Jerusalem must be destroyed because of its sins. In his enumeration of these sins, Ezekiel includes both moral and ceremonial transgressions, but he noticeably places the greater emphasis on matters pertaining to the ceremonial. He condemns the worship of idols that represent foreign deities, and he severely censures people who eat forbidden meat or violate any of the other rules having to do with the conduct of worship. Coming into direct contact with that which is unclean contaminates Yahweh's sanctuary and profanes his holy name, which Yahweh will not tolerate.
Ezekiel, no less than Jeremiah, sees the significance of the individual in his relationship to Yahweh. Rejecting the ideas that fathers may be punished for the sins of their sons and the sons punished for the sins of their fathers, he boldly states that the soul that sins shall die. Furthermore, he carries this idea to the extreme position of maintaining that a person's entire life will be judged in terms of that individual's last act. Concerning the man who has lived wickedly all of his life but turns from his wickedness and does that which is lawful and right immediately before he dies, all of his wickedness will not be remembered: He will be judged as a righteous man. The reverse is true of the man who has lived righteously all of his life but turns to wickedness just before he dies: All of his righteousness will not be remembered.
The fall of the city of Jerusalem presented something of a problem, especially to those who believed that Yahweh's presence in the most holy place in the Temple was a sure guarantee that the place would never be overthrown. They remembered Isaiah's words uttered more than a century before, when he declared that Jerusalem was Zion's city and must stand forever. For Jeremiah, these words meant very little: Yahweh's dwelling place is in human hearts rather than in a specific place in the Temple. While this idea is not entirely absent in the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet nevertheless believes that Yahweh's presence is located in the Temple more than in any other place. How then could the Temple be destroyed so long as Yahweh's presence was in it? According to Ezekiel, Yahweh's presence went up out of the Temple and rested on a hill outside; then the Temple fell.
