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Ezekiel

Ezekielchapter 11

25 verses · BSBEzekiel book hub →

Speaks with:Ezekiel 8×6Ezekiel 11×5Ezekiel 3×4Ezekiel 12×2Ezekiel 7×2Ezekiel 22×2

Summary

Chapter summary

At the east gate stand twenty-five men, Jaazaniah and Pelatiah among them, devising iniquity and saying, 'This city is the caldron, and we are the flesh': safe meat in a strong pot. Ezekiel prophesies against them, and Pelatiah dies as he speaks; the prophet falls on his face crying out for the remnant. Then the counter-promise to the exiles the city despised: though scattered among the countries, 'I will be to them a sanctuary for a little while': a temple without walls. 'I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh.' Then the glory departs the city and stands on the mountain to the east.

Context

Prophecy · Ezekiel — Ezekiel overview

  • A. 1–13 The cauldron and the flesh — princes who plot evil
  • B. 14–21 A sanctuary for the scattered, a heart of flesh promised
  • C. 22–25 The glory leaves the city and rests on the mountain

The outline

  1. A.The cauldron and the flesh — princes who plot evilvv. 1 to 13

    Read vv. 1 to 13 →

  2. B.A sanctuary for the scattered, a heart of flesh promisedvv. 14 to 21

    Read vv. 14 to 21 →

  3. C.The glory leaves the city and rests on the mountainvv. 22 to 25

    Read vv. 22 to 25 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

The glory departs and returns

Pattern

Ezekiel is built on the movement of the glory of the Lord: seen in exile by the river Chebar, rising from the cherub to the threshold, leaving the city by the east, and returning by the way of the east gate. The book's last verse turns the return into an address: the name of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there.

The departure explains why Jerusalem fell, and the return is the book's whole hope. A reader who tracks the glory's stations reads forty-eight chapters as one account rather than a pile of visions.

  1. Ezekiel 1:28

    The glory seen by the river Chebar

    The prophet sees the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord and falls upon his face.

  2. Ezekiel 10:4

    The glory rises to the threshold

  3. Ezekiel 11:23 you are here

    The glory leaves the city eastward

    It stands upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city, the last station before exile.

  4. Ezekiel 43:4

    The glory returns by the east gate

  5. Ezekiel 48:35

    The city named The Lord is there

The world behind this chapter

Ezekiel 11
When
The Babylonian exile, at the close of the temple vision · The sixth year of Jehoiachin's exile — c. September 592 BC
Where
The east gate of the temple, where twenty-five men stand giving counsel, then back at Tel Abib among the exiles
Who first heard it
Deportees who had just been told by the people back home that they were finished

The history

The men at the gate are named — Jaazaniah son of Azzur and Pelatiah son of Benaiah — and the city gate is where their kind of business was done. Gates in a walled city were deep chambered structures with stone benches, and they served as the courthouse, the council room and the marketplace. To sit in the gate was to govern.

Their slogan is a cooking proverb. This city is the pot and we are the meat. A cauldron protects the choice cuts from the fire; the meat inside is the good stuff, and the walls are the metal. They meant it as reassurance — we are safe in here, we are the ones that matter. God turns it inside out: the ones they killed are the meat, and the survivors will be dragged out of the pot and judged at the border of the land, not inside it.

The second slogan is about property. The people left in Jerusalem were saying of the deportees, they have gone far from the LORD; the land is given to us as a possession. Deportation left estates empty, and the neighbours moved onto them. Jeremiah records the same land grab. It was a legal claim as much as an insult — the exiles were being written out of their inheritance.

God's answer includes a phrase that would have been startling to a priest: I have been a sanctuary to them for a little while in the countries where they have gone. Sanctuary was a place with walls and an altar. Here it is not a place at all.

What it meant to them

This is the chapter where the exiles find out which side of the line they are on. The people with the temple, the city and the land are the ones under sentence. The people by the canal, written off by their own countrymen, are the ones God says He will gather.

And then comes the promise that the rest of the book will keep returning to: one heart, a new spirit, the heart of stone taken out and a heart of flesh given. Their problem had never been the address. It was the organ, and God says He will replace it Himself.

Sources cited

  • Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
  • John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 11. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

Connections from this chapter

v. 23 · The same word

The glory (kabod) departs the temple eastward: the tragic reversal, sanctuary emptied of presence.

Ezekiel 10:18→

Then the glory of the LORD moved away from the threshold of the temple and stood above the cherubim.

STEPBible floor; Beale 2004

This page draws on C. F. Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament; Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary and Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel.

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