Chapter 11
The vision still goes on? Ezekiel taken to the east gate of the Temple. There, the 25 men stand. There were also 25, or "about" 25, in 8:16, in the inner court, (2022 - between the porch and the altar). The sun worshipers. The 25 in this chapter are (2022 - at the entrance of the East Gate, so I would say just outside the inner court, on the east side. This is not "about" 25, it is 25 exactly.) the ones who "devise iniquity and who give wicked counsel. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy against them. (2022 - This previous interpretation is all wrong - Ezekiel tells them that their belief that they are meat in the cauldron, and they will die in Jerusalem is all wrong. They will be judged at the border of Israel, taken into captivity, and in this way they will know that it is the Lord doing all this.)
2022 - These 25 men think they are the meat in the pot that is Jerusalem. They are the nourishment, the sustainment, the best and most conspicuous delicacy in the soup that is Jerusalem. They are "all that". But Ezekiel says that is wrong. The most conspicuous thing about Jerusalem is the heaped up dead in it, killed, murdered, ignored and disdained by the whole city. The cauldron of Jerusalem is filled with the dead bodies of the wrongfully slain. In God's eyes, they are not the meat, they don't even belong in the pot. Rather than seasoning the pot they will be discarded at the border of Israel, and no part at all of what is in the cauldron. They are going to be brought right down to the ground.
2024 - Here again is the number 25. Are these the same 25 we saw before, or a different 25 from the sun worshipers?
It is because:
12 and you shall know that I am the LORD. For you have not walked in my statutes, nor obeyed my rules, but have acted according to the rules of the nations that are around you." [Eze 11:12 ESV]
Pelatiah, the son of Benaiah, falls dead at the end of this prophecy.
2024 - This one: 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.' [Eze 11:17 ESV]. We always see this. God is angry enough to expel his people twice, and yet even in the middle of his wrath, when he will not hear their prayers, when he will not turn his face to them, he promises that his anger will end, and he will bring them home. He will keep the promises he made all the way back to Abraham.
God tells Ezekiel, who feared that all Israel was about to be wiped out when Pelatiah fell dead, that He is preserving some, though they are scattered, that they will return, and clean up the Temple, and possess the land. Near/far surely. This vs:
19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, [Eze 11:19 ESV]
This almost has to be more about the pre-millennial return. We use these vss:19, 20 to speak of the renewing of the Holy Spirit, His Spirit testifying with ours to know right and wrong, to understand Him beyond our own ability. This is about supernatural in-dwelling. With the church first, and at the end, when the Jews come home.
2024 - I didn't realize that this promise of the New Covenant was also found in Ezekiel. Had he read Jeremiah, or are these the same promise independently shown by God to two of his prophets? Here are a couple verses from Jeremiah:
19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, [Eze 11:19 ESV]
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. [Eze 36:26 ESV]
Interesting...them, and you...Might be a good idea to go back and compare the context of these two verses.
2022 - I see these verses now as about the Millennial itself. This is a prophecy of the 1000 year reign.
Ezekiel sees God ascend, and then he is "transported" to the exiles in Chaldea, and he tells them all what he has seen in the vision.
I'm thinking Ezekiel's book is like a lynch pin, that holds together the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, the very similar conquest in 70 AD, and the ultimate restoration in the millennial of the Revelation. This book is the Rosetta Stone that ties them together. Needs hard, in-depth study to show this!!!
2023 - These verses:
24 And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God into Chaldea, to the exiles. Then the vision that I had seen went up from me. 25 And I told the exiles all the things that the LORD had shown me. [Eze 11:24-25 ESV]. So all that we have seen - all that we have heard - all that Ezekiel has prophesied - was done in a vision. The vision started in Chapter 8 and runs through the end of 11. This is all vision, so that Ezekiel knows what is really going on in Jerusalem. It is as if God is presenting a case for judgment as to whether or not what is coming is justified. We know that God needs no justification, so maybe it is the "proof", so that man - this time - understands why God's wrath is coming. God had Noah preach for 120 years before the world was destroyed that time. Now Jeremiah and Ezekiel have preached and preached - really it started all the way back with Isaiah - maybe 120 years before? - with warning after warning before the wrath is unleashed. Wouldn't it be interesting if the last one, the tribulation, has about 120 years of prophetic warning, mostly doubted and ridiculed, leading up to the opening of the first seal. Or will the seals take 120 years leading up to the sixth seal, the rapture, the "breaking" of the world, and the sealing of the 144,000.
To see it that way might also require 120 years leading up to AD 70 though. But there were no prophets in 50 BC. None until John. If you start with John in say 30 AD to keep the numbers round, that would put us to 150 AD...Or is that time all suspended during the church age? If not...what happened in AD 150? Found this:
132 AD Bar Kochba Revolt- The Jews of Jerusalem rose up in rebellion in 132 after the Romans built a temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple. The revolt was led by Simon Bar Kochba and Rabbi Eleazar and achieved some successes early on. The Romans were forced out of Jerusalem and most of Judea. Three years later, Roman armies under the command of Julius Severus retake Jerusalem and sack it. Bar Kochba is killed at the village of Bethel. Under the orders of Roman Emperor Hadrian, Jerusalem is completely leveled and Jews are forbidden to live there.
This was a pretty big deal. As I recall, Jews were prohibited from even getting close enough to the site of Jerusalem that they could see it. Also found this:
Aelia Capitolina, city founded in ad 135 by the Romans on the ruins of Jerusalem, which their forces, under Titus, had destroyed in AD 70. The name was given, after the Second Jewish Revolt (132–135), in honour of the emperor Hadrian (whose nomen, or clan name, was Aelius) as well as the deities of the Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva). A sanctuary to Jupiter was built on the Temple Mount, and statues of Roman deities were erected in the city, in intentional violation of Old Testament law. The area was walled and a large foreign population imported; Jews were generally forbidden entrance to the city. The present walls of the Old City of Jerusalem follow the layout of the Roman walls. The name was used until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century.
So there was a lot going on leading up to 150, and 150 is a +/- year anyway as we look at this. But there is a decent case that there were 120 years of warning before the final leveling of Jerusalem. And let's not forget that Simon was called a prophet...wasn't he? And the woman in the temple, was she a prophetess? Hmm...