Before it became a political thriller series for TV, a scandal has always been perceived to be a bad thing—the malevolent turn that no one saw coming—sometimes scintillating, but always wrong. The twenty-first-century tragedy of scandals is how ubiquitous they have become, and the church is no exception.1 Indeed, the headlines hardly grab our attention anymore. Driven by the age-old passions for power, sex, and money, the last three decades have marked the “rise and fall” of many religious fixtures.
Scandals ironically serve to arouse the shared moral beliefs that undergird a society as the public unanimously decries the shocking actions of the scandalized. Psychologist Hanne Detel refers to this as the “morality of immorality.”2 At the same time, scandal is sociologically destabilizing, as it “intimidates the powerful and destroys hierarchies of domination.”3
All scandals pivot on a moment of revelation—the moment where what was hidden becomes public knowledge. As what has been done in secret comes into public view, a moment of moral clarity surges through the onlookers, who now see things for what they really are.
The Bible is a true depiction of the human condition, and as such, we should not be surprised to find scandals in it—moments where sin is shockingly outed and hierarchies and powers tumble as a result. Perhaps our minds immediately think of the scandalous actions of David and Bathsheba, or even the climactic betrayal committed by Jesus’ own disciple Judas and the religious institution of his day. A scandal of lesser proportions within the biblical narrative, but no less shocking, is found in the vision of Ezekiel recorded in chapter 8. The surprise and shock of the account hangs on the irony that the God who sees and reveals visions is simultaneously maligned and abandoned for blind indifference. Amidst the looming threat of exile and judgement, Israel’s God sees and knows what happens in the darkness.
The God of Visions and Prophets
The account of Ezekiel’s dramatic vision opens in the beginning of chapter 8 with the prophet sitting in his house (sometime around September of 592 BC), surrounded by the exiled elders of Judah. Suddenly, the hand of the Sovereign Lord falls upon him, and he is taken away in a vision. The text reads, “the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem” (Ezek 8:3, ESV). While Ezekiel’s visions notoriously conjure up more questions than answers, the encounter is reminiscent of his initial encounter with the glory of the Lord, earlier in the book (Ezek 1:28; 3:22).
Like the experiences of other prophets in Israel, God, not Ezekiel, initiated the prophetic vision. Unlike the diviners, necromancers, mediums, and fortune tellers of the ancient Near Eastern world, the prophets of Israel were the recipients of revelation. The prophetic revelation of the Lord came only at the divine desire to disclose knowledge and vision, whereas the goal of the diviner was to harness, manipulate, and acquire otherworldly knowledge by earthly means (see Deut 18:9-22).
Many people hear the word “prophecy” and immediately jump to ideas of telling the future. And indeed, the prophets were given insight into the future of God’s working in the world. However, more frequently, the prophet is characterized by supernaturally seeing what others do not—regardless of timeframe. In Ezekiel’s temple vision, the Spirit carried him to the gates of Jerusalem from his new residence in Babylon.
While the date of this vision is later than his inaugural vision in 593, some question whether the chapter 8 vision is in “real time,” or instead, communicates an earlier departure of the Lord from the temple. Either way, Ezekiel’s divine encounter is less revelation of the future than it is prophetic expose’.
The nature of Ezekiel’s vision is to bring the prophet into a realm of seeing that—until that moment—had been hidden. It is only because God sees and knows the hearts, minds, and ways of man that he can supernaturally reveal these insights to his prophet. Ezekiel stands in the prophetic gap that accounts for the incongruity of human experience and divine sight. The people in Babylon are experiencing suffering and exile in a way that calls into question God’s power, knowledge, and vision. Yet, God is not dead, impotent, or blind. And Ezekiel is the prophetic proof to the people.
I am here reminded of the words Aslan spoke to Jill (something of a prophetess to Narnia) in C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair:
Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart, and pay no attention to appearances.4
The unseen realm continues to be a reality for God’s people who live as “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11) in a world that is not their covenant-promised homeland. Things are not always as they seem, and reality cannot be reduced to a materialism that evaluates the world based upon what we can see. God exists, speaks, and reveals that which we cannot perceive apart from his revelation.
The Scandal of Compromise, Corruption, and Idolatry
Like Ebenezer Scrooge’s dream-like encounter of the lives of his neighbors and co-workers in Dickens’ classic Christmas tale, Ezekiel is guided with a spiritual stealth through the temple community in Jerusalem, seeing all that is taking place. Verses 5-6 describe the first religious and theological scandal of the account. Ezekiel is directed to lift up his eyes toward the north gate, which is called the altar gate, to see the abominable image that dominates the visage. The vague description of “image of jealousy,” makes it difficult to discern exactly what the image was, but 2 Kings 21:7 describes the Judean king Manasseh (697-642 BC), erecting an image of the Canaanite goddess Asherah in the temple roughly 50-75 years before Ezekiel’s vision. While the image was removed later by Manasseh (2 Chron 33:15), then again by his son Josiah (2 Kgs 23:6), it seems plausible that a similar image reappeared in the years following Josiah’s religious reforms.
The scandal of the image at the gate of the temple strikes at the heart of Israel’s covenant relationship with Yahweh. In Exodus 20:5 the Lord clearly commanded the people, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God.” And such language is reiterated to the second generation of Israelites preparing to go into the Promised Land in Deuteronomy 4:23-24, “Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the LORD your God has forbidden you. For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” The brazenness of Israel’s idolatry in the temple gates demonstrates the theological corrosion that had taken place over the centuries of compromise. But, as the Lord warns, this is merely a foretaste of what the prophet will see.
The second scandalous scene unfolds in verses 7-13 of the chapter. Ezekiel is directed toward a hole in a wall, and then commanded to dig into the wall. The description of his entrance into the room evokes feelings of suspicion and intrigue. Most rooms are entered through doors, not holes in the wall! Why has God led him to this seemingly discreet location to climb through a hole? If the image of jealously in the gate shocked due to the brazen idolatry of the people, the secret worship service of the elders reveals the deep theological betrayal that had seized the religious leadership of the temple community. The vision reveals seventy spiritual leaders—censors in hand—worshipping detestable beasts and all the idols of Israel. The gods and divine beings of Egypt and Mesopotamia are frequently depicted as composite animals, and animalistic deities on the walls likely point toward the profound religious syncretism that had taken hold of the people.
The voice of the Lord enters in verse 12, asking Ezekiel a question that highlights the shock of the scene: “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures?” (Ezek 8:12, ESV). The rhetorical question directs the reader’s attention to the unfathomable actions of the elders, as God asks the prophet, “Ezekiel, are you seeing this!?” However, God then gives the rationale for their idolatry, “For they say, ‘The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.’” (8:12, ESV). The divine assessment of the people seems to indicate that Judah’s idolatry originated in a false belief about Yahweh. The vision reveals the leaders of Israel employed in a last-ditch religious effort to spiritually deal with their current geo-political crisis. In the indiscriminate phrase “all the idols of Israel,” we hear the frantic attempt to appeal to some divine power to stand in the gap for Israel’s God, whose sight and presence they no longer regarded.
The irony here hangs thick in the air like the smoke from the elders’ censors. Certainly, the sin of idolatry is the primary indictment elicited by the account. However, the secret actions of the elders evoke images of Adam and Eve hiding from the presence of the Lord in the Garden of Eden. The idea that the elders can hide from God by closing a door, building a wall, or extinguishing the light is as offensive as it is foolish. Not only can God see their so-called “hidden” idolatry, but he is also actually leading spiritual tours through the whole spectacle! Despite the conviction of the elders that the Lord does not see, he does indeed see into the darkness of their rooms and their hearts.
The Message of the Scandal
Why did the people of Israel and the leaders in the temple come to believe that the Lord no longer saw them or cared for their land? A little historical context is important in answering this question. First, in ancient Israel there was no such thing as “separation of church and state.” The religious beliefs of the people were in no way distinguishable from their political identity as a nation. In fact, this was the case in all the ancient world, and the result is that every international conflict was quite literally viewed through a theological lens. When Israel failed to view its God as the Sovereign God over all the nations and fell into the pattern of seeing Him as merely one of the patron deities of the ancient world, they opened themselves up to the tempting belief that Yahweh could be defeated and subjugated.
At this point in the nation’s history, things were going terribly wrong. The northern nation of Israel (often referred to as Ephraim in the Prophets) had already been carried off to exile in Assyria (722 BC), and the southern nation of Judah had been trying to stand its ground for a hundred years against massive world empires. By 593 BC when the book of Ezekiel opens, things are beginning to fall apart in Jerusalem, as king Jehoiachin (heir of king David) is carried away to Babylon with Ezekiel and many others. To put things in perspective, Jerusalem would only stave off attack for seven more years—Babylon eventually destroyed the city in 586 BC. All of this matters because it helps us understand the reasons why the people in Jerusalem had come to believe that God no longer sees them or cares for them.
Such suffering and destruction could not be the fault of the people; the only possible cause must be divine abandonment. The leaders concluded that their current station in life had nothing to do with their rejection of the covenant and their own sin. Instead, in acts of profound self-justification, the people would rather exchange the truth for a lie and worship created things than deal with their own sinful ways (cf. Rom 1:18-25). The deconstruction and dissolution of their faith led to the idolatry that came to shape the theological syncretism of the temple.
In the midst of fear, worry, and pain, the leaders of Jerusalem looked for other sources of power (that is, idols) to manipulate their circumstances. Righteousness and justice had lost their appeal centuries ago, covenant faithfulness and hope had not worked, so the current installation of leaders was prepared to do what it took to protect themselves—even if it meant abandoning their religious and cultural identity.
And here we must concede that such temptations are not isolated to ancient Israel. God’s people have long wrestled with the presence and goodness of God during seasons of suffering, and the prophetic answer to this situation has always been to wait and hope. These words of waiting run in opposition to those voices in our culture that would tell us that God is loving, merciful, but not sovereign over the affairs of this world. The world’s affirmations are designed to bring comfort to the sorrowful and hurting, yet only rob them of the hope found solely in the God of the Bible—seeking to find comfort in an idolatrous distortion.
The true God is revealed in Exodus 2:24-25, where God’s vision and mercy come to provide the backdrop for his saving action. “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (ESV). God sees the suffering of his people, knows them in their pain, and acts according to his own covenant faithfulness to redeem them. Israel’s leaders were wrong to abandon God in their suffering, and we are as well. When the hard circumstances of life and ministry begin to erode our faith and tempt us to believe that God has left us in our pain, may we remember not only the eyes of God toward his people in Egypt, but the Son of God who entered into human flesh, walked a path of sorrow, and demonstrates the love of God for us.
1 Hanna Detel, “The Omnipresence of Scandal,” in Psychology Today, posted August 30, 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-unleashed-scandal/201408/the-omnipresence-of-scandal.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (New York: Collier Books, 1978), 21.
Dr. William R. “Rusty” Osborne (PhD, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is a visiting professor of Old Testament at Tennent and also serves as Associate Professor of Biblical & Theological Studies at College of the Ozarks. He lives in southwest Missouri with his wife and four children. He has authored and co-edited several books, including The Prophets and the Apostolic Witness: Reading Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel as Christian Scripture.