Ezekiel chapter 11

vs 1

Whoever they are, they are leaders of the people, which means they should know better. God has many times before brought trouble on his people because of their leaders. The thing about leaders, see, is that people follow them.

vs 2

Plotting evil. They're not just dumb, they are complicit in this whole anti-God thing. They desire it to be the way it is. They have worked towards it.

vs 3

I'm not sure whether they mean they are about to be eaten (bad stuff is about to happen), or that things are going well and they are the best bits in the stew. As in, life could not be better.

vs 4

God's response for Ezekiel to prophesy against them would seem to suggest to me that they think the former.

vs 5

Ahhh, so the leaders are trying to look like everything is calm. But Ezekiel has been told that something else is happening behind the scenes.

vs 6

Who did they kill? The faithful perhaps? Not sure. Enemy invaders? Perhaps. Just regular people because of their violence and injustice and wickedness? Most probably, in my opinion.

vs 7

Rather than the leaders being the best bit, the dead people are the best bit - they're the only ones who will get claim to this stew. Everyone else is going to have to leave... or join them.

vs 8

So the leaders do fear. But instead of turning to God in their time of fear, they redouble their rhetoric and they build more idols. Sad, really.

vs 9

That's God's basic plan in a nutshell - force them out of the promised land, give them over to foreigners, life for them gets bad.

vs 10

Judgement comes by the sword, with them dying from invasion, and at the borders of their country, as they are forced to leave it either by fleeing or in chains.

vs 11

No soup for you! Come back, 70 years!

vs 12

Doesn't it say somewhere that they didn't even conform to the standards of the nations around them? Anyway, they definitely have not followed the Lord's decrees. They're way, way out of that ballpark now.

vs 13

I was going to stop at 12, but the TNIV has a bold heading at 13, so I figured what the hell.

So, Ezekiel is there prophecying to these leaders about how Israel's going to fall and they're going to die, and lo and behold, one of them dies. This upsets Ezekiel, because perhaps he realises that God isn't screwing around on this once. So he falls to his knees and does exactly what God told him not to do - pleads for what's left of Israel. I assume he means Judah - not the remnant that will actually be left over.