Ezekiel: For His GlorySample

## Have you ever been far from home? How did you feel? As the book of Ezekiel opens we find that a group of Israelites has been exiled from home (v. 1). The might of the Babylonian army had attacked Jerusalem in 598 BC and forcibly deported the elite, the leaders. We’re told that King Nebuchadnezzar dragged away the king and his family, the palace officials, the fighting men, the craftsmen, and metalworkers: that is, all the people most useful to build the Babylonian Empire (see 2 Kgs 24:10–16). Removing them also removed the threat of an uprising. Ezekiel was among those banished, and as the word of the Lord comes to him, the exiles had been away from home for five years (v. 2). How do you think they would have felt? Psalm 137 captures some of their emotions. > 1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. … 3 there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ 4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? So the exiles were in despair. They were far away from their temple and their land. They were probably wondering, ‘Has our God, the Lord, been defeated by the Babylonian gods?’ And they were also probably anxiously thinking, ‘Has God abandoned us?’ We’ll see God’s response to these types of questions in the next devotion. For now, also spare a thought for Ezekiel. Since he came from a family of priests, for all his life he’d been groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps (vv. 1-3). The usual age to begin priestly duties was thirty years old (cf. Num. 4:3). But when Ezekiel turned thirty, instead of beginning ministry as a priest, God calls him to be a prophet, His mouthpiece. How will Ezekiel respond? More importantly, how will the exiles respond to God’s word spoken to them through the prophet? We’ll find out as we study the book of Ezekiel together.