Ezekiel

• Ezekiel

145:2.7“Have you not read also where Eze­kiel taught even your fa­thers that re­li­gion must be­come a re­al­ity in your in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ences? No more shall you use the proverb which says, ‘The fa­thers have eaten sour grapes and the chil­dren’s teeth are set on edge.’ ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘be­hold all souls are mine; as the soul of the fa­ther, so also the soul of the son. Only the soul that sins shall die.’ And then Eze­kiel fore­saw even this day when he spoke in be­half of God, say­ing: ‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.’

• Ezekiel

165:4.8Then, as the peo­ple went down by the river to wit­ness the bap­tiz­ing, the first man came pri­vately to Je­sus about his in­her­i­tance inas­much as he thought Je­sus had dealt harshly with him; and when the Mas­ter had again heard him, he replied: “My son, why do you miss the op­por­tu­nity to feed upon the bread of life on a day like this in or­der to in­dulge your cov­etous dis­po­si­tion? Do you not know that the Jew­ish laws of in­her­i­tance will be justly ad­min­is­tered if you will go with your com­plaint to the court of the syn­a­gogue? Can you not see that my work has to do with mak­ing sure that you know about your heav­enly in­her­i­tance? Have you not read the Scrip­ture: ‘There is he who waxes rich by his wari­ness and much pinch­ing, and this is the por­tion of his re­ward: Whereas he says, I have found rest and now shall be able to eat con­tin­u­ally of my goods, yet he knows not what time shall bring upon him, and also that he must leave all these things to oth­ers when he dies.’ Have you not read the com­mand­ment: ‘You shall not covet.’ And again, ‘They have eaten and filled them­selves and waxed fat, and then did they turn to other gods.’ Have you read in the Psalms that ‘the Lord ab­hors the cov­etous,’ and that ‘the lit­tle a righ­teous man has is bet­ter than the riches of many wicked.’ ‘If riches in­crease, set not your heart upon them.’ Have you read where Jeremiah said, ‘Let not the rich man glory in his riches’; and Eze­kiel spoke truth when he said, ‘With their mouths they make a show of love, but their hearts are set upon their own self­ish gain.’”

97:10.7The Jew­ish re­li­gion per­sisted also be­cause of its in­sti­tu­tions. It is dif­fi­cult for re­li­gion to sur­vive as the pri­vate prac­tice of iso­lated in­di­vid­u­als. This has ever been the er­ror of the re­li­gious lead­ers: See­ing the evils of in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized re­li­gion, they seek to de­stroy the tech­nique of group func­tion­ing. In place of de­stroy­ing all rit­ual, they would do bet­ter to re­form it. In this re­spect Eze­kiel was wiser than his con­tem­po­raries; though he joined with them in in­sist­ing on per­sonal moral re­spon­si­bil­ity, he also set about to es­tab­lish the faith­ful ob­ser­vance of a su­pe­rior and pu­ri­fied rit­ual.

97:8.3But five hun­dred years of the over­lord­ship of alien rulers was too much for even the pa­tient and long-suf­fer­ing Jews. The proph­ets and priests be­gan to cry: “How long, O Lord, how long?” As the hon­est Jew searched the Scrip­tures, his con­fu­sion be­came worse con­founded. An olden seer prom­ised that God would pro­tect and de­liver his “cho­sen peo­ple.” Amos had threat­ened that God would aban­don Is­rael un­less they re-es­tab­lished their stan­dards of na­tional righ­teous­ness. The scribe of Deuteron­omy had por­trayed the Great Choice—as be­tween the good and the evil, the bless­ing and the curse. Isa­iah the first had preached a benef­i­cent king-de­liv­erer. Jeremiah had pro­claimed an era of in­ner righ­teous­ness—the covenant writ­ten on the tablets of the heart. The sec­ond Isa­iah talked about sal­va­tion by sac­ri­fice and re­demp­tion. Eze­kiel pro­claimed de­liv­er­ance through the ser­vice of de­vo­tion, and Ezra prom­ised pros­per­ity by ad­her­ence to the law. But in spite of all this they lin­gered on in bond­age, and de­liv­er­ance was de­ferred. Then Daniel pre­sented the drama of the im­pend­ing “cri­sis”—the smit­ing of the great im­age and the im­me­di­ate es­tab­lish­ment of the ev­er­last­ing reign of righ­teous­ness, the Mes­sianic king­dom.

121:7.5These cir­cum­stances ren­dered it im­pos­si­ble for the Jews to ful­fill their di­vine des­tiny as mes­sen­gers of the new gospel of re­li­gious free­dom and spir­i­tual lib­erty. They could not break the fet­ters of tra­di­tion. Jeremiah had told of the “law to be writ­ten in men’s hearts,” Eze­kiel had spo­ken of a “new spirit to live in man’s soul,” and the Psalmist had prayed that God would “cre­ate a clean heart within and re­new a right spirit.” But when the Jew­ish re­li­gion of good works and slav­ery to law fell vic­tim to the stag­na­tion of tra­di­tion­al­is­tic in­er­tia, the mo­tion of re­li­gious evo­lu­tion passed west­ward to the Eu­ro­pean peo­ples.

97:10.3Na­tional ego­tism, false faith in a mis­con­ceived prom­ised Mes­siah, and the in­creas­ing bond­age and tyranny of the priest­hood for­ever si­lenced the voices of the spir­i­tual lead­ers (ex­cept­ing Daniel, Eze­kiel, Hag­gai, and Malachi); and from that day to the time of John the Bap­tist all Is­rael ex­pe­ri­enced an in­creas­ing spir­i­tual ret­ro­gres­sion. But the Jews never lost the con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; even to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ they have con­tin­ued to fol­low this De­ity con­cep­tion.