Notes

1. Jerome, Ep. ad Paulinam, 8.

2. b. ḥag. 13a.

3. b. šabb. 13b.

4. b. Menaḥ. 45a.

5. On the history of the Assyrian empire, see William C. Gwaltney Jr., “Assyrians,” in Peoples of the Old Testament World, ed. A. J. Hoerth, G. L. Mattingly, and E. M. Yamauchi (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 77–106.

6. James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1955), 288.

7. Daniel I. Block, Ezekiel 1–24 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 3.

8. John Bright, A History of Israel, 3d ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981), 327.

9. ANET, 283, 288. On the Assyrian deportations, see Bustenai Oded, Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1979), and K. Lawson Younger Jr., “The Deportations of the Israelites,” JBL 117 (1998): 201–27.

10. Bright, A History of Israel, 344–45.

11. BZAW 39; Giessen: Töpelmann, 1924).

12. For an evaluation of these yardsticks of originality, see Moshe Greenberg, “What Are Valid Criteria for Determining Inauthentic Matter in Ezekiel?” in Ezekiel and His Book: Textual and Literary Criticism and Their Interrelation, ed. J. Lust (BETL 74; Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 1986), 123–35.

13. So Jörg Garscha, Studien zum Ezechielbuch (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1974), 15.

14. See my Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 72–74.

15. Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20 (AB; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 27. For an example of Greenberg’s critique of traditional critical approaches to the book, see “Note on Criteria of Authenticity: The Sidon Oracle As an Example,” Ezekiel 21–37 (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 597–99.

16. See Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 22.

17. See The Westminster Confession of Faith, I.4 and I.5. See John Murray, “The Attestation of Scripture,” in P. Woolley, ed., The Infallible Word, 3d ed. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967), 1–54.

18. The Homilies of Gregory the Great on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, trans. T. Gray (Etna, Calif.: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1990), 179–85.

19. William Greenhill, An Exposition of Ezekiel (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994 reprint), 780.

20. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1972 reprint), 97.

21. As Spurgeon does in his sermon on Ezekiel 47:5, “Waters to Swim in,” published in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Sermons Preached and Revised in 1872, vol. 18 (Pasadena, Tex.: Pilgrim, 1971 reprint), 313–24. By no means all of his sermons on the book of Ezekiel are allegorical, however.

22. The Journals of Jim Elliot (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1978), 39–40.

23. Dispensationalism Today (Chicago: Moody, 1986), 86.

24. Ibid., 87.

25. Edward J. Young, My Servants the Prophets (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 46–54.

26. See Edmund P. Clowney, Preaching and Biblical Theology (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1975), 76.

27. Edmund P. Clowney, “Preaching Christ From All the Scriptures,” in S.T. Logan, ed., The Preacher and Preaching (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1986), 164. See also Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 272; Sidney Greidanus, The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 118–20.

28. Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching, 272.

29. See John Newton, “On the Inefficacy of Knowledge,” in The Works of John Newton (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1985 reprint), 1:245–53.

30. On the power of the gospel to change lives, see C. John Miller, Outgrowing the Ingrown Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 120–34. Similarly, Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1979), 95–144.

31. See Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church. Volume 1: The Biblical Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 189.

1. Douglas Stuart, Ezekiel (Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1988), 29; A. D. York, “Ezekiel 1: Inaugural and Restoration Visions?” VT 27 (1977): 82–98.

2. See George A. Cooke, Ezekiel (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936), 7. In the seventeenth century, this view was advocated by William Greenhill, An Exposition of Ezekiel (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994 reprint), 9.

3. So also John Calvin, Ezekiel I, trans. D. Foxgrover and D. Martin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 14.

4. For this view, see Claus von Orelli, Das Buch Ezechiel und die zwölf kleinen Propheten, 2d ed. (Munich: Beek, 1896).

5. J. E. Miller, “The ‘Thirtieth Year’ of Ezekiel 1.1,” RB 99 (1992): 499–503; Margaret S. Odell, “You Are What You Eat: Ezekiel and the Scroll,” JBL 117 (1998): 229–48; Leslie C. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19 (WBC 28; Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1994), 21; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox, 1990), 16; Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 82.

6. On ʾ ^elōhîm as an appellative (“divinity”) in this phrase rather than a proper noun, see Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 85.

7. “Exile and Dreams of Return,” CurrTM 18 (1990): 192.

8. Ibid., 197.

9. Ibid., 198.

10. These causes of the sense of exile, while perhaps new to some of us, have been familiar to our brothers and sisters in the African-American and Hispanic-American community for generations. See Jean-Pierre Ruiz, “Exile History and Hope: A Hispanic Reading of Ezekiel 20,” The Bible Today 35 (1997): 106–13.

11. See Ursula Pfafflin, “Displacement and the Yearning for Holding Environments: Visions in Feminist Pastoral Psychology and Theology,” Journal of Pastoral Care 49 (1995): 391.

12. “An American Tune,” words and music by Paul Simon; © 1973 Paul Simon (BMI).

13. Cited by Miroslav Volf in “Allegiance and Rebellion,” The Christian Century 114 (1997): 633.

1. Notice the significance of “rest” as a precondition for building the temple in Deut. 12:10; 2 Sam. 7:1; 1 Chron. 22:9. See Roddy L. Braun, 1 Chronicles (WBC 14; Waco, Tex.: Word, 1986), 224–25.

2. Ronald E. Clements, Isaiah and the Deliverance of Jerusalem (JSOTS 13; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980), 98. Clements points to this belief as a significant factor in the “confident, but ill-founded way in which the kings of Judah reacted to the constraints of outside political pressure . . . and . . . were guilty of the most crass and reckless political misjudgments.”

3. See Iain Duguid, “Ezekiel,” Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, ed. Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998), 256–57.

4. Robert R. Wilson, “Prophecy in Crisis: The Call of Ezekiel,” Int 38 (1984): 125.

5. These wheels intersect with one another at right angles to enable the chariot to move in any direction without turning (so v. 17). See John W. Wevers, Ezekiel (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 46.

6. See “Chariot,” DBI, 139.

7. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 25.

8. This was recognized already by the rabbis, who explained: “Four kinds of proud beings were created in the world: the proudest of all—man; of birds—the eagle; of domestic animals—the bull; of wild animals—the lion; and all of them are stationed beneath the chariot of the Holy One” (Exod. Rab. 23.13). See Moshe Greenberg, “Ezekiel’s Vision: Literary and Iconographic Aspects,” in History, Historiography and Interpretation: Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literature, ed. H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983), 165.

9. The idea of God’s setting his bow in the clouds is unique to these two passages.

10. For example, William Greenhill adduces from the text that “each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved” (Ezek. 1:9), the application that Christians ought to mind their own business and not meddle in the affairs of others (Ezekiel, 39). Similarly, Gregory the Great identified the four faces of the living creatures with the four Evangelists (Homilies on the Book of Ezekiel, 4.1). In this, he may have been influenced by the earlier identification of the four (separate) living creatures of Rev. 4 with the gospel writers by Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 3.11.8) and Victorinus (Comm. in Apoc. 4.3–4). In each case, the application is arbitrary rather than growing out of an understanding of the text in its original context.

11. Other images from Ezek. 1 appear in the vision of the heavenly throne room in Rev. 4: a throne on a surface like crystal, four living creatures covered with eyes, and partaking of the likeness of a lion, an eagle, an ox, and a human being. Yet along with the similarities there are also differences. The “expanse” (rāqîaʿ ) becomes a “sea of glass,” the living creatures now each have the likeness of one kind of animal instead of each having the faces of all four, and now they have six wings (like Isaiah’s seraphim) instead of four. The eyes have moved from the wheels (which have disappeared) onto the living creatures themselves.

12. “The Seeker Service at Fair Haven,” Reformed Worship 23 (1992): 10.

1. This identification of Israel with the paradigm of rebellion, the “nations” (gôyim; e.g., Ps. 2:1), probably explains the unexpected plural here.

2. Compare with the opening chapter of Hosea, where Israel has become “Not my people” (lōʾ-ʿammî, Hos. 1:9). Similarly, in Ex. 32:7–14, after the sin with the golden calf, God sends Moses back to “your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt” (v. 7, reflecting Israel’s self-identification in v. 1); the resolution to the crisis is not reached until the Lord relents and does not bring the threatened disaster upon “his people” (v. 14).

3. Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20 (AB; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 62.

4. “ ‘The primary sense of mārad is refuse allegiance to, rise up against, a sovereign’; its antonym is ʿābad ‘serve, be subject to’ ” (Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 63).

5. There is a play on the prophet’s name here, for Ezekiel means “God strengthens.” See John B. Taylor, Ezekiel (TOTC; Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1969), 66.

6. Thus John Skinner would translate ben-ʾādām simply by “member of the human race,” arguing that “it expresses the infinite contrast between the heavenly and the earthly, between the glorious Being who speaks from the throne and the frail creature who needs to be supernaturally strengthened before he can stand upright in the attitude of service” (The Book of Ezekiel [The Expositor’s Bible; New York: Armstrong & Son, 1895], 44).

7. “What the entire people should achieve is to be realized in the one son of man who is their representative” (Walther Eichrodt, Ezekiel, trans. C. Quin [OTL; London: SCM, 1970], 64). For the connection between Ezek. 37 and Gen. 2:7, see Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel, 173.

8. Compare Ezek. 36:26–27.

9. This may be the reason why the metaphor of Jer. 15:16 has become a concrete experience for Ezekiel.

10. Ernst W. Hengstenberg, The Prophecies of Ezekiel Elucidated, trans. A. C. & J. G. Murphy (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1874), 37.

11. The Hebrew word translated “overwhelmed” (mašmîm) comes from the root šāmam, which occurs frequently throughout Ezekiel in the sense of “devastate, ravage, make desolate.”

12. Odell, “Ezekiel and the Scroll,” 244.

13. William J. Dumbrell, “Spirit and Kingdom of God in the Old Testament,” Reformed Theological Review 33 (1974): 1–10.

14. See Bruce Chilton, “The Son of Man—Who Was He?” Bible Review 12 (1996): 34–46.

15. Reversed Thunder (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 30.

16. Ezekiel I, 61.

17. John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 14–15.

18. Exposition of Ezekiel, 79.

1. Odell, “Ezekiel and the Scroll,” 231.

2. So Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (New York: Harper, 1962, 1965), 2:231.

3. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 95.

4. On the concepts of “life” and “death,” see Walther Zimmerli, “ ‘Leben’ und ‘Tod’ im Buche des Propheten Ezechiel,” ThZ 13 (1957): 494–508.

5. Compare 2 Sam. 4:11–13. See Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 85.

6. Nicholas Tromp, “The Paradox of Ezekiel’s Prophetic Mission: Towards a Semiotic Approach of Ezekiel 3:22–27,” in Ezekiel and His Book: Textual and Literary Criticism and Their Interrelation, ed. J. Lust (BETL 74; Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 1986), 209.

7. Derek Thomas, God Strengthens: Ezekiel Simply Explained (Welwyn Commentary Series; Darlington: Evangelical Press, 1993), 40.

8. Commentators have disagreed over whether the dumbness allows intermittent speech at the divine command (so Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 102) or is total until its lifting at the fall of Jerusalem, foretold in Ezek. 24:27 (so Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel, trans. R. E. Clements, 2 vols. [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 1:160). At issue is the question of whether the “when I speak to you” of 3:27 has a repetitive sense (“whenever”) or a momentary sense (“at the time when”). In favor of Greenberg’s view is the parallel construction in 3:18, which undeniably has an iterative sense.

9. Ellen F. Davis comments: “Ezekiel must fall ‘silent’ and let the scroll which he has swallowed speak through him” (Swallowing the Scroll: Textuality and the Dynamics of Discourse in Ezekiel’s Prophecy [JSOTS 78; Sheffield: Almond, 1989], 52).

10. For the evidence for the môkîaḥ as an arbitrator or mediator between the two parties involved in a legal case, see Robert R. Wilson, “An Interpretation of Ezekiel’s Dumbness,” VT 22 (1972): 99–101. So also Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 157.

11. Systematic Theology, 4th ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1941), 361.

12. See, for instance, Gen. 20:7, where it is the fact that Abraham is a prophet that qualifies him to intercede on Abimelech’s behalf.

13. David Halperin, Seeking Ezekiel: Text and Psychology (State College, Pa.: Pennsylvania State Univ., Press, 1993).

14. Odell, “Ezekiel and the Scroll,” 245.

15. Maurice E. Andrew, Responsibility and Restoration: The Course of the Book of Ezekiel (Dunedin: Univ. of Otago Press, 1985), 26.

16. The Journals of Jim Elliot (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1978), 174.

1. According to Kurt Galling, ancient Near Eastern bricks had dimensions ranging from 6” to 13–1/2” wide and 10” to 24” long (“Ziegel,” Biblisches Reallexikon, ed. K. Galling, 2d ed. [Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1977], 364).

2. Compare the comments on Ezekiel’s dumbness above.

3. At least to understand, though not to perform! For this reason, many older interpreters viewed it as a purely visionary action that was never actually performed (e.g., Calvin, Ezekiel 1, 116; Skinner, Ezekiel, 65; Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel [Grand Rapids: Sovereign Grace, 1971 reprint], 25). More recent commentators, stressing the public nature of sign-acts, tend to play down the difficulty by imagining the prophet as performing it on a part-time basis (e.g., Taylor, Ezekiel, 81; Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 67; Kelvin G. Friebel, Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s Sign-Acts: Their Meaning and Function As Nonverbal Communication and Rhetoric [Ph.D. diss.; Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin, 1989], 546).

4. Ezekiel 1–20, 106.

5. This is perhaps what explains the reading of 190 years instead of 390 years found in the LXX. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:167.

6. For an example, see Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 105.

7. The exact dates are variously rendered, depending on whether you start from the exile of 598 B.C. or that of 586 B.C.; however, the import is clear.

8. Cf. Ezek. 25:3; see Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 68.

9. Compare the same period predicted for the exile of the Egyptians in Ezek. 29:12–13.

10. Compare the similar ideas expressed in Ezek. 20:35–36.

11. Stuart, Ezekiel, 58.

12. The process by which significant actions in the present can create the future by “pre-enacting” it. An example would be the voodoo practice of sticking pins into a model of a person in the belief that thereby real hurt will be caused to the person concerned.

13. For the former see von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2:96–97; Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:156; for the latter, Bernhard Lang, “Street Theater, Raising the Dead, and the Zoroastrian Connection in Ezekiel’s Prophecy,” in Ezekiel and His Book, 305.

14. W. David Stacey has objected that many of the prophetic sign-acts took place in private; for instance, Ezekiel’s eating of the scroll (Prophetic Drama in the Old Testament [London: Epworth, 1990], 265). However, the public recounting of the sign-act performed in private immediately makes it a public act.

15. Ezekiel 1–19, 66.

16. For this use of “affections,” see Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise on the Religious Affections (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1986 reprint), 25.

17. Westminster Confession of Faith, 27.1

18. So Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:28.

19. See Lang’s comments on the ability of sign-acts to gain a hearing for a potentially unpopular message (“Street Theater,” 301).

20. Arnold Dallimore, The Life of George Whitefield (Westchester, Ill.: Cornerstone, 1980), 2:388.

21. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Viking Penguin, 1985), 8.

22. H. David Schuringa, Hearing the Word in a Visual Age (Ph.D. diss., Kampen, 1995), 220–32.

23. Dan G. McCartney, Why Does It Have to Hurt? The Meaning of Christian Suffering (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1998), 60.

24. Twice in full (Acts 10:10–16; 11:5–10) and once in summary 15:7–9 (I. Howard Marshall, Acts [TNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980], 181).

1. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 193.

2. Henning G. Reventlow, Wächter über Israel: Ezechiel und seine Tradition (BZAW 82; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1962), 25–26.

3. It is tempting to read Ezekiel’s iron pan against the background of Lev. 26:19, which speaks of the heavens becoming like iron to the covenant breakers. Though in the original context in Leviticus the iron heavens are joined to earth of brass, suggesting that drought is the curse intended, Ezekiel may have taken up the imagery and reapplied it in concrete form, much as he does with Isaiah’s hired razor, to symbolize the closing of the lines of communication between humankind and God.

4. In both cases lit., “breaking the staff of bread.” For an explanation of this phrase in terms of the practice of carrying ring-shaped loaves on a pole, see H. Schult, “Marginalie zum ‘Stab des Brotes,’ ” ZDPV 87 (1971): 206–8.

5. Ronald E. Clements, God and Temple (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1965), 49–50.

6. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 217.

7. For a brief analysis of the Hittite treaty form, see Delbert R. Hillers, Covenant: The History of a Biblical Idea (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1969), 27–39.

8. 8. O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), 271–300.

9. Though the original reference is only to the book of Revelation, it forms a fitting conclusion to the New Testament and the Bible as a whole. See Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 37.

10. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue (priv. publ., 1991), 28.

1. Note the explicit connection between Ezek. 5:17, “I will bring the sword against you,” and 6:3, “I am about to bring a sword against you” (Thomas Renz, The Rhetorical Function of the Book of Ezekiel [Ph.D. diss., Cheltenham and Gloucester College/Univ. of Bristol, 1997], 52).

2. See Lawrence Boadt, “Rhetorical Strategies in Ezekiel’s Oracles of Judgment,” in Ezekiel and His Book, 188.

3. So Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 86.

4. Cf. Isa. 14:25; 65:9. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:185.

5. Patrick H. Vaughn, The Meaning of ‘bāmâ’ in the Old Testament: A Study of Etymological, Textual and Archaeological Evidence (SOTSMS 3; London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974), 29–55.

6. Most English translations render this word as “incense altars.” However, evidence from an Aramaic temple foundation inscription that equates ḥmnʾ with naos suggests that they should rather be understood as sanctuaries of some kind. See H. J. W. Drijvers, “Aramaic ḥmnʾ and Hebrew ḥmn: Their Meaning and Root,” JSS 33 (1988): 174; Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 225–26.

7. See 2 Kings 23:4–7. Those ministering at the high places of Josiah’s day apparently included Yahwistic priests (kōh^anîm; 23:9) as well as pagan priests (k^emārîm; 23:5), so there was evidently syncretism as well as outright pagan idolatry. Recent archaeological discoveries from the eighth century B.C. also support the picture of syncretistic worship. On these, see William G. Dever, “Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New Evidence From Kuntillet ʿAjrûd,” BASOR 255 (1984): 21–37, and Ziony Zevit, “The Khirbet el-Qôm Inscription Mentioning a Goddess,” BASOR 255 (1984): 39–47.

8. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 87.

9. See W. O. E. Oesterley, The Sacred Dance: A Study in Comparative Folklore (Cambridge: Cambridge. Univ. Press, 1923), 88; Robert Burrelli, “Dance and Related Expressions of Worship” (unpub. Th.M. thesis; Dallas: Dallas Theological Seminary), 16. A similar ritual seems to have developed as part of the later Lulab Festival at the Feast of Tabernacles (m. Sukka 4:5).

10. Again, an element of heightening from the previous chapter, where it occurs only once (Ezek. 5:13).

11. See Walther Zimmerli, “The Recognition of God According to the Book of Ezekiel,” in I Am Yahweh, ed. W. Brueggemann, trans. D. Stuart (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), 29–98.

12. Cf. the title of one of his books, He Is There and He Is Not Silent (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972).

13. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:189.

14. The Hebrew of Ezek. 6:9 is difficult; various suggestions have been made to emend the text to read, “I have broken their adulterous heart and eyes,” rather than the MT, “I have been broken [by?] their adulterous heart and eyes” (see Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 83). Perhaps the difficulty has been caused by an attempt to link this verse with the destruction of vv. 4, 6, so that the Lord is in effect saying, “I have been broken [nišbartî = grieved] by the judgment necessary to break their adultery in which their altars will be broken [nišb^erû; v. 6]”; as we would put it, “This is hurting me as much as it is hurting you.”

15. Reading “Riblah” for MT “Diblah”—the consonants “r” and “d” were easily confused in Hebrew. Riblah is a city in the Syrian territory of Hamath, north of Israel. It is not the normal northern boundary of Israel, which was at Lebo Hamath (Ezek. 47:16; 48:1); it was perhaps chosen because of its associations with the exiling of Jehoahaz after Josiah’s defeat and death (2 Kings 23:33), which made it a suitable place of judgment (Cooke, Ezekiel, 73).

16. Daniel Bodi, “Les gillûlîm chez Ézéchiel et dans l’Ancien Testament, et les différentes pratiques cultuelles associées à ce terme,” RB 100 (1993): 481–510.

17. Block uses graphic terminology in Ezekiel 1–24, 226.

18. Gordon J. Wenham, “The Religion of the Patriarchs,” in Essays on the Patriarchal Narratives, ed. A. R. Millard and D. J. Wiseman (Leicester: InterVarsity, 1980), 184.

19. The tendency to view one’s country as an elect nation (or worse, the elect nation) is an unfortunate tendency within Puritan thought in general (see Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986], 198). The sense of unique destiny was amplified in the American context by the circumstances behind the founding of the New England colonies, such that they viewed themselves as “a city set upon an hill . . . a people in covenant with God.” From there, the idea of “manifest destiny” spread more widely into the American consciousness, along with other (more positive) aspects of Puritan thought. The notion of national covenants with God is also found in certain strands of British, and especially Scottish, theological thought, particularly among those strongly influenced by the Puritans.

20. “Son of a bitch” retains the canine reference but has perhaps become too commonplace an insult in general society. However, if you translate it into the context of the pulpit, its shocking force is perhaps still present.

21. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 15–16.

22. Stephen Covey lists a number of possible “personal centers” that can be helpful both in diagnosing personal idolatries and in helping unchurched people understand the concept of idolatry (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989], 118–25). Covey’s answer to these “personal centers” is a life that is “principle centered,” and he goes on to advise on how to write a mission statement that will clarify one’s own principles. From a Christian perspective, this may well end up merely replacing one “ineffective” idolatry with a more “effective” one, that of “principles.” Any center other than the true and living God, who has revealed himself in the Scriptures, is idolatry. Of course, assisting people to manufacture effective idolatries sells books.

23. The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 1–2.

24. Ezekiel I, 156.

1. Ezekiel 1–20, 161. For that reason, this translation is to be preferred to that of the NIV: “four corners of the land.”

2. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:204.

3. This translation of ṣ^epīrâ is widely accepted by commentators; however, it is only “a guess based on the context” (Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 148). Block prefers the translation, “The leash has gone forth,” seeing ṣ^epīrâ as a reference to the chains in which Judah will be led into captivity (Ezekiel 1–24, 252, 254).

4. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 158.

5. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 146.

6. This word often has military connotations (BDB, 242c).

7. The Hebrew reads lit., “Every knee will go (or flow) water,” which the NIV, along with most other English versions, renders as “every knee will become as weak as water.” However, most modern commentators understand “water” as urine in this context, a view that goes back to the LXX. The intended referent is not loss of strength but rather loss of bladder control. For the ancient Near Eastern comparative evidence, see Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 152.

8. The phrase ʿam hāʾāreṣ can either cover a rather general group of people or, as here, a specific political grouping closely linked to the Davidic monarchy. See Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Judean hāʾāreṣ in Historical Perspective,” in King, Cult and Calendar in Ancient Israel: Collected Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 68–78.

9. The balance between these two triads suggests that there is no reason to collapse the two references to king (melek) and prince (nāśîʾ ) into a single person. Although Ezekiel frequently uses nāśîʾ to refer to the reigning monarch, that preference is not absolute. For a defense of the present text, see Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 21.

10. The quotation is attributed to the nineteenth-century German author, Heinrich Heine.

11. The language is that of The Book of Common Prayer, “Collect for Communion.”

12. Ezekiel I, 188.

13. New York: MacMillan, 1946.

14. For an extended example of how this can be done, see Thomas Boston’s classic Human Nature in Its Fourfold State (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1964 reprint). This book describes the original situation of the human race in the state of innocence before the Fall, the post-Fall situation apart from Christ, the Christian’s present situation in this world, and finally a description of one’s final state in heaven or hell. The material originated as sermons that were preached to a rural community in eighteenth-century Scotland and therefore represents a pastorally motivated rather than a doctrinally motivated presentation.

1. The period is understood as completed by including the 40 days within the 390 or assuming an intercalatory month (Taylor, Ezekiel, 80); however, there seems no objection to the vision taking place within the period of the sign-act (Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 166).

2. According to Jer. 28, in the fourth year of Zedekiah’s reign the prophet Hananiah had declared that within two years the Babylonian yoke would be broken, while the captives and the temple treasures would be returned. If this oracle was known among the exiles, the fact that the clock was running down to zero on this prophecy may have prompted some expectation of imminent help.

3. In Ezek. 14:1; 20:1 they are called “the elders of Israel,” not “the elders of Judah.” But the two expressions are in many cases virtually synonymous in Ezekiel. Notice, for instance, how the charges in Ezek. 8 implicate both the house of Israel (8:6, 10–12) and the house of Judah (8:17). Indeed, the summary statement of 9:9 indicts “the house of Israel and Judah.” See Walther Zimmerli, “Israel im Buche Ezechiel,” VT 8 (1958): 82.

4. Halperin, Seeking Ezekiel, 58.

5. The NIV translation “to the entrance to the north gate of the inner court” is based on the MT. The phrase lit. translates: “to the entrance of the gate, the inner one, facing to the north.” The word “inner one” is a feminine adjective that hangs oddly beside the masculine word “gate” (note that the participle “facing” is masculine); “inner one” is not attested by the LXX, and it disturbs the general flow of the chapter from outer parts inward (as in chs. 40–43) and should therefore be omitted. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:217.

6. The only other place in the Old Testament where an “incense burner” (miqṭeret) is found is in 2 Chron. 26:19, where Uzziah is similarly convicted of cultic irregularities.

7. Martin Schmidt, Prophet und Tempel (Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1948), 139.

8. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 293.

9. Schmidt, Prophet und Tempel, 139. This family was also closely associated with Jeremiah (Jer. 26:24; 29:3; 39:14); cf. Burke O. Long, “Social Dimensions of Prophetic Conflict,” Semeia 21 (1982): 46.

10. Compare the opening vision, which described the wheels of the divine chariot as “full of eyes” (Ezek. 1:18).

11. Thorkild Jacobsen, “Toward the Image of Tammuz,” in Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays, ed. W. L. Moran (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1970), 100.

12. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 296.

13. These men are not here further identified; however, Ezek. 9:6 makes it clear that they too are elders. On this, see Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 70.

14. This obscure Hebrew phrase has inspired vast amounts of literature attempting to clarify it. In general it has been understood either as an insulting gesture or action of some kind, or as a final act of idolatry. See Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 299.

15. “He called in my hearing with a loud voice” (lit.) in Ezek. 9:1 closely parallels “[Though] they call in my hearing with a loud voice” (lit.) in 8:18.

16. So in 44:11 the Levites are assigned the duty of serving as guards (“having charge of” is the same word trans. “guards” in 9:1) at the gates of the new temple. See Rodney K. Duke, “Punishment or Restoration: Another Look at the Levites of Ezekiel 44:6–16,” JSOT 40 (1988): 65.

17. The assonance of the Hebrew hanneʾ ^enāḥîm w^ehanneʾ ^enāqîm is lost in the NIV: “those who grieve and lament.” Block translates “groan and moan” (Ezekiel 1–24, 307).

18. This total annihilation recalls the “holy war” associated with the occupation of the Promised Land (cf. Josh. 6:21).

19. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 308.

20. Thus it is not coincidental that they appear at the north gate, the direction from which both divine and human enemies come in Ezekiel.

21. On the whole question of the veracity of Ezekiel’s vision, see Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 65–68.

22. Bruce Vawter and Leslie J. Hoppe, Ezekiel (ITC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 66. Compare in this regard Moshe Greenberg’s conception of “private” cults (i.e., those administered without benefit of clergy) in “Prolegomenon,” Pseudo-Ezekiel and the Original Prophecy by C. C. Torrey and Critical Articles (New York: Ktav, 1970), xxxiii, n. 47.

23. See my Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel.

24. Robert S. Candlish, Studies in Genesis (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1979 reprint), 327.

25. Tertullian, Against Marcion, 1.27.

26. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper, 1959), 193.

27. Rob Owen, Gen X TV: The Brady Bunch to Melrose Place (Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1997), 101.

28. See, for example, the account of such eclectic blends of religious elements among students given by Diane Winston in “Campuses Are a Bellwether for Society’s Religious Revival,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 16, 1998), A60.

29. One young lady, Sheila Larson, has explicitly dubbed her own brand of customized faith “Sheilaism.” Others have followed the same course more implicitly. For a description of “Sheilaism,” see Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 221, 235.

30. In the early church, baptism often involved the actual marking of the child with the sign of the cross on the forehead, which was seen as an exact parallel to the marking with a tāw that Ezekiel envisaged in Ezek. 9:4, since tāw in the ancient script took the shape of a cross (Origen, Selecta in Ezechielem, 13.800d; Tertullian, Against Marcion, 3.22; Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel, 9:4–6). The Reformers were unconvinced by this (correct) observation (see Calvin, Ezekiel I, 218), and their Puritan followers argued strenuously against the “noxious ceremony” of signing the cross, seeing it as a superstitious, man-made ritual. The Directory of Public Worship produced by the Westminster Assembly therefore requires baptism to be “by pouring or sprinkling of water on the face of the child, without adding any other ceremony.” However, though the ceremony itself may be unwarranted, the intent of those who defended the ceremony was in line with the biblical concept of baptism, as the words of the Book of Common Prayer make clear: “We receive this child into the congregation of Christ’s flock and do sign him with the sign of the cross, in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end.” The sign of the cross was not a magic amulet ensuring salvation, but a draft notice, enlisting the baptized into Christ’s army. Having received “the king’s shilling,” as it were, one must now fight for Christ or face the consequences of being a draft-dodger.

31. Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 7. See esp. the quote from the Book of Common Prayer in the previous note.

32. “Evangelicalism: Recovering a Tradition of Spiritual Depth,” The Reformed Journal (September 1990): 25.

1. On divine abandonment, see Daniel I. Block, The Gods of the Nations (Jackson, Miss.: Evangelical Theological Society, 1988), 125–61.

2. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 155.

3. This may explain why the problems of gender confusion with regard to these creatures in Ezekiel 1 are resolved in chapter 10 They are due to the tension between the grammatical gender of the living creatures (feminine) and the reality they represent, the cherubim (masculine). See Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 199.

4. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 191.

5. See my Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 114.

6. See J. P. M. van der Ploeg, “Chefs du peuple d’Israel et leurs titres,” RB 57 (1950): 42; Udo Rüterswörden, Die Beamten der israelitischen Königszeit: Eine Studie zu śr und vergleichbaren Begriffen (BWANT 117; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1985), 64.

7. Thomas Overholt, The Threat of Falsehood: A Study in the Theology of the Book of Jeremiah (SBT 16; London: SCM, 1970), 32.

8. So also Wevers, Ezekiel, 77. The RSV translates similarly, but as a statement rather than a question.

9. The spatial pairing “near” and “far off/away” is a standard one in Hebrew and is also found in Ezekiel 6:12 and 22:5, though without the same overtones of “inhabitant of the land/exile.” In his commentary, Zimmerli notes that the nearest parallel to the unique Hebrew form used here occurs in the “far off” in Ps. 10:1, though he himself did not adopt a spatial understanding of “near” here (Ezekiel, 1:258).

10. Ezekiel, 54.

11. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 160; Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 187.

12. Wevers, Ezekiel, 77.

13. Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 167; Cooke, Ezekiel, 122.

14. Repointing the MT’s imperative (raḥ^aqû) as a perfect (rāḥ^aqû), along with most modern and some medieval interpreters. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:229.

15. Allen has noted the use of motifs from Ex. 6:6–8 in Ezek. 11:17–20 (as well as in 20:30–42) to depict the idea of a new exodus (Ezekiel 1–19, 165); however, the use actually starts earlier with the depiction of the anti-exodus from Jerusalem.

16. Lit., this phrase translates “the men of your redemption,” i.e., those for whom Ezekiel has responsibility to act as their “redeemer,” ensuring that their land remains associated with their name.

17. miqdāš m^eʿat can either mean “a little sanctuary” (Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 190) or “a sanctuary for a little time” (cf. NIV; RSV). Both translations are possible: for the former, cf. Dan. 11:34, while for the latter, see Hag. 2:6. Nevertheless, in a context where it is immediately followed by a promise of return, it seems best to understand it as a (positive) statement of the temporary nature of the Lord’s presence among the exiles rather than a (negative) statement of the incompleteness of the Lord’s presence with them (see Carl F. Keil, Ezekiel, trans. J. Martin, 2 vol. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988 reprint], 1:151). The waw consecutive + imperfect thus introduces a logical contrast between the two halves of Ezek. 8:16.

18. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 164.

19. Notice how “the thoughts (literally “ascendings”) of your spirit” (NIV “what is going through your mind”) issue in the murders of 11:6. They form a natural opposition to the Lord’s thoughts, which come to the prophet through the descending of the Lord’s Spirit, which literally “falls” on Ezekiel (v. 5).

20. Compare Jer. 5:1–2, where the prophet Jeremiah, in Jerusalem, is told to search the city for one righteous person. Should even one be found, the Lord will spare the city.

21. Hugh G. M. Williamson, Ezra-Nehemiah (WBC 16; Waco, Tex.: Word, 1985), li, 16.

22. Gordon McConville writes: “The books express deep dissatisfaction with the exiles’ situation under Persian rule; the situation is perceived as leaving room for a future fulfilment of the most glorious prophecies of Israel’s salvation and the cause of the delayed fulfilment is Israel’s sin” (“Ezra-Nehemiah and the Fulfilment of Prophecy,” VT 36 [1986]: 223).

23. The equivalent form with theophoric element would be Azariah, “the Lord helps” (1 Kings 4:2), or Azriel, “God helps” (1 Chron. 5:24). The occurrence of such names in variant forms with or without the theophoric element is common in the Old Testament: e.g., Nathan/Nathaniel, Dan/Daniel, Obed/Obadiah.

24. The name Jaazaniah ben Shaphan in Ezekiel 8:11 has an equally appropriate ring to it. Like the other Jaazaniah, the Lord indeed hears what he is saying (8:12), while like a šāpān (a hyrax or rock badger) he is buried away in a subterranean cave. Indeed, the hyrax was itself an unclean animal (Lev. 11:5), a fitting image for the idolatrous worshipers to conjure up.

25. There is some discussion as to the exact number of these marks. Calvin mentions the first two (Institutes, 4.1.9) as does the Augsburg Confession, art. 7 and art. 19 of the Church of England. The third is added in the Belgic Confession (art. 29) and the First Scots Confession (ch. 18), while the Westminster Confession reduces them to a single point, “the profession of the true religion” (25.2). Those who mention three marks have included the things they regard as necessary for the well-being of the church, while the Westminster Confession has focused simply on the one thing necessary for the existence of the church.

26. Ezekiel I, 280.

1. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 209.

2. For darkness/evening as symbolic of judgment see Jer. 13:16 (Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 210). The middle of the night is when judgment falls on Egypt (Ex. 12:29).

3. So Cooke, Ezekiel, 131.

4. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 179; Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 370.

5. The LXX translates: “So that he might not be seen.” Similarly Cooke, Ezekiel, 132.

6. So the medieval Jewish commentators Rashi and Kimḥi; similarly, Vawter & Hoppe, Ezekiel, 78.

7. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 219.

8. Indeed, “burden” (māśśāʾ ) involves a further play on words, since it can refer either to a literal load to be carried, as in Ex. 23:5, or to a prophetic oracle, as in Isa. 14:28.

9. This ambiguity may account for the repeated use of the Hiphil of yāṣāʾ (“to bring out”) often where we would expect the simple Qal (“to go out”). The attraction to this formula may be linked to the idea of the journey into exile as an anti-exodus that we saw also in the previous chapter.

10. See esp. Ezek. 17:19–21, which uses similar language to 12:13–14 in depicting the consequences of Zedekiah’s breach of covenant. Some commentators have suggested that Ezek. 17 may actually have been delivered earlier than Ezek. 12. See Thomas Krüger, Geschichtskonzepte im Ezechielbuch (BZAW 180; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989), 404–6.

11. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 376.

12. On this general sense of ʿam-hāʾāreṣ, see Talmon, “Judean ʿam-hāʾāreṣ,” 71.

13. How Good Do We Have to Be? (Boston and New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1996), 12.

14. Harvie Conn, Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 33. See also the examples he gives on pp. 49–56.

15. Galatians 305 B, D. See Geoffrey W. H. Lampe, “Diakonia in the Early Church,” in Service in Christ: Essays Presented to Karl Barth on his 80^th Birthday, ed. J. I. McCord and T. H. L. Parker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 50.

1. Johannnes Herrmann suggests that it has been introduced here specifically in order to provide a link with what follows (Ezechielstudien, [BWAT 2; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1908], 19). The connection is certainly not coincidental.

2. Cf. Ezek. 12:23–28; 13:21, 23; 14:11; 16:41–42, 63; 23:27; 34:10, 22, 28–29; 36:12, 14–15, 30; 37:22–23; 39:7, 28; 43:7; 45:8.

3. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 242.

4. Vawter and Hoppe, Ezekiel, 82.

5. See Ezek. 13:16; see also Jer. 6:14; 8:11.

6. Allen suggests that here “jackals” is the more appropriate translation since foxes hunt singly while jackals congregate in groups around ruins (Ezekiel 1–19, 201). However, foxes would presumably have found ruins equally conducive to their lifestyle, while the plural simply corresponds to the plural “prophets of Israel.”

7. Henry L. Ellison, Ezekiel: The Man and His Message (London: Paternoster, 1956), 56. For a similar connection between foxes/jackals and ruins, see Lam. 5:18.

8. This metaphor has been vividly illuminated by the excavations of siege ramps and counter-ramps at Lachish. On these see Israel Eph‘al, “The Assyrian Siege Ramp at Lachish,” Tel Aviv 11 (1984): 60–70; David Ussishkin, “The Assyrian Attack on Lachish: The Archaeological Evidence From the Southwest Corner of the Site,” Tel Aviv 17 (1990): 53–86.

9. The Hebrew word ḥayiṣ only occurs here in the Old Testament. In the Mishnah, this word denotes a rough stone wall not filled in with earth (Šeb. 3:8).

10. The word used here has been variously rendered and appears to be equivalent to “vanity” or “hogwash” (Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 407).

11. This expression of judgment normally occurs with nāṭâ (Ezek. 6:14; 14:9, 13; 16:27; 25:7, 13, 16; 35:3) while here in 13:9 it occurs with hāyâ: “My hand will be against [them].” This construction, which elsewhere indicates the force of divine inspiration, is here used as a pun: Those who never felt the reality of the divine hand in inspiration will now feel it in judgment (see Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 237).

12. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 405.

13. Ezekiel too saw visions and recognized the potential effectiveness of divination. See Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 94.

14. For the meaning of this hapax legomenon, compare the usage of the Akkadian cognate kasû, “to bind,” often in a magical context (H. W. F. Saggs, “ ‘External Souls’ in the Old Testament,” JSS 19 [1974]: 5).

15. On the analogy of 1 Sam. 9:7, where the seer gives his oracle in return for a small payment of bread, this interpretation of the significance of the barley and bread is to be preferred to that which sees these as the materials for the magical practices. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:297.

16. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 245.

17. For one example of this, see Michael G. Maudlin, “Seers in the Heartland: Hot on the Trail of the Kansas City Prophets,” Christianity Today 35 (Jan. 14, 1991): 18–22.

18. In a survey of Baby Boomers, Wade Clark Roof discovered that 26 percent of them “believed” in astrology (A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993], 72).

19. For an example of this, see Donald Bloesch’s review of The New Century Hymnal, ed. A. G. Clyde in Christianity Today (July 15, 1996): 49–50.

20. “Women in the Church: A Biblical Survey,” in Bruce, A Mind for What Matters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 263.

21. See Robert W. Yarbrough, “The Hermeneutics of 1 Timothy 2:9–15,” in A. J. Köstenberger, T. R. Schreiner, and H. S. Baldwin (eds.) Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9–15 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 178–85.

1. See Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 110. On the strengthened position of the elders during and after the exile see Daniel L. Smith, Religion of the Landless (Bloomington, Ind.: Meyer-Stone, 1989), 94–99.

2. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 117.

3. The NIV’s “I will . . . recapture [their] hearts” is probably too optimistic. tāpaś (lay hold of, seize) often has the sense of apprehend, arrest (e.g., Num. 5:13; Jer. 26:8). See Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 249.

4. The language of “any Israelite or alien living in Israel” is anachronistic addressed to those in exile. It is used here as an echo of the priestly style of law found in the Pentateuch. For the similarities to Lev. 17, see Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 252.

5. Paul Joyce, Divine Initiative and Human Response in Ezekiel (JSOTS 51; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 67; Anthony Phillips, Ancient Israel’s Criminal Law (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), 29–30.

6. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 250.

7. In fact, the two practices were frequently linked, with excommunication often acting as a preparation for the covenantal death penalty. See William Horbury, “Extirpation and Excommunication,” VT 35 (1985): 34.

8. Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel, 72.

9. Ezekiel uses the Qal and Hiphil forms of šûb together in his appeal. We might capture the flavor best by translating, “Turn and return.”

10. Greenberg describes the phrase “they will be my people, and I will be their God” as “the essential expression of the bond between Israel and its God,” an expression drawn from the terminology of marriage and adoption (Ezekiel 1–20, 254).

11. David Powlison, “Idols of the Heart and ‘Vanity Fair,’ ” Journal of Biblical Counseling 13 (1995): 49. See also Edward T. Welch, When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1997), 44–47.

12. “On Idolatry,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Roberts & J. Donaldson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 3.61.

13. Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.11.8.

14. This principle is classically expounded by George Whitefield in “The Method of Grace,” Select Sermons of George Whitefield (London: Banner of Truth, 1964), 81–82.

1. James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 2d ed. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1955), 151, 153. See John Day, “The Daniel of Ugarit and Ezekiel and the Hero of the Book of Daniel,” VT 30 (1980): 174–84.

2. Harald-Martin Wahl, “Noah, Daniel und Hiob in Ezechiel XIV 12–20 (21–3): Traditionsgechichtliche Hintergrund,” VT 42 (1992): 551–52; Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 448–49.

3. The use of mythical elements is a common feature of the genre of oracles against the nations. See John B. Geyer, “Mythology and Culture in the Oracles Against the Nations,” VT 36 (1986): 129–45.

4. Baruch Margalit complicates the interpretative possibilities further by arguing that there is an allusion to the nonbiblical Danel in Ezek. 14 but not in Ezek. 28! See The Ugaritic Poem of AQHT (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1989), 490.

5. This principle was not an inviolable rule, as Ezekiel’s examples themselves show. Noah’s children were preserved through the Flood because of their father’s righteousness, but Job’s children were not protected by his righteousness. However, the latter case is clearly regarded as the exception rather than the rule.

6. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 261.

7. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 450.

8. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 220.

9. See C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 59.

1. Lawrence Boadt, “The Poetry of Prophetic Persuasion: Preserving the Prophet’s Persona,” CBQ 59 (1997): 19.

2. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 267. Note also the “how much less . . .” of 15:5, which is the same as “how much worse . . .” in 14:21.

3. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 214.

4. Diane Gabrielsen Scholl, “Alice Walker’s Parable The Color Purple,” Christianity and Literature 40 (1991): 259.

5. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 269.

1. The description of the genre of this passage as an “extended metaphor” or “narrative metaphor” comes from Julie Galambush, Jerusalem in the Book of Ezekiel: The City As Yahweh’s Wife (SBLDS 130; Atlanta: Scholars, 1992), 11. Although the passage has allegorical features, it is not strictly an allegory, since there is not a point by point correspondence between the elements of the metaphor and the real world referents.

2. “Confront” (hôdaʿ; Ezek. 16:2) is legal terminology (Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 272).

3. On the Hittites, see Gregory McMahon, “Hittites in the Old Testament,” ABD, 3:231–33.

4. Galambush, Jerusalem, 81.

5. Meir Malul has pointed out the significance of Akkadian parallels in which a child is adopted (“caused to live”) while “in its amniotic fluid and birth blood,” meaning that the baby can never be reclaimed by its natural parents (“Adoption of Foundlings in the Bible and Mesopotamian Documents: A Study of Some Legal Metaphors in Ezekiel 16:1–7,” JSOT 46 [1990]: 108–11).

6. NIV: “You . . . became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew” should perhaps rather be translated, “You developed the ornament of ornaments, [namely] your breasts were formed and your [pubic] hair sprouted.” The point is the physical development that accompanies the onset of puberty. See Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 276.

7. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:340.

8. Again, the historical realities behind the metaphor peep through in the delay between the time of Jerusalem’s birth and the time of the Lord’s care for her. This delay is awkward in terms of the imagery of the foundling (“why was she not washed at once?”), but wholly comprehensible in terms of the underlying reality.

9. Galambush, Jerusalem, 95.

10. The beauty of Zion/Jerusalem is a central theme of Psalm 48.

11. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:344.

12. See the discussion in Morton Cogan, Imperialism and Religion: Assyria, Judah and Israel in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E. (SBLMS 19; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars, 1974), 44–49.

13. Compare the rationale of Mishnah Sotah 1:5: “She exposed herself for sin, God therefore exposes her.”

14. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 242.

15. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 288.

16. Ibid., 305.

17. The word “establish” (Hiphil of qûm) is usually used of confirming an already existing covenant rather than originating a new relationship (Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 291). It thus serves to underline the continuity between Israel’s future relationship with the Lord and his original purpose.

18. For “to atone” (kipper) as paying a ransom, see Gordon Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 59.

19. Lit., “There will never again be opening of the mouth (i.e. self-justification) for you.” See Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 292.

20. Ezekiel, 141.

21. Cited in Thomas, Ezekiel, 108.

22. The tendency to downplay the “shocking” elements of this passage is no modern phenomenon; it is already present in the Targum, which mutes the sexual imagery (see Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel, 77).

23. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), 48. In a similar vein, the novelist Larry Woiwode is quoted as saying, “If sin isn’t mentioned or depicted, there’s no need for redemption. How can the majesty of God’s mighty arm be defined in a saccharin romance? Real sin is the curse we wrestle with every day” (Chris Stamper and Gene Veith, “Get Real,” World [July 4–11, 1998]: 18).

24. Ezekiel II, trans. T. Myers (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 181.

1. William McKane describes it as a statement “whose essence was opaqueness, mystification, enigma” (Proverbs: A New Approach [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970], 267).

2. The Hebrew word nešer has a semantic range that includes both the griffon-vulture and the eagle. Here the abundance of feathers and the greatness attributed to the bird clearly indicates the latter.

3. Lit., “the land of Canaan.” The equation “Canaanites” = “merchants” is due to the particular affinity of the Phoenicians for trade and is found also in Zeph. 1:11 and perhaps in the ambiguous Zech. 14:21.

4. Allen appropriately describes the rival eagle as “somewhat damned by faint praise” (Ezekiel 1–19, 257).

5. For a survey of the historical events referred to in this chapter, see the Introduction.

6. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 321.

7. Ibid., 322.

8. This “high and lofty mountain . . . of Israel” can only be Mount Zion. See Jon D. Levenson, Theology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40–48 (HSM 10; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars, 1976), 7.

9. A similar expectation is found in Isa. 11:1, where a shoot is anticipated, springing “from the stump of Jesse.” See Otto Kaiser, Isaiah 1–12, trans. R. A. Wilson (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972), 157. Note also the similarity of Isa. 10:33b and Ezek. 17:24.

10. Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1997), 42.

11. ANET, 205.

12. Morton Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, 48–49.

1. A true proverb applied to the wrong situation will lead to a false conclusion. “A stitch in time saves nine” is a valid proverb, yet if used where the appropriate proverb is rather, “Fools rush in where angels dare to tread,” the results may be disastrous. Hence Prov. 26:9 warns: “Like a thornbush in a drunkard’s hand is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.”

2. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:375.

3. These kinds of “legal lists” for those who sought nearness to God are found elsewhere in the Old Testament (e.g., Ps. 15; Isa. 33:15) and elsewhere in the ancient Near East. On these lists, see Gordon H. Matties, Ezekiel 18 and the Rhetoric of Moral Discourse (SBLDS 126; Atlanta: Scholars, 1990), 88–105, and Moshe Weinfeld, “Instructions for Temple Visitors in the Bible and in Ancient Egypt,” Egyptological Studies (ScrHier 28; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1982), 224–28.

4. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 329. He also points out that the pairing of lifting up the eyes with mountains evokes an apostate version of Ps. 121:1: “I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from?” In place of the orthodox response, “My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth,” the apostate seeks help from the idols whose high places are situated there.

5. This succession of three generations (righteous-unrighteous-righteous) is not a purely hypothetical construct but some scholars suggest a correspondence to the historical succession of Josiah-Jehoiakim-Jehoiachin. This perhaps accounts for the placement of Ezekiel 18 between chapters 17 and 19, which focus on the fate of the royal line; Ezekiel 18 would then further justify hope for the future of the exiled Jehoiachin. See Antti Laato, Josiah and David Redivivus: The Historical Josiah and the Messianic Expectations of Exilic and Postexilic Times (ConBOT 33; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992), 358.

6. For maddûaʿ as a rhetorical device expressing affected surprise (18:19), see BDB 396c. The New Living Translation renders it: “ ‘What?’ you ask. ‘Doesn’t the child pay for the parent’s sins?’ ”

7. Joyce, Divine Initiative, 48.

8. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 337.

9. Joyce, Divine Initiative, 52.

10. For this translation, see Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 267.

11. The rhetorical device of calling on the hearers to do for themselves something that ultimately only the Lord can do, is also found in Deuteronomy, where Moses tells the people both that they must circumcise their hearts (Deut. 10:16) and that God will circumcise their hearts (30:6). The point is that God can be relied upon to act faithfully to his promises and to carry through in us the good work he has begun.

12. For the history of this discussion, see Matties, Ezekiel 18, 115–25.

13. See J. Gordon McConville, “Narrative and Theology in the Book of Kings,” Biblica 70 (1989): 45.

14. On the concepts of “life” and “death,” see Walther Zimmerli, “ ‘Leben’ und ‘Tod’ im Buche des Propheten Ezechiel,” ThZ 13 (1957): 494–508.

15. New York: Schocken, 1981.

16. For a response, see Dan McCartney, Why Does It Have to Hurt?

17. “Sin is not a cul de sac, nor is guilt a final trap. Sin may be washed away by repentance and return, and beyond guilt is the dawn of forgiveness. The door is never locked, the threat of doom is not the last word” (Abraham Heschel, The Prophets [New York: Harper & Row, 1969], 1:174).

18. “The Wailing of Risca,” The New Park Street and Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 7 (Pasadena, Tex.: Pilgrim, 1961, 1969 reprint), 11.

1. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 285–86. Alternatively, the prophetic use can be described as a “parody” of the lament genre, infusing an incongruous content into a familiar style (Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 594).

2. Ronald M. Hals calls it “incredibly crass” (Ezekiel [FOTL 19; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989], 130).

3. Block demonstrates that there are several lexical links between the two passages (Ezekiel 1–24, 603, 608). Ezekiel will also allude to Gen. 49:9–10 in Ezek. 21:27.

4. On Ezekiel’s distinctive usage of the phrase “the princes of Israel” (v. 1), see Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 10–57.

5. Ezek. 19:2a should be translated as a question: “What is your mother? A lioness!” See Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 595.

6. Commentators disagree as to the method of hunting. Against the conventional translation of šaḥat as “pit,” here and in v. 8, Moshe Held has argued that it rather denotes a kind of net, cognate with Akkadian šētu (“Pits and Pitfalls in Akkadian and Biblical Hebrew,” JANESCU 5 [1973]: 173–90). Both methods of hunting lions are attested in antiquity.

7. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:394.

8. The NIV here emends a difficult Hebrew text. Taking the MT as it stands, Greenberg explains the literal “he knew his widows” as “he came to know those whom his actions had made widows” (Ezekiel 1–20, 351).

9. The Delphic oracle was fond of such ambiguity, as when it told Croesus that if he went to war, he would certainly destroy a great kingdom. The statement was true but deceptive, for the great kingdom he destroyed was not that of his enemies, as he had supposed, but his own.

10. So, most recently, Allen (Ezekiel 1–19, 288). Allen argues on the stylistic grounds that the object of a prophetic lament is the future, not the past. The older argument based on identifying the mother lioness as Hamutal, the mother of Jehoahaz and Zedekiah, is less convincing.

11. Block has now suggested Jehoiakim for the second lion, reviving an older interpretation, with Jehoiachin and Zedekiah both represented in the oracle against the vine (Ezekiel 1–24, 605). This further underlines the complexity of the task of identification.

12. MT has (lit.) “in your blood” (see NIV note), which may be due to attraction to the similar phrase in Ezek. 16:6, 22. Two Hebrew manuscripts have the reading “your vineyard.”

13. NIV “thick foliage” is possible, but Ezekiel uses the same word also in 31:3, 10, 14 to describe a majestic cedar, and there “clouds” seems clearly a better translation. See Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 353.

14. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York: Norton, 1991), 221.

15. For a classic example of this approach, see C. Peter Wagner, Frontiers in Mission Strategy (Chicago: Moody, 1971), 41–47.

16. Wagner states confidently, “This is not the norm” (ibid., 47).

1. The exact title given to this group varies. In Ezek. 8:11 they are called the “elders of the house of Israel,” while 14:1 and 20:1, 3 speak of the “elders of Israel.” Probably the same group is indicated by the “elders of Judah” in 8:1 (Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 112).

2. Ibid., 113–18.

3. The niphal of dāraš (seek, inquire of) in the Lord’s statement is often translated as a “tolerative Niphal” (“I will not allow them to inquire of me”). However, as Bruce Waltke and Michael O’Connor point out, “the tolerative Niphal often involves the element of efficacy: what the subject allows to happen can indeed be carried through” (An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990], 23.4g). Thus, the point is not so much that the Lord will put a stop to their seeking but their seeking will be ineffective; they will seek but not find.

4. Commentators have made many ingenious suggestions as to the substance of their query, based on inferences drawn from Ezekiel’s response to them. But the whole point is that Ezekiel’s response is not an answer to their inquiry! See Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 387–88.

5. The phrase “the detestable practices of their fathers” is itself a striking inversion of the regular Deuteronomic phrase “the detestable ways of the nations” (Deut. 18:9). At the outset, Ezekiel’s charge is clear: Israel’s ancestors were no better than the pagan nations they replaced in Canaan (Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 620).

6. My analysis is broadly the same as that of Franz Sedlmeier, Studien zu Komposition und Theologie von Ezechiel 20 (Stuttgarter Biblische Beiträge 21; Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1990), 212.

7. This is the only use in Ezekiel of the verb bāḥar (“he chose”). This verb is a favorite of Deuteronomic literature to express the relationship between the Lord and Israel; see Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 327.

8. tûr is earlier used of the Lord’s preparing campsites in the desert ahead of his people (Deut. 1:33) and of the spies reconnoitering the land (Num. 13:1–2). These echoes underline the history of Israel’s perverseness: Before the spies searched out the land and by a majority vote declared it unsuitable, God had already searched it out and declared it good.

9. The historical validity of this representation is frequently questioned (e.g., by Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:409). However, the rapidity with which the people slid into idolatry in the desert, constructing a golden calf barely three months after their departure from Egypt (Ex. 32), hardly suggests that their pre-exodus state was one of untarnished devotion to the Lord!

10. Walter J. Harrelson, From Fertility Cult to Worship (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), 30. Compare Matitiyahu Tsevat, “The Basic Meaning of the Biblical Sabbath,” ZAW 84 (1972): 455.

11. The NIV’s “So I said . . .” (Ezek. 20:8, 13, 21) is too weak. For ʿāmar as “threaten” see BDB 56c, which cites also Deut. 9:25; see also NLT.

12. Note that these “not good” statutes and laws are not termed “my decrees and . . . laws” by the Lord (in contrast to the “good” statutes and laws that they rejected (Ezek. 20:11, 19, 24). See Leslie C. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48 (WBC 29; Dallas: Word, 1990), 12.

13. On this practice, see George C. Heider, The Cult of Molek: A Reassessment (JSOTS 43; Sheffield: JSOT, 1985).

14. So NIV; Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20, 371.

15. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:414.

16. Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 651.

17. See Rodney Clapp, “Why the Devil Takes Visa: A Christian Response to the Triumph of Consumerism,” Christianity Today 40 (Oct. 7, 1996): 19–33.

18. “The Church of the 90’s: Meeting the Needs of a Changing Culture,” Reformed Seminary Journal (September 1990), 11. This trend is already visible. Wade Clark Roof cites the case of a man who described himself as “primarily Catholic,” who as well as attending weekly Mass also belongs to an ecumenical prayer group and frequently worships at a local evangelical church because of its “good preaching” (A Generation of Seekers, 245).

19. See R. C. Sproul, Choosing My Religion (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995).

20. Roof states: “Personal autonomy rather than family heritage or religious background will increasingly be the basis on which one relates to the sacred. What a person chooses rather than is born into will be decisive” (A Generation of Seekers, 259).

21. Ezekiel never uses the terminology of the “new Jerusalem” for the visionary city of the future, probably because of his negative portrayal of its past. For him, Jerusalem is the Great Prostitute (cf. Ezek. 16; 23). But it is clear what city he has in mind, in purified form, and the language of Revelation 21:2 suggests that such a designation is appropriate for our use.

22. “A New Way of Being the Church? Liberation Theology and the Mission of the Church in a Postmodern Context,” Evangel 14 (Summer 1996): 50.

23. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 10.

24. A study of attitudes among members of Generation X (those born between 1963 and 1977) cites “lack of dogmatism” as one of five main characteristics that Xers are looking for in faith groups. See Andrés Tapia, “Reaching the First Post-Christian Generation,” Christianity Today 38 (Sept. 12, 1994): 18–23.

25. This portrayal of God as an abuser and exploiter is not merely an ancient heresy; it is precisely the picture of God that David Halperin reads into this passage (Seeking Ezekiel, 170).

26. The Red Rose Collection, San Francisco, Calif.; October 1996.

27. See Religion and Medical Ethics, ed. Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 135–38.

28. As Frederica Mathewes-Green points out, the idolatry is not always on the part of the women who have the abortion; frequently, family or peer pressure are significant factors (“Why Women Choose Abortion,” Christianity Today 39 (Jan. 9, 1995): 21–25.

29. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, li.

30. See, for example, Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. C. I. & J. Eagleson (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1973), 159.

1. The Hebrew versification is five verses different in this chapter from the English; the references in the commentary are to the English verse numbers.

2. MT has the indefinite miqdāšîm (“sanctuaries”); this is frequently repointed miqdāšām (“their sanctuary”), a reading actually found in a few manuscripts (Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 19). Others identify the plural sanctuaries as the pagan shrines of Israel (see Wevers, Ezekiel, 1623).

3. Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37 (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1997), 420.

4. Lit., “with crushing of the loins”; the loins were considered the seat of internal strength in the ancient Near East.

5. Many commentators, along with the NIV, assume that it is “the news” that has come. However, in view of the obvious connection of the following phrase to Ezek. 7:14, it is better to see in the “it has come” (bāʾâ) a reference back to the repeated prophecy of the judgment that would come (bāʾâ; 7:5, 7, 10; cf. the masculine bāʾ in 7:6, 12). See the translations adopted in the KJV, RSV, and NEB.

6. The Hebrew of this oracle is in places very obscure. Particularly difficult are v. 10b, which the NIV renders, “Shall we rejoice in the scepter of my son _└Judah_┘? The sword despises every such stick,” and v. 13, where the NIV has, “Testing will surely come. And what if the scepter _└of Judah_┘, which the sword despises, does not continue? declares the Sovereign LORD.” These verses have so far defied the ability of commentators to make grammatical or logical sense of them; they may be marginal notes that have crept into the text (so Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 19–20).

7. Clapping the hands can have a variety of meanings in the Old Testament, and the gesture has been variously interpreted. However, here, as in 6:11, it introduces a proclamation of judgment and is best interpreted as evincing anger (Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 679).

8. NIV: “and my wrath will subside” (v. 17) sounds as if the cooling of God’s anger is not directly related to Israel’s punishment; in fact, it is precisely through executing judgment on his people that his wrath will be satisfied.

9. yād here refers to an inscribed stone monument that simply served to mark the division of two routes (see Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:442).

10. As Allen suggests (Ezekiel 20–48, 27).

11. On the office of mazkîr, see Henning G. Reventlow, “Das Amt des Mazkir: Zur Rechtsstruktur des öffentlichen Lebens in Israel,” ThZ 15 (1959): 161–75.

12. Like mazkîr, tāpaś stems from the sphere of law and order. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:445.

13. There may also be a pun intended on Zedekiah’s name, which means “The LORD is righteous.”

14. This theme of the reversal of the status of a vassal as an exercise of royal power on the part of the Great King is also attested in Assyrian sources. See Donald J. Wiseman, The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon (London: The British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1958), 44, lines 191–92.

15. This understanding is already present in the Targum and was widespread in the earlier part of this century; hence Cooke translates “to whom the right belongs” and adds, “a hint at the coming of one who will have the right to wear the crown, who will be the true king” (Ezekiel, 235). However, mišpāṭ nowhere else in Ezekiel has this sense of “right, claim.”

16. See William Moran, “Gen 49:10 and Its Use in Ezekiel 21:32,” Bib 39 (1958): 405–25.

17. Compare the similar reshaping of Gen. 49:9–10 in Ezek. 19, noted above.

18. Iain Duguid, “Messianic Themes in Zechariah 9–14,” in The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Messianic Texts, ed. P. E. Satterthwaite, R. S. Hess, and G. J. Wenham (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 278.

19. For more help in understanding biblical images, see L. Ryken, J. C. Wilhoit, and T. Longman III, eds. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998).

20. Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), 91. For a good recent defense of the traditional position, see Robert A. Peterson, Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1995).

21. The Problem of Pain, 116.

1. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:456.

2. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 38.

3. Reventlow, Wächter über Israel, 101–6.

4. MT has “with the blood.” Ezek. 18:6, 11, 15 correspond to 22:9, but cf. 33:25.

5. To “forget” the Lord is distinctively covenantal language; see Willi Schottroff, “,” THAT, 902.

6. Reading w^eniḥaltî, “I will be defiled” for MT w^eniḥalt, “you will be defiled.” The versions also have the first person singular, though they derive their translations from the root nāḥal, “to inherit.” See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:454, and compare 36:20 for the same idea.

7. Ezekiel 20–48, 37. The theme of God’s scattering and dispersing his people among the nations is prominent in Ezekiel, being found also in 12:15; 20:23; 36:19.

8. Other examples of gathering as the redemptive reversal of scattering in Jeremiah and Ezekiel include Jer. 23:3; 29:14; 31:8, 10; 32:37; 49:5; Ezek. 20:41; 28:25; 29:13; 34:13; 36:24; 37:21; 38:8; 39:27.

9. The NIV, following the LXX and most commentators, reads lōʾ humt^erâ (“not rained on”) rather than lōʾ m^eṭōhārâ (“not cleansed”) on the grounds that it fits the parallelism better. See Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 32. This emendation is possible but not required, especially if the “showering” is a negative rather than a positive image.

10. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 38; Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:467.

11. Rabbinic commentators discussed whether this verse implies that the great flood bypassed Israel (b. Zebaḥ. 113a). Such expectations of a future flood were apparently also present in Babylon; see Moshe Anbar, “Une nouvelle allusion à une tradition babylonienne dans Ezechiel (22:24),” VT 29 (1979): 352–53.

12. The fact of a relationship between these two passages has been generally recognized for over a century. The direction of the dependence has been debated, but to my mind the clinching argument in favor of the priority of Zephaniah is the use of b^eqirbāh in v. 27 rather than betôkāh, which is found frequently elsewhere in this chapter.

13. Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 462.

14. For this sense of ʿam-hāʾāreṣ, see Talmon, “ʿam-hāʾāreṣ,” 68–78.

15. See Richard J. Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament (HSM 4; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), 3.

16. This idea was more fully developed in the rabbinic sources than in the Old Testament, but it is present in the idea of Jerusalem as the “center” or “navel” (Ezek. 38:12) of the earth, that is, the point from which the creation of the earth proceeded. See Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), 115.

17. See Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 713.

18. The original Latin poem dates back to around the thirteenth century. This translation is by W. J. Irons, printed in Hymns Ancient and Modern. For its appropriateness in connection with this passage, see Millard Lind, Ezekiel (Believer’s Church Bible Commentary; Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1996), 191.

19. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Defining Deviancy Down,” The American Scholar (Winter 1993). See also Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1995), 234–37.

20. “Prince’s Faith Receives Carey’s Blessing,” The [London] Times (Dec. 23, 1996).

21. For a contemporary writer not afraid to speak of sin and the wrath of God, see D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans 3:20–4:25; Atonement and Justification (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970), 6–10.

22. This principle of law first and then gospel was laid out in the original Puritan manual of preaching, William Perkins’ The Art of Prophesying (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1996, reprint of 1606 original). Its continuing influence is clear in C. H. Spurgeon’s “A Plain Man’s Sermon,” where he asserts: “The law is the needle, and you cannot draw the silken thread of the gospel through a man’s heart, unless you first send the needle of the law through the center thereof, to make way for it” (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Sermons Preached and Revised in 1886, vol. 32 [London: Banner of Truth, 1969], 27). Similarly, R. B. Kuiper states: “The call to repentance must come first in evangelism” (God-Centered Evangelism [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1961], 134).

1. Paul Ricoeur, “The Metaphorical Process As Cognition, Imagination and Feeling,” On Metaphor, ed. S. Sacks (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1978), 154, cited in Galambush, Jerusalem, 8.

2. Galambush, Jerusalem, 110.

3. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 48.

4. For a similar list of Israel’s failings in the desert, see Ps. 106:7–39.

5. The details are recorded on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III; see ANET, 280–81.

6. Galambush sees here a reference to Israel’s subsequent rebellion against Assyria on the strength of Egyptian support (Jerusalem, 112). However, although this was certainly a further manifestation of the same mindset, seeking human deliverers instead of the Lord, this does not seem to be in the prophet’s mind; it is Oholah’s Egyptian lifestyle that she does not abandon (lit., “her adultery from Egypt”), not her Egyptian lover.

7. Alan R. Millard, “Sennacherib’s Attack on Hezekiah,” TynBul 36 (1985): 71.

8. Deut. 7:18; 15:15; 16:3, 12; 24:18, 22.

9. Simon J. DeVries, “Remembrance in Ezekiel: A Study of an Old Testament Theme,” Int 16 (1962): 64.

10. Is it significant that the Hiphil of ʿûr can have a sexual connotation, as in Song 2:7; 3:5; 8:4? See BDB, 735c.

11. Whether these last three are historical allies of Judah or Chaldean tribes is debated. The three names suggest a sinister wordplay, sounding like “punish,” “cry for help,” and “shriek” (Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 50).

12. This is presumably metaphorical “overkill” since all three fates cannot simultaneously occur to individuals. Alternatively, three different (though equivalent) fates may be in view; compare the use of the same three modes of death in Ezek. 5:2.

13. Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 484.

14. Rhetorically, the charge is addressed to Oholah as well as Oholibah. However, as with the metaphor itself, the focus is clearly on Jerusalem (Oholibah) as the charge of “defil[ing] my sanctuary” (23:38) makes clear.

15. The reference to “women” here is not a moralizing application to women and adultery in general (so Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 1:492) but rather figurative, as in v. 10. However, it can scarcely be figurative of the nations (so Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 333; Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 51) since they do not exist in the same covenant relationship to the Lord in Ezekiel. If a specific application is to be sought, they are surely figurative of future generations within the covenant people, who will learn from the fall of Samaria and Jerusalem the lesson that the generation prior to the Exile was unable or unwilling to learn from the fall of Samaria.

16. For the curious, in former days cricket pitches were left uncovered during rain delays. During the period after a rain delay, as the pitch (or “wicket”) was drying out, the ball would frequently bounce or spin unexpectedly off a damp spot, causing great difficulties to the unfortunate batsman. In recent years, with pitches fully covered to ensure rapid resumption of play after a rain delay, “sticky wickets” are only a memory.

17. See Max Black, Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1962).

18. See Don Richardson, Peace Child (Glendale: Regal, 1974).

19. Ronald E. Clements, Ezekiel (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1996), 108.

20. Athalya Brenner, “Pornoprophetics Revisited: Some Additional Reflections” JSOT 70 (1996): 63–86. J. Cheryl Exum terms this chapter “the most pornographic example of divine violence” (Plotted, Shot and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women [JSOTS 215; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996], 109).

21. Galambush, Jerusalem, 23.

22. Ibid., 59.

23. For a thoughtful study of the issues, see Vern Poythress, “Just Penalties for Sexual Crimes,” The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (Brentwood, Tenn.: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991), 193–221.

24. Paradoxically, the parable of the good Samaritan has become equally hard to expound in a context where the adjective “good” is entirely comfortable, even expected, next to the noun “Samaritan.”

25. John F. Bettler, “Counseling and the Doctrine of Sin,” Journal of Biblical Counseling 13 (1994): 2.

1. On the date, see Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 772–73.

2. Wenham, Leviticus, 63.

3. ʾel is ambiguous and can either mean the parable is to be addressed “to” the rebellious house or that it is “about” the rebellious house (Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 497).

4. It occurs fourteen times in the book: 2:5–6; 3:9, 26–27; 12:2–3, 9, 25; 17:12; 44:6.

5. “To gather” is usually the language of restoration. Here, however, as in 22:19–22, the language has been diverted to speak of destruction.

6. MT has the word for “bones,” but the bones are in the pot, not underneath it. It should be a similar word meaning “wood,” as in verse 10.

7. The Hebrew for “put . . . on” (š^epōṭ, 24:3) sounds almost exactly like “judge” (šāpaṭ).

8. This rather obscure word, which occurs only in this chapter, is normally translated “rust” (RSV) or “corrosion” (Allen), a condition affecting the pot itself. Thus the NIV renders it “the pot now encrusted.” However, it may rather be referring to the contamination wrought by what is inside the vessel (“the pot whose filth is in her”) rather than on the vessel itself (Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 778). This fits better with the depiction of the city of bloodshed in Ezekiel 22, which stresses repeatedly the defilement “in her.”

9. The NIV, following MT, renders this “mixing in the spices.” However, this translation does not fit the context, and the LXX and some manuscripts support the possibility that metathesis of Hebrew letters has occurred, so that the text should read, “remove the broth.” The removal of broth leaves the meat dry in the cauldron, ready to be burned. See Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 767.

10. Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 509.

11. The cultic overtones of the intended meal are further underlined by the use of a copper caldron as opposed to the standard domestic cookware made of pottery (Block, Ezekiel 1–24, 776).

12. The English words “witness” and “martyr” can both be used to translate a single Greek word, and in the early church the concepts frequently became synonymous.

1. Daniel I. Block, Ezekiel 25–48 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 5.

2. Stuart, Ezekiel, 249.

3. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 17.

4. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 67.

5. Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 526.

6. An exception to this general rule is Jeremiah’s prophecy against Babylon, which he entrusted to the staff officer Seraiah to read when he got to Babylon (Jer. 51:59–64). This is the exception that proves the rule, however.

7. Skinner, Ezekiel, 217.

8. Mark Galli, “Is Persecution Good for the Church?” Christianity Today 41 (May 19, 1997): 16–19.

1. The absence of a specific month is unusual since most of Ezekiel’s dated oracles contain day, month, and year. The proposal of BHS that an original reference to the eleventh month has dropped out because the numeral was the same as that of the year is the most plausible (Cooke, Ezekiel, 294). Alternatively, Allen proposes that the unusual form of eleven is itself a corruption of the twelfth year (Ezekiel 20–48, 71). He leaves the month indeterminate.

2. Allen suggests that Tyre stood to benefit from Jerusalem’s fall primarily in political rather than economic terms (Ezekiel 20–48, 75). That may be a correct observation in historical terms, but the oracles themselves focus entirely on Tyre as a leader in international commerce.

3. The description shows no interest in the peculiar difficulties of assaulting an island city, where the conventional means of siege walls and ramps and formations protected from above by shields (Ezek. 26:8) are rather problematic. Though Nebuchadnezzar’s assault greatly reduced Tyre’s significance and power, the city itself was not destroyed until the time of Alexander the Great (332 B.C.), who built a causeway out from the mainland to the island in order to be able to capture the city.

4. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:71.

5. Thomas Boston, The Crook in the Lot (Wilmington, Del.: Sovereign Grace, 1972 reprint), 12. John Flavel similarly poses the question to the one experiencing affliction: “What if by the loss of outward comforts God preserves your soul from the ruining power of temptation?” (The Works of John Flavel, vol. 5 [London: Banner of Truth, 1968 reprint], 443).

6. Peterson, Reversed Thunder, 146.

1. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 93.

2. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 95.

3. See ANET, 149–55; Day, “The Daniel of Ugarit and Ezekiel,” 174–84.

4. Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 574; Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 96.

5. Nine of the twelve stones from the high priest’s breastplate are listed here, with the third set of three from the list in Ex. 28 omitted, perhaps accidentally during the course of the transmission of the text.

6. The Hebrew may also be read, “you were on the holy mount, you were a divine being” (Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 584), emphasizing the essence of the sin of the king of Tyre. Like the original sin, it involved the claim to have “be[come] like God” (Gen. 3:5).

7. “Walking about” (hithallāk) occurs frequently in the context of the sanctuary. See Gordon Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” in I Studied Inscriptions From Before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11, ed. R. S. Hess and D. T. Tsumura (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 400–401. The reference to “stones of fire” is obscure but may refer to a hedge of sparkling gemstones around the garden.

8. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 99.

9. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 4.

10. On the connection between these two passages, see Mark R. Strom, “An Old Testament Background to Acts 12:20–23,” NTS 32 (1986): 289–92.

11. See Os Guinness, Dining With the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts With Modernity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 71.

12. Our addiction to experts is prominent even where the results of our dependence are less than impressive. Anne Cassidy notes that this generation of children has been raised more by the advice of experts than any that preceded it. In spite of that fact, parents seem to be more bewildered and children more out of control than ever. Her radical solution is less, not more, dependence on “child development experts” (“Best Parenting Instructions Are Built in,” Chicago Tribune [July 31, 1998], 1/25).

13. For the pitfalls of such politicization, see Charles W. Colson, “The Power Illusion,” in Michael C. Horton (ed.) Power Religion (Chicago: Moody, 1992), 25–38.

1. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 128. In each case, the new section is introduced by the formula “The word of the LORD came to me . . .” and in every case except Ezek. 30:1 the oracle is dated.

2. The MT has tannîm (“jackals”) but the rest of the water-based imagery requires reading tannîn (“sea monster”), along with many manuscripts and versions. The MT may be the result of a scribal error or an otherwise unknown variant form (Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 102).

3. John Day, God’s Conflict With the Dragon and the Sea (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 94–95.

4. ANET, 374; cited in Lind, Ezekiel, 244.

5. The Egyptian loanword y^eʾōr can be translated either “Nile” or “streams.” The NIV, like many modern translations, utilizes both English words in this chapter to translate this single Hebrew word.

6. RSV reads lōʾ tiqqābēr (“you shall . . . not be . . . buried”) along with many Hebrew manuscripts and the Targum, for the MT lōʾ tiqqābēṣ (“you will not be collected”). Whether or not this emendation is correct, it at least underscores the purpose of the gathering: This is not the gathering of return from exile but merely of bodies for burial, as in 2 Sam. 21:13–14.

7. Greenberg cites Sargon II of Assyria’s statement that his contemporary counterpart in Egypt was “a king who cannot save” (Ezekiel 21–37, 604).

8. Donald Gowan is typical when he writes: the prophet “does not find it necessary to defend or explain away his earlier prophecy; in effect he just admits that it didn’t happen” (When Man Becomes God [Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1975], 103. Similarly, Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 617; Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 149.

9. Contra Apionem, 1.156; Antiquities, 10.228.

10. Cambridge Ancient History, 2d ed., 235.

11. Leslie Allen, having accepted that this oracle originates in the failure of the earlier prophecy, then goes on to note that “the redactional agenda of these verses is a different one” (Ezekiel 20–48, 111). It is the “redacted” (i.e., inscripturated) agenda with which we are concerned here.

12. Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 616.

13. See NIV note. This nation is otherwise unknown from the ancient Near Eastern sources, unless it is a mistake for Lub, which is another term for (part of) Libya.

14. “The people of the covenant land” is frequently taken as an oblique reference to Judah (e.g., Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 115; Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 159). However, the phrase “the land of the covenant,” despite its biblical sounding overtones, nowhere else occurs to designate the Promised Land. The closest parallel is in Obad. 7, which speaks of “the men of your covenant,” which the NIV appropriately renders “your allies.”

15. See Edmund P. Clowney, “The New Israel,” in Carl E. Armerding and W. Ward Gasque, ed., Dreams, Visions and Oracles: The Layman’s Guide to Biblical Prophecy (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977), 207–20.

16. For this, see Iain Duguid, “Hagar the Egyptian: A Note on the Allure of Egypt in the Abraham Cycle,” WTJ 56 (1994): 419–21.

1. It is interesting to note in passing that the “strong-armed man” was apparently a title appropriated by the Pharaoh of the day. See James K. Hoffmeier, “The Arm of God Versus the Arm of Pharaoh in the Exodus Narratives,” Bib 67 (1986): 378–87.

2. Some have seen in the breaking of the two arms of Pharaoh, a reference to an attack launched by the Egyptian on two fronts, by land and by sea. One of these attacks had been defeated, and the other would likewise come to nothing (Kenneth S. Freedy and Donald B. Redford, “The Dates in Ezekiel in Relation to Biblical, Babylonian and Egyptian Sources,” JAOS 90 [1970]: 471 n.39; Lawrence Boadt, Ezekiel’s Oracles Against Egypt: A Literary and Philological Study of Ezekiel 29–32 [Biblica et Orientalia 37; Rome: Biblical Institute, 1980], 85). However, this seems unnecessarily subtle and takes no account of the rebreaking of the good arm. It is better to see these as two separate defeats for Egypt, one past and one future.

3. The NIV follows the MT and versions and reads “Assyria,” a reading defended by Greenberg (Ezekiel 21–37, 637). In each of these word pictures of Ezekiel, however, the object of the oracle is first described in glorious terms and then brought low, which makes the oracle more appropriately directed at Egypt. The reference to Assyria presumably came in through a miswriting of t^eʾaššûr, “cypress,” or possibly of a misreading of a variant form (Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 122). The difference in overall interpretation of the passage is slight: either Pharaoh is being compared to Assyria, the great tree that flourished and was cut down, or Pharaoh is directly compared to a mighty tree that flourished and was cut down.

4. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:146.

5. Rather than NIV’s “thick foliage” (see comments on Ezek. 19:11).

6. The NIV’s “the earth below” is a misleading translation of ʾereṣ taḥtît; it is clearly part of the underworld, perhaps even the lowest part.

7. Sheol is often described as the home of all who die, hence the frequent English translation “the grave.” This is not strictly accurate. Though in the Old Testament the godly may fear being abandoned by God to Sheol (Ps. 88:3), nowhere is a righteous man actually said to have gone down into Sheol. Perhaps the contrast between the fate of the righteous and the unrighteous after death is most clearly evident in Ps. 49, where those who trust in themselves are destined for Sheol (49:14), while the psalmist expects something different for himself. What that “something” is may not always be clear in the Old Testament, but in several places there is evidence of such a hope. On Sheol, see Philip S. Johnston, The Underworld and the Dead in the Old Testament (Ph.D. diss.; Cambridge Univ., 1993).

8. The root dāmâ (“to be like”) does not normally occur in the Niphal; most translations assume a reflexive sense for it “you consider yourself like . . .” (Boadt, Ezekiel’s Oracles, 129). dāmâ (“be cut off, destroyed”) does occur in the Niphal, however, and there may well be a play on words here: “You consider yourself a lion of the nations” sounds exactly like “you are destroyed, O lion of the nations.”

9. The description of Egypt as “uncircumcised” is a theological rather than literal assessment. Like the Edomites and Sidonians, it appears that the Egyptians practiced circumcision (Jack M. Sasson, “Circumcision in the Ancient Near East,” JBL 85 [1966]: 473–76). However, from Ezekiel’s perspective, though they may have been physically circumcised, in God’s eyes they remained “uncircumcised.”

10. See Daniel I. Block, “Beyond the Grave: Ezekiel’s Vision of Death and the Afterlife,” BBR 2 (1992): 113–41.

1. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 153.

2. Here we should think of pālîṭ as a “survivor” rather than a “fugitive.” It probably referred to someone surviving the fall of Jerusalem (Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:192), rather than someone who had escaped deportation by the Babylonian forces (Stuart, Ezekiel, 315). Why should someone in the latter category make the arduous journey to Babylonia on his own, to the very place to which the Babylonians wished to deport him? As Clements puts it: “No right minded survivor would have sought refuge in the enemy homeland” (Ezekiel, 147).

3. Taylor, Ezekiel, 213.

4. Or perhaps “eating over blood,” a proscribed form of divination (Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 684).

5. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 153.

6. They are perhaps (stereo)typified by the three main characters in Douglas Coupland’s book Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991). These are described on the back of the book as having “been handed a society priced beyond their means. Twentysomethings, brought up with divorce, Watergate and Three Mile Island, and scarred by the 80’s fallout of yuppies, recession, crack and Ronald Reagan, they represent the new lost generation—Generation X.”

7. Jock McGregor: “Generation X: The ‘Lost’ Generation?” L’Abri Lectures 11 (Summer 1997). See also Stanley Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 13.

8. Life After God (New York: Pocket Books, 1994), 178.

9. Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, 277.

1. Lorenz Dürr, Ursprung und Ausbau der israelitisch-jüdischen Heilandserwartung: Ein Beitrag zur Theologie des Alten Testamentes (Berlin: Schwetscke, 1925), 118–19.

2. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:213.

3. Werner Lemke, “Life in the Present and Hope for the Future,” Interp 38 (1984): 173 n.10.

4. See Joel 2:2, Zeph. 1:15 for the same phrase in the context of the Day of the Lord. See Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 162.

5. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 122.

6. Bernd Willmes, Die sogenannte Hirtenallegorie Ezekiel 34: Studien zum Bild des Hirten im AT (Beiträge zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie 19; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1984), 511.

7. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 292.

8. Jon D. Levenson, Theology, 86.

9. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:219; Ralph W. Klein, Ezekiel: The Prophet and His Message (Columbia, S.C.: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1988), 241.

10. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 47.

11. J. David Pleins, “From the Stump of Jesse: The Image of King David As a Social Force in the Writings of the Hebrew Prophets,” Proceedings of the Eastern Great Lakes and Midwest Bible Society 6 (1986): 162.

12. Greenberg notes the significance of the absence of the blessing of victory in war; the new community is now directly under divine protection, as will become clearer in Ezekiel 38–39 (Ezekiel 21–37, 707).

13. The text of Ezek. 34:31 has aroused some suspicion since ʾādām (“people”) is absent from the original text of the Septuagint. It is normally read as a clumsy secondary gloss, identifying the Lord’s flock as being human, connecting this passage with 36:38 (Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:221). Alternatively, it has been argued that the words call attention to the depth and greatness of the divine condescension in meeting with a human being who is taken from the earth and returns to it again (Hengstenberg, Ezekiel, 305). But in the context that has just mentioned the fulfillment of the covenant with David and the Sinai covenant, might it not reasonably reach further back and affirm the restoration of the original covenant of creation, so that it is affirmed of the restored people, “You are ‘Adam’ and I am your God”?

14. Alastair V. Campbell, Rediscovering Pastoral Care (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981), 27.

15. Christopher J. H. Wright, An Eye for an Eye: The Place of Old Testament Ethics Today (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1983), 59.

16. Poythress, The Shadow of Christ, 72.

17. Thus Leith Anderson writes: “The style switch [from traditional to ‘shopping center’ church] moves from ‘farmer,’ where one person does everything, to ‘rancher,’ where a leader works with and through others” (A Church for the 21^st Century: How to Bring Change to Your Church [Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1992], 178). The distinction seems to have originated with Lyle Schaller, “Looking at the Small Church: A Frame of Reference,” The Christian Ministry 8 (1977).

18. Thomas C. Oden, Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 49.

19. For a voice crying out against this trend, see the countercultural vision of Eugene Peterson in “The Business of Making Saints,” Leadership 18 (Spring 1997): 20–28.

20. Church growth books generally identify the number at which a dramatic shift in church dynamics becomes necessary as somewhere between 120 and 200. See Kent R. Hunter, Foundations for Church Growth (New Haven, Mo.: Leader, 1983), 155.

21. For helpful comments on how the pastor of a large church can still exercise the ministry of a pastor, see Eugene Peterson, “The Business of Making Saints,” 27.

1. Clements, Ezekiel, 158. The question of who will possess the land given to Abraham has already been raised in 33:24–29.

2. Lind, Ezekiel, 281.

3. Bernard Gosse, “Ézéchiel 35—36:1–15 et Ézéchiel 6: La désolation de la montagne de Séir et le renouveau des montagnes d’Israël,” RB 96 (1989): 511–17.

4. This is the NJPS translation. The NIV has “since you did not hate bloodshed . . .”; however, the oath formula with ʾim-lōʾ normally introduces a positive statement. See Joüon-Muraoka, §165.

5. From Ezekiel’s theological perspective, there were not in actuality two lands and two nations but one. Yet the de facto situation of two separate nations was what appeared to outsiders, such as the Edomites. But this de facto situation would not persist forever, as Ezek. 37:15–23 makes clear.

6. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 322.

7. Stuart, Ezekiel, 331.

8. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 173.

9. In that respect, it is interesting to note that King Herod, who sought so desperately to kill Jesus as a baby, was himself an Idumean, or Edomite.

10. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 336.

11. See the remarkable testimonies of those involved in the massacre recorded by Steve Saint in “Did They Have to Die?” Christianity Today 40 (Sept. 16, 1996): 20–27.

1. See Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1004.

2. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 348.

3. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:247.

4. Lind, Ezekiel, 290.

5. Fairbairn, Ezekiel, 191.

6. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 178.

7. We need not see a contradiction between the “fortified” cities of Ezek. 36:35 and the “unwalled” cities of 38:11. The rhetorical contexts are entirely different. “Fortified” frequently functions as the opposite state for a city to that of “destroyed” (e.g., Isa. 25:2), while the idiom of a people living in “unwalled cities” denotes a people who live without fear of attack (Jer. 49:31). As Greenberg put it, Ezekiel was “not working to a systematic theology, but for immediate rhetorical effect” (Ezekiel 21–37, 732).

8. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:251.

9. Ezekiel’s further restriction of this group to descendants of Zadok will be discussed in reference to Ezek. 44.

10. For a fuller discussion of the diet laws, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 718–36.

11. On this, see R. W. L. Moberly, The Old Testament of the Old Testament: Patriarchal Narratives and Mosaic Yahwism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

12. See John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Portland, Ore.: Multnomah, 1986), 23–38.

13. John Murray comments: “No treatment of the atonement can be properly oriented that does not trace its source to the free and sovereign love of God. . . . God was pleased to set his invincible and everlasting love upon a countless multitude and it is the determinate purpose of this love that the atonement secures” (Redemption Accomplished and Applied [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955], 9–10).

14. It can also be broken down differently, as in 1 Cor. 6:11, where the salvation experience is described as having three aspects: “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” In Rom. 8:30, Paul mentions four aspects: “Those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”

15. Linda L. Belleville, “ ‘Born of Water and Spirit’: John 3:5,” Trinity Journal 1 (1980): 125–40.

16. I appreciate the fact that many thoughtful Christians will disagree with me on this point; however, the above provides a strong rationale for why many in the evangelical camp baptize their children.

17. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 360.

18. An example of this attitude within the Christian community would be Robert Schuller, whose “theology of self-esteem” defines salvation as “rescue from shame to glory” (Self Esteem: The New Reformation [Waco, Tex.: Word, 1982], 151). For Schuller, unlike Ezekiel, shame and salvation are mutually exclusive categories. A better perspective on shame and self-esteem is found in Welch, When People Are Big and God Is Small, 24–36.

19. Q.2 What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

A. Three things: first, how great my sin and misery are; second, how I am set free from my sin and misery; third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance (The Heidelberg Catechism [Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1989], 12).

1. biqʿâ (“valley”) appears as the antonym of har in several places in the Old Testament, notably Deut. 8:7; 11:11; Ps. 104:8. For the “very high mountain” as a theological rather than geographical concept, see Levenson, Theology, 41. Intriguingly, perhaps underlining the contrast between the Babylonian biqʿâ and the Israelite har, the builders of the tower of Babel locate their false place of worship on the biqʿâ b^eʾereṣ šin’ār (“a plain in [the land of] Shinar”) in Gen. 11:2. In terms of the spiritual geography of the Old Testament, such a location is inappropriate for divine worship.

2. Renz, Rhetorical Function, 163.

3. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 374.

4. The word rûaḥ occurs ten times in Ezek. 37:1–14, a fact obscured by the necessity of using three different English words to translate it (wind/spirit/breath), and reference to rûaḥ in verses 1 and 14 form an inclusio.

5. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 104.

6. From the Christian side, Zimmerli cites Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius of Constantine, Ambrose, Severus, and John of Damascus (Ezekiel, 2:264). For the history of Jewish interpretation of the passage, see Greenberg, Ezekiel 21–37, 749–50.

7. For the scholarly consensus, see R. Martin-Achard, “Resurrection,” ABD, 5:680–84.

8. This is merely one of a series of connections between Ezekiel and these two prophets. See Keith Carley, Ezekiel Among the Prophets (SBT 31; London: SCM, 1975), 13–47.

9. Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 150.

1. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:273. Though the Hebrew words are different, the translators of the Septuagint rendered both by rhabdos, rod, scepter.

2. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 193. Greenberg sees the choice of ʿēṣ as being due to its ambiguity, representing both king and kingdom (Ezekiel 21–37, 753).

3. Lind, Ezekiel, 303. Interestingly, this is the same number of times as the key word rûaḥ occurred in 37:1–14.

4. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:274–75.

5. Compare Hos. 1:11, which speaks of Israel and Judah being reunited under one head (rōʾš).

6. The key word ʿôlām occurs five times in these verses.

7. See Carol Meyers, “David As Temple Builder,” Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. P. D. Miller Jr., P. D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 365–66.

8. See Harold Turner, From Temple to Meeting House: The Phenomenology and Theology of Places of Worship (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 185.

9. To be fair, it should be admitted that in many “reformed” church buildings the pulpit was far more dominant than the communion table and the baptismal font, reflecting an unbalanced focus on the preaching of the Word to the exclusion of the other means of grace.

10. See “God’s Plan for Reunion” in John Frame, Evangelical Reunion: Denominations and the Body of Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 67–71.

11. It is likely that Paul has in mind the actual physical wall that divided Jew and Gentile in the Jerusalem temple in Eph. 2:14. Certainly the passage is filled with temple language, even apart from the explicit reference to the church as the new temple in Eph. 2:22. See Klyne Snodgrass, Ephesians (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 132–39.

12. Our Life in Christ (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), 99.

1. Daniel I. Block, “Gog in Prophetic Tradition: A New Look at Ezekiel 38:17,” VT 42 (1992): 157.

2. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:301.

3. See Herodotus, Hist. 1.8–13.

4. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 204.

5. Block fittingly describes Gog as the “archetypal enemy” (Ezekiel 25–48, 436).

6. This phrase has been frequently translated as “prince of Rosh” (cf. NIV note), where Rosh is understood as a place-name, ever since the time of the Septuagint. This translation is grammatically possible, but in the absence of any biblical evidence for such a place-name, it is better to see it as a hierarchical title, as in the similar examples of Num. 3:32 and 1 Chron. 7:40. See Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 20. In addition, if rōʾš is part of the title, then Gog rules over a seven-nation coalition, which underlines the symbolic completeness of the forces arrayed against Israel (cf. the kinds of weapons that are subsequently burned for seven years, while the burial of Gog’s army takes seven months). If rōʾš is a place-name, however, that symbolism is lost. For the best defense of the view that rōʾš is a place-name, see James D. Price, “Rosh: An Ancient Land Known to Ezekiel,” GTJ 6 (1985): 67–89.

7. Lind, Ezekiel, 315.

8. Allen, Ezekiel 1–19, 72.

9. Note that this expression too, which can also be translated (lit.) as the “heights of [Mount] Zaphon,” is a theological rather than geographical description. It is a description of the mythological cosmic mountain, the home of the gods (Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, 148). In Ps. 48:2 and Isa. 14:13 the terminology is taken over and applied to the heavenly residence of the Lord; here, however, it may refer to its original signification as the home of the (pagan) gods.

10. So Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:288; Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 198. Both delete the interrogative hē as due to dittography, following the versions.

11. Block, “Gog in Prophetic Tradition,” 170–72.

12. Lind, Ezekiel, 318.

13. NIV “they will forget their shame” emends the MT to w^enāšû. The translation “they will bear their shame,” attested by all the versions and the Qere, assumes that w^enāśû is a shortened form of w^enāś^eʾû. The Qal of nāšâ is rare and occurs nowhere else in Ezekiel, whereas nāśāʾ k^elimmâ is frequent in Ezekiel and occurs in a virtually identical context in Ezek. 16:54. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:295.

14. Ambrose, De fide ad Gratianum 2.16, 138. Taking an alternative view, Augustine already protested against such a specific identification of Gog and his allies with particular historical nations in The City of God 20.11.

15. Robert L. Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1992), 244–45.

16. Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1979), 151.

17. Ezekiel, 754.

18. Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, trans. S. P. Tregelles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949; reprint of 1857). The Crimean War was fought between 1853 and 1856 as France and Britain sought to prevent Russian expansionism southeast into Turkey.

19. Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ., 1909). The view that Rosh is Russia is maintained in The New Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford Univ., 1967), though Moscow and Tobolsk are no longer mentioned.

20. The Prophet Ezekiel, 2d ed. (Neptune, N.J.: Loizeaux Brothers, 1972; reprint of 1918), 259.

21. Hal Lindsey’s book The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970) includes chapters entitled “Russia Is a Gog” and “The Yellow Peril.” Substantially similar scenarios are depicted in Harry Ironside, Ezekiel the Prophet (Neptune, N.J.: Loizeaux Brothers, 1949), 266–67; David Egner, The Bear Goes South (Grand Rapids: Radio Bible Class, 1979); and Clarence E. Mason Jr., “Gog and Magog, Who and When?” Prophecy and the Seventies (Chicago: Moody, 1971), 221–32. It should, however, be pointed out that not all dispensationalists have accepted the identification of Rosh with Russia; see, for example, Ralph H. Alexander, “A Fresh Look at Ezekiel 38 and 39,” JETS 17 (1974): 157–69; Charles L. Feinberg, The Prophecy of Ezekiel (Chicago: Moody, 1969), 220.

22. Edwin M. Yamauchi, Foes From the Northern Frontier: Invading Hordes From the Russian Steppes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982), 20.

23. BDB, 912c recognizes both possible translations of rōʾš, as a title or a country, but says of the latter “not identified”; this change is already evident in the 1906 edition. Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti libros, 2d ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1958), 866a, list it as “unknown.” Lindsey also cites C. F. Keil as a supporter of the view that Rosh is Russia (Late Great Planet, 65); however, though Keil does read rōʾš as a place-name, he describes the attempt to link it with Russia as “a doubtful conjecture” (Ezekiel, 2:160).

24. Edwin Yamauchi, “Meshech, Tubal, and Company: A Review Article,” JETS 19 (1976): 243–45.

25. Yamauchi, Foes From the Northern Frontier, 51.

26. b. Yoma 10a.

27. Ephraim A. Speiser, Genesis (AB; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), 66.

28. Ellison, Ezekiel, 134.

29. Stephen L. Cook, Prophecy and Apocalypticism: The Postexilic Social Setting (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 88–96.

30. This phrase is perhaps significantly absent from Ezekiel 38–39. The more general “after many days” (38:8) and “in that day” (38:18; cf. 39:11) do not carry the same eschatological weight (Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 428).

31. These are not true “apocalypses,” however, since many key features are missing. Particularly striking is the fact that in almost all of these Hollywood scenarios the desired goal of the intervention by the [human] savior figure is not the radical transformation of our existence but simply the preservation of the American way of life. Thus in the recent movies Armageddon and Deep Impact, the savior figures sacrifice themselves in destroying the asteroids that threaten the earth simply to enable life to carry on much as before, symbolized in the latter film by the reconstruction of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

32. “The issues raised by the Terminator movies are the issues explored by Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. How is humankind to avoid extinction. . . ?” (Gaye Ortiz and Maggie Roux, “The Terminator Movies: Hi-Tech Holiness and the Human Condition,” in Explorations in Theology and Film, ed. Clive Marsh and Gaye Ortiz [Oxford: Blackwell, 1997], 142).

33. In addition to the initials of Connor’s name, calling his mother “Sarah” evokes the Old Testament mother of the promised child, further inviting us to explore the religious dimensions of the film.

34. See Ulrich H. J. Körtner, The End of the World, trans. D. W. Stott (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1995), 1.

35. Disappointment With God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 181.

36. Ibid., 174.

37. Joni Eareckson Tada, “A Stone Cold Fact,” Moody Monthly 98 (May/June 1998): 71. See also John Kramp, “Spiritual Search and Rescue: The Effort We Make Reflects Our Sense of Urgency,” Moody Monthly 97 (May/June 1997): 18–19.

1. Note that the year of liberation is explicitly mentioned in 46:17, and the number twenty-five and its multiples occur frequently in the dimensions of the temple. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:346. Medieval Jewish commentators also linked the date with the Jubilee year but in a different way, arguing that the “thirtieth year” of Ezek. 1 was the thirtieth year since the last Jubilee. Since the thirtieth year was also the fifth year of the prophet’s exile (1:2), then the twenty-fifth year of the prophet’s exile must be the Jubilee year. See Abraham J. Rosenberg, Ezekiel: A Translation of Text, Rashi and Commentary (New York: Judaica, 1991), 2:342.

2. Levenson, Theology, 39.

3. Ibid., 40.

4. Ibid., 42.

5. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 515.

6. Kalinda R. Stevenson, The Vision of Transformation: The Territorial Rhetoric of Ezekiel 40–48 (SBLDS 154; Atlanta: Scholars, 1996), 19.

7. According to Yigael Yadin, these gates were roughly seventy feet deep by twenty feet wide. See Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:352–55.

8. Steven S. Tuell, The Law of the Temple in Ezekiel 40–48 (HSM 49; Atlanta: Scholars, 1992), 59.

9. So Stuart, Ezekiel, 372.

10. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:355; Stuart, Ezekiel, 375.

11. Vision of Transformation, 44.

12. “Burnt offerings” (ʿōlôt) here and in Ezek. 40:42 appear to represent all the sacrificial offerings that would be made (Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 230).

13. MT has liškôt šārîm (“rooms for the singers”). The NIV follows most commentators in emending to liškôt š^etayim (“two rooms”), on the basis of the LXX.

14. This passage, along with others that refer to the Zadokites, has frequently been assigned by commentators to a separate “Zadokite stratum.” However, the evidence does not support such “stratification.” See Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 87–90.

15. Stevenson points out the predominance of square shapes in the realm of the holy and their absence in the profane areas (Vision of Transformation, 42). Similarly, as you move toward the center of the tabernacle, the spaces become progressively more square until you reach the Most Holy Place, which is a perfect cube. See Menahem Haran, Temples and Temple Service in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978), 152.

16. Zimmerli locates the altar off-center, in front of the temple building, as a mark of the temple building being the center of gravity of the whole (Ezekiel, 2:355). However, comparison with Haran’s diagram of the tabernacle (Temple Service, 152) encourages locating it in the center of the inner court. In that structure, even though the altar is not the “center of gravity” (that privilege belongs to the ark of the covenant), it still sits at the center of the courtyard.

17. The total number of steps is, not coincidentally, twenty-five (Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 235).

18. Stevenson, Vision of Transformation, 27.

19. Moshe Greenberg, “The Design and Themes of Ezekiel’s Program of Restoration” Interp 38 (1984): 193.

20. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:380.

21. Greenberg, “Design and Themes,” 193.

22. See Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 637.

23. Ibid., 447–52.

24. The examples are from Thomas, God Strengthens, 267; Peter C. Craigie, Ezekiel (Daily Study Bible; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 278.

25. Feinberg, Ezekiel, 242; Ironside, Ezekiel, 284.

26. The absence of specified building materials is a particular problem for literal interpretation, since these are precisely described in other situations where God instructs his servants to construct such edifices as the tabernacle and Solomon’s temple. Of course, it should also be noted that Ezekiel is not instructed to build anything; he merely has to observe and recount to his fellow exiles what he has seen. The building he sees is already in existence.

27. If indeed the site in Jerusalem is intended. See below on the division of the land in chapters 47–48 on the problems that are posed there for a “literal” interpretation.

28. Susan Niditch, “Ezekiel 40–48 in a Visionary Context,” CBQ 48 (1986): 216.

29. Ibid., 221.

30. The image comes from Katheryn P. Darr, “The Wall Around Paradise,” VT 37 (1987): 271–79, though her concern is rather with the (invisible) wall around the new Promised Land than the (very concrete) wall surrounding Ezekiel’s temple.

31. Note that Haggai, writing after the Exile, refers to priestly clothing as having a noncontagious holiness (Hag. 2:12), whereas in Ezekiel’s vision the priests’ clothes can transmit holiness (Ezek. 44:19). A higher standard of precautions is therefore necessary in the design of Ezekiel’s temple.

32. For a rich development of this theme, see Edmund P. Clowney, “The Final Temple,” WTJ 35 (1972): 166–77.

33. Ibid., 177.

34. Robert W. Bly, The Sibling Society (San Francisco: Perseus, 1996).

35. Kimberly Costello, cited in Rob Owen, Gen X TV, 11.

1. A similar pattern has been observed in the construction of the tabernacle. See Frank H. Gorman Jr., The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the Priestly Theology (JSOTS 91; Sheffield: JSOT, 1990), 48.

2. This also means that it travels along the east-west spine of the temple, a line of special sanctity in Ezekiel’s temple (Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 578).

3. Stevenson, Vision of Transformation, 50. It may be, however, that the identification of the entire temple rather than the ark as the Lord’s footstool represents once again a raising of the standards of holiness compared with the older traditions.

4. NIV translates the Heb. phrase used here as “the lifeless idols of their kings.” Various translations of this phrase have been defended in recent literature. The RSV takes it as a literal reference to the corpses of the kings (so also Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs About the Dead [JSOTS 123; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992], 116). Jürgen H. Ebach argued for their identification as offerings for the dead (“PGR = (Toten-)Opfer,” UF 3 (1971): 365–68. However, the majority opinion has continued to accept D. Neiman’s older view that these were memorial stelae erected in honor of the earthly king (“PGR: A Canaanite Cult Object in the Old Testament,” JBL 67 [1948]: 55–60). See now the discussion in Theodore J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (HSM 39; Atlanta: Scholars, 1989), 141.

5. NIV follows the MT in reading bāmôtām (“their high places”). However, this introduces a separate location for their idolatry in a context that seems centered around the temple mount. It seems better to revocalize with a number of Hebrew manuscripts and read b^emôtām (“at their death”).

6. On the relationship of the terms melek (“king”) and nāśîʾ (“prince”) in Ezekiel, see Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel.

7. Stevenson, Vision of Transformation, 18–19.

8. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 452. The overall tabernacle complex was not a square, as Ezekiel’s temple was, but rather two adjoining squares, one comprising the inner court and the other the outer court.

9. J. Gordon McConville, “Priests and Levites in Ezekiel: A Crux in the Interpretation of Israel’s History,” TynBul 34 (1983): 28.

10. NIV translates “sin offering” following the older terminology. However, the purpose of the ḥaṭṭāʾt is not the forgiveness of sins but rather the purification of a place. For the terminology and the purpose of the ḥaṭṭāʾt, see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 253–61.

11. Ezekiel, 2:433.

12. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 191.

13. Baruch Levine, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 23.

14. Behind all of the Old Testament shadows lies a heavenly reality, a reality that in Christ has now come down from heaven to earth, ushering in the New Testament epoch. For a fuller outworking of this principle, see Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 55–65.

15. Peter Jones, Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America (Mukilteo, Wash.: Wine Press, 1997), 26–29.

16. The God Who Is There (Chicago: InterVarsity, 1968).

17. Holy Sonnets, xiv.

1. Greenberg, “Design and Themes,” 194.

2. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 451.

3. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 133–39.

4. Stevenson, Vision of Transformation, 121.

5. Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, trans. J. S. Black and A. Menzies (New York: Meridian Library, 1957), 121–51.

6. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 127–29; Stevenson, Vision of Transformation, 76.

7. Jacob Milgrom, Studies in Levitical Terminology I: The Encroacher and the Levite; The Term ʿaboda (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1970), 8–10.

8. Compare the NJPS translation, which places the paragraph break after Ezek. 44:8. See Rodney K. Duke, “Punishment or Restoration: Another Look at the Levites of Ezekiel 44:6–16,” JSOT 40 (1988): 65.

9. Cooke, Ezekiel, 481.

10. See my Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 79–80.

11. Ibid., 82.

12. Stevenson describes this as the genre of “territorial rhetoric” (Vision of Transformation, 11–13).

13. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 640.

14. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 978–85.

15. It is not so much letting the hair grow long (NIV) as letting it hang uncared for, as in 24:17, 23 (Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:460).

16. Midrashic sources claimed that alcohol abuse was a factor in the deaths of Nadab and Abihu. See Pesiq. Rab Kah. 26:9; Midr. Lev. Rab. 20:9.

17. Where these laws differ from the Pentateuchal provisions, Ezekiel seems to be universally more stringent (Skinner, Ezekiel, 438).

18. Moshe Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” JAOS 90 (1970): 184–205.

19. On the sociological function of these stories, see Smith, Religion of the Landless, 162–64.

20. Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 263.

21. Joseph A. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement: Calvinism, the Congregational Ministry and Reform in New England Between the Great Awakenings (Grand Rapids: Christian Univ. Press, 1981), 120. This view of Hopkins represents a conscious distancing from the view of Jonathan Edwards, cited below.

22. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 145.

23. Darrell L. Bock, Luke (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 488.

24. Thus there is something fundamentally sub-Christian about the popular old gospel song by Ira Stamphill, “I’ve Got a Mansion Just Over the Hilltop.” This song asserts “I’m satisfied with just a cottage below / A little silver and a little gold / But in that city where the ransomed will shine / I want a gold one that’s silver lined.” It is striking that in the entire description of the joys of heaven in this song, God is not even mentioned!

25. Cited in Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement, 121.

26. “Communion with God,” Select Letters of John Newton (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1960 reprint), 34.

1. The unit of measure is unexpressed throughout this passage, except for the buffer zone around the sanctuary, which is explicitly 50 cubits. The KJV inserted “reeds,” on the basis of Ezek. 42:16–20, which identified the temple as 500 reeds square, but which has text-critical problems of its own. The overall description of the temple dimensions in chs. 40–42 seems predicated on the basis of a temple complex 500 cubits square. This makes the entire central portion about 8 miles square (25,000 cubits by 25,000 cubits). If the dimensions are in reeds, the central square is closer to 50 miles by 50 miles, which would leave virtually no land on either side for the prince before you arrive at the Mediterranean on the west and the Jordan on the east.

2. According to the NIV, which follows the Septuagint. The MT gives 25,000 by 10,000, restricting this “sacred district” to that occupied by the priests. Whichever is original, the difference is not merely the result of a visual error but of an exegetical difference over whether this refers to the inner, priestly portion, or includes the parallel strip assigned to the Levites. In favor of the Septuagint, 45:3 seems to suggest that the priestly area comprises only one part of the “sacred district,” and 48:20 suggests that the overall 25,000 square is made up of the sacred area and the 5,000 by 25,000 strip assigned to the city. In favor of the MT, see Stevenson, Vision of Transformation, 31–32.

3. E. G. King, “The Prince in Ezekiel,” Old Testament Student 5 (1885): 115.

4. The arrangement of the levitical and priestly strips is not given explicitly, causing some to argue that the sequence moves from north to south (priestly portion, levitical portion, city portion; e.g., Cameron M. Mackay, “Why Study Ezekiel 40–48,” EvQ 37 [1965]: 161; Greenberg, “Design and Themes,” 202). If, however, the motion is from the inside outward, as in the tour of the temple, then the priestly portion would be in the center, flanked on the north by the levitical portion and on the south by the city portion. Given the importance of geometric center in the square design of Ezekiel’s temple, it seems most probable that the temple is located at the geometric center of the sacred portion.

5. This may be the only equitable way of distributing the land among the twelve tribes, given the topography of the Promised Land, as Greenberg asserts (“Idealism and Practicality in Numbers 35:4–5 and Ezekiel 48,” JAOS 88 [1968]: 59–66). However, it is theology, not practicality, that is driving the division.

6. Stevenson, Vision of Transformation, 107–8.

7. Menahem Haran, “The Law-Code of Ezekiel 40–48 and Its Relation to the Priestly School,” HUCA 50 (1979): 57.

8. See the discussion of the centrality of these features in Ezekiel 43.

9. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 667.

10. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:486.

11. Here ʿam hāʾāreṣ seems to denote the entire worshiping community. See my Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 120–21.

12. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:490.

13. Dennis J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant (AnBib 21a; Rome: Biblical Institute, 1981), 57.

14. Of course, given the permanently closed east gate of the outer court and the absence of any gate on the west, this is the only axis on which a procession through the temple can take place. Elsewhere, however, processions tend to be to or around sacred objects rather than through them (Ps. 26:6; 42:4; 68:24; cf. Neh. 12:37–43), and it seems to me that there is more at stake in this verse than mere “traffic control.”

15. Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials: A Study of the Civil Government Officials of the Israelite Monarchy (Lund: Gleerup, 1971), 80–110.

16. From the outside to the center (40:5–41:4); from the center to the outside (41:5–42:20); from the outside to the center (43:1–5); and from the center to the outside (43:13–46:24).

17. b. Šabb. 13b.

18. So Rashi, Ezekiel, 2.406.

19. b. Menaḥ 45a.

20. The Scofield Reference Bible, 908; Feinberg, Ezekiel, 234.

21. As is pointed out by fellow dispensationalist Jerry M. Hullinger (“The Problem of Animal Sacrifices in Ezekiel 40–48,” BibSac 152 [1995]: 280). Hullinger’s own proposal is that the sacrifices achieve genuine “atonement” in the sense of purgation, protecting the restored sancta from accumulations of impurity. While this treatment is more sensitive to the significance of the various different sacrifices in the levitical system, it is doubtful that it is an adequate solution to the problem since Hebrews presents Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice as the ultimate and definitive purgation (Heb. 9:12–14). If Christ has effectively cleansed the heavenly tabernacle once and for all, it is hard to see how there can be earthly repetitions of that purgation that do not detract from it. It is striking that The New Scofield Reference Bible at least allows the possibility that the sacrifices may not be intended “to be taken literally, in view of the putting away of such offerings, but is rather to be regarded as a presentation of the worship of redeemed Israel, in her own land and in a millennial temple, using the terms with which the Jews were familiar in Ezekiel’s day” (888). No explanation is advanced of what this “nonliteral” sacrificial worship might look like.

22. Stuart, Ezekiel, 400; Willem VanGemeren, Interpreting the Prophetic Word (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 336.

23. Thomas, God Strengthens, 287; Feinberg, Ezekiel, 257.

24. Greenberg, “Design and Themes,” 208; Steven Tuell, “The Temple Vision of zekiel 40–48: A Program for Restoration,” Proceedings of the Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society 2 (1982): 96.

25. Daniel I. Block, “Bringing Back David,” in The Lord’s Anointed: Interpretation of Old Testament Messianic Texts, ed. P. E. Satterthwaite, R. S. Hess, and G. J. Wenham (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 181.

26. Samson H. Levey, The Messiah: An Aramaic Interpretation: The Messianic Exegesis of the Targum (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1974), xix.

27. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 55–56.

28. John Taylor is at least interested in asking that question, even if his answer (“It illustrates the fact that in ancient Israel no less than today liturgical experimentation was demanded by new situations”) fails to convince (Ezekiel, 275).

29. Similarly the new re-creation in Ezek. 37 results not in the formation of one new man but an entire army!

30. Thus Gen. 1 involves three basic elements: forming the spaces (days 1–3), filling the spaces with occupants (days 4–6), and ordering time itself (the framework of “days”). On the priestly concern with the ordering of time, see Philip P. Jenson, Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of the World (JSOTS 106; Sheffield: JSOT, 1992), 182–209.

31. The first three elements are from Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), 451–54. The fourth expresses the essence of the sin offering (ḥaṭṭāʾt).

32. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 686.

1. Raymond Dillard and Tremper Longman III, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 327.

2. Gwilym H. Jones, 1 & 2 Kings (NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 184.

3. See Day, God’s Conflict With the Dragon and the Sea.

4. For this as a theme in Ezekiel, see the comments on Ezekiel 1.

5. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism,” 402.

6. The fact that the prophet is instructed to measure the river at four different points is probably not coincidental (Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:512).

7. Ibid., 2:514.

8. Clifford, Cosmic Mountain, 49–51.

9. Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:515.

10. D. Ralph Davis, “The Kingdom of God in Transition: Interpreting 2 Kings 2,” WTJ 46 (1984): 390–91. In this covenant context, the use of salt by Elisha in “healing the waters” perhaps takes on a more transparent significance as a key ingredient in covenant renewal ceremonies.

11. Thus the distinction between “universal” versus “national” restoration, drawn by Darr, is not quite accurate (“Wall Around Paradise,” 271–79). Certainly the restoration is not universal in scope, but it is more than simply ethnic-national: It encompasses all who are part of God’s renewed people.

12. In his book Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline (New York: Regan, 1996), Robert Bork describes the danger presented to society by the trend toward unbridled antinomianism in our era: “Our modern, virtually unqualified, enthusiasm for liberty forgets that liberty can only be ‘the space between the walls,’ the walls of morality and law based upon morality. It is sensible to argue about how far apart the walls should be set, but it is cultural suicide to demand all space and no walls” (p. 65).

13. See Timothy Keller, “Preaching Morality in an Amoral Age: How Can You Blow the Whistle When People Don’t Believe There Are Rules?” Leadership 17 (1996): 110–15, and “Preaching Hell in a Tolerant Age: Brimstone for the Broadminded,” Leadership 18 (1997): 42–48.

1. Allen, Ezekiel 20–48, 285.

2. Stevenson, Vision of Transformation, 151.

3. Numbers 34 names this location Kadesh Barnea. Ezekiel’s choice of name recalls the rebellion that took place there during the desert wanderings, when the Lord provided water for his rebellious people from the rock (Num. 20:13). It is not coincidental that Ezekiel has just described the river of life flowing out of the temple to provide for Israel’s needs.

4. The order in which the boundaries are listed is different in the two accounts: Ezekiel starts in the north and moves counterclockwise to the eastern, southern, and western boundaries, while Numbers starts in the south and moves counterclockwise from there. In addition, Numbers gives most detail to the southern boundary markers while Ezekiel is most precise in the north. Steven Tuell argues that the difference between them is essentially one of perspective: The account in Numbers views the land from an Egyptian perspective, while Ezekiel’s description is that of the Persian or Assyrian authorities (Law of the Temple, 155–56).

5. Block, Ezekiel 25–48, 716.

6. G. Ch. Macholz, “Noch Einmal: Planungen für den Wiederaufbau nach der Katastrophe von 587,” VT 19 (1969): 350.

7. Diether Kellermann, “,” TDOT, 2:444.

8. Stevenson, Vision of Transformation, 39–40.

9. Levenson, Theology, 116–17.

10. Ibid., 118.

11. As Cameron M. Mackay pointed out more than seventy years ago (“Ezekiel’s Division of Palestine Among the Tribes,” PTR 22 [1924]: 29). Most of the maps in commentaries and Bible atlases locate the sacred area further south, because they identify the “city” of the sacred reservation with Jerusalem, in spite of the fact that it is nowhere given that name in Ezekiel’s vision. The result is that their diagrams depict significantly larger strips for the northern tribes than the southern tribes, although they never discuss how this can be maintained exegetically. Note, for example, the contradiction between the (correct) observation by Block that the tribal strips were all the same width (Ezekiel 25–48, 723) with the map given on p. 711, which shows the strips of the northern tribes as much wider than those of the southern tribes, while the sacred reservation turns out to be on the site of Jerusalem. Incidentally, this relocation of the temple away from Jerusalem provides another knotty problem for the dispensational view that Ezekiel’s vision will literally be fulfilled in a future millennial kingdom.

12. So, e.g., Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2:535. This assumes that the description of the sacred portion proceeds from the center out. Others have argued that the description of the sacred portion continues the pattern of the north-south progress of the tribal land division, which would place the levitical portion south of the priestly portion. So, for instance, Macholz, “Planungen,” 335.

13. In ch. 45, Ezekiel had already indicated that this land will provide the resources for the prince to maintain the cult.

14. Levenson notes that this represents a distinct shift from tribal arrangement when Israel camped in the desert. In that arrangement (see Num. 2), the north was the least favored direction (Theology, 121).

15. For a similar dual image to convey complementary truths, consider the two sacrificial goats in the Day of Atonement ritual. One goat is slaughtered and its blood applied to the Most Holy Place to purify it, while the other goat has the sins of the people placed on its head and is driven off outside the camp (Lev. 16). This provides a twofold picture of atonement. On the one hand, blood is shed and presented to God, for “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22). On the other hand, a sin-laden goat is driven out of the camp into the realm of death, demonstrating the theme of Ps. 103:12: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”

16. Jürgen H. Ebach, Kritik und Utopie: Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis vom Volk und Herrscher im Verfassungsentwurf des Ezechiel (Kap. 40–48) (Ph.D. diss.; Univ. of Hamburg, 1972), 2.

17. Macholz, “Planungen,” 349.

18. Duguid, Ezekiel and the Leaders of Israel, 140–42.

19. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959–1960), 1:69.

20. Wilken, The Land Called Holy, 48.