Ezekiel 14-15 part 1
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Summary
The words of Ezekiel 14-15 were addressed to Jewish elders in Babylon who had come to Ezekiel for a word from the Lord. Knowing they were still idol worshippers in their hearts, God refused to give them comfort. Instead he lowered the boom: Jerusalem’s judgment was certain. God’s case is presented in language drawn from Leviticus 26, which had foreshadowed Israel’s apostasy and expulsion from the land. This meeting focuses on this vocabulary and a special interpretive problem of Ezekiel 14. We will hit this interpretive problem next week.
Introduction\Spiritual Adultery
Introduction\Spiritual Adultery
All right. Ezekiel 14 and 15 today; two chapters. Most of this is going to be chapter 14 because 15 is a really, really short chapter. That's why we're going to group it in with this one, because 16 is a longer chapter. We're going to be parking in different places [in chapter 16]. Again, that's the one that has a lot of the explicit language in it. And for good reason. People are probably familiar with the whole idea (like in the book of James) where spiritual adultery is compared with physical/sexual adultery, marital adultery. That comes from somewhere. That metaphor is very much a part of the Old Testament, and it never gets more detailed and explicit than in Ezekiel 16. That's where we're going to be headed after this, so we're going to gobble up these two chapters and it will be our episode for the day. But most of all, what we'll do here is chapter 14 just because of the length.
Now if you recall from the last episode, chapters 12 through 24 sort of constitute its own section. Specifically, that section is about having to address objections and denials. We had sort of a mix last time—a few more sign acts and then Ezekiel started to be directed by God to address some of the things that were being thrown at him or lies that were being told to the people that should have been listening to Ezekiel. We're going to get more of that here in chapter 14.
As far as the immediate context, here's a short quotation from Taylor's commentary. He writes:
These words were addressed to a particular group of elders who were sitting at Ezekiel’s feet (cf. 8:1; 20:1). They had come presumably in the hope of hearing some oracle about the length of their exile or giving news of affairs at home in Jerusalem. The oracle was given, but it was not what they expected.
Or, of course, what they wanted. So in this chapter here (14), our attention is going to again be focused on what's happening in Babylon, as far as the exile. We saw that last time, where Ezekiel was supposed to get his baggage together as into exile in the sight of everyone, then dig through the wall of his house in the sight of everyone. Both audiences are in view: what's going on in Babylon and what's going on in Jerusalem, as far as the impending doom. But the focus here is a little bit more on some of the problems that are arising right where Ezekiel is at. And so that's why chapter 14 begins the way it does. In verse 1 here, this is what Taylor is referring to:
Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me.
So it's very localized. Now Block also makes the observation of this whole chapter that there's a lot of vocabulary (we're not going to drill down in all the places we could drill down as far as the Hebrew words here)… Block notes that there are a lot of lemmas, or vocabulary, in this chapter that comes from the Holiness Code. If you remember back to our series in Leviticus, the Holiness Code was Leviticus 17 through 26. So this chapter (Ezekiel 14) is going to have links back to that stuff. And that's because what's in view here is Ezekiel Instead of offering encouragement, Block writes:
Instead of offering encouragement, Ezekiel calls on the entire nation to repent of their syncretistic religious commitments or face the certain judgment of the covenant Lord. [ Because the covenant with Yahweh has been violated.]
Yahweh has a capital case against them, and his judgment is sure.
So if you remember back to Leviticus, especially Leviticus 26, we had all these ideas about the way God wants people to live. A lot of that was associated with not being an idolater, not being a pagan, not being someone who worships other gods. And then chapter 26 was sort of this climax in Leviticus where, "If you do these things, I'm going to be your God, you will be my people, and life will be wonderful. But if you don't, (God was very clear) I will drive you from this land." And that's why Ezekiel is connecting back into Leviticus—the Holiness Code, and in particular, we're going to see a few places where Leviticus 26 again comes into view. And that's because Ezekiel is living in the circumstances that Leviticus 26 described. The people have gone off into idolatry. They are apostate. And they have been (and will be even more) driven from the land. So that whole idea is going to be very clear in Ezekiel 14. It would be especially clear to leadership—especially spiritual leadership—who you would think would have more familiarity with the Torah than the average Israelite. And, of course, Leviticus is part of that, and the Holiness Code.
So let's jump into the passage. We've already read verse 1, but we'll read it again. Ezekiel 14 : 1-5
Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them? Therefore speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols, that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols.
Let's just stop there with the first five verses. This idea of taking idols into their hearts and setting the stumbling block of their iniquity (in other words, these idols) before their faces. What these phrases mean is, "Look, you're bowing down to other gods. You set the idol in front of you. The only reason you'd do that is to make offerings to it, to worship it. And when you do that, that tells us where your heart is. That tells us what you really believe. That tells God who you are aligning your innermost being with, and it isn't him. It isn't Yahweh of Israel. It's other gods." And so God says, "Really? They're coming to you..." (He's talking about the elders of Israel coming to Ezekiel and sitting in front of him.) And God has them pegged. He's telling Ezekiel, "They're idolaters. They follow other gods. So now we get to watch them come to you to consult me about what's going to happen." And look at what he says:
Therefore speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols,
He says, "If this is what you're doing (you're coming to the prophet), I'll answer you. I'll answer you with the multitude of your idols. I'm going to direct your attention back to what you're really doing and who you really worship. And then what I say to you is going to make sense because what I'm going to say to you is just bad news. You're not going to get encouragement. You're not going to get some promise that I'm going to relent. You're going to get punished. The people back in Jerusalem are going to get punished, and if you're here in Babylon and you're rejecting even here... You're in exile! If you still can't get this straight, you're not going to return to the land, you're going to die here." That's the message that we're going to see in this chapter, Ezekiel 14: 6-11. Let's pick up with verse 6.
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations. For any one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel, who separates himself from me, taking his idols into his heart and putting the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to a prophet to consult me through him, I the Lord will answer him myself. And I will set my face against that man; I will make him a sign and a byword and cut him off from the midst of my people, and you shall know that I am the Lord. And if the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. And they shall bear their punishment—the punishment of the prophet and the punishment of the inquirer shall be alike— that the house of Israel may no more go astray from me, nor defile themselves anymore with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people and I may be their God, declares the Lord God.”
We'll stop there. That language comes right out of Ezekiel 26. "Be my people; I will be their God." So the only way this relationship is going to be restored is to do what is going to happen: to clean the land, clean house. This is not a comforting, positive message. Let's just go back and pick up a few things. We've had this reference to the elders of the house of Israel coming to Ezekiel and sitting before him, and then we get this assessment. God says, "Yeah, these guys ("these men," verse 3) have taken their idols into their hearts and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces." God knows instantly what they're really about and who they're really aligned with.
Now this expression, "the stumbling block of their iniquity," is peculiar to Ezekiel. This is a phrase he uses. You won't really find it anywhere else. He uses it in chapter 7, chapter 14 a few times (where we're at here), we're going to see it again in chapter 18, and later on in chapter 44. It typically refers to the idols which the people recognized as their deity—the gods or god that isn't Yahweh that they're really aligned with. And this is, above all else (and Leviticus makes this clear in the Holiness Code), the sin that will result in expulsion from the land: idolatry. It's worshiping another gods. The people who were in Babylon among them—the elders, the people with some authority here, the leadership—they're in Babylon, in exile, they've been driven from the land and they're stilldoing it. They've brought their idolatry with them. Maybe they don't have the idols set up, but we have all this heart language. I'm willing to think that there's kind of both aspects of this. Maybe someone in the exile would have created some sort of idol that they're actually worshiping or bowing down to, something like that. But at the very least(with the language here used of exiles) they have idols in their hearts. They are still divided when it comes to their loyalty. Their believing loyalty is not with Yahweh of Israel. It's still to some other god. Now, Block writes this in response to the first two verses:
Perhaps the exiles had become enamored with the Babylonian practices all around them.
Block is thinking, "Well, maybe that's part of it. Maybe the stuff they run into in Babylon... They worshiped other gods in Canaan, in Israel, and even though they're driven into exile, here they go again. Maybe that's it.
More likely, they were inwardly longing for the idolatrous observances (such as had been portrayed in ch. 8) they had left behind in Judah. [ In other words, the exile didn’t cure them.] Though separated physically from their homeland, they had not yet been weaned of the syncretistic ways that had precipitated their present lot. These pagan commitments remain the most serious obstacle to divine favor…
Divine favor in this case is, “You’re here, you’re alive.” But Ezekiel in previous passages (and we’re going to see it again in this passage) has said, “Well, congratulations, but you could die here, too.” The goal here is to have a remnant that returns, a remnant that is repentant and that will one day be brought back to the land. Because when Jerusalem falls (if you remember way back when we introduced Ezekiel as a book that we were going to study), there’s going to be a point where Jerusalem falls and then Ezekiel’s message will transition to one of hope. So we’ve seen glimpses of the remnant already. We’re going to get more of that when we hit this transition point, but what he’s saying here is that the fact that they’re still idolatrous in their hearts. “Wake up, people! You don’t want to die here in a foreign land—a land that is not yours by the gift of Yahweh, a land that is not Yahweh’s and you don’t have his presence with you. That’s insane. You need to repent. You need to forsake the idolatry that you brought with you in your heart. Because don’t you want to be part of the remnant that goes back, that is restored in relationship to Yahweh in Yahweh’s land? Don’t you want that?” That’s essentially what the text is angling for and what Block is trying to summarize here. Block continues:
In spite of the exiles’ fundamental paganism, they presume upon divine grace by appearing before the prophet to demand a message from Yahweh… Such requests or demands for divine knowledge could be made directly or, more commonly, through mediums, to anyone recognized as having an ear with the deity. Since the paganized Israelites understood this to be one of the primary functions of a prophet, and Ezekiel claimed to be a prophet, they would naturally approach him for a word from Yahweh…
The ignorance here is ridiculous. The sun worshipers (the 25 sun worshipers who bowed down thinking they were worshiping Yahweh by bowing down to the sun… we covered this in Ezekiel before)… They think they’re worshiping Yahweh. Never mind the fact that what we’re doing violates Deut. They somehow just didn’t get that. And here we are with more ignorance. “Oh, well, let’s just talk to Ezekiel and he’ll get in touch with Yahweh,” as though it makes no difference where their hearts are at. They’re going to look for truth from Yahweh’s prophet. Never mind the fact that our hearts are far from Yahweh. We are not loyal to him. It’s just such a disconnect. Back to Block:
The delegates appear to have been serious, considering themselves still to be the people of Yahweh. [ depending on their ethnicity] In spite of their syncretistic and overtly idolatrous disposition, however, they were oblivious to the fundamental incongruity of their presence before a prophet of Yahweh. They seemed unaware that Yahweh tolerated no rivals, and that he was under no obligation to respond to any who are determined to keep one foot planted in each of the two worlds—Yahwism and paganism.
I think that's well-said. It really captures the flavor of what we're looking at here in Ezekiel 14. It's totally incongruous. In verse 3 God asks, "Should I let myself be consulted by them?" And the rest of what we read is, "Well, yeah—I've got a message for them. It isn't what they want to hear!" And he lets them have it. Look again at what he tells them in verse 6:
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations.
"I'll give you an answer... I'm going to set my face against you!” In verse 8, he's talking about the man who does this (who worships another god in his heart and then comes to me for an answer, for help
And I will set my face against that man; I will make him a sign and a byword and cut him off from the midst of my people, and you shall know that I am the Lord.
In other words, I'm going to make him an example. "I will make you a public example." And that's just not the place you want to be. (laughing) You don't want to be in a situation where God is going to make youan example of what not to do and what not to be. And that's God's message to them. It's pretty obvious in terms of application. This is a pretty good thing to keep in mind. It makes me think of "Woe to the people who honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me." This is what we've got here. You can't just live any way you want. You can't just align yourself with some belief system that is contrary to Scriptural truth and then when you get in trouble and you need God's help, then just to run back without repenting. There's the key thought. These people are being portrayed as not truly repentant. They still have idols in their hearts. You can't just assume that because you're going through a proper motion that God is going to give a rip. God wants the heart. He wants believing loyalty. He wants true repentance. You don't just do ritualistic things (or in this case, the thing that you would expect would be logical... "Hey, there's a preacher over there, let's go ask him for help") as though it was like a rabbit's foot. As though you have Ezekiel, or a preacher, or somebody, or something else you could consult when you get in trouble, without repentance. There are no rabbits' feet. God is not a vending machine. Just because he's God doesn't obligate him to do something for you. That's what this chapter is really trying to describe here. God is not there just waiting to serve you without your heart being with him. That is not the way it works. And the chapter is really, really clear on what God thinks about all that.
So we get to verse 12, and in Ezekiel 14:12-20, we read this
And the word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord God.
“If I cause wild beasts to pass through the land, and they ravage it, and it be made desolate, so that no one may pass through because of the beasts, even if these three men were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters. They alone would be delivered, but the land would be desolate.
“Or if I bring a sword upon that land and say, Let a sword pass through the land, and I cut off from it man and beast, though these three men were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they alone would be delivered.
“Or if I send a pestilence into that land and pour out my wrath upon it with blood, to cut off from it man and beast, even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness.
The point is really clear. God says, "Look, I am not obligated to save the mass of this people. I'm not being prevented from judging my people and this land the way I promised I would do back in the Torah." Back in Leviticus 26 we get the whole blessings and cursings thing, as well as back in the later chapters of Deuteronomy. "My hands are not tied from doing this. And if you think that I'm going to NOT do it because there are some righteous left, think again. Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were among them, only the righteous... The righteous will only be saved themselves. I'm not going to save the wicked and the evildoers on their behalf, because they're there.” Again, that is not the way it works.
Now later on in Ezekiel we're going to see things: "The soul that sins, it shall die." The sinner, the wicked, is not going to be saved and delivered or passed over in terms of judgment because of what somebody else does, because of the believing loyalty of someone that's true. They're not going to save the wicked. The wicked are responsible for their own hearts, for the place they're at in their relationship with God. They're either estranged from him or else Yahweh, the
God of Israel, is the focus of their believing loyalty. That's either true or it isn't. And God's not going to overlook it for the sake of someone else's relationship with him. That's not the way it works. You are responsible. You're responsible for your own response to the truth that God gives you, not someone else's. So it's actually really clear here. And it's pretty telling because, again, the language goes back to Leviticus 26 and this whole idea of throwing all these things at the land: famine, devastation, plague, pestilence, driving the people from the land. The land will not be spared and the covenant violations will not be ignored because there’s a handful of righteous people still left. That isn't the way God works. If they're righteous, by implication God is saying, "I know there are righteous in there. I know who they are, and they'll be saved. But you won't just because they are there. The covenant and the presence of faithful people will not impede judgment." And the rationale for it... Why is God taking such a hard line here? Well, he says, "when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly" and I do all these things to it... "Acting faithlessly" is sort of a clue here. The Hebrew term is a little bit stronger than that English rendering. This comes from Leviticus 26. This is a term that you'll find in Leviticus 26:40, where it says:
“But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me,
And so on and so forth. The term here refers to performing treachery. Being “faithless," that's a tough word, but being "treacherous" means betrayal. This is a spirit betrayal. And we know what the terms of the betrayal are because Ezekiel has been talking about the idols that are in the people's hearts. It's all about worshiping another. I don't know how many times we can say this in a series on Ezekiel. (Ezekiel says it over and over and over again.) The issue—the primary issue—and really you could say this is the core of Old Testament theology (and this is why Jesus goes back to the first two commandments): You don't worship another. God will not tolerate rivals.
We've used the example of David before. David was a mess. He does terrible things. But the one thing he doesn't do is he never worships another god. So he can screw up with frequency and he can do it spectacularly, and he does. But this is the one thing, the one line he does not cross. In the context of Old Testament theology, he still knew who the true God was and he refused to align his own heart with another god. "Yes, I am a deplorable person. Yes, I committed adultery. I had somebody killed." (And all these things that David does.) "I am awful, I am deplorable. But I'm not going to bow down to another god. I'm going to let the chips fall where they may with the true God. I'm going to confess my sin. I'm going to repent. I'm going to hope that he'll have mercy on me. I am not going to turn my loyalty to another. And this is really emblematic of salvation across the board, across the Testaments. Salvation is something that cannot be gained by moral perfection, and therefore it cannot be lost by moral imperfection.
The issue is: Where is your believing loyalty? In whom do you trust? Who do you worship? What is the object of your faith? Who is the object of your faith? That is consistently the question. I harped on this in Unseen Realm and I'm not going to go any further with it here, but salvation is defined as "believing loyalty." It requires faith: "I believe that Yahweh is the God of gods. In fact, this is true. He has put himself into a covenant relationship with us; with me. Not because I deserve it or have moral perfection. I don't have any moral perfection. It's because God desired the relationship. I'm going to embrace it and trust that he will deliver me from death; he will deliver me in the afterlife. I will be with him forever. I will not be left in the grave." (Again, I'm speaking as an Israelite here.) "I'm going to assume and believe and trust that he will deliver me. He will take me out of Sheol to be with him when I die, and I'm not going to believe that about any other. Period." Again, it's very easy to see how this relates to the New Testament articulation of the message of the Gospel in Christ, because Christ is the same Yahweh incarnate. And by the way, doesn't that put people who deny the incarnation, whether it's some bizarre sect within the Hebrew Roots sect or something else—doesn't that put them on really insecure footing? I would say that it does. It really does. We need to start examining the implications of the theological stuff we say. It's important, and a lot of people will just make willy-nilly statements about doctrine, not realizing the interconnectivity of doctrinal thinking across the board. The Bible doesn't present a smorgasbord of thought when it comes to salvation. It's very consistent. Just thought I'd throw that out.