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Ezekiel

Updated: Oct 11, 2020

Ezekiel

Category: Major Prophets

Written: c. 593 BC - 571 BC

By: Ezekiel

Topic: Prophecy and Warning

Location: Babylon

Purpose: To confront people about their sin, give them one last chance to repent, and offer hope.

Outline (chapter)

  • Ezekiel (1-3)

  • Call of the Prophet (1:1–3:27)

  • Judgment of Judah (4-24)

  • Before the Siege of Jerusalem (4:1–24:27)

  • Judgment of the Nations (25-32)

  • Prophecies Against Foreign Nations (25:1–32:32)

  • The End of the Age (33-39)

  • Hope for the Future (33:1–39:29)

  • Restoration of Temple (40-48)

  • The New Israel (40:1–48:35)

Theological Significance

  • Ezekiel focuses uniquely on Israel as the holy people of the holy temple, the holy city and the holy land

  • The unfolding of God's saving purposes in the history of the world

  • from the time in which he must withdraw from the defilement of his covenant people

  • to the culmination of his grand design of redemption

  • Ultimately eschatological

  • Anticipates, even demands, God's future works in history proclaimed by the New Testament.

Prophesies (chapter)

  • Prophecies against Judah and Jerusalem (1–24)

  • Prophecies against the foreign nations (25–32)

  • Prophecies of hope and salvation ( 33–48)

The Temple (chapter)

  • Desecrated temple fit for destruction (8-11)

  • Restored and purified temple (40-48)

Symmetry

  • Vision of the desecrated temple fit for destruction (chapters 8-11)

  • Vision of the restored and purified temple (chapters 40-48)

  • God in agitated wrath (chapter 1)

  • God of comfort (48:35)

  • Ezekiel's call to be a watchman announcing divine judgment (chapter 3)

  • Ezekiel's call to be a watchman announcing the new age to follow (chapter 33)

  • Mountains of Israel receive a prophetic rebuke (chapter 6)

  • Mountains of Israel are consoled (chapter 36)

Major visions (chapter)

  • Throne (1-3)

  • Temple (8-16)

  • Valley of Dry Bones (37:1-14)

  • Temple (40-48)

12 symbolic acts

  • 3:22-26; 4:1-3; 4:4-8; 4:9-11; 4:12-14; 5:1-3; 12:1-16; 12:17-20; 21:6-7; 21:18-24; 24:15-24; 37:15-28

Five messages in the form of parables

  • chapters 15-17; 19; 23

Revelation of God (chapter)

  • God will be revealed in the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple (1-24)

  • The nations will know God through his judgments (25-32)

  • Promise that God will be known through the restoration and spiritual renewal of Israel (33-48)

Key Verse: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

Prophet:

  • Ezekiel

  • Prophesied to Exiles in Babylon (First prophet called by God outside Israel during Babylonian Captivity; Foresaw the Fall of Jerusalem (S. Kingdom) to Babylon in 586 BC; Foresaw the Restoration of Israel and the Temple)

  • 620 BC - 570 BC

  • Home/Location: Babylon (During Divided Kingdom, 930 BC - 586 BC; After fall of N. Kingdom (Israel) to Assyrians in 722 BC; During Exile, 585 BC - 514 BC; Born in the Land of Israel to his father Buzi; Deported to Babylon by the river Chebar in 597 BC)



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