Ezekiel

No. 25 Ezekiel 29:13-21
Ezekiel was a priest among the Jews deported to Babylon, and much of his book is a run of oracles against the nations around Israel, Egypt among them. Egypt was the power Judah kept hoping would save it from...
No. 46 Ezekiel 42:1-9
Ezekiel was a priest deported to Babylon before Jerusalem fell, and he never saw the temple again. The last nine chapters of his book are a vision of a new one, given to him in exile, and it arrives as an...
No. 76 Ezekiel 20:1-7
It is the seventh year of the exile, and some of the elders of Israel come to sit in front of Ezekiel and inquire of the LORD. This was normal practice. You went to a prophet, you asked, you received a word....
No. 81 Ezekiel 26:15-21
Tyre was the great Phoenician port, a merchant city built partly on an island off the coast, rich from trade across the Mediterranean. When Jerusalem fell, Tyre's reaction was to see an opening in the market....
No. 145 Ezekiel 37:15-23
Ezekiel is in Babylon, and the kingdom he grew up in has been split for centuries. The northern tribes were destroyed by Assyria and scattered beyond recovery. Judah has now been deported too. This passage...
No. 153 Ezekiel 31:10-18
Ezekiel addresses a warning to Pharaoh, and delivers it by describing a tree. Assyria, he says, was a cedar of Lebanon, taller than every tree of the field, its top among the clouds, birds nesting in its...
No. 207 Ezekiel 16:59-63
Ezekiel 16 is one of the most brutal chapters in the prophets, an extended and deliberately shocking allegory in which Jerusalem is a foundling child rescued at birth, raised, adorned, and then unfaithful...
No. 209 Ezekiel 6:1-7
Ezekiel was a priest taken to Babylon with the first wave of exiles, years before Jerusalem finally fell. He prophesies about a homeland he can no longer see. Here God tells him to set his face toward the...
No. 226 Ezekiel 33:7-11
Ezekiel is living among the exiles in Babylon, and God gives him a job with a hard image attached. He is a watchman, the man posted on the city wall whose only task is to see danger coming and blow the...
No. 262 Ezekiel 36:8-12
Earlier in his book, Ezekiel was told to set his face against the mountains of Israel and announce their ruin, the shrines thrown down and the land emptied. Now, many chapters later, God turns to the very same...
No. 293 Ezekiel 45:13-17
This is a technical passage from Ezekiel's long vision of a restored temple, full of measures of wheat and oil and precise fractions, the kind of text that is easy to skim. But it sets out a role worth slowing...
No. 325 Ezekiel 23:1-8
This is one of the most uncomfortable chapters in the Bible, and it does not get easier by looking away from it. Ezekiel tells the story of two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah, and he uses deliberately graphic,...
No. 360 Ezekiel 17:16-24
Ezekiel has told a riddle about two great eagles and a vine, and this passage is God's blunt interpretation of it. The vine is King Zedekiah, whom Babylon had installed on Judah's throne. To seal the...
No. 373 Ezekiel 44:10-14
This is a small, sober passage from Ezekiel's vision of a restored temple, and it deals with the Levites who had failed. When Israel went astray after idols, some of the Levites, whose whole calling was to...
No. 383 Ezekiel 31:1-9
This is an oracle aimed at Pharaoh of Egypt, and God makes his point by describing another great power that had come before, Assyria, under the image of a magnificent cedar. The description in these verses is...
No. 388 Ezekiel 48:6-12
This is part of Ezekiel's vision of the restored land, and on the surface it is a surveyor's document, dividing the territory into equal strips, one portion for each tribe, with a special holy portion set...
No. 433 Ezekiel 28:1-5
This oracle is addressed to the ruler of Tyre, a fabulously wealthy trading city, and it exposes a very particular kind of pride, the kind that grows out of genuine success. God quotes the prince's own...
No. 488 Ezekiel 42:10-14
This is part of Ezekiel's long, detailed vision of a restored temple, and on the surface it is architecture: measurements of rooms in the temple wall, their doors and dimensions. It is easy to skim. But the...
No. 491 Ezekiel 26:1-6
This oracle is aimed at the great trading city of Tyre, and God tells us exactly why. Because Tyre said against Jerusalem, Aha! She is broken, she who was the gateway of the peoples; now that she is laid...
No. 495 Ezekiel 40:32-37
This is deep inside Ezekiel's vision of a restored temple, and it is nothing but measurements: a heavenly guide leads the prophet from gate to gate, measuring lodges and posts and arches, fifty cubits long,...
No. 502 Ezekiel 14:1-5
Some of the elders of Israel come and sit down in front of Ezekiel, in the posture of men seeking a word from God, wanting the prophet to inquire of the LORD on their behalf. It looks like piety. But God sees...
No. 504 Ezekiel 39:17-24
This is a grim and unsettling passage. After the defeat of a great invading army, God summons the birds and wild beasts to a gruesome feast, telling them to gorge on the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood...
No. 536 Ezekiel 40:24-31
We are again inside Ezekiel's temple vision, being led gate by gate as the guide measures each one. It is repetitive by design, the same lodges and posts and windows and palm trees appearing at gate after...
No. 613 Ezekiel 33:1-6
God gives Ezekiel the image of a watchman, and lays out the responsibilities on both sides with unusual precision. When a sword is coming against a land, the people appoint a watchman to stand on the wall and...
No. 614 Ezekiel 20:21-26
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...
No. 647 Ezekiel 20:45-49
God gives Ezekiel a hard word to deliver, a prophecy of fire against the south that will devour the green tree and the dry alike, an image of coming judgment. And at the end of the passage, Ezekiel lets slip a...
No. 659 Ezekiel 27:22-36
Ezekiel prophesies among the exiles in Babylon, and chapter 27 is a funeral song for a city that is not yet dead: Tyre, the island trading power of the Phoenician coast. The prophet builds Tyre as a ship,...
No. 676 Ezekiel 28:20-26
After the long oracle against Tyre, Ezekiel turns for a moment to Tyre's sister city on the Phoenician coast, Sidon. The word is brief and hard. I am against you, Sidon, God says; I will be glorified in your...
No. 705 Ezekiel 21:13-17
Ezekiel 21 is the song of the sword, one of the rawest poems in the prophets. Babylon is coming against Jerusalem, and Ezekiel is told to picture the invader as a blade: sharpened, polished, drawn from its...
No. 820 Ezekiel 23:28-34
Ezekiel 23 is one of the hardest chapters in the Bible to read. It tells the story of two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah, standing for Samaria and Jerusalem, the two kingdoms of God's people, and it casts their...
No. 853 Ezekiel 26:7-14
Ezekiel's oracle against Tyre spells out its fall in vivid military detail: Nebuchadnezzar, whom God calls a king of kings, will come from the north with horses and chariots and siege engines, break down the...
No. 861 Ezekiel 46:16-24
In the long vision of a restored temple that closes the book of Ezekiel, there is a set of laws for the prince, the ruler of the people, and one of them draws a firm line around his power. He may give gifts...
No. 888 Ezekiel 47:18-23
Ezekiel is at the end of his great vision of the restored land, drawing the borders tribe by tribe. This short passage sets the eastern, southern, and western boundaries and then gives the instruction for...
No. 916 Ezekiel 11:7-12
Ezekiel is confronting the leaders of Jerusalem who have been giving false confidence to the city. They had a smug proverb, that the city was a cauldron and they were the choice meat inside it, safe within its...
No. 923 Ezekiel 39:25-29
After long chapters of judgment, Ezekiel arrives at pure promise. God says he will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, jealous for his holy name. He will bring them back...
No. 950 Ezekiel 4:1-5
God gives Ezekiel a strange assignment. Take a clay brick, he says, scratch a picture of Jerusalem on it, and then build a miniature siege against it, ramps, camps, battering rams, and set an iron plate...
No. 991 Ezekiel 47:1-5
In Ezekiel's vision of the restored temple, his guide brings him back to the door, and he sees water trickling out from under the threshold, flowing east, past the altar. The guide leads him out and begins to...
No. 999 Ezekiel 14:6-11
God tells Ezekiel to call Israel to repent, to turn away their faces from their idols and abominations. Then he exposes something subtle: a man who separates himself from God and takes his idols into his...
No. 1057 Ezekiel 7:23-27
Ezekiel announces the end coming on a violent, bloody land. Make a chain, God says, for the land is full of bloody crimes and the city full of violence. He will bring the worst of the nations to seize their...
No. 1072 Ezekiel 16:30-34
This is part of one of the searing images in Ezekiel, Jerusalem as an unfaithful wife. God has portrayed himself as the husband who found her abandoned, cleaned her, clothed her, made her beautiful, and she...
No. 1088 Ezekiel 34:1-6
God tells Ezekiel to prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, its leaders. Woe to the shepherds who feed themselves, he says. You eat the fat and wear the wool and slaughter the best animals, but you do not...
No. 1098 Ezekiel 19:1-14
God tells Ezekiel to raise a lament, a funeral dirge, for the princes of Israel. He sings it in images. Israel's royal house was a lioness whose cubs became strong young lions that learned to hunt, but one was...
No. 1138 Ezekiel 22:23-31
God gives Ezekiel a sweeping indictment of every level of a corrupt society. The prophets are like a roaring lion tearing prey; the priests have profaned holy things and blurred the line between clean and...
No. 1156 Ezekiel 47:6-12
The vision of the river from the temple continues. The guide brings Ezekiel back to the bank, now lined with many trees on both sides, and explains where the water goes: east, down into the Arabah, and into...
No. 1170 Ezekiel 25:1-7
God turns Ezekiel's prophecy against Ammon, Israel's neighbor. The charge is specific: because you said Aha! against my sanctuary when it was profaned, and against the land of Israel when it was made desolate,...
No. 1192 Ezekiel 5:7-12
God pronounces a devastating judgment on Jerusalem, and the charge is unexpected: you have been more turbulent and rebellious than the nations around you, not even keeping the standards the pagan nations kept....
No. 1198 Ezekiel 5:13-17
God continues the judgment on Jerusalem, but the language turns toward its purpose and its end. My anger will be spent, he says, and my wrath will rest, and I will be satisfied; and they will know that I, the...
No. 1204 Ezekiel 30:20-26
God gives Ezekiel a word about Egypt and its Pharaoh, using the image of a broken arm. I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt, God says, and it has not been bound up to heal so it could hold a sword...
No. 1218 Ezekiel 13:1-7
God turns Ezekiel against the false prophets of Israel, those who prophesy out of their own imagination and have seen nothing. Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, God says. They are like...
No. 1221 Ezekiel 41:1-7
Ezekiel's guide leads him into the temple of his vision, measuring as they go: the nave, the entrance, and finally the innermost room, twenty cubits square, which the guide names, this is the most holy place....
No. 1223 Ezekiel 40:44-49
In Ezekiel's vision of the restored temple, the guide shows him rooms set aside for the priests, and identifies one group specifically: the sons of Zadok, who alone among the Levites are permitted to come near...
No. 1225 Ezekiel 38:7-13
Ezekiel prophesies against Gog, a symbolic enemy who will one day come against God's restored people. God describes the scene: in the latter years, Gog will invade a land brought back from war, a people...
No. 1231 Ezekiel 48:13-20
In Ezekiel's vision of the restored land, a great central portion is set apart as holy: a strip for the priests, a strip for the Levites, none of it to be sold or traded, for it is holy to the LORD. And in the...
No. 1259 Ezekiel 36:13-21
God promises to restore the land of Israel, so that it will no longer be called a devourer of its people. Then he explains why judgment had come: when Israel lived in the land, they defiled it with their sins...
No. 1299 Ezekiel 23:35-39
Ezekiel is delivering a harsh allegory of two unfaithful sisters, Oholah and Oholibah, representing Samaria and Jerusalem, whose idolatry is portrayed as adultery. In this section God's charge cuts deep:...
No. 1315 Ezekiel 16:49-58
In an extended and severe allegory, God is exposing Jerusalem's sin by comparing her to her sisters, Samaria and Sodom, and declaring Jerusalem worse than both. In the middle of it comes a striking summary of...
No. 1322 Ezekiel 41:21-26
In Ezekiel's long vision of a restored temple, this passage describes some of the fittings: squared doorposts, and a wooden altar three cubits high, of which the guide says, this is the table that is before...
No. 1330 Ezekiel 48:26-35
This is the closing passage of the whole book of Ezekiel. After chapters of vision, the prophet finishes dividing the restored land among the tribes and describing the holy city, its gates named for the twelve...
No. 1335 Ezekiel 45:18-25
In the laws for the restored temple, God appoints a calendar of cleansing and feasts. On the first day of the first month a young bull is to be offered to cleanse the sanctuary; the same is done on the seventh...
No. 1344 Ezekiel 23:40-49
This is part of Ezekiel's harsh allegory of the two unfaithful sisters, Oholah and Oholibah, standing for Samaria and Jerusalem, whose idolatry is pictured as adultery. The passage describes the elaborate...
No. 1400 Ezekiel 20:32-38
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...
No. 1436 Ezekiel 15:1-8
God gives Ezekiel a short, pointed parable about a vine. What is the wood of the vine, God asks, more than any other tree, the vine branch among the trees of the forest? Can you make anything useful from it?...
No. 1457 Ezekiel 30:6-12
This is part of a series of oracles against Egypt. The LORD declares that Egypt will fall, and with her all who lean on her: those who uphold Egypt will fall, the pride of her power will come down, her helpers...
No. 1469 Ezekiel 24:1-5
On a precisely dated day, the ninth year, the tenth month, the tenth day, the word of the LORD comes to Ezekiel, far away among the exiles in Babylon. Son of man, God says, write down the name of this very...
No. 1528 Ezekiel 18:24-32
In this chapter God insists that each person is judged by their own ways, not their ancestors'. The righteous who turns to sin will die in it; the wicked who turns from sin will live. When the people protest...
No. 1547 Ezekiel 28:6-10
This is a word of judgment against the prince of Tyre, who in his wealth and success had come to think of himself as more than a man. Because you have set your heart as the heart of God, the LORD says,...
No. 1562 Ezekiel 36:31-38
God promises to cleanse his people and restore them, and yet he adds a striking qualification. When you are cleansed, he says, you will remember your evil ways and loathe yourselves for your sins. But...
No. 1594 Ezekiel 23:14-21
This passage belongs to Ezekiel's deliberately shocking allegory of two sisters whose idolatry is portrayed as sexual unfaithfulness. In the section here, the sister representing Jerusalem is said to have seen...
No. 1620 Ezekiel 48:21-25
In Ezekiel's vision of the restored land, the territory is carefully divided among the tribes, each given its portion. This passage describes the land allotted to the prince, the ruler, whose holdings lie on...
No. 1624 Ezekiel 32:16-21
This passage is a lament over Egypt, the great empire, sung as she is brought down to Sheol, the realm of the dead. Wail for the multitude of Egypt, God tells the prophet; send her down to the lower parts of...
No. 1634 Ezekiel 4:6-17
God commands Ezekiel to enact the coming siege of Jerusalem in his own body: to lie on his side for a set number of days, bearing the people's iniquity, to eat carefully weighed rations of bread and measured...
No. 1678 Ezekiel 22:6-12
Through Ezekiel, God lays out an indictment of Jerusalem, a long catalog of her sins. The princes shed blood; children treat father and mother with contempt; the foreigner is oppressed, the orphan and widow...
No. 1682 Ezekiel 23:22-27
In the allegory of the unfaithful sister Oholibah, standing for Jerusalem, God announces judgment. I will stir up against you your former lovers, from whom you turned away, he says, and bring them against you...
No. 1696 Ezekiel 12:17-28
God gives Ezekiel a strange sign, to eat and drink with trembling, to picture the dread that will fall on Jerusalem. Then he addresses a proverb going around: the days drag on, and every vision comes to...
No. 1707 Ezekiel 34:7-16
God pronounces judgment on the shepherds of Israel, the leaders who fed themselves and neglected the flock, so that the sheep were scattered and became prey with no one to seek them. I am against the...
No. 1714 Ezekiel 43:12-17
In Ezekiel's vision of the restored temple, God gives the measurements of the altar and, before the details, a governing statement. This is the law of the house, he says: on the top of the mountain, all its...
No. 1761 Ezekiel 20:8-12
Recounting Israel's history, God recalls how they rebelled even in Egypt, refusing to cast away their idols; yet he acted for his own name's sake, that it not be profaned among the nations, and brought them...
No. 1811 Ezekiel 45:1-5
In Ezekiel's vision of the restored land, God commands that when the land is divided as inheritance, a portion be set apart first as a holy offering to the LORD. This holy portion is measured out and...
No. 1828 Ezekiel 27:12-16
Ezekiel's lament over Tyre catalogs the vast reach of its trade. Tarshish traded silver, iron, tin, and lead; Javan, Tubal, and Meshech traded bronze vessels, and, the text notes darkly, the persons of men....
No. 1839 Ezekiel 1:1-9
Ezekiel begins his book by placing himself precisely: in the thirtieth year, among the exiles by the river Chebar, in the land of the Chaldeans. He is a displaced man, a captive far from home, far from the...
No. 1840 Ezekiel 13:8-12
God pronounces judgment on the false prophets who spoke lies in his name. They have led the people astray, he says, crying peace when there is no peace. It is as if, when the people build a flimsy wall, these...
No. 1904 Ezekiel 29:1-5
God speaks against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, calling him the great monster lying in the middle of his rivers, who says, my river is my own, and I have made it for myself. The Nile was the source of Egypt's...
No. 1928 Ezekiel 10:6-14
Ezekiel describes his vision of God's glory in terms that strain language: cherubim with four faces, wheels within wheels gleaming like beryl, their whole form full of eyes all around, moving instantly...
No. 1969 Ezekiel 12:12-16
Ezekiel enacts and foretells the coming exile: the prince will carry his baggage out in the dark, cover his face, and be caught in God's net, brought to Babylon, which he will not see, though he will die...
No. 1972 Ezekiel 23:9-13
In the allegory of the two unfaithful sisters, God tells how the first, Oholah, standing for Samaria, was handed over to the judgment her unfaithfulness earned, becoming a byword. And then the pointed detail:...
No. 1987 Ezekiel 20:27-31
God, through Ezekiel, confronts Israel with a persistent sin: they have continued in the idolatrous ways of their fathers. When I brought them into the land, God says, they saw every high hill and leafy tree...
No. 2030 Ezekiel 35:1-9
God directs Ezekiel to prophesy against Mount Seir, the land of Edom. The charge against Edom is specific: because you have had a perpetual hostility, and have given over the children of Israel to the sword in...
No. 2132 Ezekiel 24:18-27
God gives Ezekiel a hard command as a sign to his people. He tells the prophet that his wife, the desire of his eyes, will die, and that Ezekiel is not to mourn her openly as would be expected, but to bear the...
No. 2144 Ezekiel 11:18-25
In the midst of exile and judgment, God gives a promise of inward renewal. He speaks of a day when he will gather his people and cleanse them, and then makes a promise about their hearts: I will give them one...
No. 2191 Ezekiel 12:7-11
God commands Ezekiel to act out the coming exile as a living sign. He is to pack his belongings like a refugee, dig through the wall of his house, and carry his baggage out in the dark, on his shoulder, in the...
No. 2228 Ezekiel 45:6-12
In his vision of the restored land, God gives instructions that include a rebuke to Israel's leaders and a command about honesty. Enough, you princes of Israel, God says; remove violence and plunder, execute...
No. 2251 Ezekiel 1:22-28
Ezekiel's opening vision reaches its climax. Above the living creatures is an expanse gleaming like crystal, and above that a throne like sapphire, and on the throne a figure with the likeness of a man,...
No. 2280 Ezekiel 44:1-9
In Ezekiel's vision of the restored temple, God gives a warning about who may enter his sanctuary. He rebukes his people for having brought in foreigners uncircumcised in heart and in flesh, to be in his...
No. 2303 Ezekiel 46:1-8
In Ezekiel's vision of the restored temple, the gate of the inner court is to be shut on the six working days, but opened on the Sabbath and on the day of the new moon, so that the prince and the people may...
No. 2321 Ezekiel 2:1-10
God commissions Ezekiel as a prophet to a hard and rebellious people. I am sending you to a nation of rebels, God says, who have rebelled against me; they are impudent and stubborn. And he tells Ezekiel how to...
No. 2335 Ezekiel 7:1-9
God gives Ezekiel a stark word of judgment for the land of Israel. An end has come, the Lord GOD says; the end has come upon the four corners of the land. Now the end is upon you; I will send my anger against...
No. 2343 Ezekiel 39:7-11
After the defeat of the great enemy Gog, God declares his purpose in it: I will make my holy name known among my people Israel, and I will not let my holy name be profaned any more; then the nations will know...
No. 2456 Ezekiel 36:1-7
God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the mountains of Israel themselves, the desolate land the surrounding nations have mocked and claimed as their own. The enemy has crowed, Aha, the ancient heights are ours now....
No. 2523 Ezekiel 48:1-5
Near the end of Ezekiel's long vision of a restored land, the tribes are given their places again: Dan, one portion; Asher, one portion; Naphtali, Manasseh, Ephraim, each one portion, laid out in orderly bands...
No. 2563 Ezekiel 11:13-17
Ezekiel, seeing the remnant dwindle, cries out in alarm: will you make a full end of what is left of Israel? Then God gives him a word for the exiles, the ones the people back in Jerusalem had written off,...
No. 2569 Ezekiel 35:10-15
Ezekiel delivers judgment on Edom, whose people had watched Israel fall and said, these two nations and their lands will be ours; we will take possession. But God adds a pointed phrase: they said this although...
No. 2577 Ezekiel 39:12-16
After the defeat of Gog's army, Ezekiel describes an unglamorous, months-long task: the burial of the dead to cleanse the land. For seven months the people bury bodies, and then men are appointed to go through...
No. 2588 Ezekiel 21:1-5
God tells Ezekiel to set his face against Jerusalem and announce a hard word: I am against you, and I will draw my sword from its sheath. The sword, he says, will go out against all flesh, and it will not...
No. 2596 Ezekiel 22:1-5
God sends Ezekiel to confront Jerusalem, which he calls the bloody city, and the commission is pointed: will you judge her? Then make her know all her abominations. Ezekiel is not to speak in vague...
No. 2646 Ezekiel 38:1-6
Ezekiel is told to prophesy against Gog, a menacing figure who leads a vast coalition of nations, all clothed in armor, bristling with shields and swords. But before the threat is even described in full, God...
No. 2665 Ezekiel 12:1-6
God tells Ezekiel that he lives among a rebellious people who have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear. To reach them, God has him perform a strange piece of street theater: pack an...
No. 2681 Ezekiel 39:1-6
Ezekiel is still delivering the oracle against Gog, the shadowy ruler from the far north who gathers a vast host against God's people. The Lord declares himself the enemy: I am against you, I will turn you...
No. 2683 Ezekiel 41:8-12
Ezekiel's guided tour of the visionary temple keeps going, and this stretch is all measurement. The raised base, the thickness of the side-room walls, twenty cubits here and five cubits there, a building...
No. 2692 Ezekiel 16:20-29
This is one of the hard chapters of Ezekiel, and it should be read slowly and soberly. Under the figure of an unfaithful spouse, God confronts Jerusalem with what she has actually done: even passing her own...
No. 2696 Ezekiel 33:17-22
The exiles have a complaint against God: "The way of the Lord is not fair." God answers by holding the line he has drawn. The righteous man who turns to evil dies in it; the wicked man who turns to what is...
No. 2718 Ezekiel 10:1-5
Ezekiel is shown a vision that should make the reader go still. Above the cherubim he sees the likeness of a throne, and a man clothed in linen is told to take coals of fire from between the whirling wheels...
No. 2729 Ezekiel 8:1-5
Ezekiel is sitting in exile with the elders of Judah when the hand of the Lord falls on him, and the Spirit lifts him in a vision back to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner temple gate. There, right at the...
No. 2744 Ezekiel 37:7-14
This is the vision of the valley of dry bones. Ezekiel prophesies as commanded, and with a rattling noise the bones come together, bone to bone, sinew and flesh and skin covering them. Yet there is no breath...
No. 2746 Ezekiel 36:22-30
God announces a rescue and a cleansing, and he is bracingly honest about the reason. Not for your sake, house of Israel, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations. Then the...
No. 2759 Ezekiel 27:17-21
This is part of Ezekiel's long lament over Tyre, which he pictures as a magnificent merchant ship. Here he lists her trading partners: Judah and Israel bringing wheat and honey and balm, Damascus with wine and...
No. 2796 Ezekiel 16:6-14
This is the tender heart of Ezekiel 16, and it should be read slowly. God pictures Jerusalem as a newborn thrown out in an open field, unwashed and unwanted, left to die in her own blood. He passes by and...
No. 2804 Ezekiel 29:6-12
This oracle against Egypt names two failures at once. First, Egypt had been a staff of reed to Israel, the kind of support that looks solid and then splinters, piercing the hand and shoulder of anyone who...
No. 2833 Ezekiel 5:1-6
Ezekiel is told to act out a disturbing sign. Take a sword, shave your head and beard with it, weigh the hair, and divide it in three: burn a third in the city, strike a third with the sword around it, scatter...
No. 2899 Ezekiel 20:13-20
God rehearses Israel's history in the wilderness, and it is a story of rebellion. They rejected his statutes, profaned his Sabbaths, and their hearts went after idols, so that he threatened to pour out his...
No. 2916 Ezekiel 46:9-15
In Ezekiel's vision of the restored temple, some rules for worship are given. When the people come for the appointed feasts, whoever enters by the north gate must leave by the south, and whoever enters by the...
No. 2924 Ezekiel 44:25-31
These are rules for the priests in Ezekiel's temple vision. They are to keep away from corpses except for their closest family, and then, at the center of it, comes a line unlike anything said of the other...
No. 2947 Ezekiel 30:1-5
This oracle sounds an alarm: wail, for the day is near, the day of the LORD, a day of clouds, a time of reckoning for the nations. A sword will come upon Egypt, and anguish upon Ethiopia; Egypt's allies, Put,...
No. 2961 Ezekiel 40:38-43
In Ezekiel's temple vision, this passage describes the practical rooms and tables by the gate: places to wash the burnt offering, and eight tables on which the burnt, sin, and trespass offerings were...
No. 3056 Ezekiel 30:13-19
God declares judgment on Egypt, and the first target he names is its idols: I will destroy the idols and put an end to the images of Memphis. He will end the rule of its princes, set fire to its cities, break...
No. 3122 Ezekiel 3:10-15
God tells Ezekiel to take his words into his heart and go to the exiles, to speak whether they will listen or refuse. The Spirit lifts him up with the sound of the living creatures' wings, and he goes, he...
No. 3153 Ezekiel 9:7-11
This is one of the most terrible visions in Ezekiel, and it should be read with trembling. Executioners are sent through Jerusalem in judgment, sparing only those marked with a sign on their foreheads. Ezekiel...
No. 3184 Ezekiel 18:1-9
God rejects a proverb the people kept repeating: the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. No more, he says. All souls are mine; the soul who sins shall die. And then he...
No. 3198 Ezekiel 40:17-23
Ezekiel's guided tour of the visionary temple continues into the outer court, with its thirty chambers and its pavement, the gates measured, the steps counted, one hundred cubits from gate to gate. It is...
No. 3208 Ezekiel 17:7-15
Ezekiel tells a parable of two great eagles and a vine. The vine, planted by the first eagle in good soil, bends its roots and branches instead toward a second eagle. God asks: will it prosper? Then he...
No. 3228 Ezekiel 34:25-31
After rebuking the false shepherds, God promises to shepherd his flock himself, and the promise overflows. I will make with them a covenant of peace, he says; they will dwell securely, and I will send down...
No. 3323 Ezekiel 22:13-22
God's judgment on Jerusalem is pictured as a smelting furnace. Israel has become dross, the worthless residue left when silver is refined, and God says he will gather them into the midst of the city as into a...
No. 3359 Ezekiel 16:1-5
God describes Jerusalem's beginnings with the image of an abandoned newborn. On the day she was born she was cast out into an open field, her cord uncut, unwashed, unsalted, unwrapped, with no eye pitying her...
No. 3365 Ezekiel 44:15-19
In the vision of the restored temple, a distinction is drawn: the priests who may draw near to God are the sons of Zadok, who kept the charge of the sanctuary when the rest of Israel went astray. Faithfulness...
No. 3406 Ezekiel 21:6-12
God tells Ezekiel to groan before the people, to sigh with a broken heart and bitter grief, as a living sign of the sorrow coming upon them. And the message is the sword, sharpened and polished, drawn for...
No. 3445 Ezekiel 47:13-17
As Ezekiel's vision describes the boundaries of the restored land, one phrase stands out amid the geography: you shall divide the land, and inherit it, one as well as another, for I swore to give it to your...
No. 3458 Ezekiel 37:24-28
God gathers into one great promise the hopes of his scattered people: one king, David my servant, over them, one shepherd; a covenant of peace, an everlasting covenant; his sanctuary set among them forever....
No. 3466 Ezekiel 8:12-18
God shows Ezekiel the hidden idolatry going on in the temple itself: the elders worshiping images in the dark, women weeping for a pagan god, men with their backs to the temple bowing to the sun. And he...
No. 3478 Ezekiel 37:1-6
God sets Ezekiel down in a valley full of dry bones, a picture of a people who felt utterly dead, their hope gone, cut off with no future. And he asks a searching question: son of man, can these bones live?...
No. 3502 Ezekiel 9:1-6
In this severe vision of judgment on Jerusalem, one detail shines with mercy. Before the judgment falls, a man clothed in linen is sent through the city to set a mark on the foreheads of all who sigh and groan...
No. 3503 Ezekiel 25:8-17
God pronounces judgment on the neighboring nations, Moab, Edom, and the Philistines, and the reason given is their treatment of his people in the day of trouble. Edom took vengeance and grievously offended;...
No. 3547 Ezekiel 6:8-14
Even in a message of severe judgment, God speaks of mercy: I will leave a remnant, some who escape the sword, scattered among the nations. And of these survivors he says something remarkable: they will...
No. 3556 Ezekiel 8:6-11
God brings Ezekiel through a hole in the temple wall into a hidden chamber, and there, portrayed on the walls, are all manner of idols and unclean creatures, and seventy of the elders of Israel standing before...
No. 3612 Ezekiel 1:10-14
Ezekiel's vision of the four living creatures is strange and awesome: each with four faces, of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle, gleaming like burning coals and darting like flashes of lightning. It is a...
No. 3673 Ezekiel 21:18-23
Ezekiel is told to mark two roads for the sword of the king of Babylon, one to Ammon and one to Jerusalem. And the passage describes the Babylonian king standing at the fork, using pagan divination, shaking...
No. 3678 Ezekiel 7:15-22
In this severe word of judgment, one line cuts through: they will fling their silver into the streets, and their gold will be treated as an unclean thing; their silver and gold will not be able to deliver them...
No. 3697 Ezekiel 38:14-23
This is a mysterious prophecy about Gog, a great hostile force that comes against God's people in the latter days. The imagery of judgment is fearsome, earthquake, sword, fire, and hail. But through the whole...
No. 3698 Ezekiel 3:22-27
God gives Ezekiel a strange commission: he will be bound, unable to move freely among the people, and made mute, unable to speak, except when God opens his mouth to give him a word. Then he is to declare, thus...
No. 3701 Ezekiel 16:43-48
This is part of a severe and painful indictment of Jerusalem, and we read it soberly, not dwelling on its hardest imagery. The heart of it is a startling charge: Jerusalem had become more corrupt in her ways...
No. 3709 Ezekiel 44:20-24
This passage lists the duties and disciplines of the priests, and one stands out as their central calling: they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to...
No. 3719 Ezekiel 18:18-23
God addresses a complaint that children were suffering for their parents' sins, and he sets out a principle of personal responsibility: the soul who sins shall die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the...
No. 3748 Ezekiel 7:10-14
Ezekiel announces that the day of judgment has arrived, and describes a moment when the ordinary concerns of life lose all meaning under God's wrath. Let not the buyer rejoice nor the seller mourn, for the day...
No. 3749 Ezekiel 3:16-21
God appoints Ezekiel as a watchman for Israel and lays on him a heavy responsibility. A watchman's task is to sound the alarm when danger comes, and God tells Ezekiel: when I warn the wicked and you say...
No. 3797 Ezekiel 16:15-19
Through Ezekiel, God brings a grieved complaint against Jerusalem, pictured as one he had lavished with gifts, fine garments, gold and silver jewels, rich food, and who then took those very gifts and used them...
No. 3821 Ezekiel 14:12-16
God gives a solemn word about the limits of borrowed righteousness. If a land sins grievously and comes under judgment, he says, then even if three renowned righteous men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it,...
No. 3851 Ezekiel 18:10-17
This passage draws a striking contrast between generations. A wicked man may father a son who sees all his father's sins, the violence, the idolatry, the oppression of the poor, and, seeing them, fears God and...
No. 3854 Ezekiel 28:11-19
This lament over the king of Tyre describes a figure of dazzling beauty, wisdom, and splendor, adorned with every precious stone, who fell through pride. The turning point is named exactly: your heart was...
No. 3858 Ezekiel 16:35-42
This is one of the hard passages in the prophets, a graphic announcement of judgment on Jerusalem for her covenant unfaithfulness, pictured under the disturbing image of a wife who has betrayed her husband. We...
No. 3861 Ezekiel 32:22-27
This solemn dirge walks through the graves of the great nations, Assyria, Elam, Meshech and Tubal, once feared powers that spread terror in the land of the living, and now all lie together among the slain in...
No. 3876 Ezekiel 32:1-15
Ezekiel takes up a lament over Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who thought himself a lion among the nations but was really, God says, like a thrashing monster in the seas, churning up the waters and fouling them....
No. 3903 Ezekiel 34:17-24
God, the shepherd of Israel, turns to judge not the false shepherds now but the sheep among themselves, and specifically the strong, well-fed sheep who bully the weak. Is it not enough, he asks, to feed on the...
No. 3916 Ezekiel 24:13-17
This is among the personally painful passages in all the prophets. God tells Ezekiel that he will take away, with one blow, the delight of his eyes, his beloved wife, and that Ezekiel is not to mourn her...
No. 3917 Ezekiel 40:1-5
In the twenty-fifth year of the exile, God gives Ezekiel a great vision, setting him on a high mountain to see the plan of a restored temple, measured out by a man with a measuring reed. And before the vision...
No. 3921 Ezekiel 3:1-9
Before God sends Ezekiel to preach, he gives him a strange command: eat this scroll, containing God's words, and fill your belly with it. Ezekiel obeys, and finds that the scroll is as sweet as honey in his...
No. 3924 Ezekiel 40:6-16
In Ezekiel's vision of a restored temple, a heavenly guide with a measuring reed carefully measures the great gate that leads into the temple, its threshold, its chambers, its posts, each dimension exact and...
No. 3932 Ezekiel 33:23-33
God exposes two failures of his people. The first is presumption: those living in the ruined land claim the inheritance as Abraham's heirs, while continuing in idolatry, violence, and immorality; they presume...
No. 3938 Ezekiel 41:13-20
As the vision of the temple continues, we are told how its walls were adorned, carved throughout with cherubim and palm trees, a cherub and a palm tree alternating all around the house. Even in a passage of...
No. 3950 Ezekiel 32:28-32
This closing section of the lament over the nations returns to a solemn refrain: the great powers, Edom, the princes of the north, the Sidonians, all who spread terror in the land of the living, now lie...
No. 3968 Ezekiel 27:1-11
God tells Ezekiel to take up a lament over Tyre, the great trading city, and he pictures her as a magnificent ship, built of the finest materials from all over the world, cypress and cedar, ivory and fine...
No. 3983 Ezekiel 43:6-11
In Ezekiel's vision, the glory of God returns to the temple, and God declares his desire: this is the place of my throne, where I will dwell among the children of Israel forever. The great longing revealed...
No. 3992 Ezekiel 10:15-22
Ezekiel watches something heartbreaking in his vision: the glory of the LORD, the visible presence of God that had filled the temple, rises up from the threshold and moves toward the door, departing from the...
No. 4035 Ezekiel 13:13-23
God pronounces judgment on false prophets who had misled his people, and the image he uses is telling: they were like people who built a flimsy wall and then covered it with whitewash to make it look sound,...
No. 4052 Ezekiel 11:1-6
Ezekiel is shown a group of wicked leaders in Jerusalem who devise iniquity and give evil counsel, confident in their own security. And God tells the prophet something striking: I know the things that come...
No. 4054 Ezekiel 17:1-6
God tells Ezekiel to speak a riddle and a parable to Israel, a story of a great eagle that takes the top of a cedar and plants a vine that grows low, bending its branches toward the eagle. It was a coded...
No. 4097 Ezekiel 21:24-32
This passage announces judgment on the failed rulers of Judah, and its words to the reigning prince are stark: remove the turban and take off the crown; things shall not remain as they are. And then, three...
No. 4109 Ezekiel 1:15-21
In Ezekiel's vision of God's glory, he sees an astonishing sight: wheels, gleaming like beryl, a wheel within a wheel, their rims full of eyes all around, moving in perfect coordination with the living...
No. 4194 Ezekiel 42:15-20
After a long, detailed measuring of the temple, this passage ends with the purpose of the wall around it: to make a separation between the holy and the common. The temple was set apart, marked off by a wall,...
No. 4215 Ezekiel 24:6-12
God gives Ezekiel a stark image for Jerusalem: a cooking pot so encrusted with rust that the rust will not come off. The city's corruption is like that rust, ingrained, clinging, resistant to cleansing. God...
No. 4226 Ezekiel 14:17-23
God speaks a sobering word to Ezekiel about judgment. Even if three righteous men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in a land under judgment, God says, they would deliver neither son nor daughter by their...
No. 4256 Ezekiel 20:39-44
God speaks to a people who had polluted themselves with idolatry and evil, and yet he promises to gather them, accept them, and bring them home. And he tells them plainly on what basis: I will deal with you...
No. 4268 Ezekiel 43:18-27
In the vision of the restored temple, God gives detailed instructions for consecrating the altar: over seven days, sin offerings are made, blood is applied, the altar is cleansed and purified and made holy....
No. 4278 Ezekiel 43:1-5
Earlier in his prophecy, Ezekiel had seen the terrible sight of God's glory departing from the temple because of the people's sin. Now, in the vision of the restored temple, he sees the reverse: the glory of...
No. 4316 Ezekiel 33:12-16
God gives Ezekiel a word about righteousness and repentance that cuts against presumption in both directions. The righteous who turns to sin will not be saved by his past righteousness; but, wonderfully, the...