Original Meaning
THE IDEA OF comprehensive judgment descending on God’s people was already present in Ezekiel 21, but in chapter 22 it moves into the foreground. In this chapter, the prophet is called on to act as prosecuting counsel, making known to Jerusalem in detail her detestable ways, which form the basis for both the actuality and the immediacy of divine judgment. The comprehensive nature of her sins means that judgment is necessary and judgment is now.
The prophet begins by presenting his indictment in outline form (22:3–5): Jerusalem’s sins involve both social sins—that is, sins against humanity (e.g., “shedding blood,” 22:3)—and cultic sins—that is, sins against God (e.g., the manufacture of idols, 22:3). These two broad classes of sins have resulted in two respective consequences: social sins lead to “guilt” (ʾāšam, 22:4), the forensic state of deserving punishment, while cultic sins lead to “defilement” (ṭāmēʾ, 22:4), the ritual state of being unfit to appear in the presence of God. The combination of these in Jerusalem’s case means that she has brought on herself her “doom,” or more literally, “her time” (ʿittāh, 22:3); her days have come to a close, and the end of her years have come (v. 4).
Like a virus in the bloodstream, Jerusalem’s defilement and guilt have built up to the point where they now initiate a life-threatening crisis.1 Now the hour of her judgment has struck. The result of that judgment will make Jerusalem into an “object of scorn” to the nations around her. Both those near at hand and those far away will mock her as being an “infamous city” (22:5), that is, famous for her cultic and social sins, which have led to her downfall.
Verses 6–12 give the first catalogue of Jerusalem’s crimes, showing how she has offended against God’s law. The charges are directed against the “princes of Israel,” a phrase normally understood as designating the former kings of Judah. Thus in view are not merely present sins but a continuing history of sin on the part of Judah’s leadership.2 The kings are specifically indicted because it was their responsibility to establish justice in the community, especially by protecting the poor and weak (Ps. 72:1–4).
The sins listed here are not a random collection of charges, but specifically an accusation of having violated the laws of the Pentateuch, especially those of the so-called “Holiness Code” of Leviticus 18–20; 25.3 Thus in Ezekiel 22:7, the accusation that “they have treated father and mother with contempt” has a basis in Leviticus 20:9, while the claim that they oppressed the alien is based on Leviticus 19:33. The same is true of the remainder of the charges made by the prophet: “despis[ing] my holy things and desecrat[ing] my Sabbaths” (see 19:30), slandering (see 19:16), eating “at the mountain shrines” (see 19:26, LXX),4 “commit[ting] lewd acts” (see 20:14), “dishonor[ing] their fathers’ bed” (see 20:11), “violat[ing] women during their period” (see 18:19), “commit[ting] a detestable offense with [one’s] neighbor’s wife” (see 20:10), “defil[ing one’s] daughter-in-law” (see 20:12), “violat[ing one’s] sister” (see 20:17), “tak[ing] usury and excessive interest” (see 25:36), and “mak[ing] unjust gain from your neighbors” (see 19:13).
Though the charges themselves are largely drawn from the Holiness Code, the specific turn of phrase is in many places influenced by Deuteronomy, for instance, in the final concluding phrase: “You have forgotten me” (Ezek. 22:12; cf. Deut. 8:14, 19). The end result, then, is a comprehensive indictment of the former rulers of Judah on the basis of the law of Moses; the covenant bond forged on Mount Sinai has been broken.5 The “holy nation” (Ex. 19:6) has become thoroughly unholy.
Such a comprehensive catalogue of sins can have only one outcome. As Deuteronomy 8:19 makes clear: “If you ever forget the LORD your God . . . you will surely be destroyed.” So the next two sections (Ezek. 22:13–16, 17–22) deal with the Lord’s response to his people’s sin under the twin images of judgment by scattering and judgment by gathering. The literary device of using two diametrically opposite images together underscores once again the comprehensive nature of Judah’s doom.
Verse 13 acts as the link between the accusation and the threat of punishment, summarizing the accusation by putting together the last charge (“unjust gain”) with the first (“blood you have shed in your midst,” cf. v. 3) in a reversed arrangement to form a chiasm. Because of these things the Lord will now act, dispersing Judah among the nations and scattering them through the countries (22:15). In this way, the Lord will bring an end to Judah’s uncleanness (22:15). Though such a fate for the Lord’s people would be “defiling” to the Lord6 in front of the nations, it was a necessary price to pay. As Leslie Allen puts it, the Lord’s defilement through Judah’s exile “was the lesser of two evils that he was prepared to endure as the price to pay for making his forgetful people remember who and what he was.”7
But this scattering is not the only dimension of judgment threatened. Paradoxically, there appears also a “gathering for judgment,” as the house of Israel is gathered into Jerusalem, into the heart of the smelter’s furnace, to experience the destructive impact of the full outpouring of the Lord’s wrath (22:18–22). This is paradoxical not merely because “gathering” is the logical opposite of “scattering,” but also because the terminology of gathering is elsewhere normally used in a positive sense.
The conventional use of the imagery envisages first a scattering of God’s people in his wrath and then, after the judgment has had a purifying effect, a gathering of God’s people in his mercy. For instance, in 11:17 the Sovereign Lord promises to gather his people from the countries where they have been scattered.8 Although he frequently uses “gathering” in this conventional, positive sense, Ezekiel has already indicated a possible negative aspect of gathering as a precondition for judgment rather than salvation in 20:34. Here in chapter 22, however, it functions together with its opposite “scattering” to underline the comprehensive nature of the coming judgment.
Nor is this the only conventionally positive theme given a negative twist in Ezekiel 22. The image of judgment as the refiner’s fire, purifying the dross to leave only the pure metal, appears several times in the Bible (notably in Isa. 1:21–31; 48:10; Mal. 3:2–3). But in Ezekiel 22, as in Jeremiah 6:27–30, the refining process has a purely negative product, with nothing but unpurged molten dross produced. The purpose of this divine act of judgment, then, is not to purify his people, but merely to pour out on rebellious sinners his fiery wrath.
This outpouring of God’s wrath has not yet happened to Judah, notwithstanding the disasters of 605 and 597 B.C. She remains “a land not cleansed9 or showered in the day of wrath” (Ezek. 22:24). Most commentators understand this as the removal of the covenant blessing of rain, an idea that is certainly common in the Old Testament (e.g., Lev. 26:19).10 However, in context the “day of wrath” is a future event, so the absence of rain must refer to the absence of an element of judgment. The concept of rain on the land as an element of judgment is present in the Flood narrative (Gen. 7:4, 11), and the expectation of a future destructive flood is reflected in Ezekiel 13:11 and 38:22.11 It may therefore be better to understand 22:24 as the absence of a cleansing deluge, like the great Flood, which would have purged the land of evildoers in one great day of destruction. Because of this lack of cleansing in the past, the land remains full of oppression, detailed in the following verses, which will lead to a final pouring out of indignation on the people (22:31).
If the first catalogue of the sins of Jerusalem was detailed with reference to the law (esp. Lev. 18–20; 25), the second catalogue of Jerusalem’s sins is detailed with reference to one of the prophets, namely, Zephaniah 3:3–4.12 Though Zephaniah’s four categories of leaders charged with wrongdoing (officials, rulers, prophets, and priests) are expanded to five (princes, priests, officials, prophets, and people of the land), the underlying continuity between the charges is clear: All of the leadership classes in Judah are charged and found guilty of wrongdoing.
The “princes,” described as being like “a roaring lion,” have wreaked havoc through a series of social sins (Ezek. 22:25). In effect, they preenacted the societal devastation that the Babylonians would bring to full measure when they destroyed Jerusalem.13
The “officials,” described as “wolves,” have likewise misused their power for the purpose of “unjust gain” (22:27).
Even the “priests,” who elsewhere in Ezekiel are not singled out for any blame, except in the explicit reversal of this charge in Ezek. 44:23–24, did “violence to my law and profane my holy things” (22:26). They have failed in their task of protecting Yahweh’s holy things by not teaching the proper distinction between holy and unholy, clean and unclean. The unusual phrase “they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbaths” seems to indicate the priests’ failure to prosecute those who transgressed the law (cf. a similar phrase in Lev. 20:4).
Meanwhile the “prophets” are condemned in terms similar to Ezekiel 13 as unreliable whitewashers, telling people what they wanted to hear in the Lord’s name, when he had not sent them (22:28).
The “people of the land,” who in this context should be identified as a group of powerful men in Jerusalem with close ties to the Davidic house,14 have also been taking advantage of their position. They have been exploiting those unable to defend themselves: “the poor and needy and . . . the alien” (22:29).
After the conclusion of the second catalogue of sins, we again read of the Lord’s twofold response. He first of all sought for “a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land” (22:30). In other words, he sought a true prophet (cf. 13:5)—someone who would take on the difficult and dangerous task of interceding for the people, just as Moses did successfully after the incident of the golden calf (Ps. 106:23). But this time no one was found to deflect God’s wrath, and thus the all-consuming fiery anger of God will descend on Jerusalem (Ezek. 22:31). As if to emphasize the connection to the destruction of Jerusalem depicted in chapters 9–11, the last, ominous words of the Lord are the same in both cases: “[I will bring] down on their own heads all they have done” (22:31; cf. 11:21).
Bridging Contexts
JERUSALEM AS SPIRITUAL CENTER. Few contemporary readers are aware of the unique place that Jerusalem occupied in preexilic Israel. She was not merely the ancient equivalent of London or Washington, D.C., the seat of government and power; she was the spiritual center of God’s people, the one place in all the earth where God had chosen to place his name. Thus in Psalm 48 the praise of God and the praise of Zion go hand in hand. Jerusalem is “the city of our God,” Mount Zion is “his holy mountain,” the unique place of God’s presence (Ps. 48:1, 3).
To describe its significance the psalmist borrows the language of Canaanite mythology: It is exalted above the other mountains, like the uttermost heights of Mount Zaphon, the supposed home of the Canaanite pantheon.15 It was the very center of the earth, both geographically and theologically (Ezek. 5:5).16 Of course, Jerusalem gained that spiritual significance from its role as the home of the temple built by Solomon, on which the Lord had promised to set his name (1 Kings 9:3). But the city itself stood within the aura of holiness created by the temple, so that her walls and towers became objects of spiritual meditation (Ps. 48:12–13) and she herself was a place of pilgrimage and a subject of prayer (Ps. 122).
But as a consequence of that unique significance, Jerusalem was also required to be a place of radical holiness. As the psalmist says: “Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?” (Ps. 24:3; cf. Ps. 15). The laws governing the entrance ways into the temple and the offering of the sacrifices were designed to prevent the intrusion of the profane into the place of the sacred. The accusation of Ezekiel 22 was that the barriers against the profane had comprehensively broken down. The entirely “holy city” had become the entirely “unholy city.” The very heart of Judah, geographically and theologically, had become corrupted by sin. In place of the assertion of the psalmist “God is within her,” from which followed the assurance “she will not fall” (Ps. 46:5), Ezekiel charged, with the repeated use of the catchwords dām (“blood[shed]”) and betōkēk (“in your midst”), that “you have shed [blood] in your midst” (Ezek. 22:13), from which followed the certainty that God’s wrath would fall. There could be no escape for the radically polluted “city of God.”
The contaminating nature of blood in ancient Israel. The other aspect of Ezekiel 22 that will not be readily recognized by contemporary readers is the specially contaminating nature of blood in ancient Israel. To be sure, the idea of bloodstained hands being repellent is familiar to us. We need only think of Shakespeare’s depiction of Lady Macbeth, a figure tormented by the vision of hands indelibly stained with the blood of her victim, so that even though she washed her hands repeatedly the foul spots could not be removed. But the revulsion in ancient Israelite society to the shedding of innocent blood was even stronger. The blood, whether of an animal or of a person, contained the life and was therefore to be treated with special reverence (Lev. 17:11). When a domestic animal was sacrificed, this reverence required that the blood was to be sprinkled on the altar (17:6); if a wild animal were killed for food, its blood was to be drained onto the ground before the meat could be consumed (17:13).
Anyone failing to observe these measures was deemed “guilty of bloodshed” and was to be cut off from the covenant people. This requirement was intended to underline the sacredness of all life, both animal and human.17 Those who failed to show respect for the life of others would be excluded from the covenant community, the place where life was to be found. What prospect then awaits the city that has become as deeply defiled as it is possible to be, filled with bloodshed (Ezek. 22:3–4)? It is only a matter of time before she will be cut off—and Ezekiel affirms that the time of Jerusalem’s complete destruction has now indeed come.
Contemporary Significance
DIES IRAE. When I was a university student I participated in a performance of Mozart’s Requiem. We were told the story of how, while seriously ill, Mozart was approached by a mysterious stranger who commissioned him to write a Requiem Mass. Mozart became convinced that this was an angelic visitation, telling him to write a Requiem for himself. Though he did not live to complete his final work—it was finished from his notes by one of his students—the result is a powerful and compelling piece of music. One of the most emotionally charged parts of the Requiem for me was his rendition of the ancient Latin hymn Dies Irae. To the accompaniment of crashing chords, the fortissimo voices cry out, “Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla, teste David cum Sibylla. . . .” Although I did not really understand the words (one year of high school Latin will only take you so far), I knew it had something to do with the Judgment Day, and the thought of a desperately ill genius composing the music with which to face his own Maker gave it a powerful emotional appeal.
I recently discovered an English translation of the Dies Irae, and realized that I had barely begun to understand the power of its conviction:
Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophet’s warning—
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!
Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth,
When from heav’n the Judge descendeth,
On Whose sentence all dependeth!
Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth,
Through earth’s sepulchers it ringeth,
All before the throne it bringeth.
Death is struck and nature quaking,
All Creation is awaking,
To its Judge an answer making.
Lo! the book exactly worded,
Wherein all hath been recorded;
Thence shall judgment be awarded.
When the Judge His seat attaineth,
And each hidden deed arraigneth,
Nothing unavenged remaineth.18
Such a stirring vision of the final judgment is not found in many contemporary worship songs, nor indeed in many hymnbooks in current use. These days we sing of the love of God and of the mercy and grace of God, but not, it seems, of the wrath of God and of the reality and certainty of final judgment. Why not?
Taking sin seriously. I think that the answer lies in our failure to understand the reality and the comprehensiveness of our sin. The person unconvinced of the reality and comprehensiveness of Jerusalem’s sin, when faced with its destruction in 586 B.C., asks, “Why wouldn’t God save her?” Ezekiel seeks to redirect that question so that the questioner asks: “How could a holy God do anything other than condemn her?” His method was simply to demonstrate the fact and the scope of her sin.
Modern people are equally unconvinced of the reality of their sin. The message of Paul that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) is not one that finds a ready hearing in today’s society. We tend to redefine sin out of existence as dysfunction or psychological weakness. What used to be called sin is now merely an “alternative lifestyle.” Our culture has “defined deviancy down” to the point that what used to be considered deviant behavior is the new “normal.”19
This is true not merely in society at large but also in the churches. In a recent television interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, bewailed the fact that Britain was in danger of losing its Christian values and complained that the nation had “lost the language of sin.” But earlier in the same interview, when questioned about the marital difficulties of Prince Charles, he reportedly responded: “He is a man who takes faith seriously, who attends worship and someone who has struggled as many people struggle with . . . brokenness in relationships. Therefore it’s wrong for you and I to sit in judgment on people who are, as we are, people made in the image of God.”20 Apparently persistent adultery and divorce are no longer to be described as “sin”; now they are “brokenness in relationships.”
Even those who still talk about sins have frequently lost the sense of the comprehensive nature of our sin. Preachers (and churches) tend to have a shortened list of actual sins that they preach against. Some churches are strong against sexual sins, foul language, and drunkenness but have little to say about the economic sins of unjust business practices or the societal sins of racism that are endemic around us. Other churches speak strongly against structural evils but almost completely neglect the area of private morality. Perhaps we all have a tendency to dwell more on the sins that dog the lives of others than the faults of our own congregations. Not so Ezekiel: No one can escape the range of the charges he addresses.
Along with the loss of the sense of sin goes the loss of understanding of God’s wrath. Paul understood that: “We were by nature objects of [God’s] wrath” (Eph. 2:3). Why? Because we “were dead in [our] transgressions and sins” (2:1). A knowledge of sin and the understanding of God’s wrath go together. It should therefore be no surprise that in a society where sin is no longer believed in, the wrath of God is not understood.21 We increasingly ask the question, “Why would a good God sentence anyone to eternal punishment?” instead of the question, “How can a holy God do anything other than condemn me to the depths of hell?”
Sin and redemption in “the city.” The reality of sin, however, is an everyday fact for all of us, perhaps especially for those who live in our major cities. Just as ancient Jerusalem had drawn to itself all manner of detestable practices, so typically the major cities of our world are hotbeds of every kind of vice. This is merely what one would expect, given the origins that the Bible ascribes to the city. In Genesis, the city is Cain’s natural territory. It is archetypally the place where no one is his or her brother’s keeper. In a small town, everybody not only knows your name and the state of your marriage, they know everything about you, down to how often you change your underwear. That intimate knowledge acts as a powerful brake on public sin. In a big city, by contrast, you can be surrounded by a million people and not know a single soul. Few people know what you do, and fewer still care.
Cain’s line is the one that excels in farming, in engineering, and in the arts (Gen. 4:20–22). It increases in power, wealth, and luxury. But paradoxically as it prospers materially it also declines in morals. The problem with the city is not population density but sin. Put a lot of sinners close together and it is not surprising that you will reap degradation. The city draws out what is in humanity, good and bad. It is the place of progress, of technology, of the arts—all of which are good gifts of God, but all of which can so easily be perverted.
Yet God can redeem even the city. The place that in Genesis 1–11 is the home of Cain’s descendants and the builders of the tower of Babel becomes in Revelation 21–22 the new Jerusalem, the place where God lives with his people. It will be in a heavenly city that we will know God and be fully known by him, and live in intimate and untroubled fellowship with our brothers and sisters. We were created for society; we were not created to live alone. After the Fall, to be sure, society becomes a mixed blessing. Sin has societal consequences. God’s solution, however, is not to call his redeemed people to live a hermit existence in the desert but to form them into a new society, the church, where we share fellowship with those who are our siblings in Christ.
Awakening a sense of sin and presenting God’s grace. But how can we awaken a sense of sin in those around us who are as yet outside the church? In one sense, we cannot. At the heart of the problem is the fact that those outside Christ are dead in their transgressions and sins. How do you wake the dead? Only the Holy Spirit can perform that miracle. Nonetheless, in our preaching we need to have a balance of preaching the law and preaching the gospel.
Ezekiel’s methodology for addressing the people of his own day was to show them how far short they had fallen of the standards laid down in God’s Word. He indicted his hearers comprehensively of crimes against the Law and the Prophets. The standards he used were not those of contemporary society, with which they might compare favorably, but God’s perfect law, before which all stood condemned. He showed them the extent to which sin had contaminated the very heart of their society. He charged them not merely with sin in general, but of detailed specific sins of comprehensive range. Only after they had been confronted with the reality and depth of their sin could they come to an understanding of the rightness of God’s wrath against them. Only then could the good news of God’s grace be preached to them.
On the basis of the approach of Ezekiel and some of the other prophets, it has sometimes been insisted that the law is a necessary first step toward understanding the gospel, as if only after first understanding fully the claims of the law can one come to Christ.22 In fact, however, law and grace belong together in contributing to our understanding of sin and thus our understanding of our need for Christ. If we merely understand the law without seeing God’s grace, we can fall into the trap of seeing God as the cosmic policeman, upholding apparently arbitrary standards that get in the way of our self-fulfillment. This view of God was the serpent’s goal in his questioning of Eve in the Garden of Eden. He sought to maximize the restrictiveness of God’s law (“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Gen. 3:1) and to minimize God’s gracious goodness (“God knows that when you eat of it . . . you will be like God, knowing good and evil,” 3:5).
Equally, if we merely understand grace without seeing the place of the law, then we may view God as the cosmic grandfather, understanding all and therefore forgiving all. What is important is not so much the order in which law and grace are proclaimed but the fact that both are clearly proclaimed. Perhaps rather than a fixed order of proclamation, it would be better to view their relationship as a dynamic relationship, more of a circle than a straight line.
Law and grace understood together point us to our need for Christ. In Christ, we see that God’s law is good and perfect, designed for our utmost fulfillment as human beings; the only utterly fulfilled person who ever lived is also the only person who ever fully kept God’s law. Yet in Christ we see the full meaning of God’s grace—that grace is (in the children’s acronym) God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. Forgiveness for us is complete, full, and free. But it was not without cost. The cost of free forgiveness was borne for us on the cross, where Jesus purchased the blood-filled Jerusalem and her (un)spiritual descendants in order to rehab her into his heavenly bride, the new Jerusalem, in whom God can dwell forever.
The author of the Dies Irae understood clearly that law and grace go together. Thus, having trumpeted the threats of the law, he goes on:
What shall I, frail man, be pleading,
Who for me be interceding,
When the just are mercy needing?
King of majesty tremendous,
Who dost free salvation send us,
Fount of pity, then befriend us!
Think, good Jesus! My salvation
Caused thy wondrous Incarnation;
Leave me not to reprobation.
Faint and weary Thou hast sought me
On the cross of suffering bought me;
Shall such grace be vainly brought me?
Righteous Judge! For sin’s pollution
Grant Thy gift of absolution,
Ere that day of retribution.
Guilty, now I pour my moaning,
All my shame with anguish owning,
Spare, O God, Thy suppliant groaning.
Someone to stand in the gap. The problem facing Ezekiel was not simply that he encountered a few defiled individuals, who needed to hear the gospel. Jerusalem herself, the holy city, was completely defiled. There was no righteous remnant; no one in the catalogue of leaders was left free from the taint of sin, not even the priests. There was literally no one to stand in the gap for her. In Abraham’s day, a quorum of ten righteous men might have saved Sodom. In Jerusalem, the new Sodom (Ezek. 16:46), there is not even left one righteous Lot who will escape.
Such too is the world in which we live. The best of our righteousness is as filthy rags in the presence of a holy God. As Christians we know that we are saved not by our righteousness, but by the One who stood in the gap for us, Jesus Christ himself, who bore the full weight of the true dies irae, the day of God’s wrath. On that day, the sun was turned to darkness while he suffered the full weight of the punishment our sins deserved (Matt. 27:45). The earth itself convulsed and the curtain in the temple, the barrier closing off the presence of God in the Most Holy Place, was torn in two, opening up a gap for us to come to God. As we come, we in turn are called to share in the prophetic ministry of “standing in the gap.” We are called to intercede in prayer for the lost, taking the risk of rejection and persecution as we warn them of the wrath to come, and to live lives of purity as we wait so that nothing may hinder the message of life that is proclaimed through us.