top of page

Ezekiel 33:7-11

Writer's picture: Danny QDanny Q

Our Old Testament reading this week opens with an image that has been developed throughout the book of Ezekiel and the prophetic writings: the sentinel. The picture is of a sentinel who has been posted to keep watch for any threat to the city. If a potential danger is spotted, the sentinel must alert the city with a trumpet blast loud enough that all might hear and respond. If the people refuse to heed the sentinel’s warning, they alone bear the responsibility for the (likely deadly) consequences. If, however, the sentinel remains silent in the face of an incoming threat, or fails to recognize and name incoming danger, then whatever fate befalls the city is on the sentinel’s own hands.

In the context of the book of Ezekiel, we ought to understand the sentinel as an image representing the prophet himself— the one proclaiming the word of the Lord, alerting the people to the consequences of their evil ways, signaling to the danger of sin in their midst, summoning them to respond to the call of God, urging them to turn back, turn back, and ultimately pointing to the life God offers. As we come to the text to hear the word of the Lord for us today, we ought to locate ourselves as pastors and preachers within that prophetic tradition and feel the weight of the sentinel’s responsibility as we care for our own people.

This image of the sentinel helps us understand the significant responsibility of the prophetic task. “Fundamental to Israel’s prophets of all sorts is the claim that God has entrusted his will to them, whether as word or as vision, and has sent them to bring that will to bear in the history of his people: their message is not intended merely to inform about God’s purpose but to effect it.”[1] Ezekiel and all those who locate themselves within the prophetic tradition bear the weighty responsibility of bringing the word of the Lord to bear in their communities, especially when it means naming the evil forces and oppressive systems that encroach on God’s good order of life and peace and love and justice. As we think of our own prophetic task, we must ask ourselves: How are we speaking against evil empires and the forces of sin and death that encroach on God’s good order? What invitations are we issuing to turn back, turn back to God’s true life?

In addition to the imagery of this passage, we ought to attend to the structure as well. This passage occupies a crucial point in the arc of Ezekiel’s prophetic work. In Ezekiel’s account of events, we’re halfway between the beginning of the exile and his vision of the temple restored and the year of jubilee. We are tuning in to listen right as the news reaches the people in exile that Jerusalem has fallen after a two-year siege. All hope of immanent return has been dashed, and “with the temple destroyed, the sacrificial system brought to an end, and an entire segment of the population relocated outside the territorial jurisdiction of their God, the very possibility of worship was called into question.”[2]

Throughout his prophetic words spoken to the people of God in exile, Ezekiel vividly captures the disastrous consequences of sin, showing that the power of sin and death is a force to be reckoned with. As the people of God in exile wrestle with how these world-shattering events could happen to them, the chosen ones of God, they begin to listen to the words of Ezekiel and to feel the weight of their own sin. It weighs heavier and heavier on them, and everything they used to know about addressing the sin problem no longer exists for them (no temple, no sacrifice, no priests). “How can we live?” they ask.

And at the same time, Ezekiel vividly captures the way the life-giving presence of God reckons with the power of sin and death. Ezekiel’s words insist that “The God of Israel is the God who can bring life out of death, the God who in ancient times created life in the dead womb of Sarah and the dead loins of Abraham. Precisely at the moment in which the news of the disaster reaches him, Ezekiel’s tongue is loosened to proclaim new life and the conditions necessary for sustaining it.”[3]

This is such a theologically rich moment: the Lord God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The Lord God desires that all would turn back—turn back—from evil ways and live. This is the purpose of God that has been entrusted to Ezekiel to proclaim and to effect. Perhaps one of the most compelling threads throughout the prophetic work of Ezekiel is the constant focus on the spirit of God as the driving force of transformation, bringing even a valley of dry bones to new life. As we think of our own prophetic task, we must ask ourselves: how are we proclaiming and effecting the purpose of God that all would turn and live? how are we witnessing to the transformative, life-giving spirit of God?

 

[1] Jenson, Robert W. Ezekiel: Brazos Theological Commentary. Brazos Press: Grand Rapids, Michigan. 2009.

[2] Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Ezekiel: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky. 1990. Page 12.

[3] Blenkinsopp, 6.

0 comments

Comments