12/14/2025 – Week 7 of 13 – Ezekiel study (Nov 1st thru Jan. 24th) – Chapters 22 – 24 / Post 1 of 2// Nov 1st thru Jan 24th / For introduction – See 10/14/2025 post
Three sources for my quoted commentary excerpts, so far in our Ezekiel study:
(*A) – Apologetics Study Bible
(*B) – My personal standby for this study: “Be Reverent – Bowing Before Our Awesome God – OT Commentary Ezekiel” Warren W. Wiersbe / ISBN 978-1-4347-0050-6
(*C) – The Daily Study Guide Series (DSB) – “Ezekiel” by Peter C. Craigie / ISBM 0-664-21807-5
Chapter 22:
*(A)
“22: 23 – 31 – These sins chronicle the total social disintegration of Judah in which all leaders had a share including princes (vv. 6,25), priests (v. 26), government officials (v. 27), false prophets (v. 28), and the people (v. 29). In the midst of this decadence the search for one righteous person to make a difference proved fruitless (see Genesis 18:16-33).”
*(B)
THE END OF THE CITY (22: 1-31)
“David took the stronghold of Zion”. (2 Samuel 5:7) and made Jerusalem his capital. Not only was the royal throne there but also the holy altar, for it was in Zion that God put His sanctuary. “For the LORD has chosen Zion; He had desired it for His habitation” (Psalm 132:13 NKJV). The Jews were proud of Mount Zion (Psalm 48) and claimed that the Lord loved Zion more than any other place (Psalm 87). But now the city of Jerusalem and the temple would be invaded by “unclean Gentiles” who were brought there by the Lord!…”
“A doomed people (vv. 13-22)... His first act of judgment would be dispersion (22: 13-16); the people would be exiled to Babylon and others scattered to the surrounding nations (vv. 15-16),some of which had already occurred… The people should have known this judgment was coming, because in His covenant, God had promised this kind of judgment (Leviticus 26: 27-39; Deuteronomy 28: 64-46)…
The second judgment would be fire (Ezekiel 22: 17-22), the destruction of their beloved city and the temple. .. The image of the furnace is a familiar one in Scripture. Israel’s suffering in Egypt was a furnace experience that helped to form the nation and prepare them for the exodus (Deuteronomy 4:20; 1 Kings 8:51; Jeremiah 11:4). But now, God’s furnace was Jerusalem and the fire would be divine judgment for the sins of the people (Isaiah 1: 21-26; 31:9; Jeremiah 6: 27-30)…
A disappointing people (vv. 30-31). God searched among His people for one person in authority who would stand in the gap so that the enemy wouldn’t penetrate the wall and invade the city, but found none. Of course, the prophet Jeremiah was in Jerusalem, but he was a man with no authority who was rejected by the politicians, priests, and false prophets. Jeremiah himself had scoured the city, looking for a godly man (Jeremiah 5: 1-6), but his quest was a failure. The prophet Isaiah failed in a similar search (Isaiah 51:18; 59:16). The Lord promised to spare to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if he found ten righteous men in the city (Genesis 18: 23-33), and He would have spared Jerusalem for one righteous man.
The Lord is still seeming men and women who will take their stand for the moral law of God, stand in the gap in the wall, and confront the enemy with God’s help. As you read history, you meet godly men and women who had the courage to resist the popular evils of their day and dare to expose the breaks in the wall and seek to mend them. The Lord is looking for intercessors (Isaiah 59: 1-4, 16) who will cry out in the God for mercy and for a return to holiness. Surely the Lord must be disappointed that His people have time for everything except intercessory prayer.”
Chapter 23:
THE END OF THE KINGDOM (23: 1-49)
(*A)
“23: 1-14. The parable of the two sisters, Israel and Judah, is comparable to the parable of Chapter 16. While that passage was about the seduction of Canaanite religion, this stressed the political alliances that eluded God from their national life. Oholah (Hb “my tent”) represented Israel and Oholibah (Hb “may tent is in her”) represented Judah (see Jeremiah 3: 6-12). Ezekiel 23: 22-35 contain four messages of judgment directed at Judah, and verses 36-42 make up a list of crimes similar to the list in 22: 1-12 and 18:5-9, 10-13.”
(*B)
“… With that background, we can now examine the parable and see how it applied to the Jews in Ezekiel’s day as well as to God’s people in our day. The main message the Lord wanted Ezekiel to get across to the Jewish people was that He was perfectly just in punishing the kingdom of Judah because of the way they had behaved toward Him. The Lord made three declarations: Judah arrogantly ignored God’s warning when he judged Samaraia (23: 5-13); Judah then went beyond the sins of the Samaritans committed (vv. 14-21); therefore, the Lord had every right to judge Judah (vv. 22-35)
The people of Judah will suffer the wrath of God (vv. 22-35)
“… What were their sins? Idolatry, injustice, unbelief (depending on the heathen nations for help), followed by blatant hypocrisy. They worshipped idols and killed innocent people, and then marched piously into the temple to worship Jehovah! They prostituted themselves to heathen nations when, if they had trusted the Lord, He would have taken care of them and delivered them. In their idolatry, they even sacrificed their own children, sons and daughters who really belonged to God (“whom they bore to me”).”
Chapter 24:
(*A)
“24: 1-14 The parable of the boiling pot is a poetic story that expands on 11:3. In that passage and here, Jerusalem was the pot, the people were the meat, and Babylon was the fire.
THE END OF A MARRIAGE (24: 15-27)
“24: 15-27. Interpreters question what a compassionate God would take the life of Ezekiel’s wife as an illustration of coming judgment, but there is no reason to assume that was what the Lord did. In providing advance knowledge of her death to Ezekiel (vv. 15-17). He was preparing him to respond to his loss in a way that would make the deepest impression on the prophet’s community. In the ancient Near East, mourning was a public rite in which a family often hired professional mourners to bewail the loss of their loved one. Ezekiel’s unorthodox conduct in the face of his wife’s death – he was instructed not to mourn in public — aroused the people’s curiosity, giving the prophet an opening to declare the word of the Lord. When judgement arrived, there would be no opportunity to conduct the usual ceremonies of mourning for lost loved ones or for the demise of the nation. This passage brings to a conclusion the record of Ezekiel’s ministry as the prophet to come upon Judah and Jerusalem.”
(*B)
“… But Ezekiel commanded the Jewish exiles to mourn over the loss of the temple just as he had mourned over the loss of his wife, without loud wailing, copious weeping, or any change in their dress or eating habits. The death of the prophet’s dear wife was an act of God, and so was the destruction of the temple. The woman who had died was innocent of any gross sin, but the temple had become a den of thieves. God gave Ezekiel only one day’s notice that he would become a widower, but He had been speaking to sinful Judah for many years and they had not listened. The destruction of the temple and the city should not be a surprise to anybody.
But how did the people know that the prophet was telling the truth? They didn’t have instant news service as we have today, so perhaps the whole thing was only Ezekiel’s way of dealing with his wife’s death. But said that a messenger would arrive in Babylon with the news of the fall of the city and the destruction of the temple, and this occurred five months later, on January 8, 585 BC (33: 21-22).
The next day, God opened the prophet’s mouth and removed the discipline He had imposted at the beginning of his ministry (3 25-27). From this point on, the prophet was free to speak as he felt led, an d at the same time, the focus of his ministry shifted. He had exposed the nations’sins and announced her judgment. Now he would announce God’s plans for the Gentile nations, including victorious Babylon, and then he would minister hope to the Jewish exiles and share with them visions of the kingdom yet to come.
Ezekiel has been a faithful servant of God, even to the point of sacrificing his beloved wife so he could declare the word of God. What an example of dedication?”
______________________________________________________
This coming week, we study “God Judges the Nations” (Ezekiel 25 – 28)
Always connected through prayer and by His grace!