SOME THINK THAT EZEKIEL is difficult to interpret because of its visions. By their nature, those people say, such books are not meant to communicate truth in a literal manner. These truths do not lend themselves to scientific language. They are heavy with a surplus of meaning that goes beyond the scientific.
True, Ezekiel does have visions. True, Ezekiel is difficult to interpret. As Iain Duguid points out in his introduction to this excellent commentary, at one time or another the church fathers have called the book difficult, early rabbis considered it dangerous, and most of us have despaired of figuring out what God’s message is in its pages.
However, as Professor Duguid also points out, Ezekiel’s difficulty emerges not only from the visions, but also from the fact that Ezekiel was written over a number of years that spanned a chaotic, confusing time. Ezekiel spoke to people at three different phases of a crisis situation: when they were about to be overrun by a desperately cruel foreign political power, when they were overrun and deported to an alien land, and when their restoration to their lost land was in view. Each phase elicited a distinct message from the prophet.
As any parent knows, the content and tone of messages delivered before disaster strikes and those delivered afterward can be very different. When my now twenty-two-year-old son, David, was ten years old, I presented him, as a birthday present, a Swiss Army knife. Along with the knife I made a speech: “You are a responsible young man now,” I intoned, “capable of handling a valuable tool that at its worst can also be used as a weapon. I fully expect you, however, never to misuse it in that way.”
Two days later I arrived home from work to a house filled with the heavy, anxious air of crisis. David had threatened the seven-year-old boy next door with his Swiss Army knife. I found David in his room and made another speech: “You have misused your trust. You must apologize—and you must give me back the knife.” Several days later, I made a third speech: “I love you still and always will. I believe you can handle a Swiss Army knife in the way it was meant to be used. Together we will discover the time and place for you to be a knife owner again.”
Three very different speeches about the same subject: the first ritualistic, the second moralistic, the third pastoral. The first aimed at celebration of life, the second at rule-keeping and correction, the third at restoration. I did not change in my understanding of what a Swiss Army knife was and how it was to be used. But the circumstances of David’s and my relationship and life did change. Thus, the speeches changed accordingly.
How should we understand the changing and sometimes irreconcilable passages of Ezekiel? Many hermeneutical principles come to bear. But one of them must be an awareness of the historical circumstances of Ezekiel’s time, as Professor Duguid commends. Once that background is in place, some coherence begins to emerge.
Even with all this help, however, a key ingredient is still missing. Where does the story come from, the story that holds all the changing pieces together? It doesn’t come from the Assyrians. It doesn’t come from the Egyptians. It doesn’t come from the Babylonians. It doesn’t even come from the changing fortunes of Judah, Israel, or Jerusalem. To fully understand Ezekiel we must fast forward six hundred years to the life of Jesus of Nazareth. There we discover a story so inspiring, so unifying, so redemptive that the difficulties, dangers, and despairs of life begin to take on a slightly unreal cast, like the horrors of a bad movie.
In their place what becomes increasingly, overwhelmingly real is the fact of our restoration in the hands of a loving God. The last act of our lives, the third speech, is so filled with God’s love that everything else takes on additional meaning. In our darkest hours, the cupped hands of God are there to catch us. The Lord is in control. Thanks be to God!
Terry C. Muck