On hearing the voice, Daniel faints dead away. The angelic man then pulls him up and tells him he has been sent with a message that there are wars to be fought—apparently both in heaven and on earth, where kingdoms rise and fall. The angel continues on and on about specific future events. Daniel is dumbstruck. His mind is numb.
Then suddenly two more men appear, one on each side of the river, wondering about the time span for all the events. The angelic figure straddling the river answers that it will be three and a half times. Daniel doesn’t get it. When he asks for an explanation, he is told not to concern himself with it. He doesn’t. Nevertheless, the angelic riddle has captured end-times speculators ever since.
There is no record of the remainder of Daniel’s life or of his death. He is simply left standing along the bank of the Tigris River.
Concluding Observations
It might be natural to imagine that Old Testament prophecy is irrelevant and utterly boring. But a glimpse into the lives of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel proves otherwise. They were in many respects ordinary men. What sets them apart, more than anything else, is their absolute belief in God—or nearly absolute. They seem to almost blindly follow God’s orders. They do not question the voice of God—even when that voice is telling them to do utterly outlandish things.
Isaiah spends three years preaching au naturel. Jeremiah preaches to constant scoffing. Ezekiel tells of jaw-dropping visions that make the hearers’ heads spin. Daniel (as do the other three) boldly transmits God’s bad news to powerful kings.
They were prophets for their own time as well as for times to come. Jesus freely quoted from them, as did other New Testament figures. Indeed, one might ask how the Gospel of Matthew would stand up without Isaiah’s prophetic voice.
Further Reading
Baldwin, Joyce G. Daniel. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. D. J. Wiseman, General Editor. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1978.
Beckwith, Carl, ed. Ezekiel, Daniel. Reformation Commentary on Scripture, vol. 12. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2012.
Brueggemann, Walter. A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.
Motyer, J. Alec. The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction & Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993.