Artificial Intelligence, Ai, is here. It’s taking what archeologists and historians have found and  reconstructing places like Babylon, Nineveh, Jerusalem and Rome; we can see what daily life was like in those cities, what the streets were like, the buildings, what the people looked like, how the society functioned in the time of Jesus and the prophets. It gives us a fresh look at history.

I’ve been learning more about the world Ezekiel lived in from Ai reconstructions.. 

Many scholars think Ezekiel was a priest from Jerusalem taken with other priests and Jewish leaders as slaves to Babylon. Most of his writings are addressed to Jews enslaved there.

Babylon’s rulers then were building the biggest and most impressive city in the world, and so after capturing Jerusalem they brought a large number of Jerusalem’s leading class to Babylon as slaves. Why Jerusalem’s leading class ? Because they had already built a luxurious city in Jerusalem.They built fine houses;  they knew where to go to for the finest goods and foods. They were builders and developers of a city.

They did it, however, as earlier prophets like Nahum and Haggai tell us, by exploiting the poor. Now they themselves were slaves. The Babylonians brought many conquered peoples to the city for the back-breaking work of digging canals and carrying bricks, but they brought the Jewish leading class for  another role: they were experienced builders. 

In Wednesday’s reading this week Ezekiel speaks to the Jewish exiles, not to praise them for their building skills, but to remind them they were Israel’s failed shepherds:

 “Thus says the Lord GOD: Woe to the shepherds

of Israel who have been pasturing themselves!…You did not strengthen the weak nor heal the sick nor bind up the injured. You did not bring back the strayed nor seek the lost, but you lorded it over them harshly and brutally.”

Let’s not see Ezekiel’s critique  limited to Jewish leaders:  he’s criticizing all rulers, all leaders, all shepherds who make themselves gods, especially at the expense of the poor. He’s careful in his criticism. He avoids the  rulers of Babylon. Instead he criticizes the king of Tyre, who stands for them all. Anyone claiming absolute power over another makes himself a god.

The Babylonians tried taking away the identity of their slaves by forbidding them from keeping their idols and worshipping their gods. Only Marduk, the Babylonian god. was to be worshipped. They tried to make the Jews Babylonians. 

In our final readings this week Ezekiel leaves his critique of the shepherds for a promise of the future for his own people in exile.  God offers mercy and a vision of a renewed kingdom 

“ For I will take you away from among the nations, gather you from all the foreign lands, and bring you back to your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts.” Thursday)

Dry bones, littered on the ground, will rise. “Prophesy and say to them: Thus says the Lord GOD: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and have you rise from them.” (Friday) 

Floods of living water will flow over Jerusalem. “And I saw that the temple was filled with the glory of the LORD. Then I heard someone speaking to me from the temple, while the man stood beside me. The voice said to me: 
Son of man, this is where my throne shall be,
this is where I will set the soles of my feet;
here I will dwell among the children of Israel forever.” (Saturday)