Most of the prophets that you ‘re now diving into have two basic messages: judgment and hope. The people deserve judgment because of their sin, but they have hope because God has made promises to Israel and God always keeps his promises. Ezekiel is like the other prophets this way, but his book is pretty neatly divided into a judgment half (chs. 1-24) and a hope half (chs. 33-48). In the middle there are oracles against the nations (chs. 25-32). Those oracles against the nations are good for Israel, because when God punishes Israel’s enemies, then Israel can prosper.
Some of the stories in the first half of the book are entertaining (and a few are gross), but I really like the second half of the book where Ezekiel describes for a long time just how great things will be one day. Ezekiel tells us more about this than Jeremiah does, because Ezekiel wrote this part after Jerusalem was destroyed. Thus he didn’t have to worry about confusing his readers and making them think things were going to be good when they really weren’t. But now that Jerusalem has fallen (ch. 33), Ezekiel can describe at length how God is going to put all of the pieces back together. That includes not only changing the hearts of the people, but it means that God will defend the nation against the enemies (chs. 38-39) and build them a new temple where he will come and live (chs. 40-45). Things will be so different in that day that even the Dead Sea will be fresh water and have fish in it!