Today's Scripture Reading (April 29, 2020): Ezekiel 4
I was, and to
some extent, still am, the king of imagination. As a child, I loved building
roads in my bedroom, or in the dirt and gravel that existed in front of my
house, by the street that passed by the place where I lived. In the process, I constructed
my own little town that only existed in my imagination. And then I loved to
live in that town, driving my toy cars around the town, creating even more
roads expanding what had already been built, and sometimes repairing the ones
that already existed. In my bedroom, these roads would often be constructed out
of scrap paper carefully taped together. I also loved to build models, again,
usually, cars (I lived in a car-centric environment). And once I retire, I hope
to get back at my model building days, albeit possibly using different
materials.
God tells Ezekiel
to build a model of the city of Jerusalem. The clay he used was a soft clay
block that had been baked in an oven to make it more durable. Such clay blocks
were often used for writing purposes. Ezekiel was instructed to draw the City of
Jerusalem on the surface of the clay. It is easy to imagine Ezekiel, now living
in Babylon, sketching out the city as he remembers it. Curious onlookers would
gather to watch what the prophet was drawing on his clay block, maybe pointing
out places of interest that they though the prophet should add to his drawing.
Ezekiel would have likely drawn the walls to the city first. He probably followed
the sketch of the walls by placing the Temple in the appropriate position
inside the walls, followed by other essential and official government buildings.
Then he would put in the other buildings, as he remembered them, laying out the
streets of the city.
But when his plan
of Jerusalem was done, Ezekiel still wasn't finished. God told him to lay siege
to the city. While Ezekiel relied on his memory for the construction of his
plan of the city, sketched out on the clay block, now he needed to use his
imagination. Ezekiel had never seen the city under siege in the way that the
city would come under assault in just a short time. He had heard stories of
what had happened when the Assyrians had laid siege to the city, now more than a
century in the past. Ezekiel likely imagined that event and built his model
according to the way he imagined that the Assyrian siege might have taken place.
And so, his model began to take on a three-dimensional element.
The resulting model
was now a powerful image of something that had not yet happened. It likely horrified
anyone who bothered to come and take a look. It was a glance into the not-to-distant
future. The time was coming when the Babylonians would not be content with just
carrying away the best and the brightest into exile in Babylon. The time would
come when the rebellion of the people would necessitate the Babylonians to lay siege
to the city, and in the process, they would tear down everything that Ezekiel
had drawn on his clay tablet.
The truth that
God wanted Ezekiel's audience to understand was that the real city was no more
permanent than the clay tablet the Ezekiel had held in his hands. And soon,
both would be smashed into pieces, and what Ezekiel had drawn would never exist
in that form ever again.
Tomorrow's
Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 5
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