Daily Verse Ezekiel 7:27 | Daily verse by Faithlife
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Cross References:
Eze 7:4 | And my eye will not take pity on you, and I will not show compassion for your ways; on you I will bring your detestable things; they will be in the midst of you, and you will know that I am Yahweh.’
Job 8:22 | Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will be no more.”
Eze 26:16 | And all the princes of the sea will go down from their thrones, and they will remove their robes, and their beautiful garments of finished cloth they will take off. With terror they will be clothed, and on the ground they will sit, and they will tremble continually, and they will be appalled over you.
Ps 35:26 | Let them be shamed and abashed altogether, who rejoice at my misfortune. Let them put on shame and insult, who magnify themselves against me.
Ps 62:12 | And to you belongs loyal love, O Lord, because you will render to each according to his work.
Job 8:22; Ps 35:26; 62:12; 109:18–19, 29; Is 3:11; Eze 6:7; 7:4; 18:20; 26:16; Mt 7:2
EZEKIEL 7:1–27
You Vipers’ Brood
I’ve been arranging with a member of our congregation to preach in our church this coming December 15th, and a day or two ago she sent me a message noting that the Gospel passage for the day included Jesus addressing people as a brood of vipers (“on which I always used to think it would be fun to preach, until now that it’s mine”), and that furthermore “this will be the last sermon before the world is supposed to end on the 21st. Any suggestions?” Mayan scholars and astronomers pooh-pooh the idea that there’s any basis for saying that the world will end on this date, and if you’re reading this book, they’ll have been proved right. Predictions of the end of the world have been falsified so often that people who are inclined to be skeptical have been bolstered in their skepticism.
We’ll discover in Ezekiel 12 that people were skeptical about Ezekiel’s declarations that “the end” is imminent. The end he’s referring to is the end of Judah’s independent life, the end of the time when Jerusalem is its capital and is a functioning city. In speaking of the end, he’s taking up a declaration from Amos 8. Amos lived more than a century earlier; he was referring to the end coming on Ephraim. He’d been proved right. Ephraim existed no longer. It ought therefore to be frightening to have the words reapplied to Judah, which might have been inclined to feel rather superior to that renegade northern people who got their comeuppance. Ezekiel even picks up Amos’s threatening trick of putting similar-sounding words together for effect, when he speaks of the end “rousing itself”—that Hebrew verb is similar to the Hebrew word for the end. Ezekiel also follows Amos in speaking of “the day.” “The day of Yahweh” was supposed to be a day of joy, but Amos warned Ephraim that it would be a dark not a joyful day (see Amos 5). Ezekiel likewise declares that it will be “the day of Yahweh’s wrath,” not of Yahweh’s blessing. It won’t be a festival day when people are cheering but a day of turmoil and confusion.
Part of the basis for Ezekiel’s certainty that this end will come is that (to use Jesus’ expression) his people are a vipers’ brood. God must surely therefore act in judgment. When Jesus speaks in these terms, he’s following in the footsteps of prophets such as Amos and Ezekiel. Much of this chapter is jerky and much of the detail is puzzling, and I haven’t tried to clean it up. I imagine his original audience found it jerky and puzzling, which meant they had to take the risk of thinking hard about it if they were to make sense of it. Yet the drift of it is clear.
Ezekiel is again addressing the situation back home, which is so important to people in Babylon who hope they’ll be returning there soon. The country’s life is characterized by violence and yet by confidence about the future; the people who’d escaped the exile that took Ezekiel and company to Babylon assume they dodged the bullet. They think they can defend themselves, but they won’t be able to do so. They’re on their way to catastrophe. Silver and gold will be of no use, whether they’ve been used to make images of people’s deities (who will turn out to be useless) or whether they’re thought of as financial resources (money is of no use in a siege). The silver and gold will just end up as loot for the invaders.
The most frightening declaration is that Yahweh has turned away from his people in Judah. He’s walked out on his own house, and is happy for alien feet to invade it. When they turn to their prophets, priests, and elders, they’ll find that they have nothing to say. When they turn to their leaders, they’ll find them bemused.
As in Amos, the “end” or “Yahweh’s day” isn’t the end of the world after which there’s nothing, or after which there’s resurrection or life in heaven. It’s an event in history where God shatters all the structures and order of his people’s life in a fashion that might make them face the waywardness of their life and at least “acknowledge that he is Yahweh.”
John Goldingay, Lamentations and Ezekiel for Everyone, Old Testament for Everyone (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 48–52.
You Vipers’ Brood
I’ve been arranging with a member of our congregation to preach in our church this coming December 15th, and a day or two ago she sent me a message noting that the Gospel passage for the day included Jesus addressing people as a brood of vipers (“on which I always used to think it would be fun to preach, until now that it’s mine”), and that furthermore “this will be the last sermon before the world is supposed to end on the 21st. Any suggestions?” Mayan scholars and astronomers pooh-pooh the idea that there’s any basis for saying that the world will end on this date, and if you’re reading this book, they’ll have been proved right. Predictions of the end of the world have been falsified so often that people who are inclined to be skeptical have been bolstered in their skepticism.
We’ll discover in Ezekiel 12 that people were skeptical about Ezekiel’s declarations that “the end” is imminent. The end he’s referring to is the end of Judah’s independent life, the end of the time when Jerusalem is its capital and is a functioning city. In speaking of the end, he’s taking up a declaration from Amos 8. Amos lived more than a century earlier; he was referring to the end coming on Ephraim. He’d been proved right. Ephraim existed no longer. It ought therefore to be frightening to have the words reapplied to Judah, which might have been inclined to feel rather superior to that renegade northern people who got their comeuppance. Ezekiel even picks up Amos’s threatening trick of putting similar-sounding words together for effect, when he speaks of the end “rousing itself”—that Hebrew verb is similar to the Hebrew word for the end. Ezekiel also follows Amos in speaking of “the day.” “The day of Yahweh” was supposed to be a day of joy, but Amos warned Ephraim that it would be a dark not a joyful day (see Amos 5). Ezekiel likewise declares that it will be “the day of Yahweh’s wrath,” not of Yahweh’s blessing. It won’t be a festival day when people are cheering but a day of turmoil and confusion.
Part of the basis for Ezekiel’s certainty that this end will come is that (to use Jesus’ expression) his people are a vipers’ brood. God must surely therefore act in judgment. When Jesus speaks in these terms, he’s following in the footsteps of prophets such as Amos and Ezekiel. Much of this chapter is jerky and much of the detail is puzzling, and I haven’t tried to clean it up. I imagine his original audience found it jerky and puzzling, which meant they had to take the risk of thinking hard about it if they were to make sense of it. Yet the drift of it is clear.
Ezekiel is again addressing the situation back home, which is so important to people in Babylon who hope they’ll be returning there soon. The country’s life is characterized by violence and yet by confidence about the future; the people who’d escaped the exile that took Ezekiel and company to Babylon assume they dodged the bullet. They think they can defend themselves, but they won’t be able to do so. They’re on their way to catastrophe. Silver and gold will be of no use, whether they’ve been used to make images of people’s deities (who will turn out to be useless) or whether they’re thought of as financial resources (money is of no use in a siege). The silver and gold will just end up as loot for the invaders.
The most frightening declaration is that Yahweh has turned away from his people in Judah. He’s walked out on his own house, and is happy for alien feet to invade it. When they turn to their prophets, priests, and elders, they’ll find that they have nothing to say. When they turn to their leaders, they’ll find them bemused.
As in Amos, the “end” or “Yahweh’s day” isn’t the end of the world after which there’s nothing, or after which there’s resurrection or life in heaven. It’s an event in history where God shatters all the structures and order of his people’s life in a fashion that might make them face the waywardness of their life and at least “acknowledge that he is Yahweh.”
John Goldingay, Lamentations and Ezekiel for Everyone, Old Testament for Everyone (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 48–52.
Ezekiel 5:9 , Jeremiah 30:7 , Joel 2:2 & Matthew 24:21 are all speaking of the same event, the great tribulation. History may not always exactly repeat itself but often rhymes. There cannot be more than one day of which it can be said there is none like it or ever shall be again. This one day is yet future a will be concerned with Jerusalem and the rest of humanity. It is the day of Jacobs trouble, his being the object of Gods wrath for all the abominations done. This message can be traced through the scriptures by comparing the punishments and Gods reasons for them and the timing of one particular day. Words and phrases that are strikingly similar describing these things. An example of this is comparing Revelation 17:5 with Jeremiah 3:3 and can be used with more scripture to identify this harlot as the city of Jerusalem.