Ezekiel - Lesson 12

Lesson number 12, the pot of stew, responding to an upside down world, Ezekiel 11, 1 to 13. We have left chapter 10, which you may have gathered from my presentation, is quite a convoluted and a complex chapter. And in that respect, when I think back about my presentation, I think I've caught the spirit of Ezekiel, because my presentation itself was a bit here and there, back and forth, redundancies and repetitions. But that's the way the text looks. When we move from chapter 10 to chapter 11, things change. Our next two sessions will deal with two very carefully and deliberately structured segments. And so, that's what we are entering in, in this session, Ezekiel 11, 1 to 13, the pot of stew. It's obvious from this text that we have entered a different literary world than we encountered in 8 to 10. Ezekiel 11, 1 to 13 interrupts the temple vision with its deliberate tracking of the departure of the divine glory over there. This one opens with its own formal introduction, describing the transportation of the prophet. Then, rather than worrying about crimes in the temple, it switches to ethical misdemeanors. The section assumes that Jerusalem and the temple were still standing, even though chapters 9 to 10 have envisioned their fall. These associations invite the reader to interpret the prophet's present experience, including these two sections of chapter 11, as part of the great temple vision, following his observance of the movement of the glory to the east of the temple. But this does not necessarily mean the events of 11, 1 to 3, were part of the temple tour, as described in chapters 8 to 10. These may have been parallel, possibly simultaneous prophetic experiences, unpacking the earlier vague reference to the social ills of Jerusalem in 9.9. In particular, this present oracle, 11, 1 to 13, exposes the warped attitudes of the leaders of Jerusalem toward their city, a theme that will be resumed in the following paragraph, the second half of chapter 11. With respect to structure and genre, 11, 2 to 12 represents a typical prophetic disputation speech. Disputation speeches involve the explicit quotation of a popular opinion that demands explicit exposure and refutation. Two verses cast in narrative style and linked by the figure of Pelletiah frame this prophecy, verses 1 and 13. The twofold occurrence of the recognition formula in verses 10b and 12a, along with the signatory formula in 8b, signal transitions in the literary unit, which suggests the following outline. First, verse 1, the preamble. Second, verses 2 and 3, the thesis, which is introduced in verse 2 and then quoted in verse 3. Verses 4 to 6 represent the refutation of the thesis that's represented by the quotation, and then you have the dispute of that quotation as well. Then part 4, verses 7 to 12, a counter-thesis where the Lord introduces the alternative reality, and this one has two refutations of the first thesis, and then you've got the second presentation, and then we have the epilogue involving Pelletiah. So let's look at this. The preamble, verse 1. Since chapter 8, the record of Ezekiel's prophecies has paid little attention to the prophet's own movements. Having been deposited initially by the Spirit at the north gate of the inner court, he was guided by stages through the temple compound into the inner court and to the entrance of the gate of the palace of Yahweh. It is Yahweh's palace. But in chapters 9 to 10, Ezekiel's own movements have been out of the picture. Other people's movements count more. In 11.1, the prophet re-entered the stage as he was picked up by the Spirit, or was it the wind, ruach, again, and carried to the east gate of the house of Yahweh, of the east gate of the inner court, where the Spirit or wind deposited him. From this location, he saw a new group of 25 men. Compare that with 8.16. This time Ezekiel did not record what they were doing, so we can determine their crimes only by listening to the prophet in the speech that follows. Ezekiel recognized two of these 25 men as Jeazaniah ben Azur, not Jeazaniah ben Shaphat, that was in chapter 8. Here it's a different father, Azur, and the second character is Pelletiah ben Benaiah. While we should not confuse this Jeazaniah with the one in chapter 8, we cannot say anything more about him except that he was the son of a certain Azur. Pelletiah, who will reappear in verse 13, plays a more significant role. Like Jeazaniah, which means may Yahweh hear, or oh, that Yahweh would hear, the name Pelletiah enjoyed great popularity near the end of Judah's history, probably because of its meaning, Yahweh has rescued. Pelletiah, it's a lovely name, actually. It reflected the longing of the people for divine intervention on their behalf. The patronymic, his father's name, Benaiah, meant Yahweh has built. It was a common name throughout Israel's history. But you will see that these names are all orthodox names. They have Yahweh as an element of the name, which says that on the outside, at least, these people are devoted to the Lord God of Israel. That Ezekiel could identify these men as public officials, leaders of the city, suggests they were among the new ruling class that had taken over in Jerusalem after the deportation of 597 B.C. Sometimes the singular, sarhair, governor of the town, or leader of the town, or mayor of the city. Sometimes it refers to the mayor of the city. Here the plural is a general designation for political officials, analogous to officials of Judah that we see elsewhere in Scripture, or officials of Israel. Although this title, sar, is missing in Ezekiel's public officials, list of public officials in chapter 7, their functions as counselors here suggest that sarim, leaders, plural, were included among the elders. However, whereas Ezekiel generally associated the elders with the sin of idolatry, here the issue was social criminality. Like the princes we will meet in chapter 22, 27, this club of leaders was held together by their common misuse of power for illicit gain. Meanwhile, the prophet's speech that follows suggests the Jeazaniah and Pelletiah were political counselors of some sort. Altogether, these 27 men, or is it 25? If they're part of the group, then it's only 25. They represented the nouveau noblesses, who filled the political vacuum that resulted from Nebuchadnezzar's forces, deportation to Babylon of Jehoiachin, and the established nobility in Jerusalem. This was 2 Kings 34, 10 to 17. The elders sitting in front of Ezekiel will have been especially interested in what the prophet has to say about them, because they have, in effect, taken their places. In verses 2 to 3, we have the thesis in this disputation address. The Lord initiates the disputation with an explanatory word for the prophet. He said to me, human, these are the men who are plotting evil and offering wicked advice within the city. They are saying, and here's the quotation, now is not the time to build houses. The city is the pot, and we are the meat. Therefore, prophesy against them. Prophesy, son of man, human. The opening is transparent about the Lord's disposition toward Jerusalem's new leadership. He identified three specific faults in these men. They plotted evil. The verb involves rational, scientific calculation and planning. Second, they offered wicked advice. These first two charges sound much like Micah's word to the leaders in Jerusalem more than a century earlier. Obviously, nothing has changed, where he said, woe to those who plot evil, who work out wicked schemes on their beds. Micah 2.1. Unlike Micah, who opened with a pronouncement of woe and then followed up with a detailed description of the oppressive schemes of the men in power, Ezekiel didn't cite the actual crimes. He just says, these are wicked men. However, in contrast to the evils that Ezekiel saw perpetrated in the temple in chapter 8, here he localized these crimes in the city. That is, not the city of God, not the temple compound. It is the city of Jerusalem. These offenses were no longer indirect crimes against God, but they were directed at their fellow citizens, men and women created as images of God. But there's a third accusation here. Perverse notions preoccupied their minds. Yahweh expressed this third fault in the form of a quotation, which becomes the heart of this prophecy. This is a disputation speech, which typically opens with a quotation of what people are saying. Now is not the time, now is not the time to build houses. The city is the pot and we are the meat. Well, what does that mean? On the surface, this looks like a verbatim quotation of what the people were actually saying. But Yahweh may have cast this statement as his own formulation of a popular sentiment. In any case, as quoted, every element in the citation is ambiguous, and Ezekiel's original audience may have puzzled over its meaning as much as we modern readers do. Now is not the time to build houses. The city is the pot and we are the meat. To build houses, this could refer to building up households as in the leverette marriage custom. If a married man would die before his wife had given birth to a child, his line would die out, which was the worst imaginable curse. To prevent this from happening, the man's close relative was obligated to marry the widow, and the first child from that union would be legally considered the son of the deceased, and the family line would be preserved, the household would be built up. This idiom was used by the people of Bethlehem who had witnessed Boaz gain the legal right to marry the widow Ruth, and then they pronounced their blessing upon Ruth. May Yahweh make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. Wow. Will this Moabite, that's Ruth 411, will this Moabite woman Ruth really take her seat among the matriarchs of Israel like Rachel and Leah? In fact, her role would be greater, for she became the ancestor of Israel's divinely chosen kings, David, and ultimately the Messiah. Well, if that's the meaning here these people are saying, given the present crisis, now is not the time to have children, or to ensure that families of our men who have been exiled or killed survive. It's possible that after the deportation of 598 to 97, the deportation of the upper class, some of the women had been left behind as virtual widows, and the close relatives of their husbands refused to provide them with progeny. On the other hand, it is preferable to interpret the expression more concretely. Now is not the time, literally, to build houses. But why not? Perhaps because the defense of the city required all available resources, but more likely because of an arrogant smugness of the new class of rich folks that had replaced those who were sent away into exile. They've not only taken over the positions evacuated by the deported nobility, we'll see this in verse 15, but they have also confiscated the property of the weak in the city. Within the context of this prophecy, the most likely sentence seems to be, there's no need at the present time to worry about building houses. Building houses is a normal and good enterprise, and in a world where building materials are not as durable as our own, people are always thinking of rebuilding simply as a matter of necessity. And in the land of Israel, where most houses would have been built of mud brick, you have to rebuild it every 20 years. If your house was made of mud brick, as many were, they had to be leveled and replaced in a couple of decades. But these folks were not taking care of tomorrow. The statement reminds me of Jesus' parable of the rich man who had amassed resources and says to himself, I will say to myself, self, you have stored up stuff for many years, relax, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, you fool, this night your soul will be required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? Then that's how it is with a person who amasses treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. The present statement reflects a complacency and a smugness characteristic of those who think they have everything under control. The metaphor that follows supports this interpretation. The city is the pot, and we are the meat. Of course, this statement is just as ambiguous as now is not the time to build houses. What is the function of this pot? The prophets often used the common cooking pot as an aid in their teaching. For Micah, the pot served as a figure of cannibalistic oppression. For Jeremiah, it symbolized judgment and disaster, Jeremiah 1 13. In Ezekiel 24 3 to 6, this prophet will pick up this image in another disputation speech and give it a new and really sinister twist. If we interpret it this way here, then the newly emergent leaders view themselves as choice cuts of meat that are being cooked for a sumptuous banquet. They are the privileged because they have been chosen for this table fare. But that seems to miss the point. If that were the case, Ezekiel should have said, you may be right insofar as you are being cooked, but this is not a kitchen where the chef is preparing a feast for the king, and you are not the choice cuts. In fact, you are being destroyed. But pots serve more than one purpose then as they do now. It's clear from what follows that the leaders were not using the pot as a metaphor of judgment, but as a picture of their own security. This pot was a storage vessel, a crock with a tightly fastened lid in which meat was stored securely, protected from insects or marauding animals or thieves. This pot was Jerusalem. The city offered security to those inside, particularly the newly powerful, represented by the we. We are the meat. It's unlikely the issue here involved the contrasted fates of the upper crust and the average citizens whom they exploit, but it is the contrasting fates of the new class of leaders and those who had been carried off into exile. The city is a safe or a freezer. The new rulers are still at home in Jerusalem. They are the prime cuts of meat, invulnerable within the city walls, as opposed to those nasty exiles, Ezekiel's audience in Babylon, including Ezekiel himself, who have, in their minds, been discarded by God as waste and obviously no longer enjoy the protection and favor of God. That's the thesis. The refutation, verses 4 to 6, therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, human. Then the spirit of Yahweh fell upon me, and he said to me, Say, thus has Yahweh declared, This is what you are thinking, O house of Israel. I know the thoughts that come to your mind. You have multiplied your victims within the city, and you have filled its streets with the slain. Well, God could not let the leaders' mistaken interpretation of their status in Jerusalem, and presumably, therefore, with God, compare this with verses 14 to 21, as we'll see in the next session, he could not let that go answered. The double command, prophesy, prophesy, with which he charged Ezekiel to answer on his behalf, reflected the intensity of his provocation and the divine sense of urgency. But at the same time as the prophet heard the Lord's command, he experienced special inspiration and the prophetic empowerment as the spirit of Yahweh fell upon him. In the present context, this involvement of the spirit highlighted the prophet's role as the authorized and authoritative mouthpiece for God. We find the dispute in verses 5b to 6. The Lord's verbal response to the quotation divides formally into two parts, each introduced by the citation formula, thus says the Lord, Yahweh declared, verses 5 and 7. In the first part, Yahweh did not attack the logic of the leader's thesis, but he challenged its basis. Their conduct had violated Yahweh's laws so flagrantly that they had no grounds whatsoever for their sense of security and their invulnerability. The present dispute of their saying consists of two parts. First, Yahweh declared that his gaze penetrated the human mind and that he was aware of the motives underlying the leader's smugness. This is what you are thinking, literally saying in your heart, O house of Israel, I know the thoughts that come to your mind, Ruach. The full form of the expression, to speak in or to speak to one's heart, is used of internal communication, the non-verbalized speech that passes through one's mind. This interpretation is confirmed by the following reference to, as for the thoughts that arise in your mind, I know them, literally, I know it. This statement involves a clever play on the word Ruach, which has appeared for the third time in this text, and with a third significance. In verse 1, Ruach was the agency of conveyance, it's the spirit or is it the wind that carries him to another place. In verse 5a, the Ruach was the agency of inspiration, the spirit fell on him. And now the word denotes the seat or organ of mental activity, and serves as a variant for the word for lave, heart, mind. Biblical Hebrew has no word for brain, your thinker, so that the word for a heart, 50 percent of the time, is the place of thought, the seat of thinking and logic. And this is what occurs in verse 19 as well later. But this is remarkable. In 812 and 9-9, the people inside the temple had arrogantly declared, Yahweh doesn't see, Yahweh has abandoned the land. Well, now we learn that Yahweh not only saw everything, but he also heard the thoughts of people's minds that were never even expressed in speech with their lips. The point was that Yahweh was totally aware of the motives of the leaders in Jerusalem without their mouths even opening to declare what they were thinking. But second, Yahweh charged the city leaders with crimes that disqualified them from any claims to protection. They had filled the city with corpses. Although the designation for victims, halalim, those pierced, victims of piercing, it usually has military overtones, as in the expression of pierced with a sword that we'll find many times in chapters 31 and 32. But it also denotes victims of judicial murder, that is, those who have been sentenced to death by corrupt courts. The evil rulers in totalitarian states don't wait for court decisions to perform their deadly acts. They simply eliminate those who stand in their way. The problem will be illustrated in 19, 3 and 6, where Yahweh charged kings with devouring humans, and in 22, 27, which explicitly compares Jerusalem's officials, sarim, to ravenous wolves tearing their prey, shedding blood, destroying life in their ruthless quest for gain. Far from being the special objects of divine protection within the walls of Jerusalem, these rulers had become the targets of his ire, which leads then to verses 7 to 12, where you have the counter-thesis. So much for what you're saying, here's the real truth. Therefore, thus has the Lord, Yahweh, declared, as for your victims whom you have placed within it, they are the meat, and the city is the pot, but I will remove you from its midst. The sword you have feared, the sword I will bring against you, the declaration of the Lord, I will remove you from its midst and hand you over into the hands of strangers. I will execute judgments among you. By the sword you will fall, on Israelite territory I will judge you, and you will know that I am Yahweh. The city will not become your pot, that you should become meat within it. On Israelite territory I will judge you, that you may know that I am Yahweh, because according to my ordinances you have not lived, literally walked, and my judgments you have not put into practice. Instead, according to the standards of the nations that surround you, you have behaved. Well, here we recognize a shift from the accusation, the dispute, to the counter-thesis by the opening, therefore, in verse 7. Therefore, because this is what you are thinking, and this is how you are acting, therefore. When Ezekiel's audience would hear the prophet say, therefore, Hebrew, l'chaim, they knew they were about to hear God's response. In this case, the prophet cast that response in the form of a refutation of the leader's claims, which consists of two parts, verses 7 to 10 and 11 to 12. Both parts end again with the recognition formula, then you will know that I am Yahweh. You have it at the end of verse 10 and at the end of verse 12. The unexpected insertion of the, what I call, signatory formula, the declaration of Adonai Yahweh, at the end of verse 8, in the middle of the speech, reinforces Ezekiel's claim to inspiration. These are not my words. These are the words of God that I am simply declaring to you, and it emphasizes that the word that he declared bore the signature of Yahweh himself. When you write a written document, at the end you sign your name to authenticate that text as your text. Well, this is oral speech, and in oral speech you can't have a literal signature. You can't stamp it with a seal. This is the verbal equivalent of that, and we'll hear it dozens of times in Ezekiel, the declaration of the Lord, and it'll be stuck right in the middle of a prophecy as it is here. But it divides these two refutation. The first refutation challenges the leader's claims by cleverly redefining the terms meat, basar, and pot, seer. In their own version of the slogan, verse 3, the upper crust had claimed to be the prime cuts of meat stored away in a safe place, the city of Jerusalem. But now Yahweh announced that the leaders were in fact butchers who have made stew out of the citizenry. Ezekiel declared in verse 7, as for your victims whom you have placed in the pot, they are the meat, the city is the pot. This is a condensed version of Micah 3, 1 to 3. Here now you leaders of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, is it not your responsibility to promote justice? You hate the good and love the evil who rip off the skin from them and their flesh from their bones and who have devoured the flesh of my people and they have flayed their skin off them and broken their bones into pieces and who chop them like meat for the pot and like flesh in a cauldron. The prophet hereby agreed with the leaders about the identity of the pot, that's clear, the pot is Jerusalem. But Yahweh changed the pot's significance drastically. To the people, the leaders, Jerusalem is a storage pot, a crock pot where they are safe and secure, the lid is firmly attached. To God, Jerusalem was not a crock in which food was securely stored, she was the pot over the fire in which meat was cooked. In fact, for those who have been living under the illusion of safety within the pot, TDS, the theological delusion syndrome, Yahweh announced that far from guaranteeing their security, he would personally remove them from the pot and expose them to the very fate they feared, death by the sword. Worse yet, the sword was in Yahweh's hands, it's death by Yahweh's sword. Yahweh has assumed the role of the butcher and they are the meat of that one. Verses 9 to 10 explain how the leaders would meet their fate. First, Yahweh will bring them out of the city. You think you're safe inside? Okay, I'll take you out of the crock pot. This declaration conjures up images of the awful, O-F-F-A-L, the garbage that is removed from the carcass in the process of butchering, or the off-scouring in the process of cooking. Those who perceive themselves as prime cuts, or to use another metaphor, the cream that rises to the top, were nothing but scum in God's eyes. Second, Yahweh will hand them over to hostile strangers, a reference to the Babylonian forces just over the horizon. The final statements in verses 9 and 10 are interpretive. Yahweh's actions against his people constitute the execution of his sentence. With a single blow, this statement demolished two pillars on which the people in Jerusalem were basing their security and exposed their theological derangement syndrome pathology. On the one hand, the entire refutation emphasized Yahweh's role as judge of Israel who had issued the judicial, the sentence, and who appointed the executioners. He would turn their judicial decisions on their own heads. They may not count on his protective patronage when his agents of judgment arrive. On the other hand, shockingly, he specified the location of the judgment. In both rebuttals, verses 10 and 11, Yahweh emphasized that his judgment would fall on the leaders on the territory of Israel. In its most concrete sense, the word gavul denotes a boundary marker. However, by extension, it refers to territory defined by borders and may be employed synonymously with the land of Israel, as in Micah 5.5 and Isaiah 60.18. Ezekiel intentionally spoke of the boundary of Israel rather than the conventional land of Israel because they viewed the boundaries of the promised land like a cage that Jacques Cousteau uses when he goes down into the water among the sharks. It's their protection. It's a version of the crock in which they think they are stored securely. In syncretistic pagan fashion, the Israelites had come to base their security automatically on their residence either within the city or, if you need more, it's within the territory. The land of Israel is ours as our possession, and God is the guarantor of our well-being inside the land. Because it was also recognized as Yahweh's property, Leviticus, it's Yahweh's land, they assumed it came under his protection and was therefore inviolable to outsiders. God's interests were not restricted to the temple or even the city of Jerusalem. However, by repeating upon the territory of Israel, he emphasized that even if the Israelites should escape the carnage within the city as it fell to the enemy, the leaders, Waterloo, would occur within the homeland. They would never even become exiles. They won't make it to the border because they will be killed before that. Those who trust in the pot for their security will discover that not only has the significance of the vessel been transformed, it is actually much larger than they had realized. It's not limited to the town protected by the walls around it. It extends to the entire land, and the pot has become the trap for the enemies. You cannot escape. You are cooked. Of course, the people of Jerusalem should have known better by now. The land would not or could not protect the northern kingdom a century earlier when the Assyrians came. And think about it. Nebuchadnezzar's armies had been here twice already in 605 BC when they took Daniel and his three associates as hostages, and in 598 to 97 BC when Nebuchadnezzar had taken 10,000 people to Babylon and put his own puppet Zedekiah on the throne. Where was Yahweh then? He hadn't protected them. But this was not the only lesson they would learn. According to the last line of verse 10, when the sword comes, and it certainly will, they will also gain a new recognition of the identity and activity of Yahweh. Yes, he is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in chesed, but he will not leave the guilty unpunished. This is Exodus 34, 6 to 7. Even if, or especially if, they are Israelites. The second refutation, verses 11 to 12, began by reiterating that in the future, the city would not function as a place of refuge for the leaders. Jerusalem would be no protective crock but the very pot in which they would be cooked. The leaders' victims may be the stew today, but the arrogant speakers of the quotations will suffer that fate tomorrow. Then they will acknowledge Yahweh against whom they have rebelled. Verse 12 represents one of the most expansive versions of the recognition formula in the whole book. All this will happen that you may know that I am Yahweh because according to my ordinances you have not lived and my stipulations you have not put into practice. Instead, according to the standards of the nations that surround you, you have behaved. In contrast to other cases of this recognition formula, which report Yahweh's action as the basis for the change in the people's disposition toward him, here the speech offered one more reminder of Israel's sin. The rhetorical effect is powerful, highlighting the reason for punishment rather than punishment itself and reversing the elements that we found in chapter 5, verses 7 to 10. The expressions in verse 9, I will execute judgment against you and I will judge you, both mean to carry out a sentence. However, my judgments in verse 12 and the customs of the nations in verse 12 refer to Yahweh's covenant stipulations. Those are Yahweh's judgments concerning Israel's appropriate response as his vassal to his grace. And the customs of the nations, well, that's what we have as well in that word for judgments, the customs of the nations. Instead of following Yahweh's graciously revealed judgments concerning their conduct as his guide for that, the Israelites had degenerated to the common denominator of pagans whose standards now ruled in Jerusalem. So much for your self-esteem as the choice cuts of meat. Epilogue, verse 13. Hmm, as I was prophesying, Pelletiah, son of Benaiah, died. Then I fell on my face and I cried out with a loud voice saying, horrors, oh Lord, Yahweh. So you are intending to exterminate the remnant of the house of Israel completely? This prophecy ends on a shocking note, reminding us of the broader visionary context within which the disputation with the leaders of Jerusalem has transpired. While Ezekiel was prophesying, he saw that Pelletiah had died. The prophet immediately grasped the significance of this event. The man's death functioned as a down payment, a deposit of the fate of the leaders announced in the speech. Now the text does not say why Ezekiel recognized Pelletiah's death as such an omen, that is, why it was so ominous, but his name highlights the irony of his fate. Pelletiah, which means Yahweh has delivered, rescued. Ben-Benaiah, which means son of Yahweh has been built up, symbolized the hope of Jerusalem. But that hope was futile. In a moment, and without warning or stated cause, Pelletiah expired, and with his death, the hope of the nation vanished. In the present literary context of chapters 8 to 11, Pelletiah's death was a harbinger of the fate of the rulers, Sarim, and it answers to 9.6, where the elders, Zechanim, had been identified as the prime targets of the Lord's fury. But then, in a rare emotional outburst, Ezekiel expressed his own horror at the ruthlessness of the Lord's judgment. The outburst reminds us of 9.8, except that there the exclamation was in a form of a question. There he had said, I fell on my face, and I cried out, and I said, Horrors, Lord, are you destroying the entire remnant of Israel? Here it was an emphatic comment. I fell on my face and cried out with a loud voice, and I said, Horrors, O Lord, so you are finishing off the remnant of Israel. The transformation of a question into an affirmation appears intentional. So Yahweh was indeed intent on destroying the remnant of Israel, and here that remnant was represented by those who remained in the land after the deportation of 598 to 597. Yahweh would execute the sentence within the land himself. There would be no sanctuary for the wicked there, especially not for the nation's leaders. But this notice of Pelletiah's death raises serious questions concerning the relationship between the vision and the reality on the ground at this time in Jerusalem. Was Pelletiah a real person? Did he actually die? If so, how was Ezekiel able to witness this? At what point did his visionary experience cease and a glimpse into the historical reality of Jerusalem commence? What caused Pelletiah's death? Was it Yahweh's mere utterance of the word, God says it and it happens, that he would bring about the death of the leaders of Jerusalem, or did it coincide with the prophets relaying the message? We cannot answer these questions definitively. The fact that Ezekiel could identify by name and lineage Jeazaniah and Pelletiah, as well as Jeazaniah ben Shaphan in 811, suggests we should view the twenty-five men in 816 and these here in 111 as real people. They were the elders and the public officials back in Jerusalem, and Jeazaniah and Pelletiah may have been singled out as representatives of the group, or because they were the two men whom the prophet recognized from his pre-exilic years in Jerusalem. Perhaps he'd grown up with them. But by the Spirit and in divine visions, Yahweh permitted Ezekiel to observe from a distance what was actually happening at the actual gathering of Jeazaniah, Pelletiah, and the rest of these at the eastern gate of the temple. With this sight in view, Yahweh pronounced a judgment upon them, cast in a form of a disputation speech. In response to Yahweh's command to prophesy, Ezekiel proclaimed this message to the elders assembled in his house in Babylon, think of 8-1. After all, the exiles were his primary audience. He wasn't preaching to Pelletiah and Jeazaniah. They were part of the prophecy. They were not his audience. After he completed his prophecy, Ezekiel's visionary gaze returned to Jerusalem, where he witnessed the literal death of Pelletiah. He interpreted this event as a direct divine act of judgment upon the man and as a down payment of greater judgments to come. The death of Pelletiah was significant for him personally, because in this, the first recorded public prophetic experience, his status as a prophet was confirmed. The test Moses says of a true prophet is, does what he predicts happen? And here you have it on the spot. When we reflect on this text as our scripture, we need to convert into our own cultural context, the message the Lord intended for the elders sitting in front of Ezekiel and the rest of the Judean exiles in Babylon with the prophet. What lessons emerge for us on how we need to relate to the Lord and to the world that he has created? Well, the first lesson this oracle drives home to me is not a new one here, but it remains a perpetual warning for us. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The concept was not original with Lord Acton, but this adage was coined in 1887 by John Emmerich Edward Dahlberg Acton, first Baron Acton, an English Catholic writer, historian, and politician, in a letter to the Anglican Bishop Creighton. In that letter, he continued, great men are almost always bad men. Even when they exercise influence and not authority. Still more when you super add the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority. And he added a quotation from his acquaintance John Bright, if the people would know what sort of men statesmen were, they would rise and hang the whole lot of them. Well, George Orwell's Animal Farm gives classical expression to this adage as the animals drive out their owner and take over the farm. But before you know it, Napoleon the pig has risen to the top, and he justifies his ascendancy with a new proverb. He says, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. By the end of the book, you cannot distinguish pigs from humans. They all end up the same. But this notion appears often in scripture. One of my favorite texts is the literary cartoon that Jotham, Gideon's son, sketched after his brother had slaughtered their 70 other brothers. When Jotham heard, this is in Judges chapter 9, when Jotham heard that the men of Shechem had made Abimelech king, he climbed to the top of Mount Gerizim and shouted, listen to me, all citizens of Shechem, listen to me if you want God to listen to you. Once upon a time, the trees decided to choose a king. First they said to the olive tree, be our king. But the olive tree refused, saying, should I quit producing the olive oil that blesses both God and people just to wave back and forth over the trees? So they said to the fig tree, you be our king. But the fig tree also refused, saying, should I quit producing my sweet fruit just to wave back and forth over the trees? Then they said to the grapevine, you be our king. But the grapevine also refused, saying, should I quit producing the wine that cheers both God and people just to wave back and forth over the trees? Then all the trees finally turned to the thorn bush and said, come, you be our king. And the thorn bush replied to the trees, if you truly want me to be your king and take shelter in my shade, if not, let fire come out from me and devour the cedars of Lebanon. Jotham continued, now make sure you have acted honorably and in good faith by making Abimelech your king, and that you have done right by Gideon and all his descendants, that you treated him with the honor he deserves for all he accomplished, for he fought for you and risked his life when he rescued you from the Midianites. But today you have revolted against my father and his descendants, killing his seventy sons on one stone, and you have chosen his slave woman's son, Abimelech, to be your king, just because he is your relative. If you have acted honorably and in good faith toward Gideon and his descendants today, then you may find joy in Abimelech, and he may find joy in you. But if you have not acted in good faith, then may fire come out from Abimelech and devour the leading citizens of Shechem and Bethmelo, and may fire come out from the citizens of Shechem and Bethmelo and devour Abimelech. Then Jotham escaped, and he lived in Be'er, because he was afraid of his brother Abimelech, and Abimelech ruled over Israel for three years. What's the point of this fairy tale? The scum always seems to rise to the top. Jeazaniah, Pelletiah, and the twenty-five men gathered in the eastern gate of the temple illustrate the danger that power poses for those who hold it. They become nothing but thorn bushes. These men represent the antitheses to the kind of servant leadership envisioned in Deuteronomy 17, 14 to 20. Instead of using their influence for the common good and capitalizing on their positions to model the highest standard of covenant righteousness, they had been corrupted by power. Instead of mourning over the sins of Jerusalem, they piled the city high with their own victims. Since God has created all humans as his images, he regards the oppression of the poor as a direct challenge to himself. See Proverbs 14.31 and Proverbs 17.5. And those who rise to the top over the corpses of others await the certain judgment of God. And lest we imagine this is true only of Washington, Springfield, and downtown Chicago, we need look no farther than in our own neighborhoods as church leaders fall one after another. Some time ago in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News, they publicized evidence of almost 400 cases from the last 20 years of church leaders and volunteers being charged with sex crimes. Most of these are now incarcerated. But Russell Moore rightly responds, The report is alarming and scandalous. The courage and grace of those survivors is contrasted with the horrific depravity of those who would use the name of Jesus to pray on them. And we were equally shocked when we learned that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one-time church power broker and former Archbishop of Washington, was defraud for sexual abuse crimes, treating his parishioners like meat. But this is a caution to all of us in leadership, as John Bradford commented as he watched a group of criminals being led out for their execution. But for the grace of God, there goes John Bradford. Bradford himself would be burned at the stake by Bloody Queen Mary on July 15, 1555. For those of us who have been granted leadership responsibilities, we need always to be asking, what do those under us think of us? Psalm 23 offers a wonderful antidote to the temptation of corruption. Because here you have a sheep writing poetry about the shepherd, and it's an amazing piece of poetry, Psalm 23. Second, whereas humans know one another's hearts only through their speech and their actions, this text reminds us that the Lord knows their deepest thoughts. Be careful little eyes what you see. Be careful little hands what you do. Be careful little feet where you go. Be careful little mouth what you speak. To which we all need to add, be careful little mind what you think. There's a father up above, and he's looking down in love, so be careful little mind what you think. Just as nothing is hidden from the heat of the sun, Psalm 196, so nothing in the innermost recesses of the human heart can escape the gaze of God. Third, God offers his protection and blessing only to those who are covenantally related to him and who express that relationship by joyful obedience to his will. Not tradition, not status, not even presence in the temple guarantees his favor. Security is not found in the pot, but in God. Authentic faith affirms that the privilege of being the people of God must be matched by fidelity to his covenant. To claim his blessing on any other grounds is a pagan perversion. As Jesus said, if you love me, that is, if you're covenantally committed to me, prove it by your life. Keep my commands.