Scripture Daily

Context No. 1400 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 20:32-38: in context

32“‘“That which comes into your mind will not be at all, in that you say, ‘We will be as the nations, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone.’ 33As I live,” says the Lord GOD, “surely with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out, I will be king over you. 34I will bring you out from the peoples, and will gather you out of the countries in which you are scattered with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out. 35I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face. 36Just as I entered into judgment with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment with you,” says the Lord GOD. 37“I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant. 38I will purge out from among you the rebels and those who disobey me. I will bring them out of the land where they live, but they shall not enter into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the LORD.”

God confronts a desire in his people's hearts. What is in your mind shall never come to pass, he says, when you say, we will be like the nations, like the peoples of other lands, serving wood and stone. As surely as I live, God declares, I will be king over you. I will bring you out from the peoples, gather you from the lands where you are scattered, and bring you into the wilderness, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face. I will make you pass under the rod and bring you into the bond of the covenant, purging out the rebels, so that you will know that I am the LORD.

The desire God names and refuses is the wish to be like the nations, to blend in, to be as the peoples of other lands. It is a very human longing, the desire not to be different, not to stand out, to melt into the crowd and be like everyone else; and Israel, tired of the burden of being a peculiar people, wanted simply to be ordinary, to worship what everyone else worshiped, to stop being set apart. God's answer is blunt: it shall never happen. He will not release his people into anonymity among the nations; he claims them, insists on reigning over them, will not let them dissolve into the crowd. There is something to notice in that refusal, hard as its wording is here. It is the refusal of a God who will not let go of his own, who would rather bring them through the wilderness and the rod than allow them to disappear into the mass of the nations. The pull to be like everyone else, to shed the difference that belonging to God makes and simply fit in, is strong in every generation of his people; and God's response is that he has claimed us and will not let us blend away. Being set apart is not a burden he will release us from because we find it inconvenient; it is the mark of belonging to him, and he holds us to it because he holds on to us.

Do I long, like Israel, to be like everyone else, to shed the difference that belonging to God makes and simply blend in, and can I accept that God will not let go of his own, that being set apart is the mark of his holding on to me?

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