God Has Given His Prophet

¶ … God has given his Prophet Ezekiel a clear foresight o the peoples miseries. He gives Ezekiel the insight into the people's offenses and wickedness for which God befalls judgment upon them. Ezekiel's visionary experience occurs in the prophet's house during a consultation session with the elders of the Diaspora communities. As the story is counted, it seems that the state of trance (the Hand of Yahweh") came over Ezekiel suddenly, without preparation or solicitation. In the vision, a heavenly been appeared to Ezekiel and took by the hairs of his head.(Block During this religious visionary experience the spirit of God Then transports him and sets him down in Jerusalem. Just as in our dreams we may experience other places while never moving from our beds so too does Ezekiel; physically he is bound to the reality of exile in Babylon, but in his dream, he becomes a visitor in the holy city that once was his home. Ezekiel finds himself standing in the outer court of the temple in Jerusalem, at the s pot close tot the northern entrance to the inner court; it was through this entrance that the king and royal family passed into the inner court to worship. Standing there is aware of the awesome Glory of God, just as he had been in his first vision on the plain. There he is instructed to look to the north and see the "Image of jealousy" (verse 5). An image would provoke jealousy for according to the first commandment "He is a jealous God." As such it would refer to the image of Asherah, the Canaanite goddess of love. Such an image of has been placed in the temple in the past (2Kings 21:7), and though it was removed in Josiah's reformation, it may well have reappeared in the last sad days of the temple's history prior to its destruction. Ezekiel is also privy to the information that by Israel's actions, they have driven God away and with him his protection. There are three striking features of this first installment of Ezekiel's vision. Two things were present where there should only be one. The Glory of God was there but so was the image of the false deity and immediately there is a sense of the incongruous. As mercury and water will not mix, no more would the worship of Israel's God mix with that of other gods. From a biblical perspective, a true temple has room for only one god. If two are present, one or the other will leave. If the false god remains then the true God will leave. At the sight of the image, Ezekiel perceives immediately that the first of the Ten Commandments was being broken; that commandment prohibited the recognition of any other god other than the Lord God. The first commandment expressed the fundamental principle of faith, that of absolute commitment and faithfulness to the God of Israel. When that commandment is broken, the entire foundations of faith are undermined. Thus one is already forewarned that matters will worsen as the vision progresses. God expresses to Ezekiel that he has been driven out of his sanctuary (verse 6).The anger will grow later, but for the moment the tone reflects that of grief. The people are driving God out of his temple, and in doing so demonstrate that they have forgotten entirely the very reason for the temple's existence. As the vision progresses to the second stage, Ezekiel is led to the door of the inner court, and asked to look inside a hole in the wall. Verse 8 should translate as "Son of Man, examine the wall closely." As he examined the wall his horror dos not stem from the decorations on the wall but rather, the art of idolatry that the inhabitants of the room were practicing. Seventy of Israel's leading citizens were there. Offering their worship and incense to the inanimate murals decorating the room. The seventy elders, who were taking part in a liturgy with incense, were the officials representatives of the tribes that according to tradition, accompanied Moses and Aaron at the ratification of the Sinai Covenant (Exodus 24:1, 9). The scene is reminiscent of Egyptian burial chambers; the walls were covered with brilliantly painted images of deities in animal form, including Anubis, the jackal-headed god who weighed the soul of the dead. This second phase of the prophet's vision of Jerusalem illustrates a number of important points with respect to the state of religion in the capital city. The nation's leadership was actively engaged in the pursuit of evil. When the integrity of the nation's leadership is lost, there is no hope for its people.. It is already clear from the first part of the prophet's vision that the worship of the temple had become sadly debased; a pagan altar had been set up in the temple's outer court. So why, with a public altar outside was there a secret worship of the other false gods inside? Probably, there were two forms of the false religion? The open altar outside represented the public false cult, that akin to the religion of neighboring Canaan. After the Exodus from Egyptian slavery, seventy elders had participated in the making of the covenant (Exodus 24:1, 9). Now, threatened by slavery once again seventy elders of another age turned back to Egypt, of all places, in seeking salvation. Thus the scene of the seventy elders worshipping Egyptian gods represents a loss of a sense of liberation; fearing slavery again, they turned back to their old slave-masters, not to the God who delivered them from slavery. The life of liberation called for continuing faith in the great Liberator. The tragedy of so much of human existence is that faced with new bondage, there is a loss of courage and a voluntary return to the old forms of slavery. The elders suffered delusions of secrecy (Blenkinsopp)

The last scene takes place in north of the temple the gate to the most sacred temple areas. A group of women were sitting on the ground and weeping. The weeping women that Ezekiel saw were engaged in the summer ritual, mourning the demise of Tammuz and seeking his return the following spring.The prophet bears witness to the twenty five men facing east, with their backs to the temple, worshipping the rising sun. . That they conducted their ritual in this place of special sanctity at least suggests a body with official standing. They turned their expectant faces to the mourning sunlight, hoping that would dispel the gloom of their existence.