A Study of Ezekiel by Chad Sychtysz
Twenty-three lessons through one of the hardest books in the Old Testament — including an answer to the question everybody asks about chapters 40–48.
Ezekiel is the book most Bible readers start and don't finish. The imagery comes at you thick, the oracles run long, and somewhere around the temple measurements you set it down and go read Psalms instead. That's a loss, because the man had a message this generation badly needs to hear.
Chad Sychtysz takes the whole book in twenty-three lessons. Ezekiel preached from inside the exile — a deported priest living in a settlement called Tel-Abib on an irrigation canal off the Euphrates, telling fellow captives that the city they were homesick for was about to fall. Jeremiah was saying the same thing back in Jerusalem. Neither audience wanted to hear it. Then word arrived that the city had fallen, and Ezekiel's message turned: dry bones standing up, one shepherd over a reunited flock, water running out from under a temple door and turning a dead sea fresh.
Chapters 40–48 are where most studies either go quiet or go off the rails. This one doesn't dodge them. Sychtysz lays out the four ways interpreters have handled that section, explains why he reads it as an apocalyptic vision of Christ's church under Christ the Prince, and then holds that reading consistently all the way through instead of switching between literal and symbolic whenever it's convenient. Anyone who has been handed Ezekiel as a premillennial proof text will find a careful, text-driven alternative here.
What's Inside
Section One — Ezekiel's Commission (chapters 1–3)
- Ezekiel's Vision of God
- Ezekiel's Commission
Section Two — Prophecies against Judah and the Surrounding Nations (chapters 4–32) 3. Siege Promised against Jerusalem 4. The Folly of Idolatry 5. Vision of Temple Abominations 6. The Departure of God's Glory 7. Judgment against Rulers 8. Condemnation of False Prophets 9. Judgment against Jerusalem 10. God's Righteous Judgment 11. God Recounts Israel's History 12. God Recounts Israel's Crimes 13. Two Parables 14. Prophecies against Surrounding Nations
Section Three — Future Reunification and Restoration (chapters 33–48) 15. The Fall of Jerusalem 16. Condemnation of Edom 17. Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones 18. Gog and Magog 19. Introduction to Chapters 40–48 20. Measurements of the Temple 21. Ministry of the Temple 22. The Prince and Offerings 23. Reallocation of the Land
Format and Features
A full introduction sets the historical stage before lesson one: who Ezekiel was, when he prophesied, how apocalyptic language works, and why this book gets misread so often. Every lesson closes with discussion questions and open space to write, so it works as easily in a Wednesday night adult class as it does at the kitchen table.
Scripture quotations are from the NASB (1995). More than one hundred endnotes carry the supporting detail without cluttering the lessons, and the study draws on Keil, Calvin, Coffman, McGuiggan, Barnes, Fausset, and the Pulpit Commentary, with a full source list in the back. A diagram of the land allocation under the Prince's rule helps make sense of the final chapters.
Who It's For
Adult Bible class teachers looking for a quarter or two of solid Old Testament material, preachers working through the major prophets, and any Christian who has wanted to understand Ezekiel — the dry bones, Gog and Magog, the departing glory, the measured temple — without being handed a millennial timeline along with it.
About the Author
Chad Sychtysz has been a minister of the gospel since 1994, serving churches in Alaska and Washington state. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and has written numerous books and workbooks on the Bible, including studies of Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. He lives in Billings, Montana.