Weekly Bible Reading – Week 35
Welcome to Week 35 of our journey through the Bible. We are now deep into Ezekiel, and if last week introduced us to the strange visions and dramatic signs of this prophet in exile, this week shows us why his message needed to be so severe. Jerusalem is still standing, the temple is still there, and many people are still convinced that somehow everything is going to work out. False prophets are promising peace. The people continue trusting in their heritage, their city, their alliances, and their own righteousness. Ezekiel is sent to tear those false hopes down.
That makes this a difficult week of reading. There are disturbing images, painful accusations, and chapter after chapter of judgment. But God is not destroying hope; He is destroying false hope. He is refusing to let His people build their lives on lies. And scattered through these dark chapters are little shafts of light reminding us that judgment will not have the last word. God still intends to gather His people, cleanse His name, plant something new, and make Himself known.
Daily Readings
Day 242 – Ezekiel 13-15: Ezekiel begins by confronting false prophets who are telling the people exactly what they want to hear. They are proclaiming peace when there is no peace, covering a crumbling wall with whitewash and pretending that everything is secure. It is a powerful picture of the danger of spiritual reassurance that is disconnected from truth. A fresh coat of paint cannot make a collapsing wall strong.
Sometimes what we most want from God is reassurance that everything we are already doing is fine. But God loves us too much to bless our illusions. His Word sometimes comforts us, and sometimes it peels the paint off the wall. Both are grace. Better to have God expose what is unstable now than to discover it when the wall finally falls.
Chapter 15 adds another uncomfortable image: Israel is compared to the wood of a vine. A vine is wonderful when it is bearing fruit, but its wood is not particularly useful for building anything. If it produces no fruit, what is it for? God had not chosen Israel merely so they could possess a special name. He had called them to belong to Him and bear the fruit of that relationship.
Day 243 – Ezekiel 16-17: Ezekiel 16 is one of the most painful descriptions of Israel’s unfaithfulness in all of Scripture. Jerusalem is pictured as an abandoned child whom God rescued, raised, clothed, and loved. Yet when she became prosperous, she took God’s gifts and used them to pursue other lovers. The tragedy is not simply that Israel broke rules. She betrayed a relationship.
That makes the picture uncomfortable because sin is always more personal than we would like to admit. God does not merely give us commandments; He gives us Himself. Every good thing we possess ultimately comes from His hand. When we turn those gifts into substitutes for Him, we repeat the same pattern Ezekiel describes.
But then, near the end of chapter 17, hope suddenly appears. After the imagery of great eagles, kings, and failed political schemes, God says that He Himself will take a tender sprig from the top of a cedar and plant it on the mountain of Israel. It will grow into a great tree where birds can find shelter. Human kings and political alliances will fail, but God can plant a kingdom from what appears small and insignificant. Christians cannot read that promise without hearing echoes of the kingdom Jesus announces, a kingdom that begins like a mustard seed and becomes a place of refuge for the nations.
Day 244 – Ezekiel 18-20: The people have developed a proverb: the fathers ate sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. In other words, “We are suffering because of what previous generations did.” There is some truth behind that complaint. Sin absolutely has consequences that spill into future generations. But God refuses to let them use their fathers as an excuse for their own rebellion.
Ezekiel 18 emphasizes personal responsibility before God. The righteous father does not guarantee a righteous son, and the wicked father does not doom a repentant son. God calls each person to turn and live. There is something wonderfully hopeful about that. Your story is not determined entirely by the faithfulness or failure of the generations before you. You cannot blame them for everything, but neither are you trapped by them. God calls you to Himself.
Chapter 20 then walks through Israel’s history and reveals just how consistently they had rebelled. Egypt, the wilderness, the promised land. The scenery changed, but the human heart did not. And yet again and again God acted for the sake of His name. Israel’s survival was never proof of Israel’s goodness. It was proof of God’s faithfulness.
Day 245 – Ezekiel 21-22: The sword is coming. Jerusalem has reached the point where the judgment Ezekiel has been announcing will no longer be postponed. Chapter 22 catalogs the corruption of the city: violence, idolatry, sexual sin, injustice, contempt for parents, oppression of the vulnerable, dishonest gain, and priests who no longer distinguish between what is holy and common.
Perhaps the saddest line comes when God says that He looked for someone who would build up the wall and stand in the breach before Him for the land, but He found no one. The leaders had failed. The priests had failed. The prophets had failed. The people had failed.
That should make us grateful for the One who finally does stand in the breach. Jesus does what Israel’s kings, priests, and prophets could not do. He stands between sinful people and righteous judgment, not by pretending the sin does not matter, but by bearing judgment Himself. Ezekiel exposes the need for a faithful mediator long before the fullness of that answer arrives.
Day 246 – Ezekiel 23-24: These may be the hardest chapters of the week. Ezekiel again describes Samaria and Jerusalem through the imagery of marital unfaithfulness, and the language is intentionally shocking. God wants His people to feel the ugliness of their idolatry rather than continuing to treat it casually. Then Ezekiel’s personal life becomes part of the prophetic message. His wife, whom God calls “the delight of your eyes,” dies, and Ezekiel is instructed not to publicly mourn in the customary way. His grief becomes a sign of the grief soon to fall upon Jerusalem when the temple, the delight of their eyes, is destroyed.
There is no reason to pretend this is easy to read. Ezekiel’s ministry cost him something. The prophets were not detached commentators announcing judgment from a comfortable distance. Their lives were often wrapped up in the message they carried. Ezekiel reminds us that speaking God’s truth can be costly, and serving God does not mean being insulated from sorrow. That would have been especially powerful for Ezekiel. He was a priest, but now he lived hundreds of miles from the temple where priests were supposed to serve. The future he may have expected for himself had disappeared. Yet God found him in exile and gave him a new calling. Ezekiel’s plans had been shattered, but God’s purposes for him had not.
Day 247 – Ezekiel 25-27: Once Jerusalem’s judgment has been established, Ezekiel turns outward toward the surrounding nations. Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, and eventually the great commercial city of Tyre all come under God’s judgment. Israel’s God is not merely a local deity concerned with one little patch of land. Yahweh is Lord of the nations. The surrounding peoples cannot celebrate Judah’s collapse as though Israel’s God has been defeated. God will judge His own people for their rebellion, but He will also hold the nations accountable for pride, violence, cruelty, and injustice.
The lament over Tyre is especially striking. Tyre appears magnificent, a beautifully constructed ship loaded with treasures from across the world. It is wealthy, powerful, connected, and admired. And then it sinks. Human glory can look incredibly impressive right up until the moment it disappears beneath the waves.
Day 248 – Ezekiel 28-30: The week closes with more judgment against Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt. The ruler of Tyre has become so proud that he imagines himself divine. Ezekiel responds with imagery reaching back toward Eden itself. The message is unmistakable: however glorious a human ruler may appear, he remains a creature. Pride always tries to erase that distinction.
Egypt receives the same lesson. Pharaoh imagines the Nile belongs to him because he made it. God will remind him who actually rules creation. Political power, economic strength, military force, and national prestige can all become idols when human beings begin trusting them as though they were ultimate. Yet even here we find a promise. God speaks of gathering Israel again and allowing them to dwell securely. Judgment is not God’s final destination for His people. He tears down what is false so that He can establish what is true.
Deep Dive: God Will Not Let Us Build Our Lives on Lies
One of the repeated ideas running through this week’s reading is false security. The false prophets say, “Peace,” when there is no peace. Jerusalem trusts in her beauty and privileged position. Kings trust political alliances. Tyre trusts wealth and international commerce. Egypt trusts its power. Again and again people look at something created and say, “This will keep me safe.” And God keeps knocking those supports away.
At first, that can make Ezekiel feel relentlessly negative. Why tear everything down? Why not give the people something hopeful? Because there is nothing loving about encouraging someone to trust a wall that is about to collapse. Imagine discovering a serious crack in the foundation of your house. You call someone to inspect it, and he walks around the room complimenting your paint colors. You ask about the enormous crack running through the wall, and he says, “Don’t worry about that. Let’s put some fresh paint over it. You should feel good about this house.” That isn’t encouragement. It is negligence.
The false prophets of Ezekiel’s day were offering spiritual whitewash. God was offering truth. And strangely enough, truth is where real hope begins. The gospel does the same thing. Jesus does not come merely to tell basically healthy people that they are doing better than they think. He tells us something much more frightening and much more hopeful: the problem goes all the way down into the human heart, and we cannot repair it ourselves. But then He offers us Himself.
This is why that small promise at the end of Ezekiel 17 shines so brightly. Human schemes have failed. Kings have failed. Alliances have failed. Everything Israel tried to plant for itself has withered. Then God says, in effect, I will plant something. A tender shoot. Something small. Something easily overlooked. And God will make it flourish.
That is the shape of God’s kingdom. God does not repair the old illusion and hand it back to us. He creates something new. Ultimately He gives us Jesus—the righteous King, the faithful Israelite, the true Shepherd, the mediator who stands in the breach, and the One in whom all the promises of God find their fulfillment.
So if this week’s reading feels heavy, don’t rush past that heaviness. Let Ezekiel ask an uncomfortable but necessary question: What am I trusting that cannot actually hold me? My success? My health? My family? My country? My savings? My reputation? My religious activity? My own ability to keep everything under control? These things may be good gifts, but they make terrible gods.
Sometimes God’s mercy feels like demolition because He is removing something we were leaning on. But He does not tear away false hope so that we will have no hope. He tears it away so that we will finally put the full weight of our lives upon the One who cannot fall. Take courage, Ezekiel is not finished, the valley is going to get darker before the bones begin to live, but resurrection is coming.