In the eleventh month of the twelfth year, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me … - Ezekiel 26:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 22, 2017): Ezekiel 26

Today is May 22, 2017. Not many in the Western World would question what that means. Commonly when we give a date we omit the last part of the official nomenclature. When I was young, the final part of the date was summed up by the letters A.D. which stands for anno Domini, or more fully “anno Domini nostri Iesu (or Jesu) Christi,” a medieval Latin phrase that means “in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the West, all of history has been dated from the time of Christ, the events after Christ traditionally symbolized by A.D. (anno Domini) and earlier events symbolized by the letters B.C. (or before Christ). Now, we have changed that nomenclature. Recognizing that we live in a multicultural society, we have erased the idea of the “year of our Lord” in our dating of events with the phrase the “common era” symbolized by the letters C.E. (In Christian circles, often the letters C.E. are interpreted to mean the “Christian Era.”) But the reality is that no matter what letters we might use to describe the date, in our culture time has been counted from the time of the life of Jesus Christ.

Time has always been counted from some significant event, often it is defined as the years that have passed since the current sovereign began his or her reign. Ezekiel gives us a date in a very modern way. The date does not contain the second part, the A.D. or C.E. of time counting. He actually gave us that in the first chapter of his prophecy. Ezekiel is counting time from the second exile and the “year of the exile of King Jehoiachin” (Ezekiel 1:2). This was the moment when everything, in the mind of Ezekiel, really started to go wrong. In modern terms, this was 597 B.C.E (before the Common or Christian era and the modern way of counting time) which dates these events to 585 B.C.E or shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple and final exile.

In this case, Ezekiel is dating a prophecy against the city of Tyre for their behavior during the destruction of the city. By dating this prophecy, Ezekiel intends to remind his readers that this prophecy is uttered soon after the destruction of the city and the taunts of Tyre. For Ezekiel, this is not ancient history, this has just happened, and the events are fresh in his mind and the hurt is fresh as the prophet struggles emotionally with the events of the past year of his life.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 27