diff --git a/content/bible_journal/ezekiel_20:1-32.md b/content/bible_journal/ezekiel_20:1-32.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0c4746b --- /dev/null +++ b/content/bible_journal/ezekiel_20:1-32.md @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ ++++ +title = "Ezekiel 20:1–32" +date = "2023-04-20" ++++ + +### [Read the passage.](https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Ezekiel20.1-32) + +It has now been almost a year since Ezekiel was taken to Jerusalem in a vision +to see the abominations the people were doing there, and the desctruction the +Lord caused there. (_ch. 8_) The date given in chapter 20 means the tenth of +Ab, which corresponds to August, 591 b.c. Interestingly, this is precisely five years before +Ezekiel's vision is fulfilled, and the Babylonians sack Jerusalem for real. I +don't think this is more significant than a coincidence, but it is nice to know +that we can date things this accurately even so long ago. + +On this date, the elders of Israel again come to Ezekiel to inquire something +from the Lord. However, because of the sins Israel has committed, the Lord +refuses to answer their question. Instead, He reviews Israel's history of +idolatry, which persisted throughout their entire time as a nation. While they +lived in Egypt they worshipped the Egyptian idols, so the Lord told them to +cast them away when He brought them out. He gave them His Law and statutes, +representend in this text as the Sabbath, which should have brought them life, +but they profaned and disobeyed them. + +After an entire generation of Israelites died in the wilderness outside the +Promised Land, the Lord charged their children not to walk in the ways of their +fathers. But they failed and continued in the same sins. Every time the Lord +describes the failure of the people, He threatens to wipe them out completely +in judgement, but then He relents because His name would be profaned among the +nations. Instead He judges them with exile and scattering them away from the +land, as Moses predicted before they ever entered the Promised Land. + +Israel had even gone so far as to pervert the statutes the Lord had given them. +Back when He made the covenant with Israel, He told them to devote their +firstborn children as holy to the Lord, but they should use an animal as a +substitute sacrifice, because God has never actually wanted us to sacrifice our +children to Him. Somehow Israel forgot that last part, and offered their +children up as burnt offerings, possibly to Yahweh, but definitely to the +Caananite god Molech. + +The Lord lists all these things and presents His case against the elders of +Israel. They, representing the whole nation, persist in idolatry still, so they +have no grounds to inquire what the Lord wants them to do. They have already +been told and don't do it now, so why should they hear more? + +* * * + +How great is your patience and long-suffering, O God, to deal with sinners like +us.