Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Yesterday we left off with Ezekiel in the midst of a vision of Jerusalem, where he saw all the evil done by the elders and the people.

Today, that vision continues with God calling

for their deaths. God summons the executioners, who are almost certainly angels, and has them

come to the temple. The text describes them as men, but as we've already discussed, angels always

appear as men. There are seven of these men, and six of them serve the purpose of slaughter,

while the other one has a different role. He's dressed in linen and he's got his tool belt on.

But his tools are a writing kit, which in that day would have included an ink jar, a pen,

and the case itself which served as a hard surface to ride on. His job is to go around Jerusalem

marking the people who were grieved over the evil there, because those are the ones God

says he's going to spare. By the way, the word mark here is the Hebrew word tauv. It's the last

letter of the Jewish alphabet, and in this time period of Hebrew writing, it would have looked

like either a cross or an X.

We'll link to a resource in the show notes in case you want to see how the letter has changed over the years.

This scene may have reminded you of the Passover, where those whose doorways were marked with blood,

which also would have been in the shape of a cross, were saved while the rest encountered the death of the firstborn.

Or maybe it reminded you of the mark of the beast from the book of Revelation, except the opposite, obviously.

But this also parallels something else we'll see in Revelation, where the righteous will be marked as well with the seal of God on their foreheads.

God tells them that when all the slaughter is complete, they should

stack the bodies of the dead inside the temple. Obviously, this is against the cleanliness

laws. Dead bodies are unclean. But it fits right in line with what God has said he's going to do,

which is leave the temple. In the meantime, Ezekiel is distraught because he knows how wicked

...