This chapter is a rebuke against the leaders who proclaim visions for God which are not and the women who lead the people astray through magic beads & other idolatry. While God has been generally hard on the nation of Israel, calling out their unfaithfulness and idolatry, he’s specifically hard on the leaders here. He acknowledges in Ezekiel 13:19 that the people are willing to listen to lies, but that doesn’t matter in God’s mind. He still holds the leaders accountable for their false teaching and false hope that they give the people.
Reading between the lines, they have evidently loved their position and standing more than God or His people. They refused to call out their sin, instead proclaiming peace where there is none (Ezekiel 13:10). It is not as though they are unaware of the sin. In fact, Ezekiel 13:10-16 talk about how the people built a wall and the prophets whitewashed it. In other words, the people built up their sins and the prophets attempted to make it look OK rather than calling it out.
As leaders, it can be tempting to do that ourselves. We get close to the people we lead, they are our dearest friends. We feel protective of them, rightfully so, but that can lead to the desire to help them cover their sin rather than deal with it. We forget that it is the Lord we serve and look out for first and foremost, not the people. Of course, we can also go the other way and deal with sin harshly, forgetting that is the Lord we serve, not the rule book.
As leaders, God holds us accountable for pointing the people to Him. Not to the Bible itself (though in it we find God) nor to us (though God is working through us), but to God. We must always remember that.

Ezekiel 12:7 – This reminds me of some the ‘crazy’ street preachers you might see downtown. Acting out what is coming against Israel, pretending to go into exile, even digging through the wall. What must people have thought? Yet, it was God who instructed him. I wonder how many ‘crazy’ people are on orders from God to do what they do to deliver us a message? It’s easy to dismiss them all.
Ezekiel 12:15 -“And they shall know that I am the Lord, …” Again, God must prove himself to be God through judgement. (again in v. 20)
Ezekiel 12:21-28 – They had already been warned of the judgements to come, but since it had been a long time coming, they assumed i was still a long way off. Here we are in the same boat. It can be easy to assume because Jesus has been a long time coming, He’s still a long way off or isn’t actually coming at all. But He said He’d come, and He promised that it’d be a surprise. I don’t want to get complacent like Israel was, dismissing what has been promised as not relevant from me, but for some future time. It may be decades or centuries away, or it may be next week.

Ezekiel 11:1-4 – It’s one thing to be shown the sin of a nation and the judgement coming form God, and even to be called to prophesy to that nation about their sins. It’s another to be told to prophesy against individuals for their role in leading that nation. I get real uncomfortable thinking of standing before one person and laying them out for their sin.
Ezekiel 11:13 – As I read this, I was thinking “See, Ezekiel wasn’t fired up to pronounce judgement on individuals either!” Then I got to the end of it and saw that his concern was not for his own comfort in delivering a hard message, but for Israel. OK, I’m convicted.
Ezekiel 11:14-21 – God gives Ezekiel a message of comfort. It’s going to be OK, there are some who will return to the land of Israel. They will clean up the detestable things. Not only that, but God will restore their hearts and they will walk in His ways.

Decided to do 2 chapters today, but still post them separately.
Ezekiel 10:9-22 – More descriptions that make my eyes glaze over. Cherubim, wheels within wheels, eyes all over, multiple faces. I can’t make a picture in my mind of this scene, so it just becomes a blur.
Ezekiel 10:15, 20, 22 – Ah, the cherubim are the same creatures that confused me in the beginning. 😛
Hard to reconcile this chapter of descriptions of this amazing scene with the last chapter of death and destruction for those who have not followed God. I guess I wanted some closure on that or something.

Short chapter, but heavy:

And the Lord said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” And to the others he said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark. And begin at my sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were before the house. –

Ezekiel 9:4-6 (ESV)

Whoa. This bring me chills just reading it, imagine seeing it in a vision. Ezekiel falls down and asks God if he will destroy all the remnant. God’s answer in verse 10:

As for me, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity; I will bring their deeds upon their heads.

Wow.

Ezekiel 8:3 – God grabs him by the hair and takes him off to Jerusalem. Yikes.
Ezekiel 8:6 – The Israelites were acting in ways to push God out of the temple. I’m sure that had you asked them, many may have thought they were actually serving God there. Yet God felt, and was, driven away. Isn’t it easy for us to do the same? We get caught up in how we should worship and what’s proper to do, or even caught up in parsing and dissecting scripture, and God Himself is driven away.
Ezekiel 8:12 – What do I worship in the dark of our own lives? In the dark, when the doors are shut and no one can see, what do I run after?
Ezekiel 8:14 – I wonder what the significance of these women weeping for Tammuz is. I searched the Bible for ‘Tammuz’ but found no other references.

Ezekiel 7:4 – “Then you will know that I am the Lord.” God had tried over the years through the evidence of creation, the blessings of being His people and the history of the nation and God’s interaction with Abraham, Moses, David, etc to show them that he was God. But they didn’t’ seem to get it. Now it came down to making the point through wrath and punishment.
Ezekiel 7:19 – We are a wealthy nation, but our wealth is worthless if God is coming against us. Even if he does not come, it cannot make us guilt free. It cannot cleanse our consciences. Even non-Christians understand this. They understand that money cannot make you happy, it cannot give you love and relationships, it cannot heal our hearts. Yet we still run after it as if it could. We chase things thinking that having toys will make us happy. Instead, just as in Ezekiel’s day, in becomes “the stumbling block of [our] iniquity.”
Ezekiel 7:25 – “When anguish comes, they will seek peace, but there shall be none. (ESV)” Wow.

Ezekiel 6:1-10 – I’m sure that some in Israel and Judah were still faithful to the Lord. I wonder what it was like for them to watch the people around them leave God and to know that He would eventually bring judgement on them. I wonder how they felt facing such judgement, even though they were faithful?
Ezekiel 6:9 – The ESV refers to the people’s “whoring heart” and “their eyes that go whoring after their idols”. That’s pretty graphic language that would likely offend many religious folk today (the NIV used “adulterous” and “lusting” as do several other modern translations. Interestingly, the KJV uses “Whore” & “whoring” too). This is obviously an English translation from what I assume was a Hebrew text, but still, this is God saying this. Some group of translation scholars felt that this was the most appropriate wording. Much of this rebuke is meant to be shocking to wake the people up from their spiritual slumber, so it does seem appropriate, but I can’t help wonder. If Ezekiel had come today, and said these things to the 21st century church, would many dismiss him as not from God because he used the word “whore”?

Ezekiel 5:8-12 – Wow:

therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, even I, am against you. And I will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations. And because of all your abominations I will do with you what I have never yet done, and the like of which I will never do again. Therefore fathers shall eat their sons in your midst, and sons shall eat their fathers. And I will execute judgments on you, and any of you who survive I will scatter to all the winds. Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord God, surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will withdraw. My eye will not spare, and I will have no pity. A third part of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed with famine in your midst; a third part shall fall by the sword all around you; and a third part I will scatter to all the winds and will unsheathe the sword after them.

This is serious stuff. God against them, cannibalism, God withdrawing, having no pity. It is tempting to read into passages like Ezekiel, as I mentioned yesterday, judgement and punishment on people today. But notice he says that he will never do this kind of thing again. Not only in the NT, but ever again. That does not exclude all Earthly judgements, but the wrath of God against an entire nation, bringing death and destruction is not going to happen again.
This rings to mind Noah and the flood. God promised no more floods and destruction of the Earth. Now, as He judges a nation, he promises no more judgements like it. I’m not sure it means anything, but there seems to be at least a parallel.
Ezekiel 5:13 – This is not the God we like to think about. We like to think of a fair God, logical, unemotional, stead fast. We are emotional creatures and created in His image, why shouldn’t God be emotional too? In this verse God says He will “vent [His] fury and satisfy [Himself]” and that he has “spoken in [His] jealousy“. Emotional. Passionate.
Ezekiel 5:15 – More – “in anger and fury, and with furious rebukes”
All in all a scary chapter that tells me that God is serious about obedience to his rules & ways. This is who God was, why then is it so hard to fathom a God who would send people to Hell? He is God and He demands obedience.

Ezekiel 4:4-8 – I wonder if he literally laid on his side, constantly, for 430 days. That’s 14 months. Even if e di, he had to get up to eat (but not much, see next point) and go to the bathroom. Regardless, putting the extent of the punishment of Israel and Judah into these terms, and having him live it would give him an appreciation of how serious it was to God. Those days would be years for them. Not only so, I expect it would give him some sympathy for their plight.
Ezekiel 4:10-11 – 8 oz – 1/2 of a pound of bread a day (baked on human cow dung!) and 2/3 of a quart of water a day.
Ezekiel 4:16-17 – Jerusalem would not fare better:

Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, behold, I will break the supply [7] of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay.

Ezekiel 4:16

Imagine eating “by weight and with anxiety“. And this was not, as we might like to think of God, for a grand, deep purpose. It was punishment, pure and simple. I believe that God’s heart is ultimately to teach and to care for them, that they would return to Him and that they would be better off, but here there’s no mention of that here:

I will do this that they may lack bread and water, and look at one another in dismay, and rot away because of their punishment.

Ezekiel 4:17

I think I dismiss to easily that God would punish today. I see people receive indirect punishment in the consequences of their actions – a baby born to a teenage girl, jail time for the thief, etc – but I tend to dismiss outright the idea that God would send hardships or pain simple for punishment. Certainly, it’s dangerous to pull one or two verses out of an OT book and say “See, Gos punishes us.” or even worse, “See, God punishes and He is punishing you now.”
I tend to want to see God as watching more than acting. He’s set up the world to provide punishment for us when we stray. But that’s certainly not the God of the OT, but it’s not the God of the NT either who struck down Ananias and Sapphira for their lies. We cannot point to our trouble and pin it on God as punishment necessarily (doing so is frequently a cop out), but neither can we dismiss the idea, saying God isn’t like that anymore.