Poor Ezekiel probably had the Old Testament equivalent of bed sores. In other words, they were probably somewhere between infection and callus because when he had to lay down on his right side for 390 days, it was probably in the dirt. God then had him lay on his other side for another obscene amount of time. Being a prophet back then wasn’t as easy as it is now; nobody wanted to hear what they had to say in the Old Testament, because it was intended to bring about change in sinful lives. Now, everybody loves a prophet because it’s like getting your palm read, only without the awkward hand-touching.

So after Yaweh told Ezekiel that he had to chill out for more than a year, the Deity also explained that His man, Ezekiel was to cook for himself over human excrement the entire time. I would imagine that it would have to be his own, unless he was doing this whole thing outside of the camp, because truthfully, that’s the only place anyone would find enough feces to fuel a fire large enough to cook on. God had, long before Ezekiel was born given a little clause in the law wherein He said,

Mark out an area outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourselves…

Keep your camp holy;

don’t permit anything indecent or offensive in God’s eyes.

(Deut. 23:12-14)

You see, just like any other rational person, God thinks poo is rather disgusting. So why would he have anyone cook over it, let alone one of the people who speaks for Him?

God knew the Jews’ hearts were conditioned to hate what the law said was bad. Their motivation was to be exactly what they were told to be; holy. Understanding that a Jewish prophet cooking his meal over human fecal matter would throw most of the religious minds of the day into a tizzy, God ordered Ezekiel to just that.

This might be the earliest form of shock-advertising,

then again, maybe God was telling His people something

God might have been taking the approach of creating some form of spectacle to get His people to shut up and pay attention, but then again, perhaps He was telling them that the law He gave them wasn’t as important as their obedience, or the state of their hearts. Either way, the holy God told His man to cook over the crap that was supposed to be taken care of outside the camp. He had His beloved prophet essentially defiling himself for the sake of speaking His message.

God is Holy. Perfection characterizes His actions. He can do no wrong, regardless of how we feel about what He says or does. Actions like this force me to question my definition of holiness as the personification of this awesome quality makes decisions that come across as unholy. I think there’s so much more to growing in that quality than we know, and I think that God gave us a hint in Ezekiel Four.

I wanted to swear when I titled this post. It would have made more sense, but for the sake of those people who believe that the use of any type of real cuss word amounts to purchasing your one-way ticket to hell, I held off. You see, there’s some holy crap in the Bible. It’s quite amazing, really.

We’ll get back to spiritual disciplines soon, I just wanted you to think about holiness while you’re disciplining yourself.