I wrote some time ago about God’s ability to bring himself glory through weak and broken people, that he was able to draw a straight line with a crooked stick. The key subject of that post was John Calvin, a crooked stick with which God drew a very straight line.

I’ve been reading about the prophet Ezekiel, and some have judged him to be SO crooked as to be psychotic. Daniel I. Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 1–24, whose ultimate judgment of Ezekiel the man is not unfavorable, still must confess that

“Ezekiel is in a class of his own.”

In an assessment lifted from Ezekiel’s own recorded record, Block notes:

“The concentration of so many bizarre features in one individual is without precedent: his muteness; lying bound and naked; digging holes in the walls of houses; emotional paralysis in the face of his wife’s death; ‘spiritual’ travels; images of strange creatures, of eyes, and of creeping things; hearing voices and the sounds of water; withdrawal symptoms; fascination with feces and blood; wild literary imagination; pornographic imagery;… and the list goes on.” (page 10)

That’s one crooked stick. In the end, Block does not judge Ezekiel as psychotic, but notes that for Ezekiel, ‘the medium was the message’, and he acted out many of the revelations he had received. And in the end, not unlike his older contemporary Jeremiah, he was reluctant and not a bit rebellious.

Just like, I discern, the other crooked sticks among us.