Why you should grapple with the Book of Ezekiel

Fra Angelico, "Vision of Ezekiel" (detail from Wardrobe of the Silversmiths), c. 1450

Ezekiel is one of the most daunting books of the Bible.

At forty-eight chapters, it is long. It immediately confronts the reader with unsettling and often inscrutable imagery. Such imagery, conveyed in visions both contextually sparse and geographically bounding (from Babylon to Jerusalem to elsewhere), challenges a reader’s attentiveness as well as his or her sensibilities. For a reader’s distracted mind, the content of the book becomes remote. After all—one might say—it’s among those difficult Old Testament prophets; their visions don’t have the relevance of the New Testament’s Book of Revelation, where future and otherworldly prospects are known to be tied to Jesus Christ and, in Him, the end of all things.

Then there is chapter-upon-chapter of horrifying prophetic judgment, against Israel and Judah, Jerusalem, and the nations. These align Ezekiel with Jeremiah and other prophets. Ezekiel’s theatrics of judgment—the sort of “street theater” the prophet is called to enact—are off-putting, cringe-worthy, hard to understand, and also much like his contemporary, Jeremiah.

We are enlivened and encouraged by the vividness of dead-and-dried bones brought back to life, by the vision of God’s glorious presence returning to a formidable, visionary temple, by an ever-deepening river that brings life where it flows, even to the Dead Sea. However wonderful, such episodes as vantages or points-of-entry into Ezekiel, narrow our attention and fail to return a book less opaque or fragmented to the reader.

And then there’s Gog and Magog. What are they about? With many modern interpreters unable to deal with them, the whole of the book gets packaged-up and shipped forward to an entirely future fulfillment, which is either far off, or alarmingly, geopolitically near. All this is achieved with a comprehensive system of biblical interpretation relying on many assumptions, and often failing to do justice to the understanding of the original hearers as well as the witness of Scripture overall.

The Civitas Book Club will be discussing Ezekiel on Saturday evening, January 25th, between 7:00 and 9:00 at the Presbyterian Church of Manchester. Our objective will be to discover an organizing form-of-entry using the under-considered period of Israel’s Exile and Restoration. Finding such a way into the book will uphold better understanding of the related books of the Bible—the historical books as well as the rest of the prophetic witness—and the redemptive events to which they speak. We are especially in earnest to discover a path into Ezekiel that supports repeated encounters with it throughout the course of the Christian life—when read at worship’s lectern, preached from the pulpit, or studied in the course of devotion.

We hope you will join us!