Knowing God is the basic theme of the Book of Ezekiel. The phrase, "They/you shall know that I am the Sovereign Lord" is used around 70 times in this book. .
On the one hand, the book presents God as holy and sovereign. On the other, it provides the picture of the sad predicament that the people of God - in a sense the whole world - has come into because of their lack of the knowledge of God.
Ezekiel's message is not much different from his older contemporary, Jeremiah, who wrote:.
This is what the Lord says: Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the Lord (Jeremiah 9:23-24). .
Jeremiah then follows up in verses 25-26 to spell out the result of the lack of the knowledge of God.
Likewise, Ezekiel's message is not much different from his predecessor the prophet Isaiah. Actually, the first few verses of the Book of Isaiah provide a concise overview of the Book of Ezekiel!.
Right after the first introductory verse, the Book of Isaiah begins with God's lament about His people not knowing Him.
Ezekiel preached to Israel from 592 to 570 B.C. for 22 years during their Babylonian captivity. During the later years of the monarchy, before the Babylonian captivity, the people of God had taken Him for granted. They assumed that God's covenant with their forefathers was irrevocable, the ownership of the land was permanent, and that they were immune to any foreign captivity as long as God was in their midst because of the temple in Jerusalem.
However, their utter shock, Jerusalem was captured, and the nation was exiled from the land to live in captivity. How could this happen? Is our God impotent before the Babylonian gods? Has He forgotten us? Why has He abandoned us? They became angry.
