Ezekiel 23-24

[wolfpurplemoon]

I think Ezekiel 23 is an example of what I meant before about God's arbitrary sins, the metaphor is again of a woman who is a prostitute. This is like the people of Jerusalem worshipping the gods and idols of the neighbouring cultures. For this grave sin God will send their neighbours to kill them. The neighbours that apparently get no punishment for worshipping those other gods and idols which tempted his people.

So whatever else the people were doing is nowhere near as awful to God as their worshipping of the wrong gods, it's quite petty I think. He doesn't really want them to be moral, or at least it seems he prefers worship to moral behaviour, ignoring all moral behaviour not done in his name. What's wrong with just being good for goodness' sake?

Now we have what appears to be a recipe for stew, with some analogy about how it is impossible to remove rotten meat from the pot, like it is hard to remove the sin from the midst of the people. Seems to be God justifying killing everyone because of a few sinners.

God kills Ezekiel's wife and tells him not to mourn or accept sympathy from other people because they will soon experience the same loss when God starts the destruction.

Comments

Arbitrary sins

[murray (from livejournal.com)]

God can move in mysterious ways and we may never know or understand some of the things He does 'till we get to eternity. The sins of the Israelites are not arbitrary though, as God gave Moses the Law and the ten commandments on Mount Sinai (Exodus 20.) There were many laws in the Old Testament that the Israelites were to memorize from an early age. The first commandment states "you shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God..."

Re: Arbitrary sins

[wolfpurplemoon]

But which particular god you happen to worship (or none) has no actual bearing on morality. So if it's not a moral decision then it can't be a sin to pick 'wrong'.

Re: Arbitrary sins

[murray (from livejournal.com)]

Where does morality come from? We are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) so our morality is implanted in us to differentiate between right and wrong. The Israelites were without excuse having been given a revelation from God concerning the law, including the punishment for breaking it or the reward for keeping it. God gave us free will but He clearly spells out the consequences of our decisions. When the Israelites chose to forget or ignore God, He (not so gently sometimes) reminded them to turn them back to Him just as a parent would correct a disobedient child. Children aren't too happy with consequences for misbehavior, but ultimately it is for their own good.

Re: Arbitrary sins

[wolfpurplemoon]

Morality has evolved, if you look at other social animals you find that they behave in altruistic ways that may benefit the group more than the individual. Human society works and survives when there are rules that most people follow and when there are punishments for those that won't follow the rules, so because it has been a benefit to group survival to behave morally it has become an instinct.

A society survives just as well without religion (if not better), so God's constant attempts to coerce the Israelites into following him is not for their benefit but for his (or more accurately, for the benefit of the leaders and people who were using the religion to control the people).

[zteccc.livejournal.com]

Ezekiel is given another analogy. This would have still been about 4 years prior to the fall of Jerusalem. The parallel is very clear in this analogy of the two sisters who willfully abandoned their foundation and suffer for it.
It should be noted that although Ezekiel 23 doesn't condemn the neighbors involved, other prophecies, of Ezekiel, Jeremiah and other prophets, do. Jumping to the conclusion that just because such condemnation doesn't appear in a given chapter means that the condemnation isn't there is simply ignoring the entirety of the scripture to make a specific point. This chapter also didn't say anything about sparing the lives of anyone in Jerusalem, but we know that God did so and that many people (including Jeremiah, Baruch, etc.) lived through the fall of Jerusalem, so it isn't reasonable to suggest that just because a given chapter doesn't mention something doesn't mean it isn't mentioned anywhere.
In the same vein, each chapter cannot be expected to repeat the entire litany of all of the sins committed. Instead, chapters do focus on different ones. Several chapters in Jeremiah and Ezekiel have mentioned unjustly imprisoning people, cheating them out of their house and money, physical abuse, disobeying the Sabbath, stealing, killing, double dealing etc. Some of these are mentioned here as well. The fact is that the people of Jerusalem had abandoned the laws of Moses that would encompass "being good for goodness sake." They were, largely, being pretty bad in as many ways as possible. It should be noted that many of these idols religions demanded such behavior. Worshiping some demanded human sacrifice, worshiping others demanded prostitution, worshiping still others required abuse of drugs, physical torture or debasement, etc. Don't think that just because this isn't listed out here doesn't mean that the people in Jerusalem were little angels whose only sin was bowing to a rock once in a while.

Two years before the fall of Jerusalem, Ezekiel is given a prophecy that compares the coming fall of Jerusalem to a ruined stew cooked in a rusty pot. A rusty pot will always produce a ruined stew, and to get it to produce a good meal again, it must be sterilized (remember, there were no good cleaning products in those days, so sterilization of cookware by fire was somewhat common and it made a good illustrative story). As we can see in this verse, other sins of the people in Jerusalem are listed which show that the sins are much wider than some idol worship. Again, just because the prophecy doesn't explicitly state that some will survive this process doesn't mean that it wouldn't happen. As I noted in other posts, some other prophecies do address this.
The death of Ezekiel's wife must have been very sudden and tragic for him. God is not asking him not to feel anything, God is asking him to skip the rituals of mourning that were traditional among the Israelites. A mourner wore torn sackcloth (rough fabric like burlap), ate special foods, shaved their hair, uncovered their head, etc. People could visually pick out a mourner in a crowd. God is telling Ezekiel to skip this ritual likely because it would attract greater attention when someone they knew should be "mourning" wasn't doing what was expected. That distinction would draw people to hear the message and perhaps get them to listen.
It is likely that Ezekiel's wife was ill, perhaps unbeknown to either Ezekiel or herself. God doesn't say he's going to kill Ezekiel's wife, but that he will take her away. I take this to mean that God knew she was going to die and is breaking the news to Ezekiel (giving them time, perhaps, to come to terms with it).