Chapter 4: "Make a Model," or "Also, things get a bit scatological."
And then the Author of the story said, "Get out all your tinkertoys, and..."
Ooops, that was Jeremiah, not Ezekiel...
And the author in that case was SRD, not the Lord.
But I think* we do have this similarity: Ezekiel is in one place, using small objects to construct a model of reality in another place.
He's still in Babylon, far from his home.
And God tells him to take a brick and depict on in the city of Jerusalem.
And then to build a siege wall, a ramp, battering rams all around, and make some camps... and show a city besieged.
Then God tells Ezekiel to lie on his left side bearing the iniquity of Israel for... oh, 390 days! (to represent 390 years of their punishment)
After that, Ezekiel will lie on his right side bearing the sin of Judah for 40 more days. (again, 1 day for each year)
"And behold, I will place cords upon you, so that you cannot turn from one side to the other, till you have completed the days of your siege." (Ezekiel 4:8)
Your siege... the land has its siege, and you have your own siege to live through.
The experience of the people becomes the experience of Ezekiel.
And he will make his own bread, and act out life with a starvation diet and rationed water that goes with this siege.
Things have gone so far that God will push His own people into unavoidably violating the Law that He has given them in specific ways.
But, well, they have been violating it a great deal... and now God is going to press the point.
I think what's going on here is that God is
making concealed realities externally - and unavoidably - visible.
But Ezekiel has one request about if he can modify the preparation procedure:
"Please not baked over human excrement?" (He's kept God's law in not eating unclean food from childhood, and so he asks that he not stop now.)
And okay, God says he'll permit him to use dried cow dung.
I see Ezekiel as a really good model in how he speaks with God. (more on that shows up later.)
Here, he speaks to God about something that's bothering him in what God has told him to do.
And all these things listed... can be done without Ezekiel saying a word.
I get excited about the methods he uses... (as a teacher I know how resistant any person can be to being taught any ole thing!) What he's doing is calculated to get the attention of these people who are hard to teach.
But that's not all - Ezekiel is doing this at such a cost; the prophet embodies an experience of suffering like what his community will face.
* I don't super-remember if SRD's Jeremiah's construction of Tinkertoys and maybe legoes and things was a representation of something in the Land. It was, right?
Chapter 5: judgement portrayed and proclaimed
And now there is more prep for dramatization of what will happen - God tells Ezekiel to cut the hair off his head and shave his beard with a sharp sword.
He'll gather the hairs, divide them into roughly 3 bunches, and they will symbolize the fates of the people.
He will:
* Burn a third in the middle of the city (still has his mock-up) after he's acted out the siege.
* Slash a third with the sword around the city
* Scatter a third to the wind. ("And a third part you shall scatter to the wind, and I will unsheathe the sword after them.")
And, lastly, Ezekiel will take just a few strands and bind them in the folds of his robe, for safekeeping.
(That's the remnant.)
Then come the words - prophesy saying:
Israel was worse than the surrounding nations who weren't given God's law.
Hence the judgements He'll give.
And the judgements are reviewed... turns out that the burning with fire in the city was representing plague and famine. (The others were what they sounded like.)
And what they can expect for their future is told: they'll be a ruin, a disgrace, a taunt and a horror.
So, like the material of stories people (of the surrounding nations) will tell their children to frighten them and say, "Don't be like this, because what happened was so horrible. Let me tell you what their god did to them..."
Chapter 6: altars to idols on every high hill, on every mountain, under every green tree
"Prophesy against the mountains."
Will the mountains stand witness even if no human listens?
Sometimes you get that sense, but here... it looks like he's bringing a charge against the mountains.
Well, what is wrong with the mountains?
Well, idol-worship. And lots and lots of it.
And God will bring an action against the mountains:
wrecking the altars and littering them with corpses
Why?
Then you will know that I am Yahweh.
But - a remnant!
"...then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me and over their eyes that go whoring after their idols." (v. 9)
And they will have the gift of shame over their past deeds.
"And they shall know that I am the Lord. I have not said in vain that I would do this evil to them."
And the Lord tells them to go ahead and lament... because it will happen.
Their prevalence of idols will be matched with the prevalence of the slain.
Wosbald wrote:+JMJ+
Not quite sure where you're goin' with this thread, Linna. (Just riffin' on Ezekiel, perhaps?) Not sure that, even if I did, I'd necessarily have anything to add. But I'm watching it, sho'nuff.
Just sayin'.
Thank you, Wos! That was just about the encouragement I needed.
And the answer was... I was at the stage of "Hooo, boy! This is ...kind of... harder than I imagined."
