Sheffield Old Testament Guides: Ezekiel
Overview
A much-neglected prophet, Ezekiel is nevertheless a key figure in Old Testament religion. Standing where he does, at the great crisis point of Israel’s history, the exile, he confronts the basic questions of whether the nation of Israel can survive, and whether it should. Ezekiel represents the priestly strand in Israel’s thinking, which lays such weight on the temple as the place of the presence of God. How can the nation be sustained when it has been deprived of its traditional place of worship? Ezekiel’s reply is that the presence of God is still available, even in the land of exile, but that the presence is yet to be restored to its proper place in Jerusalem. Like the other volumes in the series, this compact study of Ezekiel will be much appreciated by the student turning to the study of the prophet for the first time as well as the scholar seeking another view of an often-visited subject.
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Top Highlights
“The book of Ezekiel is an attempt to make sense of the exile, but not in the rather detached way that the academic historian ‘makes sense’ of such events. For Ezekiel’s generation and Jeremiah’s generation, ‘making sense’, some sort of sense, was a prerequisite of their own survival. As individuals, they had lost everything, except for what a man might put in a bundle on his shoulder and carry out in the dark. As a nation, they had lost everything that they thought of as essential to their nationhood: king, temple, independence; and above all, they had lost their land. They no longer had a place where they belonged.” (Pages 74–75)
“In the Ezekiel literature they are still defined by their relation to a place, even though it is a place they have lost.” (Page 75)
“It is perhaps best to conclude that the names of Gog and his associates are chosen precisely because they are foreign and mysterious.” (Page 116)
“the focus of its national as well as religious life, and was no longer to be ruled by a king of the House of David” (Page 74)
“enormous sense of loss. And their survival is at stake because their identity is at stake” (Page 75)
- Title: Sheffield Old Testament Guides: Ezekiel
- Author: Henry McKeating
- Publisher: Sheffield Academic Press
- Publication Date: 1995
- Pages: 124