Your ShelfYour Projects

The Bible Year

8%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 10, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 40.

Read the full edition

The Bible Year

Assignment for August 13 to 19

August 13: Habakkuk, Obadiah. August 14: Ezekiel 1 to 3. August 15: Ezekiel 4 to 6. August 16: Ezekiel 7 to 9. August 17: Ezekiel 10 to 13. August 18: Ezekiel 14 to 16. August 19: Ezekiel 17 to 19.

Habakkuk

“Nothing is known of him, but from indications in his writings it is guessed that he was a Levite; that he prophesied in the reigns of Josiah and Jehoahaz; and that when Jerusalem fell, he remained behind in his ruined country. The book is largely in the shape of an appeal to God for help against the threatened invasion of the Assyrians, together with God’s reply. Paul received from this book his great watchword, ‘The just shall live by faith.’”—Wells.
“To answer the question why wickedness seems to triumph, and to vindicate God’s righteousness, the prophecy is thrown into the form of a dramatic dialogue between Habakkuk and Jehovah. ‘God is boldly and reverently challenged to defend his action in the government of the world.’ It is the problem of Job, of the Psalms, and of Ecclesiastes, with this difference: there, it is individual; here, it is national. The prophecy needs careful study to see the beauty of the answers. There are two vindications of God’s righteousness. The Chaldeans, having evil in themselves, will perish; evil is the seed of death; only the just shall live. God shows the prophet, what he has been in the past to the chosen nation, and that he is supreme over man and nature. What he has been in the past to all nations, that he will be in the future. Right will prevail.”—Sell.

Ezekiel—the Man

Ezekiel (the strength of God), a priest and one of the four greater prophets, was among the captives taken to Babylon with Jehoiachin, in 598 B. C., after Nebuchadnezzar’s second invasion of Judah. With others he was placed in the fertile valley of the Chebar, about two hundred miles north of Babylon. Here his sublime visions were given; and here also the elders of his people came to inquire of the Lord in the dark years preceding the final captivity. It is said that he and Jeremiah, with whom he was contemporary for a few years at the beginning of his work “exchanged manuscripts, for the edification respectively of the Jews in Jerusalem and in captivity.”
Ezekiel prophesied a little over twenty-two years, beginning in 595 B. C. He was “distinguished by his stern and inflexible energy of will and character, and his devoted adherence to the rites and ceremonies of his national religion.” Zeal for the house of God and submission to the divine will characterized his life. “We learn, from an incidental allusion, that he was married and had a house in his place of exile, and lost his wife by a sudden and unforeseen stroke. He is said to have been murdered in Babylon, and to have been buried on the banks of the Euphrates.”
The prophet was a captive in the region of Nineveh; therefore, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he had at least heard of, and perhaps seen, the great apartments of its palaces, whose walls remain to this day, covered with images and inscriptions and figures that supplement and confirm the Bible record.
On these ancient mural tablets we find many familiar names,—Jehu, Omri, Hazael, Menahem, Hezekiah, etc., and of various cities in Judah and Syria. Not only so, but “we discover Sennacherib’s own account of his invasion of Palestine, and of the amount of tribute which King Hezekiah was forced to pay him; also pictures representing his capture of Lachish; and his officers, perhaps the railing Rab-shakeh himself, presenting Jewish captives to the king.”
A graphic commentary on the language of the prophet is supplied in these tablets and their cuneiform inscriptions. In these “chambers of imagery” are represented the “captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously,” “horsemen riding upon horses,” “the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion,” “in dyed attire,” etc., as well as the idols of the land.
Under the type of “the chambers of imagery” the Lord revealed to Jeremiah the secret sins of the leaders of Israel. The lesson is as applicable to many who call themselves by his name today as it was to those to whom it was first spoken. In our hearts there is often a dark, secret chamber. “By our memory, and by that marvelous faculty that people call imagination, and by our desires, we are forever painting the walls of the inmost chambers of our hearts with such pictures. That is an awful power which we possess, and alas! too often used for foul idolatries.” Some day those secret chambers will be opened. Shall it not be now, when the healing, cleansing rays of the Sun of Righteousness will flood the heart temple, and cast out every evil image we have painted on its walls?