A Short Bible Study Why did the LORD command the prophet Ezekiel to eat and drink his food and water shaking and trembling with fear? Ezekiel 12:18-20 CEV Ezekiel, son of man, shake with fear when you eat, and tremble when you drink. 19 Tell the people of Israel that I, the LORD, say that someday everyone in Jerusalem will shake when they eat and tremble when they drink. Their country will be destroyed and left empty, because they have been cruel and violent. 20 Every town will lie in ruins, and the land will be a barren desert. Then they will know that I am the LORD. This is obviously another enacted or acted out parable through the life of the prophet. As a sign to the people, the prophet was to eat his bread (meaning all food) with quaking, and to drink water with trembling and with carefulness. Bread represents the goodness which we receive from the Lord into our will, mind, and heart. Water represents the truth, which we receive into our understanding, our intellect. As distinguished from wine, water represents natural truth, i.e., truth as applied to our natural life; and truth as seen from the standpoint of the natural mind, which is the natural degree of human life; but wine represents spiritual truth. To eat bread, and to drink water, spiritually, are to receive goodness and truth into our minds. Quaking, or shaking, comes from the fear of danger, and from uncertainty, causing mental anxiety. Spiritually, a man eats bread with quaking when he secures that which he regards as good, but for some reason he is not happy, or at peace, but is alarmed, uncertain as to the future, and in great fear of danger, because, in his own mind, he has mixed Gods goodness with his own evil ends. To drink water with trembling and with carefulness, is to receive that which the man knows is Truth, while in a state of doubt and of fear, and of anxiety and of trouble, because the man has falsified these Truths, by confusing them with his own personal truths. Thus Ezekiel acts out the life of the people of Judah. Their life was marked by uncertainty, by doubt about the future, by fear that they had been abandoned by God, by hesitation to embrace the truth that came from Gods prophets and by a growing belief by many that they would never be allowed to return to their homes. Year after year went by. They prayed and worshipped and read the Torah, but there was no deliverance. Finally, they became a totally defeated people afraid of what the Babylonians might do with them. Every meal was eaten in fear that something bad was going to happen to them. But God had other plans for His people. He planned for the Persians to overthrow the Babylonians and for the Persians to implement a new policy returning exiled peoples to their homes. And in 539 B.C. Cyrus the Great of Persia did just that returning the exiled Jews to their home (see Ezra 1:2-4). In 1879, an explorer by the name of Hormuzd Rassam discovered the famous “Cyrus Cylinder” (now in the British Museum) at the site of ancient Babylon. The small (9 inch long), barrel-shaped, clay chronicle describes the benevolent policy of Cyrus in restoring captives to their homelands, along with their religious treasures.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 18:54:41 +0000