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

In the year 2000, on the 23rd day of this month, my wife married me.  So here we are on day 4 of the 20 days that I am going to wish her Happy Anniversary for 20 years of marriage.  Happy Anniversary Darling!

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 32-33.

Today I struggle with Ezekiel’s prophecies concerning the nations around Judah, but was struck by something.  As Ezekiel concluded his prophecy concerning the fall of Egypt he listed other powerful nations which had fallen (or were about to fall).  As he goes through this list it contains nations with which we are familiar, both from elsewhere in the Bible and from archeology, but in the middle of the list he names two nations with which we have little familiarity: Meshech and Tubal.  To the best of my knowledge, the only source we have which mentions them which is contemporary with, or earlier than, Ezekiel, is Ezekiel.  There are later mentions of these two nations, but they all appear to be identifying their location from conjecture, either their own or that of those who preceded them. Some have concluded from this that they represent figurative nations rather than real nations.  Yet, here Ezekiel lists them among nations with which he readers would have been familiar.

Once again God gives Ezekiel the command to be a watchman over the people of Israel.  Many of us today have been given a similar command, perhaps all of us who follow Christ.  There are really two elements of the watchman’s job as described here.  The first element, the obvious element, is to warn people of coming danger; to warn them that their actions will lead to their death.  The second element is to let them know that God does not desire the death of the wicked, that He instead desires them to turn from their wickedness.  As a codicil to that second element we should realize that we should not desire the death of the wicked, we should also desire for them the turn to God.  We should desire that the wicked avoid the consequences of their sin by turning from it, rather than taking joy in the possibility that they will suffer for it.