This is an early exile group in Babylon, and Ezekiel is a source of God-given news about Jerusalem. It’s all bad.
This chapter has a brutal picture of a corrupt society. The powerful are depicted as a savage bunch of wild animals that tear people and social order apart to satisfy their appetites.
The priesthood is painted as whitewashing the greed and self dealing of the powerful for the own advantage, with no care for the average people.
The test of a society is it’s treatment of the vulnerable: poor, needy and foreigners. Jerusalem’s are robbed, extorted and denied justice.
We have these things called lobbyists. Persuading the government who are supposed to represent us to instead serve the interests of the coal lobby, or the stock market. Inequality is tangibly rising in so many Western democracies. More and more people are locked out of home ownership. The picture of Jerusalem might be worse in some ways, but we have some pretty big ills.
There’s a messianic word at the end about someone who could stand in the gap between Jerusalem and God’s wrath.
So we get away with it? Now Jesus is here? What is the accountability? This question fuels my addiction to U.S. politics. How long, lord, how long?