Ezekiel

19 Episodes

Ezekiel is an exilic prophetic book marked by elaborate visions, symbolic performances, and intense priestly concern for divine presence, impurity, and restoration. Its literary power lies in how it reimagines God's mobility, judgment, and future life for a community cut off from Jerusalem and its temple.

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Why this book matters

Ezekiel returns on the show because it combines some of the Hebrew Bible’s strangest imagery with some of its most important exilic theology. The hosts keep coming back to Ezekiel 1, Ezekiel 13, Ezekiel 16, and Ezekiel 37 because the book is full of symbolic performances, unsettling metaphors, and visionary scenes that later readers often flatten into either pure literalism or pure absurdity.

What makes Ezekiel especially useful is that its weirdness is historically meaningful. In exile, the book imagines a God who is no longer confined to a ruined Jerusalem temple, a divine presence who can arrive in Babylon, judge, depart, and restore. That is why Ezekiel matters so much for conversations about divine embodiment, translation, resurrection imagery, and the survival of Judahite theology after catastrophe.

Where to start

Start here for the strongest listening on Ezekiel.

Quotes from the Data

“The idea—Ezekiel's sitting on the river in Babylon. They're exiled. They cannot access their God. That is way back in the temple in Jerusalem... And suddenly they hear the rumbling of God's new ride.”

Dan Beecher Episode 135

“[Ezekiel 1] is allusion here... to theophanies from the Hebrew Bible, where you're seeing God and God is so brilliant and shiny that it's... intimidatingly, even deadly so.”

Dan McClellan Episode 143

“When we go to Ezekiel, we go to Ezekiel 37, the valley of dry bones... the ruach is going to enliven things.”

Dan McClellan Episode 134

“Prophesy to the breath... come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.”

Dan McClellan Episode 134

All episodes

Every episode currently tagged with Ezekiel.