Re — Naked Bible 126: Ezekiel 18
I believe Heiser chases too many rabbits in this podcast. It’s not as complicated as he makes it out to be.
How many times did God miraculously spare His people in the OT? He caused three armies to fight each other when Israel obeyed and sent a choir out to face them. He destroyed the Assyrian invasion force and let the Kingdom of Judah survive because the king prayed humbly. So why did He not act against Babylon? Up to this point in Ezekiel’s prophecy, the leaders of Judah have been told in several different ways that they have broken the Covenant. Their hedge was gone because they tore it down, chasing idols.
Those elders argued repeatedly with Ezekiel’s message. They quoted a proverb that arose from Exodus 20:5 where God warns the nation that if they get entangled in idolatry, His wrath would fall, and it would keep falling on the third and fourth generations following. If you check Benner’s translation assistance, you’ll learn that the “iniquity of the fathers” is a concept based on a twisted rope that binds one generation to another. The generations are bound together. If you twist the binding, then the trouble takes three to four generations to unwind.
So, the elders there in Babylon were saying that the fathers had eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth were set on edge (sour grapes caused friction between the upper and lower teeth). They were using this as an excuse: “It’s not our sins that got us in trouble, but it was our ancestors.” They rejected Ezekiel’s declaration of their own sins. They were misusing that passage in the Torah.
When covenant people engage in idolatry, they open the doorways to the Nephilim spirits (demons). Once those spirits gain a foothold in the household, it can take a few generations to drive them out again, if the succeeding generations repent and are faithful to the Covenant. Parents can twist the rope that binds them to their children and grandchildren simply by virtue of still being alive when those subsequent generations are born. Those children still live under the same roof with dad/granddad along with his playing footsie with demons. The entire household is still subject to his perverted authority.
That should be obvious.
God, speaking through Ezekiel, warns the elders in Babylon that this does not apply to them the way they suggest. It’s no longer a simple matter of ousting a few demons. Judah had pushed God way too far too long, and He was suspending the bulk of the Covenant. In particular, He was suspending the promises that He had given to the nation as a whole.
This is the same God who overlooked the sins of the people whenever the leadership were faithful. This isn’t flatly stated in the Covenant, but was a fundamental assumption of the feudal worldview of ANE people. If your shepherd is faithful to God, He’s going to bless the sheep on the shepherd’s behalf. Otherwise, Christ’s death on the Cross for the Elect means nothing. Blessings and curses work the same in that sense. That’s the nature of Creation itself; it is fundamentally feudal and God likes it that way.
As Hesier notes, Western people choke on this, passing judgment on God for making things that way. You’ll find any number of western scholars who simply insert their individualist assumptions into their analysis and insist that the Hebrew people evolved to a “higher” (individualist) sense of justice, so that they assign dates to the biblical text based on how much it reflects rising individualism. Heiser himself waffles on this a bit, generally uncomfortable with ANE feudalism as God’s actual design.
At any rate, we have Ezekiel saying that, in this situation with some provisions of the Covenant suspended, the people need to focus on their own individual purity and zeal for Jehovah. “The soul that sins, it shall die.” Jeremiah echoes this, warning that, while God had already surrendered the nation to Babylon, individuals could survive the siege of Jerusalem by remaining individually faithful to the Lord. It’s the same message here in Ezekiel 18.
For those who get hung up on the “shall die” part, keep in mind that this applies only to the Covenant people. He’s not sharing some universal principle that applies to pagans, too. This applies only to God’s Chosen, people who belong to Him. If you embarrass Him too much, He will bring you Home early. If you aren’t His in the first place, your passing will be under the Devil’s control. There’s no telling when or how those sad souls leave this world; it’s going to appear quite random.
The Covenant is the context in which God operates.
