I'm up to chapter 29 now, and it's a really interesting book. It speaks of Israel's coming punishment and of the destruction of the countries about it, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, but not so much of it is in verse. I don't know what it's called specifically, but you know, it's indented like a poem, and most of Ezekiel is regular prose.
The main thing that keeps sticking out to me, though, is how God does not discriminate between laws. Christians have a lot of manmade categories for Old Testament laws: ceremonial, civil, and moral. And yet look at these passages from Ezekiel:
"In you they have treated father and mother with contempt; in you they have oppressed the foreigner and mistreated the fatherless and widow. You have despised my holy things and desecrated my Sabbaths. In you are slanderers who are bent on shedding blood; in you are those who eat at the mountain shrines and commit lewd acts. In you are those who dishonor their father's bed; in you are those who violate women during their period, when they are ceremonially unclean. In you one man commits a detestable offense with his neighbor's wife, another shamefully defiles his daughter-in-law, and another violates his sister, his own father's daughter. In you are people who accept bribes to shed blood; you take interest and make a profit from the poor. You extort unjust gain from your neighbors. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign Lord." ~Ezekiel 22:7-12
"Her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things; they do not distinguish between the holy and the common; they teach that there is no difference between the unclean and the clean; and they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain. Her prophets whitewash these deeds for them by false visions and lying divinations. . . .The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice." ~Ezekiel 22:26-29
See also Ezekiel 18:5-9.
In these two passages, defaming the Sabbath, sleeping with a woman on her period, and seeing no difference between clean and unclean are listed right next to murder, robbery, and mistreating the poor and foreigner. I think this is one of the many places in the word that emphasize there is little distinction between the laws of Tanakh.
That said, I do think there is some. In Matthew 23:23, Jesus himself said, "You [the Pharisees] give a tenth of your spices - mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law - justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former."
But you'll see the last phrase - without neglecting the former. So while some matters of the law are weightier, Jesus would still have us follow all of it.
What an interesting book! Maybe I'll post again when I'm finished. :)
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