Lection and Liturgy

Ezekiel may be one of the longer books of the bible, but there are comparatively few readings from his prophecies which occur in the lectionary. Those that do tend to reflect the most straightforward aspects of his message. Right from the beginning, however, Ezekiel draws his listeners in to bizarre descriptions of his visions. Perhaps fortunately for readers and preachers, these are omitted from the Sunday cycle of readings. Ezekiel’s visions – a woodcut by Hans Holbein via Wikimedia Commons As a priest, he has a particular interest in the Lord’s glorious presence dwelling in the temple. The book begins with visions given to the prophet in Babylon, and part of the burden of Ezekiel’s message is that the Lord’s glory had left the temple in disgust. Much of the first half of the book, despite being set in Babylon, seems to be addressed to the residents of Jerusalem before their exile. Ezekiel puts a great deal of stress on the transcendence of the God who nonetheless ad...

The Book of Wisdom, or the Wisdom of Solomon, is another of those books whose place in the bible is disputed. Like several of the uncontroversially canonical wisdom books, it links itself with the proverbially wise king, Solomon. Unlike them it was written very late, probably a few decades before the time of Jesus. This means that it also offers evidence of the sorts of beliefs that were important to some groups of Jews at the turn of the eras. One of its most famous sections is most likely to be encountered at funerals. It also occurs as one of the readings for All Souls’ Day. 1 In its original context it may well be extolling martyrs, and reflecting on how God will give justice in the afterlife to those who didn’t receive it in this one. 2 It helps fill out the ways in which belief in life after death was being thought about by Jews close to the time of Jesus. Another reading about death, and more specifically about God destining humans for eternity, comes as ...

Some historical events leave a deep footprint. Alexander the Great’s conquest of much of the world, as known to the people of the Mediterranean at the time, was one such event. While the political empire he established fragmented quickly among his squabbling heirs, the linguistic and cultural empire – an accidental by-product of his victories – lasted centuries longer. Greek became the common language of the ancient Mediterranean world, and Greece’s culture, education and philosophy became the ones to admire. For some time this was also the case in Jerusalem, many of whose leaders aspired to the Hellenistic city state model. The writer of First Maccabees attributes this primarily to the beginning of the second century BC. He sees it as yet another example of religious and cultural compromise. The leaders seeking cultural assimilation are backed up by the forces and laws of the king, Antiochus Epiphanes, who seems also to have had some delusions of grandeur. The Greek E...