What is the context?
Ezekiel is to mark two roads for Babylon’s king: one toward Rabbah of the Ammonites and one toward Jerusalem. At the fork, the king seeks an omen through arrows, idols and examination of a liver.
The omen points toward Jerusalem. The scene then shows the practical consequences: battering rams, battle cries, a ramp and a siege wall directed against the city.
Records of liver omens help explain this unfamiliar detail. The Metropolitan Museum’s account of a Mesopotamian liver-omen tablet describes predictions about an army’s success drawn from features of a sacrificial sheep’s liver. That later surviving tablet illustrates the kind of practice described; it is not an artifact from this particular campaign.
Those who have sworn allegiance dismiss the omen as false, but the Lord brings attention to their exposed guilt. Their confidence will not keep them from capture.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Henry understands Babylon’s decision through divination as still subject to God’s direction of the coming judgment. Wesley connects the sworn allegiance with Zedekiah and his officials’ broken pledge to Babylon.
The scene does not commend the king’s methods as a way for God’s people to seek guidance. Its point is that an apparently favorable reason to dismiss the danger cannot overturn the Lord’s warning or erase the conduct for which Jerusalem is being judged.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.