Ezekiel

Ezekiel is one of the most visually striking and theologically rich books in the Old Testament. Ezekiel himself is a priest who was taken into exile in Babylon with the first wave of deportees in 597 BC, before the final destruction of Jerusalem. He is called to be a prophet to the exiles — people who have lost their land, their city and their Temple, and who are struggling to understand what it means that this has happened to the people of God.

The book opens with an overwhelming vision of the glory of God: a storm cloud, fire, four living creatures and wheels within wheels, culminating in the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God. It is a vision that insists God is not limited to Jerusalem or to any particular place. He is present with the exiles in Babylon. This is both a comfort and a warning.

The early chapters contain some of the most sober prophetic announcements in Scripture. God's glory departs from the Temple step by step as a sign that judgement is coming. Ezekiel is told to perform dramatic symbolic actions: lying on his side for days, cooking over dung, shaving his head. These acted prophecies communicate to a people who may not have been willing to hear mere words.

But the book also contains extraordinary promises of restoration. The valley of dry bones in chapter 37 is one of the most powerful images of resurrection and renewal in all of Scripture. God will breathe new life into His dead people. He will give them a new heart and a new spirit. He will put His Spirit within them. The book ends with a vision of a new Temple, a river that brings life wherever it flows and a renewed land where God dwells with His people. The final words of the book give the city its new name: God Is There.

Ezekiel was a priest and a prophet who ministered among the exiles in Babylon from approximately 593 to 571 BC. His prophecies are among the most precisely dated in the Old Testament, with many oracles given a specific year, month and day. He was taken to Babylon as part of the first deportation under King Jehoiachin, before the city and Temple were finally destroyed in 586 BC.

Ezekiel received his call in a remarkable inaugural vision beside the Chebar canal in Babylonia. His ministry spanned more than twenty years, beginning before the fall of Jerusalem and continuing well into the period of exile. The book is widely regarded as a literary and theological unity, the work of this one remarkable priest-prophet who brought both his priestly concern for holiness and his prophetic urgency to the community of exiles.

The vision of the glory of God that opens Ezekiel finds its ultimate fulfilment in the incarnation. John 1:14 says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. What Ezekiel saw by the Chebar canal — an overwhelming, mobile, living glory — is the same glory that took on human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.

Ezekiel's prophecy of a new heart and a new spirit in chapter 36 is a direct anticipation of the new birth Jesus announces to Nicodemus in John 3. God promises to remove the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh, to put His Spirit within His people so that they walk in His ways. This is precisely what Jesus accomplishes through His death and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Ezekiel 34 contains a striking indictment of the false shepherds of Israel and a promise that God Himself will come as the true shepherd to seek the lost, bind up the injured and strengthen the weak. Jesus explicitly takes up this language in John 10 when He calls Himself the good shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. The shepherd of Ezekiel 34 is the same shepherd who goes after the lost sheep in Luke 15 and who lays down His life on the cross.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit in you and move you to follow My decrees." — Ezekiel 36:26–27

"So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet — a vast army." — Ezekiel 37:10

"The name of the city from that time on will be: God Is There." — Ezekiel 48:35

The glory of God and the holiness of God are the twin pillars of Ezekiel. God departs from a Temple and a people that have become corrupt and complacent, but He does not abandon His covenant purposes. His glory will return. His people will be renewed from the inside out. His Spirit will do what the law alone could never accomplish.

Throughout the book God repeatedly states that He acts for the sake of His holy name, so that the nations will know that He is God. This is not indifference to His people but a passionate commitment to His own character and covenant that will ultimately result in their full restoration and His permanent dwelling among them.

Ezekiel speaks powerfully into seasons of loss, exile and the apparent absence of God. The exiles in Babylon faced a crisis not just of geography but of theology: if God's presence was tied to the Temple in Jerusalem, what did its destruction mean? Ezekiel's answer is that the glory of God is not confined to any building or location. God goes with His people. He is present in the strange land.

The promise of a new heart in Ezekiel 36 is one of the most personally relevant passages in the Old Testament. Every believer who has experienced the Holy Spirit changing desires, softening what was hard and bringing life to what was dead is living in the fulfilment of this promise. It is not a peripheral text but a description of the new covenant reality that every Christian inhabits.

The valley of dry bones in chapter 37 has given hope to communities and individuals in the most spiritually dry and discouraging circumstances. If God can breathe life into bones, He can restore what appears beyond recovery. Ezekiel's vision is not merely history. It is a statement about the kind of God who is at work in the world and in human hearts.