I won’t lie to you guys, as I begin my journey into Ezekiel I am both nervous and excited. This book has a whole lot of weird going on. That is why in our TYB Bible we call Ezekiel–the Weird Prophet! We have beasts with four faces, covered in eyes, with wheels as their companions that flash back and forth like lightning, prophetic symbolism that includes cooking with human poop (so glad he protested that one!).

As we read the Book of Ezekiel, it is very easy to be overwhelmed by the intense prophetic imagery and metaphors available. And this is O.K. Just as commentator Daniel Block says, “for many Christians Ezekiel is too strange and his book too complex and bizarre to deserve serious attention.” The first step is to acknowledge that yes, sometimes these prophetic books, both Old and New Testament, can be quite confronting and seemingly impossible to understand. The next step is one of discovery.

As I read the story of Ezekiel, I am overwhelmed at how ‘trinitarian' it is. Now I don't usually like to overlap New Testament theology into the Old Testament as we study it, because I want us to read it as it was originally intended: a text for the Old Testament audience but with a prophetic finger pointing forward to Jesus the Messiah.

As we have mentioned, Ezekiel is a weird and wonderful text that is often relegated to the ‘books we don’t read in the Bible’ section, alongside Revelation. However, just because the text is not what we are used to doesn’t mean that we need to avoid it. I’m not used to Shakespeare, but the value I get out of doing my best to understand it is immeasurable!