Ezekiel opens with a storm rolling in over a refugee camp and ends with a city renamed for the nearness of God. Between those bookends the prophet watches glory depart and, by promise, return, and the people who are judged are also promised a new heart and a new spirit so they can live with the Lord who dwells among them again (Ezekiel 10:18–19; Ezekiel 36:26–27; Ezekiel 48:35). The setting is exile, not comfort; the tone is holy, not casual; yet the thread is hope from start to finish. What begins by the Kebar Canal with a priest who never reached his temple assignment becomes the life’s work of a watchman who speaks to a stubborn people so that they “will know that I am the Lord” when His word comes to pass in judgment and mercy alike (Ezekiel 1:1; Ezekiel 2:3–8; Ezekiel 33:7; Ezekiel 36:11, Ezekiel 36:23).
Many readers find Ezekiel disorienting at first. The visions are intense, the sign-acts are startling, and the timeline reaches from near events in Jerusalem to a future restoration that reshapes the land, the people, and the worship of God in ways that still stir debate (Ezekiel 4:4–8; Ezekiel 8:7–12; Ezekiel 40:1–4). Yet the center holds: the Holy One judges idolatry, disciplines His people, exposes false shepherds, promises a Davidic shepherd, breathes life into a dead nation, defeats enemies who gather against Israel, and marks the end with worship in a renewed sanctuary where His glory fills the house (Ezekiel 34:2–4; Ezekiel 34:23–24; Ezekiel 37:1–6; Ezekiel 38:18–23; Ezekiel 43:1–5). When read as one story, Ezekiel becomes a map from ruin to renewal that magnifies the Lord’s name.
Words: 2837 / Time to read: 15 minutes
Historical and Cultural Background
Ezekiel’s ministry begins “in the thirtieth year” among the exiles by the Kebar Canal, a detail that hints at a priest reaching the age of service yet far from the courts where he had trained to serve (Ezekiel 1:1–3; Numbers 4:3). Jerusalem had already suffered deportations, and the temple still stood when Ezekiel saw the heavens opened and the likeness of the glory of the Lord above living creatures and wheels within wheels, a mobile throne that could move with His people even in foreign lands (Ezekiel 1:4–28). The Lord addressed him again and again as “son of man,” a phrase that underscored his humanity before the Eternal, even as the Lord gave him a hard forehead and a stout heart to face a hard and stubborn house with words not his own (Ezekiel 2:1; Ezekiel 3:8–11). Exile did not silence God. It amplified His call to holiness.
The prophet’s earliest messages pressed into the sins within the city he could no longer visit. He was shown idolatry carved into the walls of the temple, leaders who worshiped creatures rather than the Creator, and women and men practicing rites of pagan sorrow and seasonal gods in the very place dedicated to the Lord’s name (Ezekiel 8:7–16). The result was dreadful but just. Ezekiel watched the glory depart, first to the threshold, then to the east gate, and finally to the mountain east of the city, a slow leave-taking that made clear the tragedy was spiritual before it was political (Ezekiel 9:3; Ezekiel 10:18–19; Ezekiel 11:22–23). Exile, then, was not simply Babylon’s power. It was God’s discipline, a father’s severe mercy meant to restore a people who had traded their Maker for images that could not save (Ezekiel 14:3–5; Hebrews 12:10–11).
Because the people were dull of hearing, the Lord appointed Ezekiel as a watchman and gave him messages to act as well as to speak. He lay on his side to bear the people’s iniquity, shaved his head and beard to divide the hair as a sign of coming judgment, and ate meager rations to portray the famine that would come with siege (Ezekiel 4:4–17; Ezekiel 5:1–4). The Lord even took his wife and commanded him not to mourn in public so Israel would understand that the loss of the temple would be as shocking and as final as the loss of a beloved spouse, yet the people were to accept the Lord’s verdict and submit to His discipline (Ezekiel 24:15–24). Through all of this, one refrain tied the background to the goal: the Lord acted “so that they will know that I am the Lord,” a phrase that sounds like thunder more than sixty times in the book (Ezekiel 6:7; Ezekiel 36:23). Knowledge of God—not the comfort of habit—was the aim.
Biblical Narrative
Ezekiel’s book moves in four great movements from call to comfort. First comes the prophet’s commissioning. He sees the divine chariot, eats the scroll of lament and woe, and is sent to a people of foreign-sounding speech not because of language but because of stubborn hearts, with the charge to warn both the wicked and the righteous so that blood will not be on his hands (Ezekiel 1:26–28; Ezekiel 3:1–11; Ezekiel 3:16–21). His street-theater sermons paint the siege and fall of Jerusalem in strokes no one could miss, even from a distance, and his words strike false hopes by naming the city’s violence, idolatry, and injustice as the true cause of their collapse (Ezekiel 12:1–13; Ezekiel 22:23–31). In this movement the prophet also records a personal grief that becomes a national warning when his wife dies and he is forbidden to mourn, a sign of how sudden and total the coming loss will be (Ezekiel 24:15–24).
The second movement surveys the nations around Israel as the Lord pronounces judgments on Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt, each word tailored to pride and cruelty and each verdict a reminder that the Holy One rules among the nations and lifts up or casts down as He pleases (Ezekiel 25:1–7; Ezekiel 28:6–10; Ezekiel 29:2–7). In the middle of those oracles the prince of Tyre is unmasked as a man swollen with godlike pretension while the lament over the king of Tyre reaches poetic heights that make some readers hear echoes of the fall of a darker enemy behind earthly thrones, a reminder that human arrogance follows an ancient script (Ezekiel 28:1–19). The aim is not curiosity but comfort for a people tempted to think their enemies were beyond God’s reach. He alone is God.
The third and fourth movements pivot to hope. After a messenger reports that the city has fallen, Ezekiel’s tongue is loosed and promises surge like a river. False shepherds who fed on the flock will be replaced by one shepherd, a descendant of David, who will rescue the sheep and bind up their wounds with justice and care, a promise that announces both the Lord’s direct rule and His appointment of a royal servant to lead His people (Ezekiel 33:21–22; Ezekiel 34:2–4; Ezekiel 34:23–24). The Lord promises to gather the scattered, to cleanse them from their idols, and to give them a new heart and a new spirit so they will walk in His ways and live in the land He swore to their ancestors, a promise of inward renewal joined to outward restoration (Ezekiel 36:24–28). Then the Spirit leads the prophet to a valley of very dry bones to show that the whole house of Israel can live again by the breath of God, and two sticks—Judah and Joseph—are joined in his hand as a sign that the division of the kingdoms will be healed under one king forever (Ezekiel 37:1–6; Ezekiel 37:15–22).
Hope must also face opposition, so Ezekiel sees a future assault led by Gog of the land of Magog against a restored, unsuspecting Israel dwelling in safety. The nations converge, but the Lord himself fights for His people with earthquake, hail, pestilence, and confusion until the attackers destroy one another and the world learns, again, who is God (Ezekiel 38:8–12; Ezekiel 38:18–23; Ezekiel 39:1–6). The end of that contest is not only victory; it is cleansing and a renewed awareness that the Lord has poured out His Spirit on the people of Israel, signaling a change no enemy can reverse (Ezekiel 39:9–10; Ezekiel 39:25–29). From there the last vision stretches into the future with measurements of a temple, descriptions of priestly service from the Zadokian line, a river that brings life wherever it flows, a re-allotted land, and a city whose new name captures the heart of the whole book: “The Lord Is There” (Ezekiel 44:15; Ezekiel 47:1–12; Ezekiel 48:35). What began with departure ends with return.
Theological Significance
The holiness of God stands at the center of Ezekiel’s message. The triple “Holy, holy, holy” in Isaiah is echoed here by the weight of glory in the wheels and the fire and the radiant throne, and every judgment and every mercy is framed by the Lord’s passion for His name to be known and honored among His people and the nations (Ezekiel 1:27–28; Ezekiel 36:22–23). Idolatry is not merely error; it is adultery, a betrayal of covenant love that wounds the heart of God and dehumanizes the worshiper who turns from living water to broken cisterns that hold none (Ezekiel 16:15–19; Jeremiah 2:13). Ezekiel’s repeated refrain—“then they will know that I am the Lord”—is not a cold slogan. It is the blazing purpose of redemptive history: God makes Himself known as the only God, the saving King.
Alongside holiness stands responsibility and renewal. Ezekiel insists that each person will answer to God for his or her own life, a needed correction for those who blamed their plight on the sins of their fathers and excused their own rebellion with sour-proverb logic (Ezekiel 18:1–4; Ezekiel 18:19–20). Yet the call to turn and live is paired with the promise that God will act within the heart so that obedience becomes possible, not by human resolve alone but by the gift of a new heart and the presence of the Spirit who enables a people to walk in His statutes (Ezekiel 18:30–32; Ezekiel 36:26–27). The doctrine is both bracing and tender: God commands repentance and gives renewal, and grace never cancels responsibility; it empowers it.
A dispensational reading—stages in God’s revealed plan—receives Ezekiel’s promises as they are given. The prophet speaks of Israel’s national restoration, a regathering to the land under a Davidic king, deliverance from a vast northern coalition, and worship in a temple whose dimensions and ordinances differ from earlier temples, with priestly service from Zadok’s line and a river flowing from the sanctuary (Ezekiel 37:24–28; Ezekiel 38:14–16; Ezekiel 40:1–4; Ezekiel 44:15). A grammatical-historical-literal approach does not flatten these peaks into symbols alone; it expects a future Millennial Kingdom—future thousand-year reign of Christ—in which promises to Israel are fulfilled while the nations also share the blessing as Scripture elsewhere affirms (Isaiah 2:2–4; Revelation 20:1–6). This framework resists supersessionism—teaching that church replaces Israel—by honoring the irrevocable gifts and calling of God and by locating the church’s present blessings in Christ without erasing Israel’s future under the same Lord (Romans 11:28–29; Ephesians 3:6). The result is a hope both wide and specific: wide enough for the nations, specific enough to keep every promise God made.
Spiritual Lessons and Application
Ezekiel teaches exiles how to live. The first lesson is to seek the presence of God more than the place of habit. When the glory moved, Ezekiel learned that God was not locked to stones; He was Lord in Babylon as surely as in Jerusalem, and He could meet His people by a canal and make them stand in a hard calling with His word in their mouths and His hand upon them (Ezekiel 1:3; Ezekiel 3:14). In seasons when plans shatter and familiar rhythms fall, the same Lord still calls His people to faithfulness where they are, not where they wish they were, and He gives strength for a stubborn age that does not want to listen (Ezekiel 2:7; 2 Corinthians 12:9–10). Faithfulness in exile honors the Lord more than comfort in ease.
The next lesson is watchfulness joined to love. The watchman imagery does not authorize harshness; it summons courage and compassion. Ezekiel was charged to warn the wicked and the righteous alike so that no one would perish unwarned, and the Lord took no pleasure in the death of the wicked but called them to turn and live (Ezekiel 3:17–21; Ezekiel 18:23). Believers today are not prophets of doom; they are ambassadors of reconciliation who speak truth plainly and plead with tears, remembering that they were rescued by mercy and now live by the Spirit who softens hard hearts (2 Corinthians 5:18–20; Ezekiel 36:26–27). A church shaped by Ezekiel will pray for boldness and tenderness at once.
Ezekiel also trains leaders. The false shepherds who feed themselves and neglect the flock still serve as a warning to pastors, parents, and any who carry responsibility for others. The Lord Himself seeks the lost, binds up the injured, and strengthens the weak, and He appoints a shepherd after His heart to do the same (Ezekiel 34:2–4; Ezekiel 34:11–16; Ezekiel 34:23–24). Leadership that imitates the Good Shepherd refuses to exploit, tells the truth even when it costs, and trusts the Lord to vindicate meekness in His time (John 10:11; 1 Peter 5:2–4). In a noisy age, gentle fidelity stands out.
Finally, Ezekiel teaches hope that looks beyond today’s headlines. Dry bones can live. Divided peoples can be joined. A city once abandoned can be renamed for God’s presence. The Lord can turn a surprise assault into a stage for His glory, confusing the enemies of His plan and saving a remnant for Himself so that the nations will know His name (Ezekiel 37:3–10; Ezekiel 37:21–22; Ezekiel 38:18–23). Hope is not naive; it is anchored in the word that never fails and the Spirit who breathes life where there was only death (Ezekiel 12:25; Ezekiel 37:14). In personal valleys and public upheaval alike, the call is the same: trust, obey, and wait for the Lord.
Conclusion
Ezekiel’s story arcs from a departing glory to a returning presence and from a rebellious heart to a renewed spirit. The Holy One disciplines His people so that they will know Him, and He promises not only to change their circumstances but to change their hearts so they can walk with Him in the land of promise and in the light of His presence (Ezekiel 11:19–20; Ezekiel 36:27–28). The enemies of that future will falter; the Shepherd-King will reign; the sanctuary will be filled with glory; and the city’s name will preach a final sermon over the whole redeemed landscape: “The Lord Is There” (Ezekiel 37:24–28; Ezekiel 43:1–5; Ezekiel 48:35). Until that day, exiles become witnesses, watchmen become servants, and weary hearts become new by grace.
The promise is not fragile. The God who spoke by the river still speaks by His Spirit and His word, and He has pledged His own name to the work of making Himself known among His people and the nations (Ezekiel 36:22–23; Ezekiel 39:7). Take courage, then. The same Lord who judges idols also binds up the broken, and the breath that raised a nation will keep His church until the day the world can say without doubt: the Lord is there (Ezekiel 34:16; Ezekiel 37:14; Matthew 28:20).
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36:26–27)
General Outline of the Book of Ezekiel
Chapters 1-3
- God reveals himself to Ezekiel
- Ezekiel receives his divine calling as prophet
- The responsibilities as Watchman are laid out
Chapters 4-24
- Focus is on Israel as a nation
- Ezekiel warns of various internal national problems
- Ezekiel warns of the fall of Jerusalem
Chapters 25-32
- Focus is on foreign nations
- Ezekiel alludes to the reality of Satan (28:11ff)
- Warnings and lament is recorded against neighboring nations
Chapters 33-48
- Focus is on Eschatological (Future things)
- Looks ahead to the repentance and restoration of Israel
- Prophecies are made with fulfillment expected in the distant future
- The features of the new temple are detailed
Chart of Parallel Concepts Between Ezekiel and Revelation
There are actually several parallel concepts between the Books of Ezekiel and Revelation. God was sure to include fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and concepts when he made these things known to John as recorded in Revelation. For believers who regard the written Word of God as divinely inspired, there is no doubt that these prophecies will be fulfilled.
| Concept | Ezekiel Reference | Revelation Reference |
| 4 Cherubim / 4 Faces | Ezekiel 1:5-6 | Revelation 4:6-8 |
| Eating the Scroll | Ezekiel 3:1-3 | Revelation 10:9-11 |
| Use of Coals | Ezekiel 10:2 | Revelation 8:3-5 |
| Four Evil Forces | Ezekiel 14:21 | Revelation 6:1-8 |
| Gog and Magog | Ezekiel 38:1-3 | Revelation 20:7-8 |
| River of Life | Ezekiel 47:1-5 | Revelation 22:1-2 |
All Scripture quoted from:
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.