Dr. Keith Essex · The Master's Seminary · 91 minutes
Lecture by Dr. Keith Essex, from The Master's Seminary's public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
This session crosses the hinge of Ezekiel: from the nations under judgment to Israel under promise. Its two great interpretive questions are handled with unusual candor: who is the king of Tyre lamented in Eden's language, and who is the David set over the regathered flock? Dr. Essex lays out every position, tells you where he has changed his mind and where others have, and insists that commentaries are tools while the exegetical decision remains yours. Listen also for how the restoration chapters unfold as ordered steps, each preparing the next.
Chapter 24, dated to the very day the siege began, gives the boiling pot, recalling Jeremiah's opening vision of the pot facing the land, and God is vindicated in the judgment because of the city's filthiness. Then the hardest sign: I am about to take from you the desire of your eyes with a blow, and you shall not mourn. Ezekiel's loss of his wife mirrors Yahweh's loss of his sanctuary: the Lord too is about to profane the temple, the joy of Israel's pride, and shows no outward mourning because the consequence is deserved. And a promise closes the chapter: on the day the news of the destruction arrives by one who escapes, your mouth will be opened and you will be dumb no longer. Until then, silence toward Israel; so in chapters 25 to 32 the prophet turns to the nations.
Chapter 25 rings Judah's borders: Ammon, judged for saying aha over the profaning of the sanctuary; Moab, for saying the house of Judah is like all the nations, no better than us; Edom, for taking vengeance out of its old grudge running back to David's conquest; Philistia, for acting in revenge with everlasting enmity. Each nation falls for an attitude toward Judah, and behind the chapter echoes the Abrahamic covenant: they disdained the seed of Abraham, and the one who disdains you I will curse.
Tyre, the great trading city to the north, had once been covenant friends of the Davidic house, Hiram supplying cedars and craftsmen for the temple; and being everyone's middleman made Tyre rich, and its king proud. Like Egypt, Tyre resisted Babylon, withdrawing to its island citadel so successfully that Nebuchadnezzar's long siege could weaken but never take it; the city finally fell only when Alexander the Great built his causeway to the island. So the image of 26:3 lands on a nation of seafarers: I will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves, wave upon wave until desolation. Chapter 26 recounts the judgment; chapter 27 is a funeral dirge, Ezekiel the wailing mourner over the great ship of Tyre; chapter 28 turns from city to ruler, judgment against the prince (verses 1 to 10) and lamentation over the king (verses 11 to 19), then Sidon, and a closing note (28:25 and 26) that all of this is backdrop to Israel gathered, planted, and dwelling securely.
The prince's sin is pride: because your heart is lifted up, you have said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods in the heart of the seas; yet you are a man and not God. The sarcasm bites: behold, you are wiser than Daniel; by your wisdom and your trade you have acquired riches, and your heart is lifted up because of your riches, wealth read as proof of brilliance, brilliance read as divinity. The historical referent is agreed by all: Ethbaal III, the ruler in Ezekiel's day, who will die the death of the uncircumcised by the hands of strangers, and the whole movement recalls Isaiah 14's proud king of Babylon brought down to the pit.
The lamentation of 28:11 to 19, dense with terms found nowhere else in the Old Testament, says: you were in Eden, the garden of God; you were the anointed cherub who covers; you were blameless from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. Who is being lamented? Position D, dominant in Jewish antiquity and through most of church history, and held by Dyer: this is Satan directly, the god behind the king. Position A, the majority of contemporary evangelicals, Block, Duguid, and Alexander, who changed his own mind between his 1970s work and his EBC: the literal king only, with Ezekiel ironically turning Tyre's own grandiose mythology against its ruler. Position B, Merrill: the king as a second Adam, succumbing to the Genesis 3 temptation to be like God, wise and grasping. Position C, Feinberg and Cooper, where Essex now leans: first and foremost the human king, but described in language deliberately echoing the tempter behind him, for Adam was never called the anointed cherub; the king mirrors Satan's pride as Isaiah 14's king did, and anticipates the final king Satan will raise, the Antichrist.
Essex tests position D against Ezekiel's own usage: the shift from ruler to king proves nothing, since 37:24 and 25 calls the same coming David both king and prince, two aspects of one office; and the same city, the same ruler, receives oracle and lamentation in turn through chapters 26 to 28. So he cannot say with Ezekiel that the passage leaves the human king behind. But he holds his lean loosely: good and godly men land on all four positions, Alexander changed his mind in print, and whatever position you take, good commentators support you, and good commentators do not. Commentaries are tools; the exegetical decision is yours. And a pastoral note: settle whether Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 belong in your teaching on Satan before you teach it, remembering that the doctrine of Satan does not stand or fall on either passage.
Chapters 29 to 32 gather oracles on Egypt across a chronological hopscotch from 587 to 571 BC, best untangled, Essex advises, with Alexander's EBC treatment. The big idea: Egypt strains every muscle to withstand Babylon, and it will not work; God is superior to Egypt's strength and will bring the proud kingdom down. Then chapter 33 recommissions the watchman, answering the exiles' complaint that the way of the Lord is not right: when the righteous turns to iniquity he dies; when the wicked turns to righteousness he lives; I will judge each of you according to your ways. Repentance stands open, and that call is the foundation for everything after 33:21.
At 33:21, January 585 BC, the survivor arrives: the city has been taken; and the hand of the Lord, on Ezekiel the evening before, opens his mouth. Six times now the formula falls, the word of the Lord came to me, marking six movements through chapter 39. The first concerns the desolation of the land. Those left behind in the waste places reason: Abraham was one man and possessed the land; we are many, so the land is surely ours. God answers: you eat meat with the blood, lift up your eyes to idols, shed blood, defile your neighbor's wife, and should you then possess the land? Sword, beasts, and pestilence will sweep the land clean, for the scattering must be total: Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 decreed dispersion among the nations, and it is from the nations that the regathering will begin. Meanwhile the exiles treat the prophet as entertainment: you are to them like a sensual song sung beautifully; they hear your words and do not practice them; but when it comes to pass, they will know a prophet has been among them.
Movement two, chapter 34: the unfaithful shepherds fed themselves and scattered the flock, so Yahweh declares: I myself will search for my sheep; I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken, strengthen the sick, but the fat and the strong I will feed with judgment. Then verse 23: I will set over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will feed them, and I, Yahweh, will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them, with a covenant of peace. Who is this David? Dyer, following Pentecost's Things to Come, a book approaching a quarter million copies, reads resurrected literal David. Essex affirms that Old Testament David will indeed be raised and reign with all the saints, but argues Ezekiel means someone else: David may itself be a throne name, as Solomon was a throne name given at birth to another name in 2 Samuel 12, so that the true and ultimate David is the Messiah, the one in whom Yahweh who shepherds his own flock sets a shepherd who is Yahweh's own presence, the king over all the earth of Zechariah 14:9, known to us historically as Jesus. This is the majority position across commentators of various stripes.
Movement three, 35:1 to 36:15: Mount Seir, Edom, still inhabited as Ezekiel spoke, will become a waste with no one passing through; and the mountains of Israel, the very mountains cursed for their high places in chapter 6, now hear blessing: you, O mountains of Israel, will put forth your branches and bear your fruit for my people Israel, for they will soon come; you will be cultivated and sown, and men multiplied upon you. The good shepherd having come, the land itself is prepared for the flock's return.
Movement four, 36:16 onward: Israel defiled the land, was scattered, and then profaned God's name among the nations by their very presence there. Therefore: it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for my holy name. I will take you from the nations; I will sprinkle clean water on you and cleanse you from all your filthiness and your idols; I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. Purification, then a heart transplant, then the indwelling Spirit's power, exactly what Deuteronomy 30 required, for what use is returning Israel to the land to repeat the whole history? The desolate land will become like the garden of Eden, Genesis 2's bounty made actual at last, and the ruined cities fortified and inhabited.
Movement five, 37:1 to 14, flows without a break from the new-heart promise. The valley of dry bones is interpreted by the text itself: son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, our bones are dried up and our hope has perished; we are completely cut off. This is first and foremost national, not individual, resurrection: the despair itself fulfills Leviticus 26's word that the scattered would lose hope of any future, precisely so that when God opens the graves, brings them into the land of Israel, and puts his Spirit within them, they will know that I, Yahweh, have spoken and done it, for they did nothing to bring it about.
The chapter closes with the sign of the two sticks: write on one, Judah; on the other, Joseph, Ephraim, the house of Israel; join them into one stick in your hand. The split under Rehoboam will be healed under the greater David: one nation on the mountains of Israel, one king over all of them, no longer two kingdoms, no longer defiled with idols; and, verse 28, my sanctuary in their midst forever. Jeroboam's rival temples, priests, and feasts are finally undone: one king, one worship, which prepares directly for chapters 40 to 46 and the question of what that one sanctuary entails. Five steps have now run their course, from total desolation through shepherd, land, cleansing, and resurrection to a reunified nation at peace, and, in about twelve days of class, chapters 38 and 39 will ask what happens when a nation at peace is invaded by Gog.
Essex closes by setting Block's outline beside his own: Yahweh's restorative actions for the glory of his name, six movements, the restoration of Yahweh's role as shepherd, his land, his honor, his people, his covenant, his supremacy, his presence among his people and in the land. There, he says, is a non-dispensationalist who has read Ezekiel right. And Duguid's NIVAC, in its original-meaning sections, reads the restoration of Israel, people, kingship, and new covenant so plainly that, brother, we are on the same page, though the amillennialist's bridging contexts and contemporary application then move where Essex cannot follow. The steps themselves are simply a clear reading of Ezekiel.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all twenty-two are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What does Ezekiel's forbidden mourning for his wife signify?
2. For what is Moab judged in Ezekiel 25?
3. What covenant echoes behind the judgments on the four neighboring nations?
4. How did Tyre finally fall, long after Ezekiel's day?
5. What is the sin of the prince of Tyre in 28:1 to 10?
6. Which position on the king of Tyre was predominant through most of church history?
7. Which commentator changed his position on Ezekiel 28 between the 1970s and his EBC volume?
8. What is Essex's chief objection to reading position B, the king as Adam?
9. Why does the shift from ruler to king in Ezekiel 28 fail to prove a change of referent?
10. What does Essex say commentaries finally are?
11. What is the big idea of the Egypt oracles in chapters 29 to 32?
12. How did those left in the land after 586 argue their claim to it?
13. Why was total scattering among the nations necessary?
14. How did the exiles actually receive Ezekiel's preaching, per 33:30 to 33?
15. Whom does Essex understand by my servant David in Ezekiel 34 and 37?
16. What reversal do the mountains of Israel undergo between chapters 6 and 36?
17. For whose sake does God act in the regathering of Ezekiel 36?
18. What three gifts transform Israel in 36:25 to 27?
19. What do the dry bones represent, by the text's own interpretation?
20. Why had Israel's hope perished, exactly as foreseen?
21. What does the sign of the two sticks promise?
22. What does Essex demonstrate by quoting Block's outline of the restoration chapters?
All twenty-two correct. Lecture 13 is complete.
The nations of Ezekiel 25 were judged for attitudes: gloating, leveling, vengeance. What does it mean that God weighs how peoples and persons respond to others' downfall, and where do you catch yourself quietly glad at someone's stumble?
The king of Tyre read his wealth as proof of his wisdom and his wisdom as grounds for self-deification. Trace that same logic in modern dress: where does success most tempt you to misread its source?
Essex holds his position on Ezekiel 28 loosely, notes that Alexander changed his mind in print, and says the exegetical decision is yours. How do you distinguish convictions worth defending from conclusions worth holding open, and what texts sit in each category for you?
The exiles enjoyed Ezekiel like a beautifully sung song, hearing without practicing. What guards a person against consuming preaching and teaching as content rather than command?
God acts in Ezekiel 36 for the sake of his name, not Israel's worthiness, and gives the heart he requires. How does grace that originates entirely in God, cleansing, new heart, indwelling Spirit, reshape both your assurance and your obedience?
Ezekiel 36:26
Read Ezekiel 28 whole, marking where the language could describe a proud man and where it strains beyond one, then set Isaiah 14:12 to 15 beside it. Then read chapters 34, 36:16 to 38, and 37 in one sitting to feel the ordered steps: shepherd, cleansing, heart, Spirit, resurrection, reunion. Next session: Gog of the land of Magog invades a people at peace, and the vision of the temple begins.