Today’s Scripture Reading (April 27,
2014): Ezekiel 4
The more I
deal with broken relationships between people, the more I wonder that we have
any relationships at all. I mean, we assume – maybe I should say that I assume –
that we mean what it is that we say. We want to assume that words, in whatever
medium we might find them, mean something. And often in broken relationships,
words have been spoken don’t carry the meaning that we think that they should.
Maybe the classic example is that when a woman says to a man that the relationship
is over, what she often means is that she wants her partner to fight for the relationship.
But too often the guy quits, thinking that that is the action that is required.
The truth is that words carry a message, but often the message is veiled and
hard to understand. The clearest statement about what we feel is spoken through
what it is that we do.
Ezekiel
seems to be the master of speaking though his actions. And this passage is no
exception. Ezekiel does not speak a message with words, just with his actions.
Unfortunately, separated as much as we are by time, we often miss the message.
Ezekiel starts his message by lying on his left side for 390 days. For the
ancient peoples, they would often orient themselves so that they face the rising
sun or the east. Therefore the left would be the north. So spends 390 days on
his left side would indicate time spent for the Northern tribe of Israel. The
390 days is also significant. Forty is the Hebrew number or symbol for
punishment. Israel spent forty years in their desert wanderings because of
their lack of trust and obedience in God. Lashings or beatings were often
administered with the instruction that the one being punished was to receive
forty stripes less one – or thirty-nine. Since Ezekiel is laying on his left
side for Israel, the math is pretty simple. It is thirty-nine times the ten
tribes of Israel. And it is an illustration that repeats something that has
been spoken of a few times by the prophets – the northern ten tribes of Israel may
be missing, but they are not forgotten, nor was God through with them. The
Northern tribes would still have a role to play in the future that God was
setting up.
Ezekiel lies
on his right side for forty days. Following the same imagery as we did for the
Northern tribes, we find the meaning of the action pertaining to the punishment
of Southern Kingdom which had become dominated by one tribe – Judah. The
southern kingdom even retained the name of that one tribe. But it is
interesting that Judah was not to suffer the normal forty minus one – they were
to suffer the full forty. The reason might be simply that their punishment was
fully upon them. The destruction of the city of Jerusalem and of the Temple
would have been felt by Judah as being the full punishment of God. This time,
it would seem, God was holding nothing back.
But often
this seems to be where our analysis stops. Maybe the most significant aspect of
the story is often left unmentioned - that it is Ezekiel that bears the
punishment for both the northern Kingdom of Israel and their southern counterparts
in Judah. And in this he becomes a type of Christ – and the image that he
portrays becomes a forerunner of the sacrifice that Jesus will make on behalf of
all of the people of the world. And Jesus would once again bear the full
punishment for our sins – he would give his very life.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel
5
No comments:
Post a Comment