Introduction

Why Read Ezekiel?

IF YOU WERE to ask your Christian friends to name their favorite book of the Bible, the book of Ezekiel would not spring to most people’s minds. There are exceptions, of course. My fourteen-year-old niece is a big fan of the book, especially of the opening vision. But she is surely in the minority. In fact, I suspect that few of you picked up this commentary out of love for the book of Ezekiel. Most of you are probably reading this commentary out of curiosity, or desperation, or a mixture of both. You are seeking help in making some kind of sense out of this Old Testament book.

The book of Ezekiel is a certainly a difficult book to understand. That is hardly a new observation. The church father Jerome remarked:

Before Jerome, the rabbis had themselves struggled with the book of Ezekiel. For them the chief problems lay, as Jerome noted, in the beginning and ending of the book. Study of the obscurities of the opening chariot vision, which became a mystical pursuit in some circles, was thought to be not only difficult but even potentially dangerous. The rabbis recorded the cautionary tale of a child who picked up a copy of the book of Ezekiel at his teacher’s home and apprehended the true meaning of the extremely obscure and much-debated Hebrew word ḥašmal, the substance of which the divine figure appears to be comprised (Ezek. 1:27). Instantly, fire came out from the ḥašmal and incinerated him.2 Herein lay part of the reason for restricting study of the book in Jewish circles to those of more mature years.

At the other end of the book, the rabbis also had a problem with Ezekiel’s temple vision. Here the difficulty lay in harmonizing the regulations of Ezekiel with those prescribed by Moses in the Pentateuch. That the problems of harmonization remained unresolved by them was certainly not for want of effort on their part. One of their number, Hananiah ben Hezekiah, is said to have hidden himself away in his attic and burned three hundred barrels of oil in his lamp in his search for a reconciliation between the different laws. Thanks to the success of his labors, the book of Ezekiel as a whole was saved from being excluded from the canon.3 Unfortunately, however, the fruits of his work have not been preserved for us. Should they ever turn up, they will undoubtedly make fascinating reading. Bereft of his wisdom, other rabbis gave in to the counsel of despair, something many readers of Ezekiel can sympathize with. At those moments, they simply referred their pupils to a higher authority: Elijah would explain it all when he came.4

Notwithstanding the very real difficulties that exist, I do not think that we need to despair of understanding this book. Elijah has come (Mark 9:12–13); the Holy Spirit has been poured out on the church, and it is the Spirit’s task to guide us into all truth (John 16:13). The book of Ezekiel is part of God’s Word, part of the truth that the Holy Spirit is assigned to open up to us. It is part of what Paul was thinking about when he said that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). Therefore, at least in principle, the book of Ezekiel is both comprehensible and profitable to the man or woman whose eyes have been opened by the Holy Spirit.

As we proceed through this commentary, our goal will not be to study the book as an exercise in ancient history or literature but rather to seek what the Spirit has to teach us from the biblical text, where he will rebuke us, how he will correct us, and how he will train us in righteousness. Such a study will be full of relevance for contemporary Christians, for at its heart the whole of Scripture is a testimony about Jesus Christ (John 5:39). As we proceed, therefore, we will be continually looking to see how in particular ways Ezekiel points us forward to Christ.

Historical Background

THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL was composed for a particular moment in time. Unlike the Book of Mormon, the Bible is not an abstract revelation that descended to the prophet on tablets of gold from heaven. What is more, unlike some of the other prophetic books within the Bible whose historical setting is hard to date with certainty, Ezekiel provides us with precise dates that enable us to determine accurately where in the history of God’s people his writings belong. It is a prophecy given to a particular person in a particular situation at a particular juncture in redemptive history. Ezekiel was by the Kebar River in Babylonia in the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin when the visions began (1:2–3). In order to understand the book, we must explore the theological significance of that location (see comments on Ezek. 1:1–3). But for now we need to sketch in the historical background. How did a company of God’s people end up in such an apparently God-forsaken location?

Part of the answer is contained in the movements of “secular” history of that day. In the preceding centuries, the neo-Assyrians, whose capital city was Nineveh, had dominated the Near East.5 The limits of their empire had ebbed and flowed, reaching as far as Egypt. In their forays to the west, they imposed tribute on Jehu and the northern kingdom of Israel in 841 B.C. A century later, under Tiglath-Pileser III and his son Shalmaneser V, the Assyrians made inroads into the territory of the northern kingdom, finally absorbing it in 722 B.C. The Israelite population was exiled to various parts of the Assyrian empire, and they were replaced with other people groups (2 Kings 17). Within twenty years, the Assyrians swept up to the very gates of Jerusalem itself under Sennacherib, shutting up the would-be rebel King Hezekiah “like a bird in a cage.”6 Hezekiah’s bacon was saved (if one may be permitted to use such a non-kosher idiom) only by the direct intervention of the angel of the Lord, who put to death 185,000 of the Assyrian army (2 Kings 19:35).

At the same time, the powerful Chaldean ruler Merodach-Baladan was causing trouble for Sennacherib closer to home. He sought to encourage Hezekiah’s rebellious ways by sending envoys, whom Hezekiah treated to a royal display of his wealth and weaponry (2 Kings 20:13). Obviously, Hezekiah had swiftly forgotten that it was neither his wealth nor his weaponry that had rescued him when the Assyrians had come calling earlier. He probably viewed the Babylonians as a potentially useful political and military ally against their mutual foe. But such dependence on human allies, whether in the shape of the might of Egypt or of Babylon, was always reprehensible in a Judean monarch. He ruled his kingdom as a man under authority, as the vassal of King Yahweh. He was therefore not free to make and break military and political alliances based on his own reading of political necessities. This is a theme we will see emerge again in Ezekiel.

Therefore, God sent his ambassador in Jerusalem in the shape of the prophet Isaiah. His task was to confront Hezekiah with his sin (2 Kings 20:14–18). If Hezekiah was so enthusiastic about Babylon, then he should know that at some unspecified time in the future those same Babylonians would come back and strip his palace of everything of value. The Babylonians would carry off into exile his own flesh and blood, so that they might become eunuchs in the house of the Babylonian king. It is a marker of the political and military pressure brought to bear on a small nation like Judah in such times of political uncertainty that Hezekiah regarded this oracle as good news, since it seemed to indicate that his own life, at least, would be lived out in peace (20:19).

Indeed, these were trying times for most small nations in the ancient Near East. Though Sennacherib crushed the Babylonian monarch in 689 B.C. and tore down the sacred city of Babylon, dragging off her patron deity Marduk, the power of the Assyrians was already on the wane. By 625 B.C., the Babylonians had freed themselves from the Assyrian yoke again, this time under the generalship of Nabopolassar. Ten years later, in 616 B.C., he marched into Assyrian territory and began to capture city after city. Even the astonishing switch in loyalties of the Egyptians, Assyria’s traditional enemy, who came to the aid of their former foes, was insufficient to stem the tide. Nineveh fell in 612 B.C.; and after the decisive battle at Carchemish in 605 B.C. the Assyrio-Egyptian alliance was destroyed. Shortly thereafter, Nabopolassar died and his place was taken by his son, who is well-known to readers of the Bible by the name Nebuchadnezzar.

Although not directly involved in these events, Judah had already been caught in the crossfire. Good King Josiah, the last good king of Judah, who had led prominent reforms in public worship, went out to try to intercept the Egyptian forces marching to the aid of Assyria in 609 B.C. The motivation behind this action is not entirely clear, unless he thought to reestablish Judah as the dominant force in the Levant, something not seen since the time of David and Solomon. Whatever his reasoning, he was tragically killed in battle against the Egyptians at Megiddo.

With his death, the brief Judean experiment with orthodoxy came to an abrupt end. He was succeeded by his son Jehoahaz, whose three-month reign followed in the wicked ways of grandfather Amon rather than in the righteous ways of father Josiah. After three months the Egyptians intervened, carrying Jehoahaz off into exile in Egypt and placing his elder brother, Eliakim, on the throne (2 Kings 23:34). As an act demonstrating covenant lordship, Pharaoh Neco renamed him Jehoiakim (“the Lord raises up”), an ironically orthodox name for yet another bad king, especially for one who had been installed on the throne by a foreign superpower.

Around 605 B.C., the Babylonians came knocking. The Egyptians were driven out of Palestine and Jehoiakim wisely switched sides, swearing allegiance to the Babylonians. Hostages were taken to Babylon from the nobility, including Daniel and his three friends. But Jehoiakim had no intention of keeping his commitments to the Babylonians, which, to be fair, probably included crushing tribute requirements. He rebelled against them in 598 B.C., no doubt crying “No taxation without representation.”

This was all noble and heroic, but in the light of his pattern of wickedness in the eyes of the Lord, only one outcome was possible. The Babylonians returned and crushed his revolt; in the process, Jehoiakim died, either executed by the Babylonians7 or assassinated by the Judeans in hopes of winning clemency from the Babylonians.8 In his place, the Judeans installed his son Jehoiachin on the throne. Jehoiachin turned out to be no better than his father, either in the eyes of God or of Nebuchadnezzar. Instead of submitting to Babylon, as Jeremiah advised, he looked to Egypt for help (the perennial alternative in the Old Testament to trusting in the Lord), and within three months he was dragged off to exile in Babylon along with many of the temple treasures and more of the leading citizens. Ezekiel was one of those taken into exile in this wave.

After Jehoiachin’s exile, Nebuchadnezzar placed Jehoiachin’s uncle Mattaniah on the throne and renamed him Zedekiah (2 Kings 24:17). Once again, one wonders who thought up the name “The Lord is righteous” for this particular individual! It probably wasn’t Nebuchadnezzar himself, nor Zedekiah, whose personal righteousness is regarded as highly problematic not only by the book of Kings but also by both Ezekiel and Jeremiah.

Zedekiah, whose personal hold on the throne appears to have been sufficiently tenuous that he did not always know or control what his officials were doing, voted for revolt in 589 B.C. Doubtless his confidence was bolstered by the promise of help from Tyre and Ammon and high hopes of Egyptian aid. It was a fatal mistake. Nebuchadnezzar came loaded for bear. Gradually the lights went out across Judah, as one fortified city after another was pummeled into submission. Jerusalem itself came under a siege that lasted for over a year. Finally, the walls were breached, and although Zedekiah fled, he was captured and brought to Riblah. There Nebuchadnezzar made him watch while his sons were put to death, before gouging out Zedekiah’s eyes and taking him away to Babylon.

The city of Jerusalem was then torn down and burned, with most of the remaining inhabitants of the land being carried off into exile. Only the poorest of the poor remained, struggling without skills or resources to scratch out a living from the land. If you imagine the kind of doomsday scenario painted in movies like The War of the Worlds or Terminator, in which society as we know it has been reduced to rubble and ash and a few shell-shocked human beings remain, desperately trying to keep themselves alive among the ruins, then you won’t be too far off the mark of what life must have been like for those who remained in Judah. Just substitute the fearsome Babylonians for the Martians or the Cyborgs and you get the picture.

The years leading up to that ultimate cataclysm form the background to the prophecies in the book of Ezekiel, which span a twenty-year period before and after Jerusalem’s destruction. You cannot understand this book unless you see it as the response to Holocaust Now!, warning God’s rebellious people of the oncoming juggernaut—and then scraping up the pieces of what remained off the highway. The book itself is fundamentally arranged about the central event of the fall of Jerusalem, or more precisely, around the event of the arrival among the exiles of the news of the fall of Jerusalem (anticipated in Ezek. 24:27; realized in 33:21–22). This forms the turning point in the experience of both the prophet and God’s people in exile. The prophecy, which begins by clearly depicting the end of the road for God’s rebellious people (Ezek. 1–24), closes by showing that the end of the road is not the end of the story (Ezek. 34–48). Even his people’s sinfulness and rebellion cannot ultimately prevail against God’s electing grace.

In the providence of God, the Babylonians and the Assyrians had very different policies of exile. The Assyrians adopted the policy of divide and conquer; they would take large numbers of people from one area of their empire and resettle them in small groups in different parts of the empire.9 By breaking up old ties and alliances, they hoped to render the defeated peoples disorganized and disoriented, unable to mount any effective revolt. Their policy therefore represented a shuffling of the people groups around the margins of their empire, in what you might call a “melting pot” policy of imperial rule. The aim was that people would lose their original ethnic identity and become simply “Assyrians.”

The Babylonians, on the other hand, followed a less assimilationist “tossed salad” model of empire. They took the leaders and skilled workers from the subjugated nations and brought them from the margins of the empire to the center, to Babylonia itself. There they treated them reasonably well and allowed them to settle in ethnic groups and to advance within the Babylonian system. The goal, from a Babylonian perspective, was to incorporate these diverse people groups in the service of the empire by bringing their various talents and gifts into the center, while allowing them to retain their own ethnic identities. In addition, the margins of the empire were thereby left impoverished and leaderless and therefore less likely to rebel against the power of the center.10

The results, from the perspective of Israel and Judah, were the different fates of the northern and southern kingdoms in exile. The northern kingdom of Israel was dispersed and effectively destroyed. Individual believers presumably remained, keeping hope alive among the Diaspora of a future reunion of the twelve tribes (as we will see in Ezekiel), but as a political entity, the northern kingdom was finished. Their land was occupied by a half-breed mixture of different ethnic groups, who had little more than a superstitious interest in the God of their land. Judah, on the other hand, remained largely denuded of population after the debacle of 586 B.C., allowing the possibility of a genuine return from exile on the part of those who had kept the faith. It was one of these groups of exiles living by the Kebar River in Babylonia, which included both faithful and not so faithful, to whom Ezekiel was commissioned to prophesy.

Authorship and Date

WHO WROTE THE BOOK that bears Ezekiel’s name? There are, and have been for some time, four schools of thought on the subject. (1) Some scholars have taken the radical view that very little of the book can be traced back to the prophet himself. This view became temporarily fashionable following the publication in 1924 of Gustav Hölscher’s book, Hesekiel: Der Dichter und das Buch.11 Hölscher ascribed to Ezekiel a mere 144 verses out of the canonical 1,273, on the basis that all of the authentic oracles of the prophet were poetic or elevated prose. Although few scholars actually found Hölscher’s method of separating out genuine Ezekiel texts from later accretions convincing, his successors have continued in attempting to distill out a small base layer from the later dross by a variety of means.

The criteria employed by these scholars have frequently included the requirements that the original oracles be terse and strictly uniform in style. Each oracle is allowed only to have one opening and closing formula. Texts that pick up and develop ideas from earlier in the book are held to be “clearly” secondary; only oracles expressing ideas that can be paralleled from elsewhere in preexilic prophecy are allowed to stand as original.12 Once the various texts have been detached from their immediate surroundings, continuities of thought or style are then used to link these separate texts into a number of different “layers” or “strata.” Since the layers of text separated out by these methods do not come with signatures, the scholars often then make elaborate attempts to determine the social and historical contexts that gave birth to the different layers, and sometimes warnings are issued that even the “earliest” layer cannot naively be assumed to stem from the “historical prophet.”13

This last observation is indeed true, though in an entirely different sense from that usually intended. It can be shown, for example, that Ezekiel 22:25–29 is based on Zephaniah 3:3–4.14 The distinctive language of Zephaniah has been picked up and adopted, though not without changes that make the style distinctly that of Ezekiel. It is possible for us to unfold and identify these changes, but only because we have the base text of Zephaniah with which to compare it. If we did not have the text of Zephaniah, we would not be able to reconstruct it from Ezekiel’s version. What is more, even if we were able to do so, our hypothetically “reconstructed” text would not be what originally belonged in Ezekiel 22. It is the present “reworked” text that is the original in this case.

This practical example suggests that in the absence of such points of comparison, the whole scholarly enterprise of reconstructing “original” texts is fraught with fundamental methodological questions. It is like cleaning “accretions” from the ceiling of the Sistine chapel and crying “Aha” once you reach the bare plaster. In the process, it is not merely centuries of dirt that have been removed but the work of Michelangelo as well! The text as it stands is our only sure datum.

(2) In a different direction, Hölscher’s work encouraged a few scholars to argue that the entire book of Ezekiel was a pseudepigraphic work dating from much later than the Babylonian exile. C. C. Torrey, for example, argued that the book is a unity that belonged to the period around 230 B.C. For a while in the 1930s and 1940s, these two opinions captured a significant percentage of scholarly critical opinion.

(3) But gradually the pendulum swung back to a more moderate critical position, which argues that the vast majority of the book comes from the prophet himself and his immediate disciples, and that it was essentially complete by the end of the exilic period. The outstanding figure supporting this position has been Walther Zimmerli, whose massive German commentary, with its English translation, remains the reference point of critical scholarship on Ezekiel, even though it is now thirty years old. These scholars make some use of the criteria of authenticity described above to detect significant editorial additions and changes, and thus diversity of authorship within the book; however, in contrast to the radical scholars, they date most of those changes relatively close to the lifetime of the prophet himself.

(4) In recent academic work, there has been something of a resurgence of support for a more conservative position regarding the relationship of the prophet and the book. The excellent commentaries by Daniel Block in the New International Commentary on the Old Testament series and by Moshe Greenberg in the Anchor Bible series acknowledge in principle the possibility that there may have been editorial additions and revisions made by the disciples of the prophet. Indeed, Ezekiel 1:2–3 seems to be a fairly routine example of just such an editorial comment, locating the work of the prophet in space and time for those who did not hear him or know him firsthand. Yet both commentaries work in practice from the initial assumption that the present contents of the book essentially come to us from the hand of the prophet himself, an assumption that their own work helps to support. As Greenberg puts it:

Their position still remains a minority opinion in scholarly circles, compared to the moderate critical position argued by the disciples of Zimmerli. Nonetheless, it is the firm conviction of this writer that they are fundamentally accurate in their assessment. When the text is allowed to speak for itself, it conveys a coherent and consistent worldview that addresses the situation of those exiled from Judah in the sixth century B.C. There seems, therefore, little good reason to assign significant portions of it to late and clumsy redactors. What is more, if the editing process is neither late nor clumsy, why must we assign it to anyone other than the prophet himself?16 It is simpler to accept the testimony of the book itself than to multiply unnecessarily complex theories of authorship.

Ultimately, however, the authority of the text does not lie in our ability to demonstrate that it comes to us directly from the mouth of the prophet. Nor does it lie in the assessment of the book by an authoritative body of human beings, whether a council of academics or a council of the church, that it is worthy of a place in the canon. In the final analysis, as the Reformers insisted, Scripture is self-authenticating. Though there may be supporting witnesses, such as the testimony of God’s people down through the ages or the testimony of those who have studied the book in depth, for us to be convinced of its divine origin and authority over us requires a work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Only this internal illumination will enable us to recognize the book and receive it for what it really is: nothing less than the word of the Sovereign Lord.17

Interpreting Ezekiel

WITHIN THE HISTORY of the church, probably the most popular method of interpreting Ezekiel has been the allegorical method. Thus the church father Gregory the Great, in his homily on Ezekiel 40:6–8, identified the East Gate of the temple as Jesus, the steps leading up to the gate as the merits of the virtues that lead to salvation, and the threshold of the gate as the ancestors of Jesus. The chamber inside the gate has length, which symbolizes longsuffering in expectation, and breadth, which symbolizes amplitude of charity.18 A millennium later, the Puritan William Greenhill’s commentary on Ezekiel 40:16 finds significance in the windows of the visionary temple as denoting the spiritual light and joy that should be in the church of Christ. According to him, the fact that there are windows also in the “little chambers” means that even the least churches and the least saints shall not be without light and joy, teaching and comfort.19 In this kind of allegorical approach, the interpretation does not flow out of an understanding of the text in its original context; rather, it fastens on certain details in the text and applies them directly to our present context.

This method of interpretation is undoubtedly motivated by pastoral concerns. These preachers desired to help their people benefit from all of Scripture. After all, is not all Scripture inspired by God and profitable in the life of the believer (2 Tim. 3:16)? Indeed, although unfashionable in the contemporary world, not everyone would agree that such an approach to difficult texts is problematic. Charles Spurgeon, that prince of Victorian preachers, defended the practice of allegorizing—or as he called it, “spiritualizing”—on the grounds of its pragmatic value. According to him, provided that it is done within certain limits,

On the grounds of gospel success, Spurgeon therefore defends (to cite just one example) a sermon preached on the text: “The owl, the night hawk and the cuckoo” (Lev. 11:16). If you wonder how it might be possible to get a profitable sermon out of that verse, his explanation is well worth reading! He would have been quite happy to “spiritualize” Ezekiel’s visionary temple in the same way as William Greenhill did.21

It is interesting, however, to note the tone of Spurgeon’s defense. Insisting that you should always preach the “plain, literal sense” of the text is, according to him, an elitist proposal. It is the kind of idea forwarded by the “learned rabbis,” those who esteem “high culture” and “profound learning.” Of course, he is right. What I mean by that is that it is a difficult task to expound what he describes as the “plain, literal sense” of the text (i.e., the meaning of the text within its original context) week after week. To do so requires a significant amount of hard work and depth of biblical knowledge. This is particularly true in the case of a book like Ezekiel, whose surface meaning seems at first sight singularly uninviting. It is not surprising that so many ordinary preachers and Bible study teachers shy away from such an approach to Ezekiel, feeling unprepared to tackle its numerous complexities. On the other hand, it is relatively easy to preach the simple gospel week by week and merely vary the text from which you preach it.

Those who by the grace of God are “learned rabbis,” whether as a result of formal academic study or self-directed reading, should not despise such simple proclamation of the gospel. In the history of the church, many have been brought into God’s kingdom and nourished on the central truths of the gospel in that way. What God has chosen to use, let us not be overly hard on. As we have already noted, this kind of allegorical interpretation stemmed from a firm conviction of the inspiration and usefulness of every portion of God’s Word; thus, rather than not expound part of the Word because its plain sense was not understood, these preachers proclaimed what they knew to be true from elsewhere in the Bible.

Yet we should also recognize that such allegorical interpretation has many dangers. Spurgeon himself was aware of some of them: The exposition given may strain common sense, as in the case of the preacher who discoursed on the Trinity from the three baskets on the head of Pharaoh’s baker. Allegorical interpretation may also be used as a means of impressing your audience with what a clever person you are. In some cases, it may lead to undervaluing or forgetting the factual and historical nature of the texts on which you are preaching. But one of the biggest drawbacks of allegorical interpretation, even at its best, is that it does not train your listeners to interpret the Scriptures for themselves. Even when done well, it almost inevitably leaves the people impressed by the teacher’s personal ability and “spirituality” rather than being equipped to feed themselves from the Word. The congregation comes out of church saying, “I would never in a million years have seen that truth there,” instead of, “How obvious it is! How could I have missed what the passage was clearly saying?”

Jim Elliot, one of the five missionaries who were killed in 1957 while attempting to reach the Auca Indians of Ecuador with the gospel, was an intensely—dauntingly—spiritual young man. Yet he once wrote this entry in his journal:

Growing up in Brethren circles on a diet of allegorical preaching, Elliot felt that only a direct infusion of divine insight could enable him to understand such a difficult text. As a result, he berated himself for being unable to pull a spiritual rabbit out of the exegetical hat in the way his favorite preachers always seemed able to do. The true fault lay more with his favorite preachers than with him, however. The purpose of this commentary is to enable you to understand more fully what the text is about in its original context. In that way, understanding its true meaning, there need be no resort to allegorical interpretation to derive spiritual food from this portion of God’s Word.

On the other hand, it is necessary to point out that what we mean by “understanding the text in its original context” does not imply what is sometimes termed in contemporary discussion literal interpretation. This latter approach means, according to Charles Ryrie, “interpretation which gives to every word the same meaning it would have in normal usage, whether employed in writing, speaking or thinking.”23 To put it like this begs the question of what “normal” usage is in the prophets, as Ryrie is himself aware. Ryrie’s response to that potential objection is that his approach does not deny the possibility of figurative or symbolic speech. However, it insists that “prophecies are to be normally interpreted . . . as any other utterances are interpreted.”24 The key point to observe is that for him, the genre of prophecy is fundamentally one of normal or plain speech. He supports his case by citing the fulfillment of Micah 5:2, which prophesies that the Christ will be born in Bethlehem. Indeed, Jesus was literally born in Bethlehem, not just in some analogous small town in Judah.

But does the Bible itself support Ryrie’s claim? Certainly some Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled literally in the New Testament. Some of those Old Testament prophecies were equally clearly understood in a literal manner prior to their fulfillment. Thus, Herod could be advised by the chief priests and teachers of the law where to go looking for the Christ child on the basis of Micah 5:2 (Matt. 2:4–5). However, other prophecies from the Old Testament were fulfilled in a way that would have been completely unexpected to preceding generations, even though they too were fulfilled in a literal way. What first-century B.C. prophecy conference would have been clearly predicting the birth of Messiah from a virgin on the basis of Isaiah 7:14? Or his crucifixion on the basis of Psalm 22? Or his physical resurrection on the basis of Psalm 16? These texts are clearly viewed by the New Testament as messianic prophecies that were literally fulfilled, yet they were only seen to be such with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight after their fulfillment in Christ, not before.

Still other Old Testament prophecies are transformationally fulfilled; that is, their New Testament fulfillment is clearly related to the Old Testament promise, but it is not exactly literal. Thus Isaiah 40:3 speaks of the coming of a messenger whose message is: “In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.” The New Testament sees that promise fulfilled in the coming of John the Baptizer, who is, to quote Luke, “a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him’ ” (Luke 3:4). In other words, in the New Testament, the “desert” is no longer part of the message as it was in Isaiah’s proclamation, but has become the location of the messenger.

This transformational fulfillment is repeatedly found in the New Testament, perhaps in classic form in what John does in Revelation 22 with Ezekiel’s temple vision of chapters 40–48. We will examine that connection in much greater detail further on in the commentary, but for now suffice it to say that the New Jerusalem is not a literal fulfillment of Ezekiel’s temple, nor is the latter a millennial preparation for it. The book of Revelation shows us the temple of Ezekiel viewed through the lens of our redemption accomplished in Christ.

Nor is this merely an exegetical observation of what the New Testament does in practice in a few cases with Old Testament prophetic texts. It is in principle what the Old Testament itself tells us to do with prophetic texts. The classic Old Testament text on the nature of prophetic visions is Numbers 12:6–8, where the Lord says:

The point of this text is a distinct contrast between the revelation by Moses (i.e., the Torah or Pentateuch) and that by means of the (true) prophets. The latter is characterized as being indirect—by vision (marʾâ) and dream (ḥ^alôm). In stark contrast, the revelation by Moses is characterized by four expressions that emphasize its directness. (1) It is “face to face,” or more precisely, “mouth to mouth,” a unique phrase that focuses on the verbal nature of that revelation. (2) It is “plain” or “clear” (marʾeh), not by means of dreams or visions. (3) It is “not in riddles” (ḥîdōt), unlike prophets such as Ezekiel, who were explicitly commanded by God to speak riddles (Ezek. 17:2). The revelation by Moses is transparent and self-explanatory in comparison to the obscurities that attend the words of the prophets. (4) Finally, the revelation by Moses is superior in directness to that by the prophets because Moses saw “the form of the LORD,” a reference to his encounter with God on Mount Sinai, which was so transformational that it made his face shine.25

The entire burden of this text, then, is that the Old Testament should not be read in a uniform manner. Moses (the Pentateuch) should be read in a straightforward way, according to “literal interpretation.” When reading the prophets, on the other hand, we should expect to find nonliteral forms, dreams, visions, and riddles, which are not intended to be interpreted literally but rather will be unfolded in the light of the clearer revelation of God.

But what prevents us from sliding into the morass of subjectivism in interpreting the prophets, of which Ryrie warns? Does this approach not inevitably lead to speculative allegorizing that wrenches out of the texts spiritually uplifting messages that they were never intended to bear? The answer is to recall the words of Jesus on the Emmaus road. When Jesus caught up with those two despondent disciples, who were leaving Jerusalem unaware of the resurrection, he took them back on a tour of the Old Testament Scriptures. He exposed their woefully inadequate knowledge and exegesis, saying (Luke 24:25–27):

In other words, Jesus gave these two followers a classic redemptive-historical sermon, unfolding the Old Testament and showing them how it is fulfilled in him. The point is that according to Jesus, we should expect the message of all of the prophets to be Jesus Christ! The disciples’ response was not to be amazed at his cleverness in uncovering references to himself in such a wide range of sources! Rather, they were astonished at their dullness in not having perceived before what these familiar books were about.26 Nor was that simply his message on one particular occasion. Luke 24:44–47 gives us the substance of Jesus’ teaching to all the disciples in the climactic forty-day postresurrection period:

This is Jesus’ master class in Old Testament interpretation. Note the comprehensiveness of the language he uses: “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” These three terms make up the three comprehensive divisions of the Old Testament, what Luke later designates “the Scriptures.” In other words, the focus of Jesus’ teaching was not a few “messianic” texts but rather the entire Old Testament.27 According to him, the whole Old Testament Scriptures are a message about him. More specifically, the central focus of the entire Old Testament is his sufferings, his resurrection, and the proclamation of the gospel to all nations.

Nor was the teaching of Jesus lost on his disciples. In Acts 3:18, preaching in front of the temple, Peter described the crucifixion of Jesus in these words: “This is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer.” The apostle went on to speak of Jesus’ second coming from heaven as being something God “promised long ago through his holy prophets. . . . Indeed, all the prophets from Samuel on, as many as have spoken, have foretold these days” (3:21, 24). Once again, notice the assertion that the central message of the prophets is Jesus’ suffering and the glories that would subsequently flow from that event.

Peter explicitly formulates that principle in 1 Peter 1:10–12:

So too did Paul, who testified before King Agrippa (Acts 26:22–23):

This was Paul’s exegetical method that he put into practice in Thessalonica, where on three consecutive Sabbaths, he reasoned with the Jews “from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead” (Acts 17:2–3).

To sum up, then, the message of the prophets in general, and Ezekiel in particular, is not simply instruction addressed to their own day and age. Still less is it a manual to help you interpret current events in the Middle East and work out the countdown to Armageddon. The message of the prophets is Jesus, and specifically “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.” Thus, when you interpret Ezekiel correctly, without allegory, you will find that his message is not primarily morality, or social action, or eschatology. His central message is Jesus.

To be sure, understanding this gospel will lead to a new morality in the life of believers; it will motivate and empower them for meeting the needs of a lost world and engage their passion for the eschatological vision to be realized in fullness with the return of Christ. But the heart of Ezekiel is a witness to Christ, which centers in on his suffering and glory, his death and resurrection. The goal of this commentary is to show how this Christ-centered approach opens up the heart of the message of the ancient prophet for the contemporary believer.

Some of my readers are likely to be concerned at this point that I am selling short the ethical imperatives of the prophets in general and of Ezekiel in particular. I appreciate their concern, and I will respond with two simple points.

(1) The gospel (the good news about Jesus’ death and resurrection) is not merely the power by which dead sinners are raised to new life, it is also the power by which God’s people are transformed. The gospel is not merely the starting point from which we move on to ethics; it is the heartbeat of our lives as Christians. That is why Paul could say in 1 Corinthians 2:2: “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Presumably, Paul is not saying that he only preached evangelistic sermons while ignoring the task of discipleship. Rather, he means that every sermon he preached had a focus on the cross of Christ, whose implications he then drew out for every area of life.28 To put it simply, he never preached Ephesians 4–6 (the ethical imperatives) without Ephesians 1–3 (the gospel indicative). Our sanctification flows out of our justification.

(2) This is important in our contemporary context because relatively few believers are short of ethical knowledge. There may be exceptions to the general rule, and there are certainly some areas where ethical instruction is sorely needed by the church. But in my own experience most Christians know a great deal about how they ought to live. Their problem is that they don’t live up to what they know.29 The gap is not in their knowledge but in their obedience.

How do we address this gap? Ethical sermons and Bible studies, no matter how accurately biblical their content, tend simply to add to the burden of guilt felt by the average Christian. Such teaching yields little by way of results. The gospel, on the other hand, has the power to change lives at a deep level, as men and women come to see both the depth of their sin (and therefore that their feelings of guilt were actually far too shallow) and at the same time the glorious good news that Jesus is their substitute, who has taken upon himself the punishment their sin deserved and has lived the perfect life in their place. Freed from their guilt, freed from their fear of failure, freed from their love of reputation, these people are now equipped to change.30

Finally, this approach requires a different orientation to preaching (and, I would argue, Bible study) than is common in our churches. Typically, we have drawn a sharp division between “worship” (the first part of our service) and “preaching.” Often, the latter has degenerated into “instruction” with the sole measure of its efficacy, “How much have people learned?” To aid the communication of information, we put diagrams on overhead projectors and issue handouts. Yet biblical preaching is much more than instruction: The preaching and hearing of God’s Word is itself worship in its most profound sense.31 Its goal is doxological, that is, that men and women might be brought to see in a new way the glory of God and to bow their hearts in adoration and praise. Such preaching will certainly change lives, but it will be concerned even more fundamentally that God should be glorified. Like the apostle Paul, we pray (Eph. 3:20–21):

Central Themes of the Book of Ezekiel

THE TASK THAT was assigned to Ezekiel was to prophesy to the exiles of Judah, who had been carried away into captivity in distant Babylonia. It was an audience close to despair, asking why this disaster had come on them and where God was in the middle of their personal holocaust. Their assessment of their own condition was: “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off” (Ezek. 37:11). What use was a God who seemed unable or unwilling to protect his own land? What use was a God who allowed his own temple in Jerusalem to be defiled? What use was a God who allowed his own people to be carried away from the land he had promised to the patriarchs? Even if he were to intervene now on behalf of his land, how would that help those who were far away in exile? These were the questions with which the exiles struggled.

The answers to these questions permeate the book. The first and overarching theme of the entire prophecy is the sovereignty and glory of God. Ezekiel’s opening vision is a vision of the glory of God, in all of his power and majesty (Ezek. 1). This visible glory was the mark of God’s presence in the midst of his people in former times, which had first filled the tabernacle and subsequently fell on Solomon’s temple at its dedication (2 Chron. 7:1–2). God had chosen the temple in Jerusalem to be his dwelling place. But now, amazingly, this same glory of God is seen by Ezekiel by the Kebar River, that is, in the midst of the exiles! The glorious and majestic sovereign God has gone into exile with his people (Ezek. 11:16).

Ezekiel 8–11 explains in visionary form why this shift has happened. The temple in Jerusalem has been utterly polluted by the abominations of the people (Ezek. 8). God’s response to this defilement is twofold: He first decrees the destruction of the city and the temple (Ezek. 9), and then his glory departs from the temple to the east. He leaves slowly, haltingly, as if sorrowing over the scene, and moves towards those already in exile (Ezek. 10–11). The point of the vision is that God has not been evicted from his home by a superior force, impotent in the face of the Babylonian horde. Rather, because of the sin of his people he deliberately abandons the city of Jerusalem and its temple, decreeing their destruction. The Babylonians are merely a tool to do his will (Ezek. 21).

God’s control over the entire situation is such that he can even determine the outcome of the Babylonian king’s efforts to consult his gods through examining the liver of an animal (Ezek. 21:21)! As Proverbs 16:33 puts it: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” For wicked Jerusalem that is bad news, because it means that the punishment already decreed by God will surely come about and nothing can avert it (Ezek. 21:8–17). But for those already in exile, this same sovereignty represents hope. If it is indeed God who has scattered them among the nations, then he may also gather them back to himself and to their land again (11:17). He who voluntarily withdraws his glory from the defiled temple in chapter 11 is able to choose to return to a renewed and cleansed temple in chapter 43. God’s sovereignty guarantees both the destruction of the sinner and the salvation of those who hope in him.

The second main theme in the book of Ezekiel could not contrast more strongly with the first: the utter sinfulness of humans. Yet the two themes are interrelated: To become aware of the glory of God is to receive a heightened awareness of the awfulness of sin, as Isaiah had earlier discovered (Isa. 6:5). All of the prophets preached against the sin and idolatry of their own day, but perhaps none was quite as comprehensive or as sweeping in their indictments as Ezekiel. For him, the sin of God’s people stretched back throughout their entire history. Jerusalem had acted like a prostitute from the day of its birth (Ezek. 23:3) and was actually worse than Sodom (16:46–48)! Even from earliest times, from the day when God had called Israel out of Egypt and brought them into the desert, they had rebelled against him (ch. 20).

In addition to stretching back through time, the sin of God’s people also stretched throughout society. It affected kings, priests, bureaucrats, prophets, the elite families of Jerusalem, elders, women—in short, every layer of society (see esp. Ezek. 22). It included sins against God (idolatry, neglecting the Sabbath, despising God’s holy things; 22:7–12), as well as crimes against their fellow men and women (slander, violence, sexual impurity, bribery, extortion, oppression of the weak; 22:7–12). In order to make his point abundantly clear, Ezekiel deliberately adopts the most shocking language possible. Parts of Ezekiel 16 and 23 have been deemed by many scarcely suitable to be read aloud in church, and an ancient audience would have found its bluntness no less offensive.

The message is crystal clear, however: Sin cannot be swept under the carpet. It cannot be prettified, excused, or ignored. It is ugly, dirty, and offensive and cannot coexist with the presence of a holy God. When Jeremiah complained of those prophets and priests who dressed the wound of the people as though it were not serious, who said “Peace, peace” when there was no peace (Jer. 8:10–11), he was certainly not thinking of his younger contemporary, Ezekiel.

The third theme of the book grows out of the first two: the inescapable coming of judgment. That judgment will come first of all on Judah and Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be made a ruin and a reproach among the nations. Its destruction will be almost total and its people will be scattered to the four winds (Ezek. 5). It is literally the end of the road for Judah (chs. 7, 12, 15, 17, 21). They are the meat in the cooking pot, about to be cooked not simply medium-rare or even extremely well-done, but until they are turned into a charred heap of ashes (ch. 24). What is more, this holocaust is not the result of blind fate or the expansionist ambitions of arrogant world rulers. Rather, it is the outpouring of the wrath of a holy God on a land full of bloodshed and a city full of injustice (9:9).

Nor is there any mediator who will be able to turn away God’s wrath from his people. Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were miraculously present, between them they would have only enough righteousness to save themselves, not the people of the land (Ezek. 14:12–20). There is no prophet to stand in the gap on behalf of the people and thus prevent their destruction (22:30). Ezekiel himself is prevented from interceding for the people or remonstrating with them. He is struck dumb, only able to speak to declare the word of the Lord to them (3:26–27).

Judgment begins in God’s program at the center, with his sanctuary (Ezek. 9:6). But it does not end there. Just as God’s sovereignty extends to the ends of the earth, so also does his judgment. Thus, after the extensive section on Israel’s sin and punishment, we find a section of prophecies against the other nations (chs. 25–32). They too have sinned in their pride and mocking of Judah’s fallen state, and judgment will fall on them as well.

We might call these last two themes the bad news according to Ezekiel. It is bad news indeed, but it is a reality that had to be faced nonetheless. Judah was now going into exile, and her people needed to acknowledge that the cause of this situation was their own sin, not their fathers’ sin or their brothers’ sin. This is the point of Ezekiel 18, a point repeated in chapter 33 at the beginning of the section on the future hope. Until Judah acknowledges the rightness of God’s action, she cannot receive forgiveness.

Yet there are signs from the opening pages of the book that God’s judgment will be tempered by mercy. Ezekiel’s vision of God includes a throne surrounded by a rainbow (Ezek. 1:28), the covenant sign that judgment against sin will never obliterate the remnant of God’s true people (see Gen. 9:13–15). This theme is reiterated in many ways: a few hairs tucked away (Ezek. 5:3), a promise to spare some (6:8), the marking of the faithful (9:4), and so on. Yet it is no coincidence that Judah must first come face-to-face with the reality and ugliness of its sin in chapters 1–24 before it can receive the promise of a new future in chapters 33–48.

The turning point of the entire book comes with the coming of news of the fall of Jerusalem, an event anticipated at the end of Ezekiel 24, which then actually occurs in 33:21–22. Now the prophet’s dumbness is removed, and the good news of restoration dominates. Now the positive side even of the oracles of judgment against the foreign nations can be seen: It is a mark that at least part of God’s covenant with Abraham is still in force, that “whoever curses you I will curse” (Gen. 12:3). Is it not then true that the part of the covenant that promised ultimate blessing to Abraham’s descendants is also intact?

The exploration of that possibility provides the central theme for the remainder of the book, which deals with the return of the King and the restoration of the people to their land and a state of blessing. The heart of Ezekiel’s vision of the renewed temple is the return of the divine glory to the Most Holy Place (Ezek. 43:1–5). Once it has returned, the East Gate of the temple is closed forever. God will never again depart from his people as he did earlier. In order to assure this continuous presence for blessing, God promises to act to transform the people, starting from the top down. Their leadership is first on his agenda. A multiplicity of bad shepherds will be replaced by one good shepherd, a new David, by whom God will restore justice for all (Ezek. 34). He will unite in himself all of God’s people, from the former northern and southern kingdoms (37:15–28). The priesthood will also be purified, with only those who remained faithful permitted access to the inner part of the sanctuary (44:6–16). Laws will be established that prevent the possibility of any return to the nation’s former sins (e.g., 46:16–18). The old structures of the society that transgressed are completely swept away.

But sin does not reside simply in the structures of society; it pervades the hearts and minds of men and women. What the people need is nothing less than a new heart and a new spirit—a heart that will be willing and a spirit that will be obedient. That is what God promises to give them (Ezek. 37:1–14). What is promised is nothing short of a new creation, a radically changed world that will rise out of the ashes of the old. Even the very land in which they live will be transformed from a harsh, barren wilderness to a fruitful paradise (36:11, 35). Even though the enemies of God may still seek to stir up trouble against his people, they will never again come as an act of God’s judgment and prevail against them. From henceforth, God will fight on behalf of his people, not against them (Ezek. 38–39). Judah is promised a return to Eden, but it is now an Eden that is populated with purified Adams and that has a high fence around the forbidden tree.

These, then, are the themes we find in the book of Ezekiel: God’s glory and sovereignty, human sinfulness, the certainty of judgment, and the promise of mercy and hope for the future. From a New Testament perspective, the picture presented of the future still has an air of “not yet” about it. The most prominent feature of the new temple is not free access to God, but massive gatehouses designed to keep sinners from defiling it. There is a cleansing stream flowing from the temple (Ezek. 47), yet there is still a need for regular atonement sacrifices offered by the prince on behalf of his people (45:17). There is salvation for the Promised Land (Ezek. 48), and even for the alien and stranger in their midst, but not yet for the whole world. In all of this, there is still room for a greater revelation of hope.

This greater revelation of hope is revealed in Christ, to whom Ezekiel points us forward. The Glory of God, which Ezekiel saw coming to the temple, arrived in the person of Jesus, of whom John testifies: “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father” (John 1:14). Just as the Glory of God departed from Jerusalem and went to be with his people in exile, so Jesus left his Father’s side to identify with sinful humanity, suffering “outside the camp” on behalf of his people (Heb. 13:12–13). The mediator who could not be found to turn aside judgment from Judah is now found in Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, who offered his own blood for the sins of his people (9:11–15). Jesus is the Good Shepherd promised by Ezekiel, who will restore justice for his sheep (John 10:11). All who are in him are completely new creatures, filled with the Spirit of God (2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 5:18).

But the salvation revealed in Jesus is far greater even than that which was revealed to Ezekiel. The reality is far better than the anticipation. It turns out that the prophet’s wildest dreams were simply not wild enough! In Christ, we have boldness to approach the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16; 10:19). The city toward which we press needs no temple (Rev. 21:22), for the final sacrifice has been offered once and for all by Christ (Heb. 10:10). In it will be not only the full number of the tribes of Israel but a great multitude of all nations, tribes, peoples, and languages (Rev. 7:5–9).

Truly, the gospel is present in the book of Ezekiel for those with eyes to see it. It may not be with the full measure of revelation found in the New Testament—indeed it could not be—yet Ezekiel, too, deserves his place among those who “predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (1 Peter 1:11).