Tuesday
Tuesday
Sin and Judgment
Your countrymen say, “The way of the Lord is not just.” But it is their way that is not just.
Ezekiel 33:17
If one reads straight through the middle chapters of Ezekiel (4–24), there is no doubt of their dominant thought. It is human sin and divine judgment—on the one hand, an exposure of Israel’s sin and, on the other, a justification of God’s judgment. Moreover, the sins that Ezekiel exposes are clearly breaches of both tablets of the Ten Commandments.
Firstly, God’s people were not loving God with all their being. Instead, when Ezekiel paid his visionary visit to Jerusalem, he was horrified by the idolatrous images he found even in the temple itself. “Evil abominations” he called them (6:11 NRSV). Men and women, priests and laypeople, were desecrating God’s house. One group had turned their backs on the temple and their faces toward the east, prostrating themselves before the sun (8:16). Others were worshiping at the high places of Canaanite fertility religion. Some did not even stop short of the horrors of child sacrifice. Moreover, theirs was no superficial idolatry; they had “set up idols in their hearts” (14:3).
Secondly, God’s people were not loving their neighbor. They had “fill[ed] the land with violence” (8:17). They had failed to care for the poor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and secure justice for the oppressed. Worse still, they had gained a reputation for Jerusalem as “the city of bloodshed” (22:2), which is what the prophet Nahum had called Nineveh (Nah. 3:1), because so much innocent blood was being shed in it.
Since the word idols is the acme of sin against God, and blood is the acme of sin against our neighbor, one could not sink lower than to combine the two, and this was Ezekiel’s accusation: “You … look to your idols and shed blood” (33:25; see also 36:18). Such was the record of the rebellious house of Israel. No wonder they had driven Yahweh far from his sanctuary (8:6) and caused his glory to depart.
For further reading: Ezekiel 14:1–8