Wholly Buyable

The day before a messenger arrives in Babylon with news that the mighty city of God, Jerusalem has fallen, Ezekiel tells the exiled Jews that it will fall. As if this weren't amazing enough, he shares the astonishing news that the exiles will eventually be repatriated, and that they will flourish in a rebuilt Israel. Written and produced by Chas Bayfield Music by Michael Auld and Jon Hawkins...

These chapters of Ezekiel are some of the least read - and least quoted - in the Bible. One by one, the prophet takes nations and city states surrounding the kingdom of Judah and describes what calamities will befall them and why. It's hard to make a neat segue to the New Testament from these, but this poses no problem for the Wholly Buyable podcast. Deep theology is not our job; we simply na...

Judah's people me be about to meet with catastrophe, but neighbouring nations will also be on the receiving end of a kicking, they are told. Ammon, Edom and Tyre all receive dire storm warnings from the prophet Ezekiel. Though none of these nations attacked Judah's Jews, their celebration of its defeat by Babylon and their opportunistic ransacking of the stricken nation has not gone down...

This is one of the most remarkable set of chapters in the entire Bible.  And that's a Bible that includes the creation of the earth, a boat filled with animals, a man swallowed by a giant fish and a man who comes back to life after being executed. In one eye-popping passage, the cities of Samaria and Jerusalem are likened to a couple of nymphomaniacs, and in another, Ezekiel's wife is ki...

“A ruin! A ruin! I will make it a ruin!” Ezekiel shouts at Israel's Jews. These, he says, are God's words, not his own, adding: "I will gather you in my anger and my wrath and put you inside the city and melt you." It's fair to say that God is not especially pleased with the people who are contractually obliged to worship him in exchange for their own eternal wellbeing. Th...

More florid description pours fom the pen of the prophet Ezekiel. Vines, lions and the perfect man all take centre stage in an episode where, through Ezekiel, God hammers home the truth that everyone is responsible for their own spiritual wellbeing, andno one gets a free pass because of who they are or where they were born. Written and produced by Chas Bayfield Music by Michael Auld and Jon Hawkin...

Surprisingly for an episode entitled 'The Nymphomaniac', this really is about a nymphomaniac. or a metaphorical one at least. God is so angry at his people's rebellion against him that he orders his prophet to explain in colourful language their relationship to him, and how they have behaved. It's lurid to say the least. This episode contains explicit sexual reference, as well...

In a vision that will have shocked those who first heard it, Ezekiel sees God leaving the Holy of Holies. This is the sacred room in the Jerusalem temple which is believed to have been God's earthly HQ since Solomon completed the building 400 years earlier. It is a show of God's utter rejection of his people, and is designed to terrify them back into worshipping him. The trouble is, thos...

If Jerusalem's elders weren't fully aware of what awaits their city, their nation and thei people as a result of turning away from God and worshiping pagan idols, they are now. In a dramatic vision, the prophet Ezekiel is teleported from exile in Babylon back to Jerusalem where he witnesses first hand the city's corruption, and the impending carnage about to land on it. Written and...

Ezekiel's vision at the beginning of his book is so other-worldly that he barely has words to describe it. What follows is a dramatic life change for a man who has already been wrenched from the comfort of priestly life at the Jerusalem temple and into exile in Babylon. Among other things, the prophet is ordered to eat a scroll, lie on one side for over a year, and cook on a fire fuelled by h...

Trigger Warning: Contains reference to infant death The Bible's darkest book just got darker. The fourth chapter of the Book of Lamentations makes for some harrowing reading as the writer is caught up in the wretched, slow death of a city under siege. With the horror of his situation all around him, he composes without doubt the bleakest chapter in the entire Bible.  Written and produced by C...

Trigger warning: This episode includes accounts of infant death  In 597 BC, the city of Babylon was besieged. Eleven years later, Nebuchadnezzar II's army returned and laid siege to it once again. The privations of living through these sieges are hard to imagine, but readers don't need to use their imagination. They have the poet or poets who lived through these terrible years and saw th...

With an ending shrouded in mystery, the finale of Jeremiah's book asks more than it answers. What is certain - at least from the prophet's perspective - is that the Babylonian Empire is going to crash and burn. God may have used Babylon as a useful agent to annihilate Judah, and his people may have needed to learn the heard way that they must not worship other deities, but destroying God...

To his audience, the prophet Jeremiah's words must seem beyond belief. The city of Jerusalem has been battered and besieged, its king has no real authority to rule, and its greatest and best people have been hauled away to exile in Babylon. Yet Jeremiah promises that the mighty, all-conquering Babylonian Empire which dominates the Near East from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean and south to...

After more than forty chapters where it is Judah who is in God's crosshairs, it's refreshing to see that a few other Near Eastern Nations will also be on the receiving end of a kicking. None of these countries exist any more, which is telling, and the language used by the prophet to describe their downfall is dramatic. They won't be crowing at Judah's downfall for long, Jeremia...

After most of Judah's Jews have been exiled to Babylon, the few who remain have rebelled, opting to settle in Egypt rather than follow their compatriots east. According to God, this is a terrible life choice, and he spells out what will happen to these renegades, and why. Surprisingly, it isn't just Judah who receives a kicking from God. He's about to call time on all neighbouring c...

Finally! Some action. Jeremiah reports from the front line of the siege as Judah's renegade king bolts for freedom. Reprisals follow, some especially grisly, but the drama doesn't end there. Where there is a ball to be dropped, Judah appears to have any number of clowns to drop it, even after the nation has fallen to Babylon. You can almost see Jeremiah clutching his head in despair, and...

In a ceasefire, Jeremiah heads off to claim the field he has recently bought - and is arrested on suspicion of deserting to the Babylonians. His love-hate relationship with Judah's reckless puppet king, Zedekiah continues, with home for the prophet now being a jail cell. Worse still, the book which he and his scribe Baruch have so painstakingly put together has fallen into enemy hands. Writte...

The last thing most people would do as an enemy invades their land is buy property. And given that no defeated nation ever gets its land back, this appears to be throwing money away. Or in other words, madness. Often when there is madness in the Bible, there is method. Better still, everyone learns a little bit about 6th century BC real estate deals. Written and produced by Chas Bayfield Music by...

No captured city in the Ancient Near East has ever been repopulated by its own people. This kind of thing simply does not happen, and so to promise it appears to be madness. Jeremiah is not only confident that God is planning to do this, he looks ahead to a time when his people will have a new king, a man who seems not a million miles away from Jesus Christ.  As far as Bible pages go, these are bi...

The last thing a prisoner in the ancient Near East is expected to do is buy land. Especially when that land is currently being trampled by enemy armies. Who might kill him. Jeremiah's book is all about theatre, especially if that theatre can provide a teachable moment. And so papyrus, ink, scales for weighing silver, sealing wax and witnesses are brought to the prophet's cell. 

An apocalyptic storm “from the ends of the earth” is coming, one that will see Near Eastern nations toppling like dominos. Everywhere, the corpses of God’s enemies will lie unburied and unmourned, littering the ground like dung.  Expect another lively episode from the Bible's most down-at-mouth prophet as Jeremiah continues to rage at a people who don't want to hear. Written and produced...

O land, land land! It's a pitiful lament from the prophet Jeremiah as he attempts to rescue the nation he loves. No one in power or authority appears to see the danger of worshipping pagan gods in a country which, the Bible tells its readers, was founded by God. Turning away from him is seen as an act of rebellion, and rebels must be punished. The question is, will Judah's kings listen?...

The human cost of being God's mesenger is spelled out in graphic detail in this episode. Jeremiah feels gerrymandered into being a prophet, and even wishes that the man who brought his father the supposedly joyful news of his birth had been murdered. Despite this, he continues haranguing Judah's great and good, even taking them on a field trip to a rubbish tip. Speaking out against Judah...

What a mess. Judah's people are being assured by their prophets - holy men who should know better - that all will be well. Business as usual will win the day, they say, even if that business is worshipping pagan deities rather than capital G God. Jeremiah warns these bogus seers that they will die in the disasters which they have promised their people will never happen. Unsurprisingly, he is...