Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezekiel 24-26.

Today’s passage begins with Ezekiel comparing Jerusalem to a copper cook pot.  As he describes how the pot is put over the fire, he makes the point that it doesn’t make any difference that the best quality meat was put into the pot.    I had always imagined the “heat” Ezekiel says was applied to the pot as God’s wrath being poured out on Jerusalem for their sin.  Today, it struck me that the “heat” applied to the pot was the sins of the people, particularly the sins of the elites, of the wealthy and powerful.  Their sins have boiled off that which would have made the “stew” edible until the contents were burned to the metal so that no amount of cleaning could remove it.  That is what is happening to our society today.  After finishing his metaphor, Ezekiel talks about the fall of Jerusalem and God’s judgement against the nations surrounding Judah.  Repeatedly as he describes these things God, speaking through Ezekiel, says, “Then you (or they) will know that I am God.”  Yesterday, I wrote about people doing terrible things because they had forgotten God.  Today’s passage tells us that if we forget God, He will allow terrible things to happen to us until we once more know that He is God, and act accordingly.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezekiel 24-26.

God gives Ezekiel a prophecy where He compares Jerusalem to a cooking pot.  In the prophecy God calls for filling the pot with the best cuts of meat and boiling them all together.  The point of this prophecy being that God’s judgement, unlike man’s, will not favor the rich and powerful, or politically connected, over the poor and powerless.  When God brings judgement He will treat rich and poor equally, the only distinction He will make is between the righteous and the unrighteous.  And I want to note that while this passage does not make this point, the righteous are those who repent and throw themselves on God’s mercy.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezekiel 24-26.

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!

Every time I read Ezekiel’s prophecy about Jerusalem as a cooking pot I feel like I am missing part of the image he is drawing here.  Today, it reads to me like he is making one of two comparisons.  My first thought was that he was comparing Jerusalem to a cooking pot and all of the “meat” was thrown in together and indistinguishable after the cooking.  By that I understand it to mean that there will be no distinguishing the elites from the common man when destruction comes to Jerusalem.  Then when I re-read the passage today, it occurred to me that Ezekiel says that only the choicest meats had been placed in the cooking pot.  To me, that suggests that the prophecy says that the “elites” had gathered in Jerusalem and would suffer there together.  In both cases, I see it as a warning against those who think that they are a special class who will be able to avoid the suffering others will suffer as a result of their decisions.  As I read this I am reminded of things I see in the world today from the elites, from those who believe that their wealth or political connections will shield them from the devastation which will result from the policies they support and the actions which they take.  Again, I would like to note that Ezekiel did not speak his prophecies to the people of Jerusalem.  Rather, Ezekiel prophesied to the Israelites already in exile in Babylon.  I believe that just as I see two possible interpretations for his there are two possible lessons.  First, we should not despair thinking that those whose actions and policies will bring about devastation will escape from the consequences they are bringing upon others.  Second, we should not think that we can take actions which will bring suffering on others and escape that suffering ourselves.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezekiel 24-26.

I really struggled with what to write about today’s passage.  Finally it came to me that the prophecy using the cooking pot as a metaphor was directed specifically at Jerusalem.  In many of the other prophecies against Jerusalem, Jerusalem is symbolic for all of Judah, or sometimes even all of Israel.  But this one is specific to Jerusalem.  The people of Jerusalem considered themselves the elite of Judah, and at times of all of Israel.  And among the people of Jerusalem there were those who were considered better than the rest. So, I see this as a prophecy against those who see themselves as the elite of a nation.  God will hold those who see themselves as above the rest of the nation responsible for all of the sins of that nation.   The “choicest” cuts of meat were put into the pot, some “better” cuts than others.   But God will “cook” that pot over the fire until there is no distinction among them,  He will heat the pot with fire in order to turn them from their sins, but, if they do not, He will raise the temperature until they are burned to the metal of the pot and the pot is ruined.  God is turning up the heat right now, will we turn from our sins?

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

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 24-26.

Elsewhere, some of the false prophets were quoted as saying that people would be safe in Jerusalem because it was like an iron cooking pot.  Here Ezekiel illustrates why that was a faulty metaphor for safety.  He makes the point with this illustration that the wealthy and the powerful, those who think of themselves as the “choice cuts”, will be no different from the poor and needy.  When you cook meat in a pot like this, it all becomes pretty much interchangeable.  Further, as I read the passage, he cooks the meat until it becomes burned to the sides and bottom of the pot, charred and inedible.  As a result the pot cannot be cleaned and becomes unusable.  Ezekiel takes the metaphor which false prophets had used to reassure people and makes it a metaphor for the results of the people’s unwillingness to turn from their sins.  This is a perfect metaphor because earlier Ezekiel had used the metaphor of using fire to purify silver.  God brings trouble into our lives to purify us.  We can either let it melt us down to remove the impurities, or we can resist and be discarded as useless.

I am going to skip over the very sad portion where Ezekiel was forbidden by God to mourn for the death of his wife.  I find a very real lesson for practical politics in Ezekiel’s prophecies against the nations which surrounded Judah.  Those nations fell into two classes: those which encouraged the kings of Judah to ally against Babylon, and those which sought to gain by encouraging Babylon to destroy the Jewish people.  There may have been significant overlap between these two groups., as some may have sent envoys to convince the kings of Judah to rebel against Babylon while sending envoys to Babylon to swear fealty to Babylon.  In either case, the destruction which came upon Judah brought devastation on those nations as well.  War does not stay within borders.