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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
33:23-33 Culpability. Although the movement toward restoration has begun, words from the Lord are castigating Judeans at home (vv. 23-29) and abroad (vv. 30-33) regarding ungodly living.
33:23-29 A Word for the Homelanders. Those left in Judah after its fall are addressed. The scenarios described (vv. 24-26) overlap with those listed in ch. 18. The connection is appropriate. Chapter 18 challenges the notion that ancestry ensures (or prohibits) blessing, and the claim confronted here, in part, is that "paternity" implies possession. Rather, the desolation of the land (33:27-29) is directly linked to the people's own abominations.
33:24 The patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) are rarely mentioned by the prophets. For this invocation of Abraham, cf. Isa. 41:8; 51:2. The Judeans' "logic" of arguing from the one to the many here is deeply flawed. On possession of land at this time, see also Jer. 39:10.
33:25-26 On this catalog of crimes, cf. notes on 18:5-18. You eat flesh with the blood. The Hebrew is literally "you eat over the blood," an idiom used also in Lev. 19:26. The reference is to illicit sacrifice. Ezekiel's rhetorical questions (shall you then possess the land?) imply the terms of the covenant that the homelanders have seemingly forgotten.
33:30-33 A Word for the Exiles. If the "implied" audience for vv. 23-29 was the homelanders, the "real" audience listening in was Ezekiel's fellow exiles. Their enjoyment of the rebuke aimed at their land-hungry compatriots is cut short as Ezekiel turns to accuse them of also being marked by greed (v. 31). Compounding this, they treat prophetic words as mere entertainment (v. 32). No judgment is pronounced, but it is ominously implied (v. 33).
