Ezekiel - Lesson 17

The signatory formula at the end of verse 11 signaled the end of Ezekiel's debate with counterfeit prophecy and opened the door to a new subject, the inevitability and totality of Yahweh's judgment of Jerusalem. Back to the real issue at hand. Ezekiel 14, 12-23, 49 offers a collection of oracles that vary greatly in both content and style. However, we do observe a logic in their arrangement. In the first section, 14, 12-15, 8, this functions as a thesis-type introduction into parts, explaining the basis and the justice of Yahweh's determination to judge his people. Although the chapter division should probably have come after the last oracle against fake prophets in 14, 11, Ezekiel 14, 12-23 and 15, 1-8 appear to be two separate oracles, each with its own formulaic framework, opening with the word event formula and closing with the signatory formula, the declaration of the Lord Yahweh. However, while these units may have been delivered on separate occasions, they deal with a common topic, the certainty of Yahweh's judgment of Jerusalem. In their present arrangement, it looks like 14, 12-23 offers a theoretical lecture on the nature of divine judgment, while 15, 1-8 takes a common, everyday object, a useless vine branch, and adapts the illustration to serve the theme of Jerusalem's total destruction and answers the question of the fate of those who, surprisingly, survive the catastrophe. Ezekiel 14, 12-13 divides into two uneven parts, dealing respectively with the theoretical basis of divine judgment in four panels, verses 12-20, and the application of divine judgment in verses 21-23. In verses 12-20, we have what I call the four strikes of Yahweh's hand. Bang, bang, bang, bang. The theoretical basis for divine judgment is the issue in each of these panels. Like the previous oracle, 14, 1-11, this section is cast in a quasi-legal style, reminiscent of the priestly legislation in Leviticus. This shouldn't surprise us, because Ezekiel was a prophet. His primary status was that of a priest to the exiled community, whom he served as their prophetic priest. Although the signatory formula, the declaration of the Lord Yahweh, appears in different locations within the panels, it punctuates all four, highlighting this text as divine speech and adds some solemnity to the tone. Ezekiel is not talking from his own mind. The threefold repetition of the oath formula, by my life, immediately before the signatory formula in verses 16 and 18 and 20 reinforces the gravitas of this prophecy. Once again, the language is heavily dependent on the covenant curses, especially Leviticus 26. Yahweh formulated verses 12-20 to develop the thesis of theodicy, announced at the end in verse 23, declaring that Yahweh's judgment of Jerusalem was neither capricious nor arbitrary. On the contrary, it was more than deserved, and it would be administered in precise fulfillment of the principles announced and the warnings issued long ago. You should know this, Ezekiel in effect tells his audience. Our text lacks a date notice. Compare this with 8-1 and 21 later, and we may only speculate when Ezekiel might have declared this message. As in chapter 18, he appears to have delivered it in response to objections the people were raising about the principles of divine retribution he espoused. It seems the comprehensiveness of the judgment upon Israel that he predicted had cast doubts on God's justice. Surely, not every single person who remained in Judah after the 597 B.C. deportation was as wicked as the prophet had made them out to be. Surely, some righteous individuals remained on whose behalf or through whose influence the children of the present exiles, note the emphasis on the sons and daughters, surely they would be spared. But the prophet didn't flinch. In fact, he became more specific in his vindication of God by demonstrating that God would not break. In fact, he became more specific in his vindication of God by demonstrating that God would not break but confirm and serve the absolute principles of justice when he poured out his wrath on his people. As is common in this book, this prophecy opens abruptly with the word-event formula but without the usual citation formula, thus has the Lord Yahweh declared, or the command even to Ezekiel to prophesy. Instead, Yahweh launches immediately into what looks like an expository lecture intended for the prophet's own consumption and benefit. He opened by proposing a hypothetical scenario that illustrates fundamental principles driving the divine administration of justice. Son of man, if a land, as for a land, if it sins against me by acting treacherously, On first sight, the opening is strange. Yahweh treats the land as a living, active, and sentient agent. We could interpret this in one of two ways. First, within the tripartite covenant relationship involving Yahweh, the people of Israel, and the land, each member was an active participant. Yahweh served as the divine patron of this relationship. The people served Yahweh and the land by pursuing covenant righteousness, which included taking care of the land as the Lord's tenants, and the land responded by yielding its produce for the good of the population and to declare to the world the glory of God. In this case, for the land to sin and commit treachery against Yahweh would mean to refuse to yield its produce, even though the people were taking good care of it and Yahweh was sending the rain. The verb chattah, to sin, denotes fundamentally to miss a target. This is illustrated in Judges 2016, which notes that in Israel's civil war against the Benjaminites, that tribe was able to send into battle 700 select troops, all of whom were left-handed, each of whom could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. And the word here is chattah, sin. The word means to miss the target, Judges 2016. Before we move south of the 49th parallel in 1983, I had a colleague whose brother was a professional archer. One day he was demonstrating his skills in a gymnasium in Nova Scotia before television cameras were broadcast across Canada by the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Another brother stood at one end of the gymnasium with his arm outstretched and an apple in his hand. While the filming went precisely as planned, to the amazement of the crew, the archer never sinned, not even once as they were filming it. He hit the apple every time. Well, as the crew was packing up, someone asked if he might do this one more time so he could watch closely and not worry about the equipment and the recording. So his brother took his place again, just as he had done a half dozen times. The archer aimed and let the arrow fly, and ouch! This time he sinned badly, striking his brother in the wrist. This was the everyday sense of chattah. But in the book of Ezekiel, this word always carries the common theological sense of failing to measure up to the norm, the target of God's covenantal standards. We see this in 321. In this case, Yahweh charged that the land was sinning against him, the patron deity of Israel, and that Israel, of course, they were there doing the same. The second verbal phrase, by acting treacherously, clarifies the sin. To commit treachery signifies fundamentally perfidy, infidelity, violation of a confident relationship. In Numbers 5, 12, and 27, this word refers to the actions of a woman who has been unfaithful to her husband. Although it is used of betrayal in other human relationships as well, usually in the first testament, it involves Israelite infidelity to Yahweh. This is especially the case where to commit treachery occurs repeatedly, as in chapter 15, verse 8, 17, 20, and additional occurrences. This form of expression with a verb and the object being formed from the same root, to treat treachery, if there's such a thing in English, I don't think there is, but that's how the Hebrew works. This is very common in Hebrew. English equivalents would be to do deeds, to act acts, to cheat cheats, to sin sins. Numbers 5, 6 describes any of the sins of humankind as treachery against Yahweh, presumably assuming that what one does to a fellow human being, one does to God in whose image the person is made. That's treachery. Well, if in this case the land was the one sinning, Yahweh would perceive it as the active agent. However, it is clear from what follows that in this case Yahweh used the land figuratively for the people who live in the land. This is clearer if we translate the words Eretz as country, which is quite legitimate. We often speak this way. We say that Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula and claimed the eastern provinces of the Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk as if Russia is a person. Of course, we mean Vladimir Putin and the Russian army did this. Russia didn't do it. It's the people. Well, in the last words we hear from Moses' mouth at the end of his benediction of the 12 tribes that he had led for 40 years, he celebrated the special relationship that existed between Yahweh and Israel with this brilliant kota. These are the last words we hear from Moses. There is none like El Ojesherun, that's the Lord's pet name for Israel, who rides the heavens to your aid on the clouds in his majesty. The God of time immemorial is your dwelling place and underneath are the eternal arms. He drives out the enemy before you and shouts, annihilate. So Israel dwells securely. Jacob resides undisturbed in a land of grain and new wine. Even his skies drip with dew. How privileged you are, O Israel. Who is like you, people rescued by Yahweh? He is the shield that aids you and the sword in whom you boast. Your enemies will cringe before you and you will tread on their backs. In this kota, in this picture, all three members of the covenant triangle are performing as planned. By contrast, Yahweh's oracle for Ezekiel envisions an environment in which the triangle has completely disintegrated because of sin and Yahweh was about to toss a grenade into what remained of it. The way Yahweh opened this prophecy, by the way Yahweh opened this prophecy, it could have applied to any country. The references to internationally recognized paragons of virtue in the following verses reinforce this impression. If a land, what land, any land, however, any member of the audience, Ezekiel's audience, who was awake would have recognized that the case was not at all hypothetical from the way he described the offense. And for the explicit reference to sin against Yahweh, who is the God only of Israel, as well as the use of the verb to commit treachery, which involves a violation of a tight and right relationship. So far in this oracle, Yahweh has not specified how Israel had violated her covenant relationship with Yahweh. However, his exilic audience would have been quite familiar with Ezekiel's previous messages, which described their crimes in considerable detail and variety. Yahweh announced his reaction to the infidelity of that land first with a general statement, I will stretch out my hand against her, verse 13. This is an idiom that does not occur outside Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Ezekiel had touched on the devastating effects of Yahweh's outstretched hand in two earlier texts, in 614, where he dealt with its effects on the nation, and 149, where it concerned the effects on an individual. Here we see an example of resumptive exposition, which will be common as we proceed. Ezekiel picks up a subject he had mentioned in passing earlier. He picks it up by citing four different scenarios, each one involving a different agent of judgment. In panel one, it opens with a longer introduction. Human, if a land were to sin against me by acting treacherously, then in panel one, and if I were to stretch out my hand against it and broke it, this happens four times in panel one, two, three, and four, but each time there's a different agent. I stretch out my hand against it, and I released animals against it, and I released a sword against it, and I sent a plague on that land. Those are the four scenarios, and this would leave the land starving or desolate or the population destroyed, and then he will say, even if there were three men in its midst, Noah, Daniel, and Job, as I live, by their righteousness, they would not live. They would save only their own lives, these righteous persons, the declaration of the Lord, the declaration of the Lord, and the declaration of the Lord. This is a remarkable text, very artistically and intentionally structured, so you've got four panels doing the same thing with a different agent in each one. Since there's little evident progression in the four panels apart from the change of agent, we may examine Ezekiel's rhetoric by comparing and contrasting their respective features under a series of separate but inclusive headings. So let's look first at the agents of divine judgment. The five agents of the divine hand listed here are identical to those we heard in 517. If I send famine, wild beasts, the sword, plague, and bloodshed, though the last two are combined in panel four, but we hear something similar in Jeremiah 15, 2 to 3. Jeremiah and Ezekiel echo each other. Jeremiah 15, thus has Yahweh declared those destined for death to death, those destined for the sword to the sword, those destined for famine to the famine, those destined for captivity to captivity. And I will appoint for them four agents of judgments, declares the Lord, the sword to slay, the dogs to drag off, that represents the wild animals, the birds of the sky, and the beasts of the earth to defour and destroy. Well, in our text, the agents of judgment are God's hand directly, and he breaks the staff of bread, animals, the sword, and the plague. These are the agents of divine judgment. Secondly, let's look at the purpose, results of the divine judgment. The four-strike rhetorical strategy highlights the thoroughness of the impending doom and reinforces its comprehensiveness with the idiom, to cut off human and beast from the land, that is, all living creatures, that appears in panels one, three, and four. But several panels also add their own distinctive elements to the picture. In panel one, we hear the idiom, to break the staff of bread, which we encountered in 4.16 earlier, prior to the explicit reference to famine in verse 13. In panel two, Yahweh envisaged beasts of prey overrunning the land and wiping up the population and leaving the land desolate and dangerous for passers-by. Here, the word shekel means it bereaves the land of children. It terminates one's line by destroying the offspring. This could occur prenatally through abortions, whatever, or it could also include, actually, the removing of children who've already been born. In panel three, Yahweh brings the sword, but this is a metaphor for invading armies, they are God's agents. And then panel four, the plague is the outpouring of Yahweh's fury. Third, notice how they deal with the irrevocability of divine judgment. Yahweh expressed the desired escape from the heavy hand with the root netzal, to be saved, which occurs seven times in verses 14 to 20 and functions as the key word for this passage. Elsewhere, the word often referred to Yahweh's deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage, Exodus 3, 8 and 5, 23 and elsewhere. However, in a tragic and ironical twist, the agent of the earlier rescue, Yahweh, had now become the enemy from whom the Israelites would be desperate for deliverance. That's a brutal twist. But rescue would not come, and no amount of intercession, regardless of the personal qualities of the intercessor, could or would change the mind of God. To concretize the irrevocability of these harsh reality, the prophet named three persons, paragons of virtue, whose presence in Israel would never and could never convince Yahweh to withdraw his hand. Noah, Daniel, and Job. Although each panel refers to the three, they are named only in panels one and four. The first and third are easily identifiable. The second is more problematic. Apart from this text, the name Noah, let's talk about these three folks. The name Noah occurs in the first testament only in Genesis 5-10, Isaiah 54-9, and 1 Chronicles 1-4, both of which are dependent on Genesis. Of course, to these we could add New Testament references. Noah appears more often in the New Testament. Once you get outside the story of Noah in Genesis, his name appears more often in the New Testament than in the first testament. Since Ezekiel ministered in Babylon, he may have been familiar with Noah-like figures in other ancient Near Eastern traditions. And we have the texts, the stories of Ziusudra of Shurupac, an ancient Sumerian account from the third millennium, portrays him as a pious, God-fearing survivor of the deluge. Or Atrachasis, the hero of an old Babylonian deluge account. Although he supposedly received divine revelations and sacrifice to the gods, the text is silent on his personal piety. Or there's Utnapishtim, the principal character of the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, which was largely dependent on Atrachasis. This person, Utnapishtim, achieved immortality for having survived the flood, but again, the text says little about his personal character. And there's Zisuthros, equivalent to Sumerian Ziusudra. This is the hero in a third century B.C. Greek account by a Babylonian priest, Berossus. This man built a large boat because he was headed for the gods to plead for the good of mankind. He disappeared after the flood, but the survivors heard that he had gone to live with the gods because of his piety. Now, these are the Babylonian Mesopotamian versions of this story. Despite those accounts of Noah-like characters, Ezekiel's awareness of the man by the name Noah came from his own Hebrew literary heritage. This is not the Babylonian character. Indeed, the reference to his righteousness, Noah was a righteous man. In verses 14 and 20 summarizes what the narrator of Genesis had said in Genesis 6, 9 to 12. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God, close, intimate communion. In all these respects, he stood out from his generation, which was perversely corrupt and violent, hamas. However, as a man whose personal righteousness brought no benefits to his contemporaries, he served as a perfect example for Yahweh's point. The world wasn't spared because of Noah's presence, but here Yahweh was even more determined to execute his judgment upon a sinful world than he had been prior to the great flood. Had Noah been present at the time of this oracle in Jerusalem as the only righteous person around, not even his children would have survived the fury of God. And we know Job, Yahweh's third paragon of righteousness. We know of this guy only from the biblical book that bears his name. According to the prose prologue, the patriarch of Uz was also renowned for his piety. The narrator shared Yahweh's viewpoint that this man was, quote, blameless, upright, God-fearing, and that he turned aside from wickedness. The poetic heart of the book explores whether or not this piety was genuine, which was the adversary's charge in 1-9. Test him, let's try and test him, and take away all the props from around him and see if his righteousness is maintained or sustained. Arguing from cause to effect, Job's three friends insisted that his suffering was justified divine punishment for sin, because their theology said that if people sin, they suffer. Job is suffering, therefore he must have sinned. But Job maintained his righteousness, climaxing his self-defense with an apologetic recitation of his code of honor, chapter 31, which actually offers a comprehensive exposition of the Israelite definition of righteousness. In the end, Job was vindicated and charged to intercede on behalf of his, shall we say, friendly accusers. These are his friends, but with friends like this, I've always said, who needs enemies? Well, sandwiched between these two names, Noah and Job, neither of whom is an Israelite, they're from outside there, we find Daniel. Now, interpreters have traditionally identified this Daniel with the main human character in the biblical book by the same name, Daniel. However, recently, most scholars have gone in a different direction for several reasons. First, the Hebrew spelling of Ezekiel's Daniel here is not actually Dani-el, it's Dan-el, so the Hebrew differs between the character in the book of Daniel and this one. It must be a different person. Second, Ezekiel's contemporary in Nebuchadnezzar's court was too young to have earned the right to stand alongside these ancient paragons of piety, Noah and Job. They were from long ago. But third, as an Israelite Judahite, Daniel did not belong in the company of the two non-Israelite heroes of long ago. Well, because of these issues, scholars have looked for other candidates who would fit the picture better than the biblical Daniel. Jewish tradition knows of a Dan-el, the grandfather of Methuselah on his mother's side, who fits the chronological frame, Jubilees 420. 1 Enoch 6 identifies another Dan-el as one of the leaders of the angels that cohabited with the daughters of men, Genesis 6 1-4. Obviously, neither fits the context. But closer to home, in Ezekiel 28-3, we'll talk about this guy later. This prophet compares the king of Tyre with an extraordinarily wise Dan-el, again the same spelling as we have here. Look, you, prince of Tyre, are indeed wiser than Dan-el. No secret baffles you. By your wisdom and your understanding, you have gained wealth for yourself, and you have accumulated gold and silver in your treasures. That's from Ezekiel 28-3-4. In the minds of some, this must be some internationally renowned figure known to the Phoenicians who are Canaanites, and it must come from some ancient Canaanite tradition. Amazingly, such a figure has surfaced in one of the 15,000 clay tablets discovered in the ruins of a 12th century B.C. Ugarit ruins site, modern Ras Shamra, on the coast of Syria. The tale of Akkath tells the story of a legendary king Dan-el, characterized as the man of Rapha-u, the valiant Harnamite man. He arose and he sat at the entrance to the gate among the leaders sitting at the threshing floor. He judged the widow's case and made decisions regarding the orphan. Well, this is an interesting text that has surfaced within the last half century. Since this was an ancient non-Israelite but apparently upright man, most critical scholars argue that both Ezekiel's Dan-el and the hero of the legend from the northern Canaan were based on the memory that circulated widely in the Semitic world of an ancient man identified by this name who was renowned for his wisdom and piety. Well, I was initially attracted to this and tempted to go this way, but this interpretation, in the end, is not as convincing as it appears. First, in terms of the form of the name, Dan-ee-el versus Dan-el, this is simply variant spellings of the same name. We find this kind of alternation elsewhere. Furthermore, the fuller form Dan-ee-el, which occurs in the book of Daniel, appears in the 18th century Mari letters. So, both forms occur in ancient texts and in this generation of texts. Second, every person in Ezekiel's audience would have known that even though Noah and Job were not Israelites, the written records have Yahweh, the God of Israel, involved in both men's lives. Yahweh is there and he is named as Yahweh, the God of Israel, Genesis 8, 20 to 21, Job 1, 6 to 12, and 42, 1 to 11. So, Yahweh is relating to them. Third, we know far too little about that Ugaritic Dan-el to insert him into the book of Ezekiel, and what little we know scarcely fits Ezekiel's definition of piety. People may have remembered the hero of the Akkad story as a just ruler, but he was a pagan. He was worshipping a foreign god. He was much more at home with the Canaanites and more like Ezekiel's audience than the people of Yahweh, as this book and the Torah on which it was based demanded. For critical scholars to see the Ugaritic Dan-el as an internationally renowned paragon of virtue and devotion to Yahweh is probably wishful thinking, a convenient way to avoid having to deal with Ezekiel's Dan-el or should we say Daniel's Dan-el. What kind of figure did Ezekiel's Dan-el need to be? The only common denominator of the three men in this triad that he talks about is their righteousness. They were righteous. As we saw earlier in 3, 17 to 21, the righteousness referred to spiritual and moral faithfulness demonstrated in conformity to the divine will, behavior in accordance with an established standard as laid out in Yahweh's covenant with Israel. This was the antithesis to sinning if a land sins. It was the antithesis of acting treacherously against Yahweh, verse 13. The text does not demand that they all be individuals from a common hoary past. Actually, Noah and Job represent different periods of history. The first from the pre-flood era and Job from the period of the patriarchs. But these men were separated between the two of them by a much longer span than Job and Daniel would have been, and certainly than Job and the Ugaritic Daniel. Although most readers assume that what was needed was the intercessory power of these pious men, Yahweh's point here was that Noah and Job were simply two pious men who survived unspeakable disasters because of their righteousness. They were men like the ones for whom Habakkuk held out hope, who in the face of impending judgment, he said, the righteous shall live by their faithfulness. That's those two guys. Ezekiel was not envisioning a man like Abraham interceding on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah. He's not asking, looking for a righteous intercessor. He was looking for a righteous person within these cities whose presence could stay the hand of the judge of all the earth, a person like Abraham had hoped God would find in the cities of the plain, remember? If there are a hundred righteous, will you spare it, or fifty, or thirty, or ten? Not because they are intercessors, but because they are there, and their righteousness would serve as a sort of lightning rod holding off the lightning. The key word tzaddik, righteous man, occurs seven times in Genesis 18, 23 to 28. Based on the evidence of the book of Daniel, few men in the first testament met the internal criterion of righteousness better than Daniel. Having been taken to Babylon as a political hostage on Nebuchadnezzar's first visits, 605 B.C., he wasn't taken in 627 as punishment for the pervasive evil. He was taken on the first visit for other reasons. In 604 or 5 B.C., this young Judean quickly distinguished himself in a foreign court as a man of extraordinary virtue. It's inconceivable that Ezekiel's audience would not have been familiar with him. He was one of our guys in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. Indeed, we may speculate that Daniel was to Nebuchadnezzar what Joseph had been to Pharaoh in patriarchal times. He was Yahweh's advance agent. God knew 597 is on the map, but I need to have somebody in Babylon to represent my people's interests. So Nebuchadnezzar came in 604, and he schlepped him off to Babylon. He was God's advance envoy sent to gain the favor of the king so that he might influence the king when the settlers, when the exiles had come and give them a place to live in a favorable location like Joseph had when his brothers came to Egypt. Daniel's presence in Nebuchadnezzar's court may have affected both the way Jehoiakim, the king, was treated, and the favorable settlement of Ezekiel and his fellow exiles near Nippur by the river Kibar at Tel Aviv. But let's get back to Ezekiel and his message. The prophet hereby affirmed that even if Noah or Job or the exiles' own contemporary model of righteousness were back in Jerusalem, the city would not be spared. They could not count on a human lightning rod to deflect the fury of God's wrath away from them. These righteous individuals would be delivered, to be sure, but no one else, not even their children, would escape with them. By presenting these four hypothetical test cases, the prophet had created a powerful, if hyperbolic, form to communicate that salvation may not be achieved by proxy. Nobody can get it for you. And for those in the audience who might have doubted Yahweh's sincerity in this threat, in each of the last three panels, he strengthened the rhetorical force of the prophecy by adding the oath, by my life, as I live. In effect, may I, God talking, he can only swear by himself. There are no other gods, but by myself, he swears by himself. The declaration, in effect, through this prophet, Yahweh declared, as surely as I live, so surely you shall die. And if it doesn't happen, then I give my life. Not even children may depend upon the righteousness of a virtuous father or mother in their midst. And if sons and daughters are excluded, how much more the extended family, the house of Israel, the principle of individual responsibility for one's fate that Ezekiel will develop in detail in chapter 18, Yahweh would apply with unprecedented rigor. Noah's family had escaped the great deluge with him, but Yahweh offered no such hope here, not even the family. Salvation will be determined by personal righteousness alone, not by family connections, let alone Israelite citizenship. However, even while Yahweh had been talking about individual responsibility, his concern had been corporate. The sins of Israel as a community were so monstrous that the flood of divine fury upon the nation could not be damned up. It had to happen. In verses 21 to 23, we have the application of divine judgment. Now then, thus has the Lord Yahweh declared, how much less would they save even their own sons or daughters if I inflicted upon Jerusalem my four calamitous judgments, sword, famine, wild animals, and plague, cutting off both human and beast. But look, some survivors will be left. Some of their sons and daughters who are being brought out, look at them, coming out to you. But when you see how they behaved and how treacherously they acted, then you will breathe easier over the disaster that I have inflicted upon Jerusalem, that is, over everything that I've brought upon her. And they will let you breathe easier when you see how they have behaved and how treacherously they have acted. Then you will know that it was not without good reason that I have treated her this way, the declaration of the Lord Yahweh. This paragraph grabs hearers' attention with a particle key, which we may translate, indeed, or perhaps, take note, it focuses our attention on the new citation formula, thus has the Lord Yahweh declared. For the first time, we get the sense that Ezekiel was indeed charged to relay this message to his exilic audience. The point of this lecture on divine justice was not just to clarify for the prophet Yahweh's righteousness in judging his people. So far he's been talking to the prophet, but now we learn, tell it to the people. It was intended for his audience. We've now reached the climax of this oracle and the transition from the theoretical phase, the four panels, suppose, suppose, suppose, the transition to the practical application. That's what we have here. Yahweh had reinforced the hypothetical nature of the preceding test cases by refusing to disclose the land he had in mind as particularly treacherous against him. If we thought it might be Judah, now we learn that that answer was correct. Indeed, Jerusalem was a specific target of the Lord's fury. By opening with, how much less, af ki? Would they save even their own sons? He absolutely ruled out the possibility of this land escaping the coming fury. If the presence of a supremely righteous person could not win anyone else's deliverance, not even one's children, when Yahweh came to judge this city with a single stroke, how much less would its citizens be able to survive the fourfold judgments? Bang, bang, bang, bang. It's over. But I wonder where Jeremiah was in Yahweh's thinking. He was righteous. He survived, but his presence didn't save the city. That's the point. Verse 22 catches us by surprise. After the emphatic and repetitive vow of total devastation and annihilation, the announcement that some would survive and that they would join the exiles in Babylon, that seems incredible. The reference to bringing out sons and daughters, oh really, there's that expression, the very ones whom the preceding panels had cited as beyond deliverance, it heightens the tension. But the divine speaker was obviously aware of this apparent incongruity. On the one hand, Yahweh commanded Ezekiel to express astonishment at the beginning of each of the first two sentences in the verse, with a particle of surprise. Hine, behold, look, or check it out. Look what's happening. On the other hand, the choice of words is cautious. Yahweh studiously avoided the key word of the preceding section, nitzal, to be delivered, preferring more neutral expressions for survival, the leftovers, the escapees, palata, the brought-out ones, those who have gone out.They've not necessarily been saved. Well, hearers should not confuse escape from the devastation with deliverance, the savings of one's life, verse 20, or being saved, period. These would not be exceptions to the principles declared earlier, but chance survivors like Amos, two legs or a piece of an ear, chapter 3, Amos 3, 12, or Isaiah's two or three olives on the topmost bough, 17, 6. They will not have been delivered by the righteousness of anyone. What then was the purpose of this notice of survivors if it was not soteriological, having to do with salvation? The answer lies on their impact on Ezekiel's audience when they arrive in Babylon, verses 22b and 23. First, this is an unspiritual remnant. This unspiritual remnant will prove Yahweh's justice in annihilating the nation. Instead of responding to their narrow escape with a change in behavior, their pattern of impious conduct will be on full display when they get to Babylon for the whole community to see. What Yahweh meant by impious conduct, aliloth, he clarified in 20, 43 to 44, where the term applied to more defiling deeds, evil actions, evil ways, and corrupting actions. With his statement, Yahweh and his spokesman Ezekiel took their stand once more on the side of those already in exile. The newcomers who join them will join them in the wake of the coming disaster. They will be as incorrigible as those who had perished. No one should interpret their survival as a reward for superior righteousness. Indeed, even though they will have escaped, they have no place in Israel's tomorrow. As unlikely as it might have seemed to the prophet, Yahweh's plans for the nation's future lay with his current immediate audience alone. The only significance Yahweh placed in the survivors of the coming holocaust, 586, was didactic and theodicy, and had to do with theodicy. A single word wraps up the earlier exiles to response to the arrival of the escapees, the root necham. This word is related to Arabic, nechama, to breathe deeply. Usually this form of the word means to take comfort or to be encouraged, and they will be encouraged. But it's difficult to see how either the annihilation of their countrymen or their continued impiety of the escapees would offer comfort to Ezekiel's present audience. I don't think comfort is the issue. Moreover, the fury of Yahweh's actions would have raised disturbing questions about his character and his justice until the survivors arrived in Babylon. Observing them continue their impious ways despite the devastation and judgment, the earlier exiles will realize the correctness of God's judgment and be reconciled to the consequences. They will look at these characters who come as exhibits A, B, C, and D of everything that was wrong and needed judgment. In such contexts, necham conveys the sense of relieving tensions. Now their minds may be quieted, and they may relax and breathe easier, knowing that true justice has been served. They got what they deserved. The conclusion to the oracle, a modified recognition formula, confirms this interpretation. Then you will know that it was not without good reason that I treated her this way, that is, the city, the declaration of the Lord Yahweh. But instead of recognizing Yahweh the person as is customary in this formula, the observers will recognize the appropriateness of his action. In observing the ways of the recent arrivals, they will have discovered the ways of God, which are wrapped in the phrase, I have not acted arbitrarily without cause. Yahweh's actions would be neither impulsive, nor arbitrary, nor unprovoked, nor capricious. In destroying the nation on account of its sin, Yahweh would fulfill the fine print in the covenant, and as judge of all the earth, Genesis 18.25, God would execute justice. In an earlier time, he had been willing to negotiate with Abraham over the fate of Sodom, based on the presence of righteous individuals in the city. But the time for negotiating Jerusalem's deliverance was long past, and with the concluding signatory formula, he sealed her fate. As I reflect on the enduring and theological significance of this passage, two lessons on the ways of God stand out. First, within the Lord's economy, each person is responsible for his or her own welfare. On the one hand, children may not bank on the piety of parents for their salvation, nor may a community find a lightning rod against divine fury in the presence of one or two righteous persons. On the other hand, there is hope and mercy for all who are righteous by God's standards, even for those who appear to be outsiders to the community of faith. Think of Caleb. Caleb wasn't a native Israelite. Caleb ben Jephunneh, the Kenizzite. But Caleb had a different spirit. Caleb was a righteous man. Second, the Lord is just in all his ways. Carnal minds struggle with the justice of God in the face of human tragedy, but the eyes of faith recognize behind them all the hand of God. When all the evidence is in, his people will know that he does not operate arbitrarily, without cause. His actions are always according to his immutable principles of justice and righteousness. Accordingly, if people experience his wrath, it's because the wages of sin is death. Romans 6.23