Ezekiel 22

In this episode, we explore Ezekiel 22, offering unique insights into the religious life of Judeans during the Babylonian exile. 

Key points to look forward to:

• Gain an insider's view of the exiled community's spiritual atmosphere
• Discover Ezekiel's harsh critique of Jerusalem's sins and their consequences
• Explore powerful metaphors of metallurgy used to describe God's judgment
• Understand the prophet's role in reframing the mindset of the exiles
• Learn how this chapter helps explain the fall of Jerusalem from a theological perspective

Whether you're a biblical scholar, history enthusiast, or simply curious about ancient prophecies, this episode promises to offer fresh perspectives and thought-provoking analysis. Don't miss this opportunity to deepen your understanding of the Bible and its historical context!"

Transcript

Welcome to Bible Fiber, where we are encountering the textures and shades of the biblical tapestry through twelve Minor Prophets, two reformers, and one exile. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern. 

This week, we're studying Ezekiel 22. Ezekiel's book stands out in biblical studies for a unique reason: it's the only text that offers a window into the religious life and mindset of Judeans during the Babylonian exile. While the Book of Daniel shares stories of individual exiles in extraordinary situations, Ezekiel provides something different. It gives us an insider's view of the exiled community's spiritual atmosphere. This perspective makes Ezekiel's writings particularly valuable for understanding this crucial period in Jewish history.

Jerusalem versus Tel Abib

Let's recap what we've learned about the exiles so far in Ezekiel. In Chapter 12, we saw that they didn't buy into doom-and-gloom prophecies. They thought these predictions were either false or too distant to matter in their lives (12:21-28). Chapter 18 revealed their fatalistic attitudes. They believed they were suffering for their ancestors' sins, not their own (18:1-4). As for idolatry, scholars are unsure if the exiles had idols in their Tel Abib encampment. Still, Chapter 13 tells us they were into pagan divination practices like witchcraft and sorcery (13:17-19).

Ezekiel called out his fellow exiles for their wrong thinking and bad behavior. But he saved his harshest words for the people back in Jerusalem, 600 miles away. Chapter 22 lays out a laundry list of Jerusalem's sins—covering everything from social issues to religious practices, from sexual misconduct to economic crimes. No one escapes Ezekiel's criticism. By tallying Jerusalem’s sins, Ezekiel justified God’s actions beforehand. Clearly, God had to cleanse and purge Jerusalem.
 
Ezekiel 22 comprises three short-form indictments against Jerusalem. The prophet signaled each new oracle with the introductory prophetic formula, “the word of the Lord came to me” (22:1, 17, 23). The first oracle is a full indictment of Jerusalem’s sins (22:1-16). The second oracle describes Jerusalem’s coming judgement in the language of smelting metal (22:17-22). The third oracle elaborates on the guilt of Israel’s leaders and citizens (22:23-31). 

Inventory of sins (22:1-16)

The chapter begins with Yahweh commanding Ezekiel to act as prosecutor at Jerusalem’s trial. Yahweh said, “You, mortal, will you judge, will you judge the bloody city? Then declare to it all its abominable deeds. You shall say: Thus says the Lord God: A city! Shedding blood within itself; its time has come; making its idols, defiling itself” (22:2-3). 

Biblical prophets often reverted to courtroom language in their speeches to present the evidence against Israel. Legal imagery depicted God as the judge delivering his irrevocable verdict. In Ezekiel, when God summoned the defendant to the courtroom, he refused to dignify Jerusalem by addressing it with a proper name. Instead, Yahweh called Jerusalem the “bloody city.” And it's not just a one-time insult; God repeats the accusation of bloodshed three times (22:6, 8, 12). 

God had once designated Jerusalem as the “city of God” that he loved “more than all the other dwellings of Jacob” (Ps. 87:3). Isaiah referred to Jerusalem as the “holy city” and “daughter Zion” (Isa. 52:1-2). From "holy city" to "bloody city," how far had Jerusalem fallen in God's eyes? The only other place in the Bible to be called the “bloody city” was Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, which was famous for its brutal exploits of conquered peoples (Nah. 3:1). Ezekiel paired the sins of violence and idolatry because, as often was the case, where there was idolatry, there was also violence, whether it was child sacrifice or self-harm (2 Kings 17:17-18; 1 Kings 18:28). Through their idolatry and violence toward one another, they polluted the land and defiled themselves (22:4).

Ezekiel accused them of a laundry list of other specific sins, even more thorough than he had done in Chapter 18. They treated their fathers and mothers with contempt (22:7). According to the Ten Commandments, dishonoring one’s parents was punishable by death (Ex. 21:17). They extorted foreigners and oppressed orphans and widows. Greed and power had directed their vectors inward rather than outward, rendering them unable to empathize. When God first called the Israelites to be his special people, he recognized that the world was a broken place where many people have it harder than others. For that reason, caring for the vulnerable was essential to building a just society. God embedded protections in his legal code to uphold his standard of justice, but the Jerusalemites ignored them (Deut. 24:17-18).

As a priest, Ezekiel was certain to include their religious apostasies as well (22:8-9). They disrespected what God had set up as sacred and they profaned the Sabbath day, an accusation he had elaborated on earlier in his historical recap (20:12-21). (GO BACK and listen to the episode on Ezekiel 20.) He accused them of participating in pagan rituals, like sacrificial meals and ritual prostitution.

Ezekiel went into the most detail about the sexual crimes they had committed. Besides adultery, they indulged in incestuous relationships, defiling their sisters and their daughters-in-law (22:10-11). Ezekiel also blamed them for corrupting Jerusalem’s judicial system by accepting bribes and they tainted the economic sphere by charging high interest rates (22:12). 

Worst of all, Yahweh said, “you have forgotten me” (22:12). Centuries before, God sent the same message to the Northern Kingdom of Israel through the prophet Hosea. Hosea warned the Israelites that they suffered because they no longer had any knowledge of their God (Hos. 4:1,6). Once Yahweh punished Jerusalem and expelled its inhabitants, they would never again forget his power (22:16). Ezekiel said, “I will scatter you among the nations and disperse you through the countries, and I will purge your filthiness out of you” (22:15). The irony is that only after being scattered among pagan nations would the people of Jerusalem experience cleansing from their filthiness.

Ezekiel didn't list every single sin of Jerusalem, but he covered a lot of ground. His accusations hit most of the Ten Commandments. Ezekiel seems also to echo the structure in the Holiness Code—the chapters in Leviticus that detail the moral, ethical, and ritual conduct expected from the community (Lev. 17-26). Since Sinai, the Israelites had known and understood what Yahweh required of them. Yet their selfish pursuits overruled their will to obey God’s commands. 

Smelting Furnace
 
Ezekiel followed up his presentation of Jerusalem’s crimes with a metallurgy word picture. Yahweh told Ezekiel, “The house of Israel has become dross to me; all of them, silver, bronze, tin, iron and led. In the smelter they have become dross” (22:19). Although Ezekiel returned to symbolic language, he did not cloud his meaning. 

Smelting involves heating ore to extract valuable metal, like silver. Dross is a waste material that forms on the surface of a liquified metal during the smelting process. The metalworker must skim off and discard the dross. In Ezekiel’s allegory, Yahweh was the metalworker, turning up the heat in his furnace, Jerusalem. He warned, “I will gather you in my anger and in my wrath, and I will put you in and melt you” (22:20). God even blew on the fire, giving oxygen to the flames (22:21).

Other prophets—like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Malachi, and Zechariah—also used metallurgy allegories to describe Jerusalem’s calamity and the period of exile (Jer. 6:27-30; Isa. 1:25-26; Mal. 3:2-3; Zech. 13:9). Other than Ezekiel, every prophet depicted God’s judgment as a refining fire that would remove their impurities. To those prophets, the refiner’s fire symbolized the future restoration of Israel after a time of hard-earned lessons. Ezekiel put his own spin on the furnace of judgement. Ezekiel warned nothing would survive the inferno because no one in Jerusalem was innocent (22:22). Noone merited saving from the fire of God’s wrath. 

The Guilty

Ezekiel introduced a third oracle that seems to be an intentional cross-reference of the seventh century BCE Judean prophet Zephaniah. Zephaniah prophesied, “The officials within it are roaring lions; its judges are evening wolves that leave nothing until the morning. Its prophets are reckless, faithless persons; its priests have profaned what is sacred; they have done violence to the law” (Zeph. 3:3-4).

Both Ezekiel and Zephaniah reproached every class of the accused in Jerusalem: royalty, priests, elders, and prophets. They were all found wanting. Not for the first time, Ezekiel described Jerusalem’s kings as predatory lions who hate what God loves (22:25). Like Zephaniah, Ezekiel likened the city’s officials to voracious wolves. They were guilty of “destroying lives to get dishonest gain” (22:27). Prophets spread their lies and false visions, misleading people to promote their own self-interest (22:28).

In earlier oracles, Ezekiel called out Jerusalem’s kings, officials, and false prophets. Chapter 22 is the first time that he challenged his fellow priests. To them, he issued the strongest worded rebuke, although it almost exactly mirrored Zephaniah’s condemnation of the priests two centuries earlier. They were guilty of profaning the sacred things, abusing the law, and disregarding the Sabbaths. Although priests were supposed to instruct the people in the law of Moses and enforce purity regulations and rituals, the priests in Ezekiel’s day “made no distinction between the holy and the common” (22:26). Instead of exemplifying covenant living, they committed violence against God’s word. 

In a capital with ravenous leaders, lying prophets, and defiled priests, the ordinary citizens had little hope. God commissioned the leaders to set them on the path of justice and righteousness. Instead, they led them to corruption. Guilt began at the top and trickled down to the citizens. In Chapter 18, Ezekiel emphasized individual responsibility; he was not letting the regular people off the hook. They too were guilty of subverting justice, oppressing the poor, and practicing extortion (22:29). In summary, all of Jerusalem had brought on the coming disaster. 

In the past, when a generation became so corrupt that they were beyond salvation, Yahweh found at least one righteous person worth saving. In Noah’s day, the people had strayed so far from their creator that their thoughts were constantly filled with evil (Gen. 6:5). Amidst this corruption, however, Genesis described Noah as “blameless in his generation” so he saved Noah and his family from the floodwaters (Gen. 6:9). 

Ezekiel lamented that in Jerusalem there was not a single righteous individual who was worth saving. According to Yahweh, it was not for a lack of looking. God said, “And I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it, but I found no one” (22:30). 

Who is to blame

Ezekiel’s powerful denunciation of Jerusalem preceded the Babylonian destruction of the city by only four years. As a prophet, his job was to reframe their mindset and position them toward repentance and return. When Jerusalem finally fell, the upset exiles in Babylon could look at Ezekiel's writings to make sense of what happened. Somehow, the exiles needed to reconcile their belief in Yahweh’s supreme power with the disastrous fate of his people, city, and temple. They questioned how a pagan empire could overthrow Jerusalem if Yahweh was the sovereign God of the universe. However, that was the wrong inquiry. Ezekiel urged them to consider why they let Jerusalem become so unholy in the first place.

Looking at their scriptures, the exiles found answers in the Torah, writings, and prophets. The Torah warned that covenant unfaithfulness had consequences. Their loyalty to Yahweh and his laws determined their blessings in the land. The historical writings documented the names of Israel’s unrighteous kings, demonstrating the cyclical nature of Israel’s periods of rebellion. Early prophets called for repentance and return, a last reminder of the repercussions of disloyalty to Yahweh. Later prophets, like Ezekiel and Jeremiah, predicted the coming punishment and justified God’s reasoning. 

Oracles like Ezekiel 22 clarified that it was not Yahweh who had failed the covenant. Israel’s covenant betrayal absolved Yahweh of his responsibilities and brought on the disaster. Ezekiel said, “You have become guilty by the blood that you have shed and defiled by the idols that you have made; you have brought your days near” (22:4). The Babylonian attack did not display Yahweh’s weakness; it exhibited his strength. The all-powerful God would not stand idly by while his followers dismissed him and polluted his temple city. Their theology about the one true God was not what they got wrong. What they had miscalculated was the full-hearted commitment that Yahweh required. 

That’s it for Ezekiel 22. Thank you for listening and please continue to take part in this Bible Reading Challenge. Join me next week for Ezekiel 23. I am not looking forward to that one. If you peak ahead, you will see why. Please keep modern Israel and Jerusalem in your prayers. Pray for Jerusalem's peace and its people, who currently feel more isolated than ever on the world stage. 

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Shabbat Shalom and Am Israel Chai