Scripture Daily

Context No. 614 of 4322 · Ezekiel

Context · Reflection

Ezekiel 20:21-26: in context

21“‘“But the children rebelled against me. They didn’t walk in my statutes, and didn’t keep my ordinances to do them, which if a man does, he shall live in them. They profaned my Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them, to accomplish my anger against them in the wilderness. 22Nevertheless I withdrew my hand and worked for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I brought them out. 23Moreover I swore to them in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, 24because they had not executed my ordinances, but had rejected my statutes, and had profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers’ idols. 25Moreover also I gave them statutes that were not good, and ordinances in which they couldn’t live. 26I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused all that opens the womb to pass through the fire, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the LORD.”’

This is a hard stretch of a hard chapter, in which God recounts the long history of Israel's rebellion in the wilderness, generation after generation refusing his commands and profaning his Sabbaths. Some of its verses are among the most difficult in the Bible; when God says he gave them over to statutes that were not good, the honest reading is that, because they persistently rejected his good law, he handed his rebellious people over to the deadly practices they preferred, letting their chosen path run to its horrific end. I will not pretend that is easy or comfortable. But running through the whole grim recital is a refrain worth pulling out, because it reveals the ground of God's mercy. Again and again, God says: nevertheless I withdrew my hand, and acted for my name's sake.

Notice what that phrase does and does not say. It does not say God withheld the judgment they deserved because they had improved, or repented, or earned a reprieve. They had done none of those things. He withheld it for his name's sake, out of his commitment to his own character and reputation before the nations. His mercy, again and again, rested not on anything in them but on something in himself. That is a sobering thought, and also, on reflection, a deeply reassuring one. The restraint of God toward a rebellious people was anchored in his own name, not in their deserving, which meant it did not rise and fall with their performance.

That reaches the ground of my own hope more directly than I usually admit. When I ask why God would keep being patient with me, keep withholding what I have earned, keep his hand of judgment back, my instinct is to look for some merit in myself, and to despair when I cannot find it. Ezekiel points somewhere steadier: God acts for his name's sake. His mercy toward me is grounded in his own character and his commitment to his name, not in my deserving, which means it rests on something far more secure than I am. Do I ground my hope in my own shaky deserving, or in the God who, again and again, withholds judgment and shows mercy for his name's sake?

Sources