50 Fun Facts About Book of Ezekiel

Which Tarantino film has a hitman recite a passage he calls Ezekiel 25:17, though most of it is invented?

Pulp Fiction's version is mostly stitched together from stray biblical phrases; only its ending resembles the real verse, which closes an oracle against the Philistines.

Which modern Israeli city is named after the exiles' settlement where Ezekiel sat overwhelmed for seven days?

Tel Aviv took its name from the Hebrew title given to Theodor Herzl's novel Altneuland; older English Bibles spell the exiles' village Tel Abib.

In Ezekiel's opening vision, each living creature has the face of a man, a lion, an ox and which bird?

An eagle is the fourth face; each creature also had four wings with human hands beneath them, and moved straight ahead without ever turning.

What covered the high rims of the wheels beside the living creatures in Ezekiel's first vision, all the way around?

Eyes filled the rims all around, and each wheel looked like one wheel set inside another, able to roll in any of four directions without turning.

What did the scroll taste like in Ezekiel's mouth when he obeyed the command to eat it?

Honey was the taste in his mouth, though the scroll handed to him was written on both sides with lamentations and he was told to fill his stomach with it.

In Ezekiel 37, what filled the valley where the prophet watched a vast army rise to life at his word?

Dry bones rattled together, grew sinews, flesh and skin, then stood up once breath entered them; God calls them the whole house of Israel.

In Ezekiel 36, God promises Israel a new spirit and a heart of flesh in place of a heart of what?

Stone is the image: the stony heart is taken out, and the next verse adds that God's own Spirit will move the people to keep his laws.

By which three-word title does God address Ezekiel more than ninety times in the book?

Son of man is how God speaks to him 93 times, a reminder that the prophet is a mere mortal before the blazing glory he has just seen.

In the proverb God bans in Ezekiel 18, what have the fathers eaten that sets their children's teeth on edge?

Sour grapes summed up the people's complaint that they were paying for their parents' sins; God answers that each person dies only for their own.

Which invader leads a vast alliance from the far north against Israel in Ezekiel 38 and 39?

Gog is styled prince of Meshech and Tubal; after his defeat, Israel needs seven months to bury his dead and seven years to burn the weapons.

Ezekiel 4:9's mix of wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt gave its name to a sprouted-grain kind of what?

Bread is what the verse says to make from the six ingredients, though for Ezekiel it was siege food, weighed out at twenty shekels a day.

When Ezekiel protested at baking his barley cakes over human excrement, which fuel did God allow him to use instead?

Cow dung was the concession after the prophet pleaded that nothing unclean had passed his lips since his youth.

What did God tell Ezekiel to use as a barber's razor on his own head and beard in chapter 5?

A sharp sword did the shaving; he then weighed the hair into thirds to burn, strike and scatter, picturing the fates awaiting Jerusalem's people.

Whose sudden death was Ezekiel forbidden to mourn in public, as a sign of the coming loss of Jerusalem's sanctuary?

His wife died in the evening, just as God had warned; the next morning he carried on without tears, as the exiles would when the temple fell.

Which ability did Ezekiel regain on the day a fugitive reached the exiles with news that Jerusalem had fallen?

His speech returned the evening before the survivor arrived; years earlier God had made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, so that he spoke only when given an oracle.

In Ezekiel 33, who answers for a city's dead if he sees an army coming and fails to blow the trumpet?

The watchman is the role God gives Ezekiel himself: if he warns the wicked and they ignore him, their blood is on their own heads rather than his.

Besides prophet, which office do the opening verses of the Book of Ezekiel say Ezekiel held?

Priest is how the opening verses introduce him, and his final nine chapters read like a blueprint for a rebuilt sanctuary, its altar and its sacrifices.

Beside which waterway in Babylonia was Ezekiel living among the exiles when the heavens opened in his first vision?

The Chebar is thought to have been an irrigation canal near the city of Nippur, part of a network that carried water and boats across the plain.

Ezekiel is the third of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, following Isaiah and which prophet of Jerusalem's fall?

Jeremiah comes second, and one rabbinic tradition even made Ezekiel his son, reading the name of Ezekiel's father as a nickname for the older prophet.

Which New Testament book borrows most from Ezekiel, reusing his living creatures, eaten scroll and new holy city?

Revelation leans on Ezekiel more than any other New Testament writing, ending as he does with a tour of a perfect city where God lives among his people.

In Ezekiel 8, women sit at the northern entrance of the temple weeping for which Mesopotamian god?

Tammuz's death was mourned by women across Mesopotamia each midsummer, and a month of the Jewish calendar still carries his name.

In Ezekiel 8, about twenty-five men turn their backs on the temple of the LORD to bow down to what?

The sun was the last of four scenes of idolatry Ezekiel was shown in the temple courts, each introduced as a greater abomination than the one before.

In Ezekiel 9, where does a man with a writing kit mark those who grieve over Jerusalem's sins so they are spared?

On their foreheads the linen-clothed scribe set a mark, and the six armed men who followed him were told to touch no one who carried it.

Which heavenly beings does Ezekiel 10 reveal the four living creatures seen beside the river in chapter 1 to be?

Cherubim is the name he gives them once he sees them at the temple, where God's glory leaves the threshold and comes to rest above them.

Which temple entrance must stay shut in Ezekiel 44 because the LORD, the God of Israel, has come in by it?

The east gate is the one God's glory used to return to the temple in the previous chapter; only the prince may sit inside it to eat.

Ezekiel 14 says that even Noah, Job and which third righteous man could save only themselves from a doomed land?

Daniel is named between Noah and Job, and the chapter insists again and again that the three could not rescue even their own sons or daughters.

Which city does Ezekiel 16 call Jerusalem's younger sister, guilty of pride, plenty and neglect of the poor and needy?

Sodom is the comparison, and the prophet shocks his hearers by adding that Jerusalem has behaved so much worse that her sisters look righteous.

In the allegory of Ezekiel 23, Oholibah is Jerusalem; which northern capital is her elder sister Oholah?

Samaria is Oholah, who doted on Assyrian officers dressed in blue and was handed over to them; her sister then outdid her.

At a fork in the road in Ezekiel 21, the king of Babylon shakes arrows, consults idols and examines what?

A liver was inspected for omens as the king chose between two roads; the lot in his right hand marked Jerusalem for battering rams and siege mounds.

In Ezekiel 13, what do false prophets smear over a flimsy wall before rain, hail and wind bring it crashing down?

Whitewash stands for their soothing promises of peace when there was no peace, a coat that hid the cracks without mending them.

Which wealthy trading city does Ezekiel 27 lament as a splendid ship that sinks at sea with all its cargo and crew?

Tyre is pictured with cypress planks, an embroidered linen sail and crews drawn from many nations, before the whole vessel founders in the heart of the seas.

Which ruler does Ezekiel 29 picture as a great river monster, to be hauled out with hooks in his jaws?

Pharaoh is the monster, boasting that the river is his own creation; he is dragged out with fish stuck to his scales and left for the wild animals.

Which king does Ezekiel say will be handed Egypt as wages for an army left unpaid after a hard campaign?

Nebuchadnezzar's troops had worn their heads bald and their shoulders raw labouring against a great port city, and came away with nothing to show for it.

Ezekiel 31 pictures mighty Assyria as which towering tree, envied by every tree of Eden and then felled?

A cedar of Lebanon, taller than every tree of the field, is the image, and the lesson was aimed at Egypt's ruler: greatness that high still came crashing down.

Which long-dead king does Ezekiel 34 name as the one shepherd God will set over his rescued flock?

David had died centuries earlier, so the promise looks to a coming ruler in his mould; the chapter opens by condemning shepherds who fed only themselves.

In Ezekiel 37, the prophet joins two sticks into one, the first marked for Judah and the second for whom?

Joseph, through his son Ephraim, stood for the northern tribes; the joined sticks promised one nation under one king, never again split in two.

What does the bronze-like man who guides Ezekiel through the visionary temple carry in his hand besides a linen cord?

A measuring reed six long cubits in length lets the guide size up every wall, doorway and chamber, filling three chapters with dimensions.

In Ezekiel 47, trees along the river from the temple bear fresh fruit every month; what are their leaves for?

Healing is the leaves' purpose, and the river itself turns salt water fresh, so that fishermen spread their nets along a once-dead shore.

With which new name for the restored city, given in its final verse, does the Book of Ezekiel end?

The LORD Is There, Yahweh Shammah in Hebrew, answers the book's darkest moment, when the divine glory rose and abandoned the old temple.

In Ezekiel 33, God says the exiles treat the prophet's warnings like which entertainment, enjoyed but never obeyed?

A lovely song from a fine voice and a skilled player is the comparison: the crowds flock to hear Ezekiel, then go on chasing their own gain.

What does the Hebrew name Ezekiel mean, fitting for a prophet told not to fear a stubborn people?

God strengthens, or God is strong, suits the commissioning scene, where God promises to make the prophet's face as hard as the faces of his opponents.

Ezekiel dates his opening vision to the fifth year of the captivity of which exiled king of Judah?

Jehoiachin had reigned only about three months before being taken to Babylon, and Ezekiel keeps counting the years from that exile throughout the book.

Which otherwise obscure man does the opening of the Book of Ezekiel name as the prophet's father?

Buzi is named in the book's third verse and never again, leaving the prophet's family background almost a blank.

In Ezekiel 44, the Levites allowed to minister at God's table must descend from which man, faithful when Israel strayed?

Zadok's sons alone may enter the sanctuary and approach the table; the other Levites are kept to guard duty and temple chores for having followed idols.

Which Hebrew word for chariot names the early Jewish mysticism built on Ezekiel's vision of a throne on wheels?

Merkabah mystics told of ascents through heavenly palaces to the throne itself, and the chariot passages are still read in synagogues each year at Shavuot.

The glowing 'hashmal' at the heart of Ezekiel's first vision gave modern Hebrew its everyday word for what?

Electricity took the name in the nineteenth century, when the poet Judah Leib Gordon revived the word; the King James Bible had translated it as amber.

Which Renaissance master painted the small panel Ezekiel's Vision, now hanging in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence?

Raphael's panel is only about 40 by 30 centimetres; French troops carried it off to Paris in 1799, and it came back to Florence only after Napoleon's fall.

In which modern country does the shrine revered by Jews as Ezekiel's Tomb stand, in the town of Al-Kifl?

Iraq holds the tomb, in a province still called Babylon; many Muslims revere the same shrine as the grave of the prophet Dhul-Kifl.

Ezekiel 1 says the throne above the heads of the four living creatures had the appearance of which gem?

Sapphire-like, the throne held a figure with the appearance of a man, glowing like metal from the waist up and like fire from the waist down.

Under the land division in Ezekiel 47, which group living among the tribes is to inherit like native-born Israelites?

Foreigners who settle and raise children among the tribes are to be treated as native-born, receiving land in whichever tribe they live with.