Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezekiel 22-23.

My lovely wife married me 22 years ago on the 23rd of this month.  So I am going to wish her Happy Anniversary every day from now until then.

Happy Anniversary, Darling!

God spoke a prophecy against Jerusalem through Ezekiel in today’s passage.  In it God accused the people of Jerusalem of being accepting of various sins.  Their political leadership was guilty of using their power to bring about the deaths of their political enemies.  Some among them not only failed to honor their parents, they treated them with contempt.  Others oppressed the foreigners among them, and still others mistreated widows and orphans.  There were sons who slept with their father’s wives, and fathers who slept with their son’s wives.  People among them took bribes to convict the innocent and others who sought riches at the expense of the poor.  Some extorted gain from their neighbors.  And, in the middle of all of this, God accused them of desecrating the Sabbath and despising holy things.  We often look at that last as a relatively minor sin, but Ezekiel makes clear that God sees it otherwise.  It seems to me that Ezekiel is suggesting that desecrating the Sabbath is a kind of “gateway sin” which leads us to many others.  Or, perhaps to express it another way, a society which does not respect the Sabbath will fail to respect other important limitations on acceptable actions.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.