Ezekiel chapter 22

vs 1

Ahh, good old word of the Lord. I've missed you.

vs 2

Of course, Ezekiel is quite far away, so this confrontation is perhaps going to take some time.

vs 3

Better known as Jerusalem, but you can see why God uses the long title.

vs 4

Now, a lot of this verse is just repeating what he said in the verse before. But the punishment is an interesting one - becoming an object of scorn and a laughingstock. The thing is, of course, that we will read in a few chapters that if the countries around actually do mock Jerusalem, God will smite them. So... how does that work?

vs 5

Well, perhaps this clears it up. Perhaps God sometimes cracks jokes that we're not allowed to laugh at, because if we do he'll smite us. Of course, doing things we're not allowed to do is really the only thing humanity is good at, so God can be pretty much guaranteed that some nations will get together and mock Israel as part of its punishment. He can deal with those nations later.

vs 6

Obviously I can't see it, but I will happily take God's word that it happened. He certainly seems upset by it.

vs 7

There's a long list coming, I can feel it in my bones. The really interesting thing is to look out for all of the hearkenings back to the deuteronomic law. So treated father and mother with contempt, that's against one of the ten commandments. Oppressing the foreigner and mistreating orphans and widows - once again, a very strong part of the law. Also, not two things that you would think are the first things on God's list against his own princes. We I think would take these as of secondary importance - I am tempted to look at our current political campaign and see how many of our candidates are seeking to 'oppress foreigners' and have treated their parents with contempt.

vs 8

The sabbath is a huge part of the law. Just huge. It pervades so much of it. And the holy things is pretty much what Leviticus is all about. So we're talking big sections of law being disobeyed here. It's funny to think that Jerusalem wasn't following sabbaths, or passover. The Jews today do it so religiously (ha - get it?) but back then, they were just so far from God. I'magine going to a church and people saying, "Oh, yeah, we don't have service times as such, and we don't have preaching, and we don't do communion."

vs 9

All bad things. Eating is obviously not against God's law, but doing it at shrines dedicated to idols is. I don't think we need to dig deep into lewd acts and shedding blood to find something wrong with them.

vs 10

But apparently we're going to dig and find out what sort of lewd acts have been going on here. Now the interesting thing about these lewd acts of course is that not only are they possibly sexually immoral, but they break other laws too - so one dishonours your father, while the other makes you ceremonially unclean - which is what the Israelites should be avoiding at all costs, because it means they can't approach God!