Ezekiel 11: 1-13 The Judgment of the Jerusalem Leaders

¹ The spirit lifted me up and brought me to the east gate of the house of the LORD, which faces east. There, at the entrance of the gateway, were twenty-five men; among them I saw Jaazaniah son of Azzur, and Pelatiah son of Benaiah, officials of the people. ² He said to me, “Mortal, these are the men who devise iniquity and who give wicked counsel in this city; ³ they say, ‘The time is not near to build houses; this city is the pot, and we are the meat.’ ⁴ Therefore prophesy against them; prophesy, O mortal.”

⁵ Then the spirit of the LORD fell upon me, and he said to me, “Say, Thus says the LORD: This is what you think, O house of Israel; I know the things that come into your mind. ⁶ You have killed many in this city, and have filled its streets with the slain. ⁷ Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: The slain whom you have placed within it are the meat, and this city is the pot; but you shall be taken out of it. ⁸ You have feared the sword; and I will bring the sword upon you, says the Lord GOD. ⁹ I will take you out of it and give you over to the hands of foreigners, and execute judgments upon you. ¹⁰ You shall fall by the sword; I will judge you at the border of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD. ¹¹ This city shall not be your pot, and you shall not be the meat inside it; I will judge you at the border of Israel. ¹² Then you shall know that I am the LORD, whose statutes you have not followed, and whose ordinances you have not kept, but you have acted according to the ordinances of the nations that are around you.”

¹³ Now, while I was prophesying, Pelatiah son of Benaiah died. Then I fell down on my face, cried with a loud voice, and said, “Ah Lord GOD! will you make a full end of the remnant of Israel?”

In George Orwell’s famous short story Animal Farm the new leadership of the fictional farm ruled over by the animals quickly devolves as the pigs adopt the role of leaders. Napolean and the rest of the pigs soon take over the farmer’s house as their home and office. Instead of being compatriots who uphold the principles of animalism in the book, they become new masters willing to sell other animals for profit. Proverbs warns of the dangers of a dramatic change in leadership in its own manner:

Under three things the earth trembles; under four it cannot bear up: a slave when he becomes king, and a fool when glutted with food; an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maid when she succeeds her mistress. Proverbs 30: 21-23

The situation in Jerusalem that Ezekiel is visiting in this spiritual vision shows us the twenty-five men who are the new leaders in Jerusalem now that many of the leaders, priests, and counselors have been exiled to Babylon. Jaazaniah and Pelatiah and the remaining leaders who exercise authority in the absence of the exiles view themselves as safe within the city walls. In their view God’s judgment has fallen upon the exiles and they are now outside the pot, while they are the prime cuts left on the inside. To use a different metaphor, the city is now their oyster and they mean to extract the pearl of great price for their own profit.

When we think of the pot as a metaphor, it often is a place of difficulty rather than safety since pots are primarily used as instruments of cooking in modern kitchens. The image in Ezekiel is likely viewing the pot as a sealed vessel used for the storage of meat and other items, like the pithos in the image above, rather than primarily a vessel for cooking. (NIB VI: 1186) With the city walls functioning as the metaphorical pot that will keep the meat (these officials) safe they have run the city as ‘false shepherds’ as Ezekiel will later describe in Ezekiel 34: 1-10. The officials’ comments that “the time is not near to build houses” may indicate that building materials are needed to secure the city walls, but another insidious possibility is that these new officials are appropriating the property and wealth of the exiles and exploiting their new power to confiscate the property of the vulnerable within the city, as verse six seems to indicate. In the LORD’s view their actions have been death dealing to the very people they were entrusted to protect. They used their apparent safety and the power vacuum to enrich themselves at the expense of others, but their safety was an illusion.

God reverses their metaphor; they were the meat safe in the pot but now God has determined they are the spoiled portion that needs to be removed from the pot. These officials were probably exempted by their position from serving in the conflict around the walls, but now God promises to take them outside the walls and to expose them to the sword they have previously avoided. Like the pigs in Animal Farm who end the story indistinguishable from the surrounding farmers, these officials have acted like the nations around Israel. They have not cared for the vulnerable in the city, nor the exiles from their own people. As the prophet Micah would declare of leaders in his time, they became the butchers of the people:

And I said: Listen, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Should you not know justice?—you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin off my people, and the flesh off their bones; who eat the flesh of my people, flay their skin off them, break their bones into pieces, and chop them up like meat in a kettle, life flesh in a cauldron. Micah 3: 1-3

Throughout these chapters God has declared judgment upon the temple, the city, and the nation because of their unwillingness to live according to the way of God’s covenant. These leaders may have escaped the effects of the famine and conflict temporarily, but now they too will experience the consequences of their unjust actions while they were leading the people. Pelatiah, whose name means YHWH reserves a remnant, dies while Ezekiel is prophesying. Ezekiel protests to God that God is making a full end to the remnant of Israel.[1] Ezekiel’s protest results one of the first windows of hope in the book of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 11: 14-21 Hope for the Exiles

¹⁴ Then the word of the LORD came to me: ¹⁵ Mortal, your kinsfolk, your own kin, your fellow exiles, the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, “They have gone far from the LORD; to us this land is given for a possession.” ¹⁶ Therefore say: Thus says the Lord GOD: Though I removed them far away among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a little while in the countries where they have gone. ¹⁷ Therefore say: Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. ¹⁸ When they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. ¹⁹ I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, ²⁰ so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God. ²¹ But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, says the Lord GOD.

Ezekiel is the first prophet to a people in exile, and it is to the exiles that this vision of hope is imparted. The people of Jerusalem may have viewed the exiles as those removed far from the LORD, but the LORD imparts through the prophet that these are the ones who the hopeful future will come through. Although they have been removed from the physical presence of the temple, now the LORD promises to be their sanctuary in this time of exile. As Psalm 90, attributed to Moses, declares about the LORD, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” (Psalm 90:1) Their exile will not be forever, and they will be regathered by their God and returned to the land. There have been little windows into hope in the previous texts (Ezekiel 5:3, 6: 8-10) but those slivers of hope were surrounded by seas of darkness. In a further reversal, although the LORD has given up on those dwelling in Jerusalem, the remnant of the people is already in exile. The LORD will not abandon the land of Israel or the people.

This is the first time that Ezekiel will utilize the image of a ‘heart’ transplant: replacing a stony heart with a fleshy one. The heart in Hebrew thought is the organ of will, not emotions, so perhaps this is as much about a fleshy mind as a fleshy heart. Yet, Ezekiel will diagnose the problem with Israel as a heart problem, and only by replacing the sick and hard heart can there be a new life that is responsive to the LORD’s covenant and ordinances. This people of obedient and fleshy hearts will return and purify the land from the idols and detestable things that are present during this time. This renewed land and renewed people allow for the reestablishment of the covenant as the rearticulation of the covenant formula indicates: “Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”  As the prophet Jeremiah could state in a similar manner:

I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for all time, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back from doing good to them, and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing good to them, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and soul. (Jeremiah 32: 39-41)

Yet, for any who would not embrace this new future with a new heart and new faithfulness, their wicked deeds will not be exempted from the judgment Ezekiel proclaims.

Ezekiel 11: 22-25 The End of the Vision

²² Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them; and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. ²³ And the glory of the LORD ascended from the middle of the city, and stopped on the mountain east of the city. ²⁴ The spirit lifted me up and brought me in a vision by the spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles. Then the vision that I had seen left me. ²⁵ And I told the exiles all the things that the LORD had shown me.

The LORD has left Jerusalem. Ezekiel never sees the glory of God move further than the mountains east of the city, although it has appeared to him in his exile in Babylon. Daniel and Revelation will assume that the presence of God is in heaven, but for Ezekiel God’s presence stops here and the vision ends with Ezekiel being returned to the exiles. Now the prophet shares this vision, both its terror and its hope, with these exiles, presumably starting with the elders of Judah who were seated in his house when the vision began.

Ezekiel has seen in this vision a people who worship other gods, but also a people whose misdirected worship has caused them to be an unjust society. The officials leading both the civic and religious life of Jerusalem have done violence to the city. Jerusalem as it stands is irredeemable in the LORD’s eyes, and it will require beginning fresh with a remnant already in exile. During this exile the LORD will be their sanctuary, will put a new and willing heart within them. I am reminded of the words of Psalm 51:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit. Psalm 51: 10-12

Yet, Psalm 51 is a prayer for individual renewal while Ezekiel’s vision is the recreation of a covenant people from the remnant in exile in Babylon whose clean hearts will lead to a clean land.

[1] Most English translations make this a question, but in Hebrew there is no interrogative. Rather than a question, Ezekiel is here protesting the perceived totality of God’s judgment on Israel. (NIB VI: 1187)