Ezekiel 21-22

[wolfpurplemoon]

God threatens many punishments for all his people's sins. Mostly death and ruin.

Comments

[mrwizard288.livejournal.com]

The only true punishment for sin in the eyes of God is physical death itself. I assume that since you've made it to Ezekiel you know a fair amount concerning the history of Israel as well as the early history of mankind. The recurring theme i wanted to point out is that wherever sin has gained absolute control over a population God's immediate reaction is to wipe it out. Since it is the population that chooses to sin, His judgment is against the people. this is because God is holy and righteous. If to remain so, then He cannot permit sin to continue in His presence. Since He is all-powerful and has dominion over the universe it follows form for Him to destroy it.
The people of Israel stand apart in the fact that God doesn't bring such punishments upon them to wipe them out, He does so so that they will remember who He is. Its like getting in trouble with your parents. They'll sit there and say "don't do that, don't do that" until one day they act and make the decision to handle the situation through punishment in an effort not to control you but to remind you of the authority they do have. God dealt with Israel through punishment because by the time said punishment was upon them they had forgotten the spiritual implications of their actions.
The thing is, sin has spiritual consequences, and it doesn't take punishment from God for us to experience them. However, if we ignore the consequences to the point that we don't even recognize them when they are upon us, it takes a heavy hand to reinstate that awareness. This is the purpose of punishment when it comes to the people of Israel. God may bring ruin upon them, but it is not to destroy them. It is simply an attempt to remind Israel of the covenant they have with God. The severity of God's punishments are of our own perspective. God sees things in a little longer light. If you want to correct a problem across the board, you need to act across the board. If your goal is to completely reverse the actions of an entire culture, you need to completely wipe out those things that are causing the culture to falter in the first place. This can be accomplished by having a foreign power come in and rearrange things (or in the case of the Israelites, remove them from the influences altogether). Like I said, God is thinking in the long term here. God even decreed that the invasion and subsequent exile would not be permanent. In Eze 21:27 God says that a ruin will come until one comes forth that is rightfully deserving to wear the crown (be ruler over the people). Basically God is saying that he will move the people away from the negative influences until they have developed as a culture to the point that they recognize their mistakes and are ready to be led by a king again. Its God's version of time-out.
The allegory surrounding the bloodshed to take place is both figurative and literal. There will be bloodshed, there always is in a military conquest. But the ruin and destruction talked about doesn't refer to just the physical. The words are also meant to invoke the idea of what it means to be destroyed. The modern world tends to think in terms of materialism. The Israelites understood this to also mean the destruction of the present culture, which is best understood through the literary devices used to convey a coming physical altercation. God likes to do this throughout scripture. He'll say something that can and in many cases is taken very literally, while at the same time has properties that allow it to be read or heard as a prophetic message of the future in a more poetic form. The amazing thing about using such a form is that both interpretations are technically correct.

[zteccc.livejournal.com]

God tells Ezekiel (about 4 years prior to the fall of Jerusalem) to condemn (from a distance; in Babylonia) the places where people worship idols in Jerusalem. God says that people will die (it has been known to happen in wartime).
God says that this is going to happen because people have willfully ignored the warnings given by the prophets.

Ezekiel is given a litany of Jerusalem's sins for which they will be punished. Even the priesthood, which is supposed to lead the people in worship of God, are ignoring God. They don't fulfill their part of the covenant. The majority of the "prophets" give false hope and false visions because they make things up that people want to hear rather than speaking the truth.

The repetitive nature of the prophecies here can be better understood if one remembers that these occurred at different times over years. We may read two adjacent chapters, but we have to realize that there may have been weeks or even months between them. Different audiences probably were listening, so even though the message would have been similar, it needed to be repeated to the different groups of people. We also saw this with Jeremiah, who served under five kings (Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah). He repeated warnings to each of them, many years apart, but we see them all together in one book.
Each warning given to Ezekiel reinforces the prior message. It is likely that some false prophet or other speaker attempted to contradict Ezekiel during this time, perhaps saying that God's mind had been changed from Ezekiel's earlier prophecy. Each time, Ezekiel, under God's direction, would say that God's mind hadn't been changed, and the prior prophecy still remained.

[zen-says.livejournal.com]

"the sovereign LORD" needs to chill out,,,,,,,

it writes as if the whole israel is commiting sexual crimes against families and neighbours, and are robbers.....

sounds like a damn angry ruler that need Xanax,,,,,,, if he were a man, probably will blow out an artery or two,,,,,,,

[liedownlovely.livejournal.com]

you've inspired me to re-read the bible, and i just wanted to comment and say so to you. i was raised in an evangelical household and got all sorts of awards for memorizing scripture and reading it in ungodly (lol) fast amounts of time through the Missionettes program (now called Girl's Ministries or... something).

anyway, i haven't picked it up since then. and i've managed to push mountains of scriptures out of my conscious brain so i don't find myself quoting it like a robot anymore! it's nice to read what you post and hear about the book that was drilled into my brain from a perspective of someone who hasn't read it all before. i also get a kick out of the various commenters, though zteccc's comments are very insightful. that i appreciate. the rest... not so much.

anyway, keep it up!

[zteccc.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I do my best.

-- Jeff

[k2rider78.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with god's judgment because if he is all powerful that he can enforce punishment as he chooses, he doesn't even have to threaten. I have a problem with the people who claim they know gods judgments and carryout death sentences.