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LIBRARY
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University of California.
Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH.
Received October , 1894. Accessions No.SL^toS^ - Class No.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
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http://www.archive.org/details/ezekielbool<ofhisOOfairrich
EZEKIEL,
AND THE
BOOK OF HIS PROPHECY:
AN EXPOSITION.
BY
PATRICK FAIRBAIRN, D.D.,
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IX THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, ABERDEEN, AUTHOR OF " TYPOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE," ETC,
SECOND EDITION.
[UKIVBRSITTj
EDINBURGH: ^"ss^^^s*^^ T. AND T. CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET.
LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. DUBLIN: JOHN ROBERTSON, AND HODGES AND SMITH.
MDCCCLV.
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MUKRAT AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
It is sometime since the first impression of the following Expo- sition was exhausted ; and the opportunity, which the call for a New Edition has presented, of introducing a few alterations and improvements has not been neglected. The changes, however, are not material, as regards the substance of the work, or even the interpretation of particular parts. On a very few passages only, and these not of primary moment, has a different view been presented from the one formerly given. But the Exposition has been rendered more uniform by a translation of the whole Book, while in the first edition, this was limited to the more difficult parts ; and that has necessarily led to a number of minor changes and re-adjustments. It has also rendered necessary the print- ing of the translation in a smaller type, as otlierwise the size, and consequently the expense of the volume, must have been increased beyond what was deemed advisable. An Introduction, besides, has been prefixed, in which certain topics of a preliminary kind, that were not altogether omitted in the former edition, but rather too briefly noticed, have been more fully discussed. These, which constitute the chief alterations in matter and form, it is hoped, will be found to have added somewhat to the usefulness of the volume.
The reception it has met with in its first shape has been, for the most part, so favourable and encouraging, that anything beyond the grateful acknowledgments of the author w^ould be here out of place. He did not expect that all would agree with him in the views embodied in his interpretations, or would entirely approve of the form which he has given to his Exposition. Some,
VI PREFACE.
he has observed, have sought to account for the latter, by supposing it to have been, in the first instance, preached to a congregation. In this, he takes leave to state, they are mistaken ; and it is on principle, and from a regard merely to what he thinks should be found in an Exposition of the Word of God, and in particular of the writings of Ezekiel, that he has introduced so much of the spiritual and practical element. But, as this point has been noticed in the Introduction, it is needless to say more on it at present. If the volume shall be made, by the Divine blessing, instrumental in promoting a more exact acquaintance with this portion of Prophecy, or advancing the study of the prophetic Word in general, the great desire of the Author will be fulfilled.
Aberdeen, May 1855.
CONTENTS.
Page
Introdlction, ......... 1
Chap. I. — The Time and Manner of EzekieFs Entering on the Prophetical
Office, ......... 17
Chap. II.— HI. 1-11.— Call to the Prophetical Office, .... 34
Chap. III. 12-27. — Ezekiel's Entrance on his Mission, and the First Message
imparted to Him, . . . . . . .39
Chap. IV.— The Vision of the Siege and the Iniquity-Bearing, . . 45 Chap. V. — VI. — The Vision of the Shorn Hair, and its Foreshadowing Deso- lations, ......... 61
Chap. VII. — Lamentation over the Guilt and Fall of Israel, ... 76 Chap. VIIL— The Vision of the Image of Jealousy, and other Abominations
at Jerusalem, ........ 79
Chap. IX.— The Vision of the Sealing, ...... 93
Chap. X.— The Vision of the Coals of Fire, ..... 100
Cbap. XL — Destruction of a Corrupt Priesthood, with the Promise of Grace
and Blessing to a Believing Remnant among the Exiles, . . 105 Chap. XII. — The Vision of Ezekiel's Typical Removing as an Exile, and
accompanying Instructions, ...... 116
Chap. XIIL— The False in Prophecy, its Character and Doom, . . 126 Chap. XIV. — Hypocritical Inquirers after God— their Wickedness Discovered
and Rebuked, ........ 141
Chap. XV. — The Guilt and Condemnation of Israel Parabolically Represented, 154
Chap. XVI. — The Story of Israel's Guilt and Punishment, . . . 157 Chap. XVIL— The Parable of the Two Great Eagles, and the Cropping of
the Cedar of Lebanon, ....... 179
Chap. XVIIL— The Retributive Righteousness of God, . . .187
CuAP. XIX.— The Lamentation Over the Fall of the Royal House, . . 202 Chap. XX. 1-44.— A Display of the People's Long-continued Sinfulness, and
the Lord's Loiig-Suffering-Mercy and Goodness, . . . 209
Chap. XX. 45-49.— XXL— The Vision of the Lord's Fire and Sword, . 230 Chap. XXII. — The Lord's Judgment upon the All-Pervading Sinfulness of
Jerusalem, ........ 247
Chap. XXIII. — The Story of Israel's Sin and Punishment Parabolically Exhi- bited under the Names of Aholah and Aholibah, . . . 251 Chap. XXIV.— The Vision of the BoiHng Caldron, and of the Death of
Ezekiel's Wife, ........ 258
Chap. XXV. — The Judgment of Israel's Immediate Neighbours and Rivals —
Ammon, Moab, Edom, and the Philistines, .... 270
Chap. XXVI.— The Judgment of Tyre, ..... 281 Chap. XXV IL — The Lamentation upon Tyre, with an Account of Her Former
Greatness and Prosperity, ...... 297
Vlll CONTENTS.
Chap. XXVIII. 1-19.— The Criminatory Address to the King of Tyre, and
the Lamentation Over His Coming Downfal, .... 303
Chap. XXVIII. 20-26.— The Judgment of Sidon, and the Ultimate Peace of
Israel, ......... 316
Chap. XXIX.— The Judgment of Egypt, its Desolation for Forty Years and Subsequent Degradation — the First Instrument of Chastisement, Nebuchadnezzar, . . . . . . .321
Chap. XXX. — Continuation of Egypt's Judgment, .... 335
Chap. XXXI.— The Certainty of Pharaoh's Doom Confirmed, by a Parabolical
Relation of Assyria's Greatness and Destruction, . . . 340 Chap. XXXII.— Songs of Lamentation Over the Fall of Pharaoh and his
Kingdom, ........ 345
Chap. XXXIII. — Renewal of Ezekiel's Commission, his Office as "Watchman, 354 Chap. XXXIV.— The Promise of the True Shepherd, after the False Shep- herds have been Punished and Removed, .... 366
Chap. XXXV.— The Judgment of Edom, ..... 381
Chap. XXXVI. — Israel Revenged and Comforted — the New Heart and the
Blissful Heritage, . ..... 386
Chap. XXXVII. — The Vision of the Dry Bones Restored to Life again, as
Symbolical of Israel's Death and Resurrection, . . . 400
Chap. XXXVIII.— XXXIX.— The Assault of Gog and His Destruction, . 414 Preliminary Remarks on the Vision in Chap. XL. — XLVIIL, with Respect to
the Principles on which it ought to be interpreted, . . . 431
Chap. XL. 1-48.— The Position, Walls, Gates, and Courts of the Temple, . 450
Chap. XL. 48, 49.— XLL— The Temple Itself, 460
Chap. XLII. — Chambers of the Temple and its Boundary Walls, . . 466 Chap. XLIII.— The Lord's Return to the Temple, . . . .470
Chap. XLIV. — Ordinances for the Prince and the Priesthood, . . 476
Chap. XLV. — The Sacred Allotments in Land and Gifts, . . . 481
Chap. XLVI. — Additional Ordinances for the Prince and People, . . 486 Chap. XLVI I. 1-12.— Vision of the Temple- Waters, . . .489 Chap. XLVII. 13-23.— XLVIIL— The Boundaries and Re-Distribution of the
Land, 495
ERRATA.
Page 79, last line in te.xt, after sitting, insert before me. 94, third line from bottom, for n"nps read Th'^t, 130, Note 1, for sp2 read 5>pa.
185, line fifteenth,/or representation, read representative. 236, Note 2, for nsns read nsas. 258, Note 3, /or rs-^JJW read r\^-"jn. 367, Note 1,/or nVia read rh''::^. 367, Note 1, for Thr&'L read n'-slna.
INTRODUCTION.
It is not our intention to detain our readers long at the threshold, or to enter here into any discussions which might pre-suppose and require an intimate acquaintance with the writings of our author. We mean simply to present a few statements of a strictly preli- minary kind, respecting the personal position and circumstances of Ezekiel, the more distinctive features of his prophetical charac- ter, the nature of his style and diction as a sacred writer, the order and classification of his prophecies, and the literature con- nected with their interpretation.
I. On the first of these points, it is not necessary to say much ; for the whole that is known with certainty of Ezekiel is furnished by his own hand, and is so closely interwoven with his discharge of the prophetical office, that it is only by following him through the one, we can become properly acquainted with the other. We know nothing of what he was or did as a man ; but only of what he was and did as a prophet. That he was the son of Buzi, a priest, and entered on his prophetical career by the river Chebar or Chaboras, in the fifth year of Jehoiachin's captivity, which was the same also of his own (comp. chap. i. 1, and xxxiii. 21), he has expressly informed us ; and Josephus transmits the additional information (Ant. x. 6, 3), that he had become a captive when he was but a young man. This, however, has been as often questioned as believed ; and among recent commentators — while Ewald sees reason to conclude, that the prophet "was pretty young when he was carried into exile" — Havernick, on the other hand, thinks that " the vigorous priestly spirit, which prevails throughout his prophecies, furnishes evidence of a greater age ; and that he had undoubtedly for some considerable time performed the service of a priest in the temple" before he left Judea. These diversities of opinion show, that the precise age of Ezekiel at the period of
A
2 INTRODUCTION.
his exile can at most be only a matter of probability. But from certain considerations we intend to adduce on the dates assigned in the opening verses of his Book, we are of opinion, that the probability is mainly on the side of his having been, at the time of his removal to Chaldea, a comparatively young man — in the twenty-fifth year of his age. And as one of his later prophecies makes mention of the twenty-seventh year of his captivity (chap, xxix. 17), this, added to the original number of twenty-five, brings him to an advanced stage of life, though still not to the close of his prophetical agency. For some of his later predictions appear to have been uttered at a period subsequent to the time to which the prediction in ch. xxix. belongs. There is reason, therefore, to conclude, that Ezekiel's public life both began early, and was prolonged to the season of mature age.
But of the absolute cessation of his prophetical gift, we have no definite chronological information ; nor, except from incidental notices sometimes introduced into his communications, do w^e learn anything of the experiences and results that attended its exercise. The direct historical notices in his writings, apart from the record of the visions he saw, and the messages of good and evil he re- ceived from above, are comparatively few. But in the messages themselves references are not unfrequently made to the circum- stances amid which he was placed, and the trials or sorrows connected with his official ministry. From those scattered notices we can easily gather, that as the time was marked by the fearful prevalence of evil in a moral, not less than in an outw^ard and worldly respect, so there was the application, on his part, of an unwearied activity, and the energy of a devoted zeal, striving against gigantic difficulties and manifold discouragements. He had to plead the cause of God in an atmosphere of rebellion ; prove himself to be faithful amidst many faithless ; and, without palliation or reserve, lay open evils in the condition of his com- panions in exile, which they sought most anxiously to cover out of sight. Hence, while he appears as one tenderly sympathising with them in their depression and gloom (chap. iii. 15), there is nothing to indicate that they ever properly sympathised with him in his contendings for truth and righteousness. They recognise him, indeed, as a prophet of the Most High, and collect around him, from time to time, to hear what message he might have re- ceived for their behoof, or to make inquiry thi'ough him concerning
INTRODUCTION. 6
the mind of God (chap. viii. 1, xi. 25, xiv. 1, etc.) ; but it was never without having a rebuke administered to them on account of the frame of mind in which they appeared, or an intimation made respecting the light and captious humour they were wont to in- dulge in toward him (chap. xiv. 1, xviii., xxxiii. 30-33, etc.). So that his prophetical career, we can have no doubt, was connected with much that was trying and painful, and, like too many of our Lord's prophetical types, he also in no slight degree had to " en- dure the contradiction of sinners against himself."
Yet this must not be understood of his connection with the whole / band of exiles, nor probably of the later period of his public ministry nearly so much as of the earlier. For, amid the prevailing iniquity there are not wanting occasional indications of a better spirit among the captives (chap. xi. 16, Jer. xxiv.) ; and, at a period not very distant from the close of his ministrations, a very marked and general amendment had undoubtedly taken place among them. It could not greatly, if it did at all, exceed thirty years from the cessation of his active labours, when the decree was issued for the return of the captives ; and notwithstanding the cor- ruptions which still lingered among them, and which soon began to appear in the infant colony, there was a general repudiation of idolatry, and an adherence to the law of Moses, very different from what had existed at the era of the captivity, or for a considerable time previous to it. Nor can there be any doubt, that among the agencies which contributed to effect this beneficial change, a pro- minent place must be ascribed to the ministry of Ezekiel. By^ the results that appeared, decisive evidence was thus borne to the / fact, that a prophet had been among them, who had not laboured i in vain ; and we can scarcely doubt, from the whole circumstances \ of the case, that the satisfaction was afforded our prophet— a satis- faction which was denied to his great contemporary Jeremiah, of • witnessing the commencement of the spiritual renovation for which i he so earnestly laboured. \
II. It naturally follows, from what has been said of the position and circumstances of Ezekiel, that, in respect to his prophetical agency, one of the leading characteristics was that of active and energetic working. He had, almost single-handed, to begin and direct the process of a general reformation, which no one can do with effect, even now, without force of character and energy of
4 INTRODUCTION.
action ; and still less could it be done then, when writing and reading were so much less in use, and practical effects on com- munities were necessarily more dependent upon the instrumen- tality of the living voice. This consideration is of itself sufficient to disprove the idea entertained by Ewald, and more recently espoused by Hitzig, of the comparatively quiescent and chiefly literary character of Ezekiel as a prophet. " As we see him in his Book," says Ewald, " he appears more as a writer, than as a prophet taking part in public life. The writer may have his individual peculiarities of a kind quite foreign to a prophet of the elder sort ; and so, in point of fact, Ezekiel as an author sur- passes all the earlier prophets, in particular Jeremiah, in finish, heauty, and completeness; but the more the man grows as an author and a cultivator of learning, he loses in the same propor- tion as a genuine prophet." He, therefore, contemplates the great book of Ezekiel as " proceeding almost entirely from the study of a learned retreat ;" and Hitzig, following in the same track, and speaking as from the most intimate acquaintance with the facts of the case, tells us that, as Ezekiel was driven from the external world by the badness of the times,. he " but cultivated the more the internal world — he flew to his books, and gave him- self up to literature, leading a kind of dusky retirement in the law and his own past reminiscences" (Yorbem. § 2). If so, we might certainly affirm, never did an author's course of life pre- sent a greater contrast to the character of his writings, or appear less adapted to the aim he professes to have in view. The work, to which he owns himself to have been called, from its very nature required the most resolute and devoted agency : he was expressly called to do the part of a watchman in the midst of abounding dan- ger and corruption; where success in any degree must have seemed utterly hopeless, excepting as the result of unwearied diligence and self-denying labour. And though, it is true, in his writings, as in those of the prophets generally, we have the record of little else than his direct communications with Heaven, and his more special messages to the people ; yet these breathe throughout such a living earnestness and practical vigour, as clearly bespeaks the man of active labour, not the learned leisure and meditative quiet of a recluse.
This moral detvorrjs, or fervent, energetic striving after a practical result is stamped upon the whole of Ezekiel's writings, although
INTBODUCTTON. 5
it comes out more palpably in some portions than in others. The Book possesses much of a rhetorical character, and has, in a manner, but one aim — that of moral suasion. Hence, the more peculiar difficulties connected with its interpretation, are not those which attach to the meaning of the words, or the construc- tion of sentences, but such rather as inhere in the general form and substance of the prophet's communications. Thougb the former are occasionally found, it is the latter which chiefly prevail ; and some even of the most profound and enigmatical portions are remarkable for the perfect plainness and simplicity of the style. At the same time, while we thus maintain the essential incorrect- ness of the view given of Ezekiel's prophetical character by Ewald and Hitzig, we are not insensible to a difference, in the line indi- cated by them, between the writings of this prophet and the other prophetical books ; this book is characterised in a quite peculiar manner by a tendency to minute, detailed, and, as might seem, elaborate descriptions. But this arose from the native bent of the prophet's mind — not from the retired and studious character of his life.
For, as another distinctive peculiarity in Ezekiel, there appears a very marked individuality in his cast of mind — such as gives a kind of uniqueness to his writings, and plainly distinguishes them as productions from those of the other prophets. It is true, that in the one, as well as in the other, we have the inspired utterances of men speaking as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. But it is not the less true, that in thus moving them, the Spirit of God had respect to their native bent of mind, and allowed their several constitutional peculiarities to give their full impress to the form and method of their prophetic announcements. The doctrine of inspiration does not imply, however often it may be represented as if it did, that the persons who were the subjects of it, should be wrought upon by the Spirit as mere mechanical instruments, whose natural faculties were suspended under the violent and impulsive agency of a higher power. On such a supposition, we could never account for the diversities of manner which charac- terise the sacred oracles, and which not only shed over them the charm of an instructive and pleasing variety, but also endow them with a manifold adaptation to the different tastes and capacities of men. The Spirit did not suspend, or imperiously control, but most wisely and skilfully used the mental peculiarities and
6 INTRODUCTION.
individual relations of his human instruments of working. And as through the employment of these he has sought in the Divine communications to find his way more thoroughly to our under- standings and our sympathies, so it is by making due account of the same, that we must endeavour to find our way to what, in the communications themselves, may be the mind of the Spirit.
In the simply literary department of the religious sphere, we readily concede a full play to the varied idiosyncrasies of mind, and the diversified methods they naturally fall into in the exhibi- tion of Divine truth. A clear and solid judgment, practical wisdom and sagacity, rapt fervour of spirit, logical accuracy, the playful sportings of fancy or the bolder flights of imagination ; the direct and the veiled, the homely and the refined, the histo- rical and the allegorical — all find here their peculiar province, and have each their appropriate use. And in reaping the benefit, which they are severally fitted to render to the cause of truth, and to minister of personal instruction, every one knows, that they must each be treated after their own kind, and judged by their distinctive characteristics of thought and expression. Now, there is the same variety in the natural gifts and endowments of the inspired writers ; and they must be dealt with in the same manner — if we would catch aright their spirit, and receive just impressions from the discourses they delivered. For example, in the case more immediately before us, in the prophet Ezekiel, we have an example of the Spirit's theopneustic agency in one of the more uncommon and eccentric class of minds — a mind susceptible of deep emotions, possessed of an aerial fancy, and intensely ener- getic in its aims and movements ; a mind, therefore, strongly realistic in its tendencies, so that it must be ever striving after the living presence, or the life-like representation of things, behold- ing the unseen mirrored in the seen, and arraying the dim per- spective of the future in the familiar garniture of the past or present. To such a mind the distinctions, in a manner, vanish between history and prophecy, symbol and reality, flesh and spirit ; the one seems insensibly to merge into the other, or to be related to it only as the exterior form of the life that dwells within. And the Spirit of God, in serving himself of such a mind, as a channel of Divine communications to the church, must be under- stood to have left these marked peculiarities to their native opera- \tion, and only to have given them the proper impulse, and furnished
INTRODUCTION. 7
them with the necessary materials of working. It was, in truth, precisely such a mind that was needed in the crisis, at which the affairs of the covenant-people had then arrived, when, the external framework of the Divine kingdom having fallen to pieces, the interest of God seemed ready to perish, and the very foundations of the faith were tottering to their base. No ordinary man, at such a time, v/as fitted to raise anew the standard of God's truth, and rally the prostrate forces of the kingdom. One was needed, who should be capable of living alike in the past and the future, and who could see, as with open eye, and grasp, as with a giant's hand, the hidden realities of faith.
The peculiarities, therefore, of Ezekiel's mental constitution stood in very close connection with his special calling as a pro- phet ; and due account must be made of them by all who would either understand aright his mission to the church, or read in an intelligent and discerning spirit the Book of his prophecy. If we should expect to find there, as in some of the other prophets, fine displays of tender feeling, or descriptions remarkable for their flow of pleasing sentiment, and artistic beauty of composition, we shall certainly be disappointed. This is not the field for gems of such a nature. The mind of the prophet was concentrated upon one great object — to give life and reality, body and freshness to the objects of faith, so as thereby to reanimate an expiring church, and recall men's confidence to an almost forgotten and unknown God. Whatever might serve this purpose, whether in the real or ideal world, in the symbols of religion or in the facts of sacred history, he freely lays under contribution to effect it. Even strange combinations and grotesque forms are often resorted to, when by means of them he can add to the graphic power and moral force of his delineations. And comparatively regardless of the mode, intent mainly on the effect of his communications, he indulges in frequent reiterations, and invests his imagery with such specific and minute details, as one naturally connects with a felt and present realit3\
The characteristics now noticed in the prophetic agency of Ezekiel seem to call for a species of commentary, which shall be more parcenetical than exegetical; in other words, which shall rather handle the different communications as doctrinal or prac- tical discourses on particular subjects, than break them up into detached fragments for miruite explanatory remarks. There
» INTRODUCTION.
would otherwise be a want of fitting correspondence in form be- tween the text and the kind of interpretation subjoined to it. And this, it is our purpose, to keep steadily in view, not slurring over difficulties in the text, or refusing any aid we can find for elucidating its import ; yet, at the same time, dwelling chiefly on the great principles of truth and duty, to w^hich all that is either more common or more peculiar in the prophet is rendered prin- cipally subservient.^
It is impossible not to notice, as another distinguishing element in Ezekiel's prophetical character, his strong priestly feeling. For the most part the prophets belonged, either to the priestly or the Levitical order ; and sometimes, as in the cases of Samuel and Jeremiah, prominence is given to the fact of their having been _ by birth connected with those more select portions of the com- munity. But in Ezekiel alone of the later prophets, does the priestly element become so peculiarly prominent and pervading, as to give a tone and impress to the general character of his ministrations, and to render even his prophetical labours a kind of jDriestly service. His thoughts seem perpetually to linger about the temple, and ever delight to find in its symbolical materials and forms of w^orship the channels through which to unfold the truths he was commissioned to declare. This, however, it must be remembered, was less owing to any individual pecu- liarity or personal choice, than to the circumstances of his position and the nature of his calling. It sprung more immediately from the desire of satisfying the spiritual want occasioned, first by the
^ We are glad to see that this is again coming to be recognised as proper in regard to the exposition of Scripture generally. Hengstenberg, in the preface to his Commentary on the Apocalypse, expresses it as his opinion, that the present times demand a kind of exposition of Scripture, which is in ac- cordance with its great doctrinal and practical design. And Stier, in his preface to the 4th vol. of his Reden Jesu, thus vindicates his adoption of such a form of commentary : — " Our older expositors, as is well known, gave to their exegesis very much of the same form, in respect to edification ; it is only in the present age, in our unhappy divorce between the church and the professorial chair, that such can appear to be of a mongrel character. Intentionally and on principle I abandon the wholly unpractical manner of the schools, which coldly and stiffly guards itself against the use of any word that might speak from heart to heart, and which must always carry an unna- tural and unseemly appearance in every, even the most learned treatment of the living word of God."
INTRODUCTION.
9
absence, and then by the destruction of the outward temple, which it was of importance to have met by something of a corres- ponding nature. But of this more particularly under the opening verses.
Still further, the prophetical gift itself possessed and exercised by Ezekiel was of the higher kind. Beyond all question, he belongs to the first rank of those, who under the old covenant were called to the regular discharge of the prophetical office. As with the prophets generally, his gift w^as exercised as well in regard to the present as the future ; and in both respects it proved itself to be, as Witsius terais it, "incomparable."^ It enabled him to form a correct estimate of the existing state of matters, not less than a clear apprehension of what was going to take place. . His spiritually enlightened eye takes the true guage and measure of w^hat was around him ; looks through the appearances into the realities of things ; so that, with the assured confidence of one who knew the mind of God, he gives forth the judgment of heaven respecting them. His anticipations of the future are not less remarkable. Even De Wette admits, that not only are there here actual predictions, but that " in none of the ancient prophets are there found such definite predictions as in this." The last part of the statement may certainly be questioned by those who believe in the genuineness of Daniel's prophecies ; yet the predictions of Ezekiel are both of great variety, and singularly minute and faithftd in their delineations of coming events. Partly, however, from some of the events referred to in them lying not far remote from the utterance of the predictions, and partly, also, from the strongly figurative form into which not a few of the others are cast, their apologetical value in the present day, against the adversaries of the faith, is not altogether in pro- portion to their number, or their definiteness. Of many of them it must be said, that they are fitted rather for confirming the faith and strengthening the convictions of those who already believe, than for removing the doubts of such as are still opposed to the truth. Yet we should deem it impossible for any one, in a spirit of candour and sincerity, to peruse the wonderful and discrimi- nating predictions contained in his writings respecting either the Jews themselves (those, for example, in chap, v., vi., xi., xvii.,
Miscel. Sac. i. p. 243.
10 INTRODUCTION.
xxi.), or the neighbouring nations, more particularly those of Tyre and Egypt — predictions, which foretold in regard to the subjects of them very different and varying fortunes, and such as necessarily required ages for their accomplishment : — we should deem it impossible for any one in a proper spirit to examine these, and compare them with the fulfilment, without being persuaded that they afford indubitable evidence of a supernatural insight into the far-distant future. No spirit of human di^dnation, or mere worldly sagacity could possibly have enabled him to descry events, at once so remote in time, and so different from what might, on many accounts, have been supposed likely to happen.
III. — In respect to the style and diction of Ezekiel, different estimates have been formed by different writers, and exaggerated representations, as well of a favourable, as of an unfavourable kind, are still to be met with. The comparative estimate of Lowth may certainly be characterised as in some respects over- drawn ; but he says with substantial correctness, " that in his images he is fertile, magnificent, harsh, and sometimes almost deformed; in his diction grand, weighty, austere, rough, and some- times vnipolished ; abounding in repetitions, not for the sake of ornament or gracefulness, but through indignation or violence" (Praelec. xxi.). His diction, he adds, is sufficiently perspicuous, almost all his obscurity lying in the matter ; and notwithstand- ing the obvious want of parallelism, which pervades the greater part of the Book, Lowth is disposed to claim most of it as poetical — although, he admits, " the sentences are often so rude and void of composition, that he was often doubtful what to determine in that respect." In truth he was here trying the productions of the prophet by a somewhat mistaken standard. And altogether the view taken, and the estimate formed by Ewald are much more correct. The latter says (Propheten, p. 2 12 ), " considered simply as a writer, this prophet exhibits great excellences, especially as living in so dismal a period. His mode of representation, indeed, like that of most of the later writers, has a tendency to length and expansion, with sentences often very much involved, and rhetorical breadth and copiousness ; yet it seldom dwindles down like that of Jeremiah, readily recovers itself, and usually makes a fine conclusion. His language has scattered through it several Aramaic and foreign expressions, in which one may perceive the
INTRODUCTION. 11
influence of his exiled condition ; though, for the most part, it is formed after the elder and better models. His diction, besides, is rich in rare comparisons, often alike attractive and striking, full of varied terms, and commonly wrought out with much beauty (for example, chap, xxxii.). Where the discourse rises higher to the delineation of the sublime visions presented to him (as in chap. i. and x.), it exhibits the vividness of genuine dra- matic composition. It has also a certain evenness and repose, a quality which distinguishes this prophet from Jeremiah ; he but seldom soars into lyrical strains (chap, vii.), or becomes vehe- mently moved (chap, xxi.)." It is added, that the verse is often rough, and the strophe-arrangement much obscured, on account of the tendency to lengthen out the sentences ; but they are still regarded as to some extent existing, though they are only to be found in a distinct and regular manner in a few select portions, such as chap. vii. and xxi.
In one respect Ewald also has given an erroneous view of the character of Ezekiel as a writer — representing this as in a certain sense interfering with his character as a prophet. This is done more especially in respect to the symbolical actions and parabo- lical discourses, which abound so much in his writings. " The writer here," he says, ^' overpowers the prophet. The writer seeks for excellent images, similitudes, and enigmas, and the merely-literary prophet finds therein the readiest helps and sup- ports to his fancy ; and so Ezekiel very commonly sets out from an image, conducts this with all possible varieties of form and embellishments, and then unfolds it in proper discourse ; or he draws long delineations marked by genuine poetic beauty : — but the point and keenness of the prophetic style suffers much there- by," etc. This line of remark proceeds on the misapprehension already noticed respecting the prophetical character of Ezekiel. It has been well met, as to the particular point now under con- sideration, by Havernick, who says, " It is quite correct, that a certain amount of skill is discoverable in this mode of represen- tation ; but it is to misapprehend the nature of prophecy, when this artistic impulse is viewed as the productive power of such compositions. Prophecy has its root in quite other soil ; and were it after this fashion drawn into the mere province of art, it would cease to be genuine prophecy, and should belong to the class of degenerate productions — spurious imitations of the true.
12 INTRODUCTION.
The writer's skill evinces itself here rather in giving forth with the greatest vividness and fidelity his internal perceptions with the full impress of their immediateness and originality. It is the historical skill of the narrator of internal facts, a simply re-pro- ductive, and not a productive faculty, which must be conceded to the prophet, and in which he shows a perfect mastery" (Comm. p. 24).
We simply add, under this head, that the darkness to a certain extent inseparably connected with our prophet's delight in the use of parable and symbol, was, when rightly contemplated, by no means at variance with his great design as a prophet. His primary object was impression — to rouse and stimulate, to awaken spiritual thoughts and feelings in the depths of the soul, and bring it back to a living confidence and faith in God. And for this, while great plainness and force of speech were necessary, mysterious symbols and striking parabolical delineations were also fitted to be of service. They showed the prophet's mind to be on the stretch to arrest the attention of his people, and lead them to penetrate into the deep things of God. To the great majority of them such things appeared deep, chiefly on account of that superficial habit of mind, which rests satisfied with looking at the exterior, and mistakes shadows for realities — the same habit sub- stantially, which has led the modern Jews to magnify to such a height the obscurities of this book of Ezekiel — ordaining that no one should read it till he had passed his thirtieth year, with other foolish and extravagant things of a like nature. Had either the earlier or the later Jews understood it aright, they would have felt that the profound and enigmatical character of some of the visions, especially when viewed in connection with the awful directness and pungency of others, was itself a witness against them, and formed a call to serious consideration and anxious inquiry. And thus in respect to the more peculiar part of the form and clothing, as well as the matter of his revelations, wisdom is here also justified of her children.
IV. The order and classification of his prophecies next demands some notice. And here it ought, first of all, to be borne in mind, that whatever arrangement may be made respecting them as to their subjects, an order and progression belongs to them as a whole, as well as a homogeneousness of nature, which fits them
INTRODUCTION. 13
for mutually throwing light on each other ; and, in particular, one large portion of them (chap, i.-xxxii.), which is mainly conversant wdth sin and judgment, in a great degree supplies the key, by which the later announcements — more cheering in their tone, but more remote in their objects — are to be interpreted. There is in this respect a unity in the character of the book, which calls for an orderly and progressive perusal of its contents. And should any one, heedless of this characteristic, overleap all the earlier portions of the prophecy, and proceed at once to grapple with some of the later and more peculiar visions, he would only take the course most likely to involve himself in perplexity or disappointment.
A general classification of the contents of the book, as has just been noticed, may be made into those, which have respect pre- dominantly to sin and judgment, and those which are more peculiarly appropriated to the revelation of grace and mercy. We can only, however, speak of prevailing, not by any means of exclusive, characteristics of this sort. For, in the one part mercy is often found intermingling with the judgment, as in the other judgment occasionally alternates with the mercy. The more specific, and at the same time quite natural divisions, are com- monly indicated by the prophet himself, in the several dates which he has, at certain intervals, placed as superscriptions to the messages he successively received. These are altogether eight. 1. The first is introductory, containing a description of the first vision, and in connection with it of the call of the prophet — (chap. i.~iii. 15). 2. The next portion, embracing the remaining verses in chap, iii., and reaching to the close of chap, vii., is occu- pied chiefly with a more explicit announcement of the prophet's commission and charge, and his entrance on the work it devolved upon him, by setting forth the enormous guilt of the people, the certainty of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, with still sub- sequent calamities, and the prostrate condition of the whole affairs of the kingdom. 3. The next section embraces chap, viii.-xix., but falls into two parts. The first, including chap, viii.-xi., contains still farther revelations of the people's sinfulness, espe- cially as connected wath the profanation of the temple, and the corruption of the priesthood — the determination of God, in con- sequence, to forsake his sanctuaiy, with severe executions of vengeance on the wicked, though not without gracious interpo-
14 INTRODUCTION,
sitions for the safety of the few who remained faithful — and then, the twofold work of destruction and preservation being (symbolically) done, his actual departure from the temple-mount, that he might go and reveal himself in tenderness and power to an inquiring and afflicted people in exile. In the second part of this division, which includes chap, xii.-xix., the prophet prose- cutes in detail his exposure of the sins, which were bringing down such inflictions of judgment, and shows how all classes, as well as the priests — prophets, princes, and the people generally, had corrupted tlieir ways, and should severally share in the destruction that was impending. 4. In chap, xx.-xxiii., the same subject is con- tinued, though, as the time of judgment had approached nearer, there is an increased keenness and severity in the prophet's tone ; he sits, as it were, in judgment upon the people, brings out in full form the Divine indictment against them, and with awful distinctness and frequent reiteration, announces both their con- summate guilt and its appropriate judgment. 5. Then comes, in chap, xxiv., the actual announcement of the end, as regards Jerusalem and its guilty people, with a representation of the behaviour suitable for such as survived the calamity ; the prophet himself being required to share in the confusion and silence, which were proper at such a time. 6. Chap, xxv.-xxxii. form a group by themselves, containing the announcements respecting sin and judgment, which, during the interval of the prophet's silence towards his own people, he was commanded to utter against the surrounding nations. The great object of them was to show, that if judgment had begun at the house of God, it would assuredly embrace, and visit with still more overwhelming calamities, the ungodly world. There are various headings in this section ; and some of the revelations were given at periods considerably subsequent to others ; but they began to be uttered immediately after the doom of Jerusalem, and all manifestly relate to one great theme. 7. In chap, xxxiii.-xxxix., we have a series of predictions given to the prophet in the tw^elfth year of the captivity, after the appearance in Chaldea of the remnant that had escaped from Jerusalem (chap, xxxiii. 21) ; a series which points more particularly to the better times in prospect, and unfolds, with considerable fulness and variety, the revival of God's cause among the covenant-people, the re-establishment of the Divine kingdom, and its sure and final victory over all the
INTRODUCTION. 15
sources of evil, which had prevailed so much against it in the past. 8. Then, after an interval of thirteen years, comes the closing vision, in chap, xl.-xlviii., disclosing, under the symbo- lical representation of a new temple, city, and commonwealth, the restored condition, with the perfect order and beauty, of the people and kingdom of God.
Y. All that is necessary for the present time to be said on the literature of the subject may soon be told. Our own country has done comparatively little in relation to it. The bulky and tedious work of Greenhill, reprinted some years ago in a cheap form, is, like most of the Puritan writings, of small account in an exegetical respect ; and is rather a collection of common-places founded on Ezekiel, with a multitude of parallel passages from other Scriptures, than a commentary in the proper sense. The only English work calling for special notice here, is the Transla- tion, with Notes, by Archbishop Newcome, published in 1788. The notes are of a very brief description, chiefly explanatory of the meanings given in the translation ; and both the translation and the notes proceed to a large extent on the vicious principle, very prevalent at the time, of getting rid of diflSculties in the sense by proposed emendations of the text. This false and superficial style of criticism has now deservedly fallen into discredit; although Ewald, and after him Hitzig, still pursue, to some extent, the same course, and not seldom, like Newcome, would correct the Hebrew text from the Septuagint. How little con- fidence can be placed in emendations derived from such a source, no one can need to be told, who is in the least degree acquainted with the character of the Septuagint translation generally, and, in particular, with its translation of this Book. Hitzig himself admits many of its variations from the true sense to have arisen from palpable mistakes ; and that, as a whole, it is pervaded by frequent and systematic deviations from the correct import, while the Hebrew text is remarkable for its degree of purity, are among the surest results of a sound biblical criticism. We have, there- fore, but rarely paid any regard to the diverse readings derived from the Septuagint, and, with the rarest exceptions, have a - hered to the existin g text.
By far the most elaborate work ever published on the prophe- cies of Ezekiel, was the joint production of two Spanish Jesuits,
16 INTRODUCTION.
Pradus and Villalpandus, in three huge folios (Rome, 1596). The first vohime, which, with a shght exception, was executed by Pradus, and reaches to the close of chap, xxviii., is the best portion of the work ; now, however, chiefly valuable as a reper- tory of the opinions of the Fathers. The two other volumes are occupied with interminable discussions in reference to the Temple, and, as stated in the preliminary remarks to chap, xl.-xlviii., proceed throughout on a wrong principle. The expository discourses of Calvin extend only to the first twenty chapters, and are distinguished by his usual acumen and discrimination, also by his hearty appreciation of the great moral principles exhibited by the prophet ; but afford little help in regard to some of the more peculiar difficulties connected with the interpretation of the Book. The same also may be said of the commentaries of Rosen- muller and Maurer, though both are deserving of consultation — the former, more especially for the judicious and extensive use it makes of existing materials — the latter (which, as to the sense, very commonly follows Rosenmuller), for its grammatical exact- ness and acute remarks on particular passages. The translation of Ewald, with its brief notes, forming part of his Hebrew Prophets, though unsatisfactory as a whole, is yet of considerable value, and has frequently been consulted. But a much more valuable contribution to the study of Ezekiel appeared very shortly after it — that of Hiivernick, which issued from the press in 1843, a year or two before the lamented death of its author. Though I cannot always adopt the views and conclusions arrived at in this work, yet I gratefully acknowledge my deep obligations to it. The commentary of Hitzig, of still later date (1847), is the production of an accurate scholar, but of a very inferior mind to that of Hiivernick ; and while it is entitled to an honourable place as regards the grammatical sense and connection, it has added nothing to the general elucidation of the Book, or done aught to enhance its value as part of the Inspired Volume. In this respect it is rash and superficial, and partakes of the wonted leanness and spiritual poverty of Rationalism. The few passages of Ezekiel examined by Hengstenberg in his Christology, are treated with his usual accuracy and penetration.
THE BOOK
THE PROPHET EZEKIEL.
CHAPTER I.
THE TIME AND MANNER OF HIS ENTERING UPON THE PROPHETICAL OFFICE.
Ver. 1. And it came to pass in the thirtieth year, on the fifth of the fourth month, while I was among the captives by the river Chebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. 2. On the fifth of the month ; it was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin's (Heb. Jojakhin's) captivity. 3 The word of Jehovah did verily comei to EzekieP the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans, by the river Chebar ; and the hand of Jehovah was upon him.
The information contained in these introductory verses, respect- ing the person of Ezekiel, and the time at which he entered on his prophetical calling, is very explicit upon some points, but indefinite or doubtful upon others. It tells us, that he was of the priestly order, and that his father's name was Buzi ; but it does not indicate with what particular family of the priesthood he was connected ; nor does it state that he had ever personally
1 We have here, at the outset, a striking example of our prophet's love of emphasis. He does not say simply, after the usual manner, the "word of Jehovah was or came r-r; to him ; but n-rr rrr,, using the infinitive absol. along with the verb, according to a common Hebrew usage, to strengthen the meaning. The authorized version employs the adverb expressly to bring out the force of this peculiar construction ; but it is rather the felt assurance with which the revelation came, than its expressness, which is indicated.
2 Ezekiel, composed of Vs -^trr, God strengthens.
B
18 EZEKIEL I.
discharged the duties of the priestly office m the temple. The more special part of the description has respect to his position and calling as a prophet to his exiled countrymen on the banks of the Chebar. He was, indeed, the only individual raised up among them to fulfil there the prophetical office. Daniel, it is true, flourished during the same period in exile, and was also richly furnished with prophetical gifts ; but Daniel might more fitly be called a seer than a prophet, since the spirit of prophecy imparted to him, was not given to fit him for the discharge of a spiritual office, but for the purpose of enabling him to disclose, beforehand, coming events in the providence of God. Chosen by the king of Babylon from that portion of his countrymen who were distinguished by their superior rank and accomplish- ments, the sphere which Divine Providence marked out for him in the land of exile, was one that required his application to the affairs of worldly business, not to the employments of a sacred ministry. His lot was to dwell in king's palaces ; and in giving counsel to princes, and directing the movements of empire, he found his proper vocation. Hence the revelations vouchsafed to him had respect chiefly to the outward relations of God's kingdom — its connection with the kingdoms of this world, and their ever-shifting dynasties. It is on this account, and not for the fanciful reasons sometimes alleged, that the later Jews place the book of Daniel not among the prophetical scriptures — the writings of strictly prophetical men — but among those of a more general character — the Hagiographa, or sacred writings.
The sphere which Ezekiel was called to occupy was entirely different. His was the distinctive work and calling of a pro- phet. Himself of priestly origin, and hence devoted from his birth to the peculiar service of God, he had to do more especially with the inward concerns of the divine kingdom ; and it was in connection with this essentially spiritual vocation that the high calling and supernatural gifts of a prophet were conferred on him. When sent into exile, his duty of service was but trans- ferred from the visible temple in Jerusalem to the spiritual temple in Chaldea, as it was also withdrawn from ministrations of a more common and formal to those of a more select and elevated kind. Therefore, as it was Daniel's part to guide the machinery of government, and transact with affairs of state, it was Ezekiel's to deal In God's behalf with the hearts and con-
THE OPENING VISION. 19
sciences of men. And as the one was called to raise the standard of truth and righteousness in the high places of the world's pomp and corruption, so the other had to battle with the forms of evil that were nestling in the bosom of the church of God, and con- tend against the abominations which were laying waste the heritage of his people.
The place where Ezekiel was called to discharge the functions of this high ministry is said to have been " in the land of the Chaldeans, by the river Chebar" (ver. 3), — which Chebar is universally agreed to have been the river that is more commonly known by the name of Chaboras, a river in Upper Mesopotamia, flowing into the Euphrates near the ancient Carchemish, or Circe- sium, at the distance of about two hundred miles above Babylon. It was among the captive Jews settled there that Ezekiel's lot was cast, and for them more immediately that he had to do the work of a prophet. But whence came those captive brethren ? and when had they settled there ? They consisted, mainly at least, of that portion of the captivity which was carried away with Jehoiachin, on the second occasion that the Babylonian army made reprisals upon the land and people of Judah. The first occasion was about eight years earlier, in the third or fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim, the father of Jehoiachin ; of which there is no particular account in the historical books of Scripture, though, from being the occasion on which Daniel was carried into exile, it has found an explicit record at the com- mencement of his book.^ The captives, however, of this first successful expedition of the Chaldeans against Judea, appear to have been few compared with those who suffered in the second expedition, when, having first quelled Jehoiakim's rebellion, and
' Dan. i. 1. In 2 Kings xxiv. 1, it is merely said that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up and besieged Jerusalem, and Jehoiakim became his servant. Daniel places his deportation by Nebuchadnezzar in the third year of Jehoiakim, while Jeremiah (chap. xxv. 1) says, that the fourth year of Jehoiakim was coincident with the first of Nebuchadnezzar, in which same year, he also states, Nebuchadnezzar gained a victory over the Egyptians at Carchemish. The probability is, that it was shortly before this battle, in the end of the third year of Jehoiakim, that Nebuchadnezzar came against Jerusalem and took away some captives (among others Daniel). If his assault on Jerusalem was after the battle, the Jews at Jerusalem, and those in Chaldea, must have dated the commencement of his reign differ- ently.
20 EZEKIEL I.
put him to death, the army proceeded to carry oflp his successor Jehoiachin, with all . the flower of the people. The kingdom was then left in a feeble and dependent state, and so continued for about eleven years longer ; when the infatuated revolt of Zedekiah provoked a third incursion of the Chaldeans, who now reduced Jerusalem to a heap of ruins — the remaining inhabitants being partly killed, partly taken captive to Babylon, and partly, also, dispersed to other regions.
It is not expressly said that the ivhole of the captives who had been carried away with Jehoiachin were settled near Carchemish, on the banks of the Cliebar, though the probability is, that the great body of them had been located there. Ezeklel's call was to labour among " the captivity," — or, as we prefer rendering it, the captives, — and he constantly represents these captives as having their local habitation on the banks of the Chebar. If there was any considerable number of captives taken from Judea on the first incursion of Nebuchadnezzar, it is probable that the most of them were settled there after the battle of Carchemish ; these would form the older portion of the .Jewish settlers on the banks of the Chebar. And as the leading object of those deportations was evidently to consolidate the Chaldean empire, by w^hat seemed a wise assortment of its subjects, it could scarcely fail to be regarded as a politic arrangement, to attach the succeeding and much larger companies of captive Jews to those already settled there, as they would thus more readily feel at home in their new habitations, and with less difficulty become reconciled to the change that had passed over their condition. So that when we hear of the Jews, time after time, being carried to Babylon, or again delivered from it, we are not to understand by this the city of Babylon itself, in which appar- ently a mere fraction of their number was appointed to dwell, but the Chaldean region at large, and especially this particular district of it on the banks of the Chebar. The place of exile was identified with Babylon, merely because the centre of power and influence was there, and the fortunes of the whole region were necessarily bound up with those of the capital.
In a moral point of view, the situation of the exiles on the Chebar was peculiarly tiying and perilous, and never more so than during the eleven years' reign of Zedekiah — the period that elapsed between the captivity of the chief part of them, and the
THE OPENING VISION. 21
utter prostration of their country. Encompassed, as they now were, by the atmosphere of a triumphant heathenism, the more degenerate portion were in imminent danger of burying them- selves in the world's darkness and corruption ; while those who had attained to more correct views, both of divine truth and of their own position, were exposed to a variety of influences, which tended to nourish false expectations in their bosom, and to take off their minds from what should have been their grand concern — the work of personal reformation. The kingdom seemed now to have become, in some degree, consolidated in the hands of Zedekiah ; and why might they not hope, after a few years more had elapsed, to get permission from the king of Babylon to re- turn and dwell peaceably in their native land ? Even without any express leave on his part, the matter did not seem entirely hopeless, relief might still possibly come through the interven- tion of Egypt ; for, though that power had sustained a severe blow by its defeat at Carchemish, it was not so far broken as altogether to exclude the prospect of its again taking the field against the king of Babylon. It was precisely this expectation which misled Zedekiah to his ruin ; for it induced him to enter into a treacherous alliance with Egypt, which proved the fore- runner of his utter discomfiture and final overthrow. Nor were persons wanting, as we learn from Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who sought to inspire the exiles at Chebar with the same delusive hopes. And it is more than probable, though we have no explicit information on the subject, that some of the earlier predictions, especially those of Isaiah and Habakkuk, which so clearly foretold the downfal of Babylon, were employed to countenance and support them in the false prospects they enter- tained. Then, for the small remnant of sound believers, who existed there like a few grains of wheat among heaps of chaff, how much was there, if not to betray them into such vain con- fidences, at least to fill their souls with depression and gloom '^ Cut off", as by an impassable gulf, from the temple of the Lord, while their more favoured brethren in Judea were still allowed to frequent its courts, how apt must they have been to feel that they were cast out of God's sight, and to mourn, in the plaintive strains of the Psalmist, " Woe is me that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar."
We find that Jeremiah, amid the severe and painful struggles
22 EZEKIEL I.
which beset his course in Judea, was not unmindful of these en- dangered and forlorn exiles in the land of the enemy. On the ^occasion of an embassy going from king Zedekiah to Babylon, he despatched communications to them by the hand of Seraiah, such as their circumstances required. One of these — the pro- phecy contained in Jer. li. — announced the certain downfal of Babylon, but was probably committed to Seraiah in confidence, that he might impart its tidings only to such as were likely to profit by them. The other was .a letter addressed to the captives generally, in which he warned them not to believe the false pro- phets, who held out flattering hopes of their speedy and certain return to the land of their fathers ; assured them that there should be no return till the period of seventy years had been ac- complished in their captivity ; and exhorted them to submit them- selves to the hand of God, and to seek him with all their hearts (chap. xxix.). So far were the views expressed in this letter from coinciding with those prevalent on the banks of the Chebar, that one of the captives, we are informed, wrote back to the high priest at Jerusalem, and even complained of his allowing Jere- miah to go at large, since he was acting more like a madman than a prophet (chap. xxix. 24-28). And it was in immediate connection with these transactions, and for the purpose of giving a full utterance and a pointed application to the truths and les- sons which had been expressed in the communications of Jere- miah, that one was raised up among the captives themselves to do the work of a prophet — the fervent and energetic Ezekiel. For as it was in the fourth year of Zedekiah's reign that those communications went from Jeremiah to the captives (Jer. li. 59), so it was very shortly after, namely, in the fifth year and fourth month of the same reign, or, which is all one, of Jehoiachin's captivity (Ezek. i. 2), that Ezekiel was called to the prophetical office ; whence he begins with the usual historical formula, "And it came to pass," as if what was going to be recorded was merely the resumption of a thread that had somehow been broken or suspended, a continuation in a new form of the testimony that had been delivered by other servants of God. In him the truth found a most important witness, both as regards the nature and variety of the communications disclosed througii him. By his very name a^d call to the prophetical office, he was a witness of the Lord's faithfulness to his people, as, by the tone and character
THE OPENING VISION. 23
of his ministrations, he gave strong expression to the high and holy principles of God's government over them ! For, as has been justly said, " He was one who raised his voice like a trumpet, and showed to Israel his misdeeds ; whose word, like a threshing machine, passed over all their sweet hopes and purposes, and ground them to the dust ; whose whole manifestations furnished the strongest proof that the Lord w^as still among his people ; who was himself a temple of the Lord, before whom the apparent temple, which still stood for a short time at Jerusalem, sunk back into its own nothingness ; a spiritual Samson, who, with a strong arm, seized the pillars of the temple of idols, and dashed it to the ground ; an energetic, gigantic nature, who was thereby suited effectually to counteract the Babylonish spirit of the times, which loved to manifest itself in violent, gigantic, grotesque forms; one who stood alone, but was yet equal to a hundred scholars of the prophets."^ We have referred as yet only to the more explicit date assigned by Ezekiel for his entrance on the prophetical office, viz., the fifth day of the fourth month of the fifth year of Je- hoiachin's captivity. Before this, however, he mentions another, which he simply designates " the thirtieth year," — a date which has been very variously understood. Some, in the first instance, Jewish authorities, in particular Kimchi and Jarchi ; recently, in this country, the Duke of Manchester, in his " Times of Daniel," p. 35 ; and on the continent, Hitzig — regard the prophet as reckoning from the last jubilee. By some misapprehension, the Duke of Manchester represents Jerome and Theodoret as being of this opinion ; both, on the contrary, reject it. Jerome's words are : " Tricesimus annus, non ut plerique aestimant getatis pro- phetae dicitur, nee Jubilgei, qui est annus remissionis, sed a duo- decimo anno Josiae," etc. The chief objection to this view is, that it rests entirely on hypothesis, there being no historical notice of a jubilee about the time referred to, nor any other in- stance of such an occurrence being taken by a prophet as an era from which to date either his own entrance on the prophetical office, or any other event of importance to the church. It seems the more unlikely that Ezekiel should fix upon an era of that description, since it already lay so far in the distance ; and so many painful and humiliating events had occurred in the interval,
1 Hengstenberg's Christol., vol. iii. p. 450, Eiig. Tj-ans.
24 EZEKIEL I.
that no one almost would naturally think of it, or feel as if, in existing circumstances, anything had depended on it. Of what moment was it to Ezekiel or his countrymen, that thirty years ago there had been a jubilee in the land of Judah, when now the whole nation was in bondage, and the best of its people were miserable captives in a foreign land ? The more common opinions are, that the thirty years date, either from the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, when, with the finding of the book of the law in the temple, a notable reformation began — so the Chaldee, Jerome, Theodoret, Grotius, Calov, Piscator, Ideler, Havernick (some also of the Rab- binical writers combine their idea of the jubilee with this period) — or from the Nabopolassarian era, at the commencement of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar's father, and of the Chaldean dynasty — so Pra- dus, Scaliger, Perizonius, Michaelis, Rosenmiiller, Ewald. Of these two epochs, it is quite certain that the eighteenth of Josiah's reign did stand at the distance of thirty years from the fifth year of Jehoiachin's captivity (14 of Josiah's reign, 11 of Jehoiakim's, and 5 of the captivity) ; and recent chronological investigations have rendered it probable, that the Nabopolassarian era must also have nearly, if not altogether coincided with it. But it un- questionably seems strange, that either of these epochs should have been indicated by giving only the number of years that had elapsed, with no explicit mention of the point from which they commenced to run. Neither of them could then possess so marked and settled a character in history that, without being expressly named, the one or the other might have been expected at once to present itself to the mind. The very circumstance that two seem almost with equal right to claim the distinction, implies that neither of them stood so prominently forward as to render the specific mention of them unnecessary. If it were established, however (though it cannot possibly be so), that the Chaldean era had then come into general use, the opinion, which would date the thirty years from it, would be the most probable, as the era would, in that case, have formed a definite note of time, which it had been quite natural for a prophet in Chaldea to point to; while no period of internal reformation, like that in Josiah's reign, is ever taken by the prophets as a chronological starting-point. In this uncertainty as to any reference to a public historical epoch, we cannot but think more weight is due, than has latterly been given, to an ancient opinion, that the prophet had respect to
THE OPENING VISION. 25
himself in this number, and meant simply to denote by it the thirtieth year of his own life. It was customary for the Levites, and, we may infer, also for the priests, to enter on their duty of service at the temple in their thirtieth year ; and though the prophets were not wont to connect the period when they received their predictions with their own age at the time of their receiv- ing them, yet the case of Ezekiel was somewhat peculiar. As the Lord, by his special presence and supernatural revelations, was going to become a sanctuary to the exiles on the banks of the Chebar (see especially chap. xi. 1 6), so Ezekiel, to whom these revelations were in the first instance made, w as to be to the people residing there in the room of the ministering priesthood. By waiting upon his instructions they were to learn the mind of God, and to have what, situated as matters now were in Jeru- salem, would prove more than a compensation for the loss of the outward temple service. It seems, therefore, to have been the intention of the prophet, by designating himself so expressly a priest, and a priest having reached the thirtieth year, to represent his prophetic agency to his exiled countrymen as a kind of priestly service, to which he was divinely called at the usual period of life. And then the opening vision, which immediately follows, naturally presented itself as the fonnal institution of that spiritual temple, in connection with which he was to minister in things pertaining to the kingdom of God. Such appears to us, on fresh and careful consideration, by much the most natural view of the subject ; and it seems chiefly from overlooking the dis- tinctive character and design of Ezekiel's agency as a prophet, that the difficulty respecting the thirtieth year has been expe- rienced. The prophet w^ished to mark at the outset, in what he said of his own position and calling, the priestly relation in which he stood both to God and to the people. And thus also the end fitly corresponds with the beginning ; for it is as a priest deline- ating the rise of a new and more glorious temple, that he chiefly unfolds the prospect of a revived and flourishing condition to the remnant of spiritual worshippers among whom he laboured.
In regard to the revelation itself, which formed at once the call of Ezekiel to the prophetical office, and the commencement of his mission, there are altogether four expressions employed, the three first having respect to what was objectively presented to the prophet, and the other to his internal fitness for appre-
26 ^ EZEKIEL I.
bending what was presented. " The heavens were opened " — " he saw visions of God " — and (in connection with these divine visions, as the aim and object of them), "the word of Jehovah did verily come to him," — all indicating, and that in the first instance, the reality of the supernatural manifestation, both in action and speech, that was made to him. Without such actual appearances and communications on the part of God, nothing in the state of the prophet himself would have been of any avail, as to the certain revelation of God's mind and will. At the same time, a corresponding state of spiritual excitation was needed on his part, to fit him for perceiving what was exhibited in the divine sphere, and for being the organ of the Holy Spirit in making known the truth of God to the church. Hence, the prophet adds in respect to this, " And the hand of Jehovah was upon him ;" as in the case of St John (Rev. i. 1 7, " And he laid his right hand upon me, saying. Fear not "), and of Daniel (chap. x. 10, 18), the Lord now, by a divine touch, invigorated his frame and endowed him with strength of eye and elevation of soul for the lofty sphere he was to occupy. And thus raised on high by the immediate agency of God, he was in a condition for witnessing and reporting aright what passed in the region of his inner man.
Ver. 4. And I looked, and behold a whirlwind coming from the north, a great cloud, and a fire kindling itself, and a brightness round about it (the cloud), and from out of it (the fire) like the bright glitter of Chasmal in the midst of the fire.^ 5. And out of the midst of it the likeness of four
^ This fourth verse is peculiar in almost every one of the expressions con- tained in it. The ms-ipV^w 'i-s is literally, fire catching itself; but the only de- finite meaning we can attach to this is, that ^of fire kindling itself — self-com- municating from one part to another. The expression occurs only in another passage (Exod. ix. 24), where it is plainly used to denote, as here, the awful intensity and living force of the fire. The two its, being of difierent genders in the original, plainly refer, the one to the cloud, the other to the fire ; and I have marked this by inserting the words for the two objects respectively. The V^'i-nr; rj?s is rendered by our translators, " as the colour of amber." But y^ is not properly colour ; it is the eye, the look, the glance, such as the eye itself, or anything brilliant gives forth. Amber also is not the right word here for Chasmal. We have no term exactly corresponding to it, as it de- notes a sort of mixed metal, a composition of gold and silver ; which is ex- pressed by the rX5«Tjev of the LXX. The glance of this glittering compound in the midst of so intense a fire, suggests the highest possible splendour. And as it is this quality of it that the prophet here has in view, it is, for us, better
THE OPENING VISION. 27
living creatures ; and this was their appearance — they had the likeness of a man. 6. And four faces were to each, also four wings to each of them. 7. And their feet were straight feet ; and the sole of their feet like the sole of a calfs foot; and they sparkled like the glitter of polished brass. i 8. The hand of each (literally, his hand) was that of a man underneath their wings on their foiu* sides ; and they four had their faces and their wings. 9. Their wings were joined one to another ; they turned not when they went ; they went each straight forward. 10- And for the likeness of their faces, there was the likeness of a man and the likeness of a lion on the right side to the four of them : and the likeness of an ox on the left side to the four, and the likeness of an eagle to the four. 11. And their faces and their wings were separated from above ; two of each joined one another, and two covering their bodies. ^ 12. And they went every one of them straight forward; whither the Spirit was to go they went ; they turned not when they went. 13. And for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burn- ing coals of fire, as the appearance of torches ; it went up and down between the living creatures ; and there was brightness in the fire, and from the fire went forth lightning. 1 4. And the living creatures ran and returned like the appear- ance of the meteor-flash.3 15. And as I was looking at the living creatures,
to give prominence to the shining than the mixed character of the metal. The appearance of this fiery cloud is said to have been from the north, we believe simply on natural grounds; it was of the nature of a storm, hence it seemed to come firom the hilly, Caucasian region to the north — the natural region of clouds and tempests. We regard it as quite fanciful in Hav. to suppose, that the prophet conceives himself in the temple, and points to the north as the quarter from which the instruments of God's displeasure, the Chaldeans, were to come. Besides, there is mercy as well as judgment, indicated in the vision.
1 Hitzig would translate this last expression, molten brass, or metal, deriving V-;? from t-;'-;p to roast, or bum in the fire. But the transition from roast
T T 7 7
to melt, does not appear at all easier, in respect to such an article as brass, than from to be light, to make light (the common meaning of h'-'p), to fur-
" 7
bich or brighten. For nothing is more usual, than to say of any piece of metal, it is heavy or light in appearance, according as it is well or ill polished. I therefore retain the common meaning, which was quite correctly given by Stephanus in his Thes. as refulgens, a consequenti tamen, cum proprie po- litum ac tersum declaret.
2 The import of what is said in this 11th verse, regarding their faces and wings is, that they were each separate or distinct both in regard to their heads and wings, but that the tips of the two oustretched wings reached to one another, while the other two wings, in token of humble and reverential awe, formed a sort of veil or covering for the middle or lower parts of their bodies. Very commonly the first clause is rendered, " and their faces and their wings were expanded from above," or spread forth upwards. But one does not see how that could properly be said of the faces, as well as the wings, and the verb t-i is never used but in the sense of separating, dis- persing, or scattering. The Septuagint leave out the faces altogether, in order, apparently, to make the sense of expanding (s*;riT«/^'y«/) more suitable.
^ The p^= here, which I render by the meteor-fiash, is not found in Heb.
28 EZEKIEL I.
behold one wheel upon the earth beside the living creatures for its four faces (or, according to its four sides — i. e., as there was a side or direction for each of the four creatures, so a wheel for each of the sides). 16. The appearance of the wheels and their work, was like the glance of the tartessus-stone ;^ and there was one likeness for the four ; and their appearance and their work was as if there were a wheel in the midst of a wheel. 17. When they went, they went by their four sides (or, directions), they turned not when they went. 18. As for their rings (felloes) they were both high and dreadful ; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. 19. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them ; and when the living creatures were hfted up from oflF the earth, the wheels were lifted up. 20. Whither- soever the spirit was for going, thither they went — the spirit was for going ; and the wheels were lifted up beside them ; for the spirit of the living crea- tures was in the wheels. ^ 21. When those went, they went ; and when those
as a verb, but has in Arabic and Syriac the sense of, to scatter, spread ; hence Hav. prefers the meaning of spark-fire. But this hardly comes up to what seems to be required here ; and something of the same nature as light- ning, only more diffuse and sporadic in its appearance, must be understood. Such is meteor, or sheet-lightning ; and such is at least one of the meanings ascribed to the word by Ephraem : either a flash of lightning, or a meteor, falling-star. Many in ancient and modern times prefer the first ; but Ave should then have expected p^i, which occurs in the verse immediately before.
The leading features of the description so far, are, first, the portentous cloud, radiant round about, and within glowing with the fervour and bright- ness of a living, self-fed flame. Then, in the midst of this awful heat and lightning-splendour, the four living creatures, in whom the general form and appearance was that of a man, though conjoined with this, were also the like- nesses of a lion, an ox, and an eagle — each looking to its own quarter — a face each way, so that wherever the living creatures moved, they did not need to turn ; there was a face in that direction. Each were separate in respect to the others ; yet, by the two wings that were expanded for flying, they were in immediate juxta-position above ; and were all moved and animated by one living Spirit, by whose mighty impulse they shot like meteors from place to place, and in all their movements and appearance reflected the bright, burn- ing splendour of the fiery element in which they were seen to exist. At chap. X. 1, they are expressly called cherubim.
1 Our translators have given berj/l as the stone here meant ; but it is now more commonly regarded as the chrysolite of the ancients, though this also is not quite certain.
2 Both Hiiv. and Hitzig here render J^lji^;" ij^"' the spirit, or breath of life, the living principle, holding that if the living creatures had been meant, the usual term t^T^ij would have been used. But in the very next verse, except one, we have the same word as here for what must mean the living creatures — *' the heads of the living creatures;" and there Hitzig, as usual, is obliged to suppose a corruption in the text, and correct from the LXX. But in both places the word is most naturally taken collectively, just as in Gen. vii. 14, viii. 1, for living creatures : that which has life, the living creature-hood, for
THE OPENING VISION. 29
stood, they stood ; and when those were lifted up from oflf the earth, the wheels were lifted up beside them ; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. 22. And above the heads of the living creatures was the like- ness of the firmament, as the ghtter of crystal, terrible, stretched over their heads above. 23. And under the firmament their wings erect, one toward another ; each one had two covering on this side, and each one two covering on that side their bodies.^ 24. And I heard the sound of their wings as the noise of many waters, as the voice of the Almighty ; when they went there was a tumultuous noise, like the noise of a camp ; 2 when they stood, they let
the living creatures. So here, the prophet has spoken of the creatures sepa- rately ; he now views them collectively, as being together the aggregate crea- turely forms in which the spirit resided and manifested itself. The clause in the middle of the verse, " the spirit was for going," seems to have been thrown in for greater explicitness, to indicate expressly, that it was not the wheels themselves, but the spirit working in them, that was the source of motion. I see no need, therefore, for rejecting the clause. .
The description in this second part of the vision is to the following effect : By the side of each cherub (that is, apparently, on the same side and exterior to the cherub), there was a gigantic wheel, or more properly a double wheel — one within another, going through each other transversely ; for the wheels, like the cherubim with their four faces, did not need to turn when they moved from one direction to another ; and this could only be effected by a sort of double wheel to every cherub, each running transversely through the other, so that to whichever quarter the movement might point, there could be a motion of the wheel towards it. The felloes or outer rings of these wheels, were set round with eyes ; and were each also instinct with the same spirit of life and power that wrought in the cherubim ; so that the motions of all were simultaneous.
^ This looks somewhat hke a contradiction to what was said in ver. 11, where simply four wings were assigned to each cherub, tsvo for flying, and two for covering their bodies. Here it seems as if each had four for covering their bodies. But, possibly, what is meant is, not that four wings existed specially for this purpose, but that the use of the four wings altogether was such as to act like a covering for the body ; the whole body was overshadowed by them, and kept out of sight.
^ A tumultuous noise, *'^^n 'Tj so the expression is now commonly un- derstood. Our translators appear to have given the meaning of -^7- " the voice of speech." But this hardly makes sense, and is also against the point- ing. The only other passage where the word occurs is in Jer. xi. 16, and there our translators have rendered tumult, and the connection evidently requires something of that description. The LXX omits the clause, as it does various others in this chapter, but the vulgate translates : sonus multi- tudinis. The expression here, therefore, may be regarded as equivalent in meaning to the very similar one V -^J '*? which is more frequently employed. (Dan. X. 6; Isa. xiii. 4. See Ges. Lex.).
The description in this third and last part, which is that of manifested Godhead in the likeness of enthroned humanity, closely resembles the descrip-
30 EZEKIEL I.
down their wings. 25. And there came a voice from above the firmament that was over their heads when they stood, and they let down their wings. 26. And above the firmament that was over their heads, as of the ajjpearance of a sap- phire-stone, Avas the likeness of a throne ; and upon the likeness of the throne, the likeness after the appearance of a man upon it aloft. 27. And I saw like the glitter of Chasmal, as the appearance of fire within it round about, from the appearance of his loins and upwards, and from the appearance of his loins and downwards, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it was bright all around. 28. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. And I was looking, and I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice speaking."
To gather up now the leading features and symbolic purport of this wonderful vision, we can easily perceive that the ground- work of it was derived from the patterns of Divine things in the most holy place in the temple ; yet very considerably modified and changed to suit it to the present occasion. Here also there is the throne of the Divine Majesty, but not wearing the humble and attractive form of the mercy-seat ; more like Sinai, with its electric clouds, and peaUng sounds, and bursting effusions of Hv- ing flame. Here, too, are the composite forms about the throne — the cherubim with outstretched wings touching each other ; but instead of the two cherubic figures of the temple, four, each with four hands, four wings, fom' faces, looking in so many directions — doubtless with respect to the four quarters of the earth, toward which the Divine power and glory was going to manifest itself. These four are here further represented as pecu- liarly living creaturesj full of life and motion, and not only with wings for flight, but wheels also of gigantic size beside them, revolving with lightning speed, and all resplendent with the most intense brightness. The general correspondence between what Ezekiel thus saw in the visions of God, and what was to be found in the temple, indicated, that it was the same Grod, who dwelt between the cherubim in the temple, and who now appeared to his servant on the banks of the Chebar ; while the
tion given in Exod. xxiv. 10, only more extended and particular. Here, as there, we have the sky-blue sapphire-stone, and the heavens' crystal clear- ness, emblem of divine splendour, only here the splendour is of a more dreadful aspect ; and there is seen, not merely a pavement, but a throne also as of sapphire ; while the glorious being that sat on it was radiant with the bright lustre of celestial fire. From that throned firmament also were heard voices of terrific majesty and power, at the utterance of which the cherubic forms continually let down their wings as in the attitude of reverent and listening silence.
THE OPENING VISION. 31
differences bespoke certain manifestations of the Divine charac- ter to be now at hand, such as required to be less prominently- displayed in his ordinary procedure.
1. That he appeared specially and peculiarly as the God of holiness ; this, first of all, was intimated by the presence of the cherubim. For here, as in the temple, the employment of these composite forms pointed back to their original destination in the garden of Eden, to keep the way to the tree of life, from which man had been debarred on account of sin ; ideal creatures, as the region of pure and blessed life they occupied, had now become to men an ideal territory. Yet still they were creatures, not of angelic, but of human mould ; they bore the predominant like- ness of man, with the liknesses superadded of the three highest orders of the inferior creation (the lion, the ox, the eagle). " It is an ideal combination ; no such composite creature as the cherub exists in the actual world ; and we can think of no reason why the singular combination it presents of animal forms, should have been set upon that of man as the trunk or centre of the whole, unless it were to exhibit the higher elements of humanity in some kind of organic connection with certain distinctive properties of the inferior creation. The nature of man is immensely the high- est upon earth, and towers loftily above all the rest, by powers peculiar to itself. And yet w^e can easily conceive how this very nature of man might be greatly raised and ennobled, by having superadded to its own inherent qualities, those of which the other animal forms here mentioned stand as the appropriate types." — "These composite forms are here called '"'"''u; for which the Sep- tuagint, and John in the Apocalypse, use the synon3''mous term C<^a — living ones. The frequency with which this name is used of the cherubim is remarkable. In Ezekiel and the Apocalypse together it occurs nearly thirty times ; and may consequently be regarded as peculiarly expressive of the symbolical meaning of the cheru- bim. It presents them to our view as exhibiting the property of life in its highest state of power and activity ; as forms of crea- turely existence, altogether instinct with life. And the idea thus conveyed by the name is further substantiated by one or two traits associated with them in Ezekiel and the Apocalypse. Such, especially, is the very singular multiplicity of eyes attached to them, appearing primarily in the mystic wheels that regulated their movements, and at a later stage (ch. x. 12), in the cherubic
32 EZEKIEL I.
forms themselves. For, the eye is the symbol of intelligent life ; the living spirit's most peculiar organ and index. And to repre- sent the cherubim as so strangely replenished with eyes, could only be intended to make them known as wholly inspirited. Hence, in ver. 20, " the spirit of the living creatures" is said to have been in the wheels ; where the eye was, there also was the intelligent, thinking, directive spirit of life. Another, and quite similar trait, is the quick and restless activity ascribed to them by Ezekiel, who represents them as '^ running and returning" with lightning speed; and then by John, when he describes them as " resting not day and night." Incessant motion is one of the most obvious symptoms of a plenitude of life. We instinc- tively associate the property of life even with the inanimate things that exhibit motion — such as fountains and running streams, which are called living, in contradistinction to stagnant pools, that seem comparati^'ely dead. So that creatures which appeared to be all eyes, all motion, are, in plain terms, those in which ^e powers and properties of life are quite peculiarly displayed. But life, it must be remembered, most nearly and essentially con- nected with God — life as it is, or shall be held, by those who dwell in his immediate presence, and form, in a manner, the very inclosure and covering of his throne — pre-eminently, therefore, holy and spiritual life."^
2. But this idea of holy and spiritual life, as connected with the presence and glory of God, was greatly strengthened in the vision by the fervid appearance, as of metallic brightness and flashes of liquid flame, which shone from and around all the parts and figures of the vision. It denoted the intense and holy severity in God's working, which was either to accomplish in the objects of it the highest good, or to produce the greatest evil. Precisely similar in meaning, though somewhat differing in form, was the representation in Isaiah's vision (chap, vi.), where in- stead of the usual name cherubim, that of seraphim is applied to the symbolical attendants of God — the burning ones, as the word properly signifies — burning forms of holy fire, " the emblems of God's purifying and destroying righteousness. Hence their cry one to another was, " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of Hosts." And in token of the twofold working of this holiness,
^ The Typology of Scripture, 2d ed. vol. i. p. 221-247, where the whole subject of the cherubim is fully investigated.
THE OPENING VISION. 33
it was by the application of a burning coal to his lips, that the prophet, as the representative of the elect portion of the people, was hallowed for God's service, while in the message that follows, the ungodly mass are declared to be for burning (as the word literally is in ver. 13). The same element that refined and purified the one for God's service, was to manifest itself in the destruction of the other. And it is this also that is symbolically taught here by the dazzling light, the glowing embers, and fiery coruscations, with which all was enveloped and emblazoned. It made known God's purpose to put forth the severer attributes of his character, and to purify his church by " the spirit of judg- ment and by the spirit of burning."
3. Even these fiery appearances, however, in the cherubim and the other objects of the vision, did not sufficiently express what was here meant to be conveyed ; and, therefore, to make out the idea more completely, wheels of vast proportions were added to the cherubim. The prophet would thus render palpable to our view the gigantic and terrible energy which was going to characterise the manifestations of the God of Israel. A spirit of awful and resistless might was now to appear in his dealings ; not proceeding, however, by a blind impulse, but in all its move- ments guided by a clear-sighted and unerring sagacity. How striking a representation did such a spirit find for itself in the resolute agency and stern utterances of Ezekiel ! In this respect he comes nearest of all the later prophets to Elijah.
4. Finally, above the cherubim of glory and their wonderful wheel-work, was seen, first, the crystal firmament, and then, above the firmament, the throne of God, on which he himself sat in human form — a form, as here displayed, beaming with the splendour of heavenly fire, but, at the same time, bearing the engaging aspect of a man, and surrounded with the attrac- tive and pleasing halo of the rainbow. In this shone forth the mingled majesty and kindness of God — the overawing authority on the one hand, and the gracious sympathy and regard on the other, which were to distinguish his agency, as now to be put forth for the reproof of sin among the covenant-people, and the establishment of truth and righteousness. The terror which the manifestation was fitted to inspire, was terror only to the guilty ; while, for the penitent and believing, there was to be the bright- est display of covenant love and faithfulness. Especially was
34 EZEKIEL II.-III. 1-11.
this indicated by the crowning appearance of the rainbow ; which, from being the token of God's covenant with Noah, in respect to the future preservation of the earth, was like the hanging out from the throne of the Eternal of a flag of peace, giving assur- ance to all, that the purpose of Heaven was to preserve rather than to destroy, and to fulfil that which was promised in the covenant. Even if the Divine work now to be carried forward in the spiritual world should require, as in the natural world of old, a deluge of wrath for its successful accomplishment, still the faithfulness and love of God would be sure to the children of promise, and would only shine forth the more brightly at last, in consequence of the tribulations which might be needed to prepare the way for the ultimate good.
Such, then, was the form and import of this remarkable vision. There was nothing about it accidental or capricious; all was wisely adjusted and arranged, so as to convey beforehand suitable impressions of that work of God, to which Ezekiel was now called to devote himself. It was substantially an exhibition by means of emblematical appearances and actions, of the same views of the divine character and government, wdiich were to be unfolded in the successive communications made by Ezekiel to the church. By a significant representation, the Lord gathered into one magnificent vision the substance of what was to occupy the prophetic agency of his servant, as in later times was done by our Lord to the evangelist John, in the opening vision of the Apocalypse.
CHAPTER n.-HL I-IL
CALL TO THE PROPHETICAL OFFICE. Ver. 1. And he said to me, Son of man,i stand upon thy feet, and I will
^ Hiivernick, after many leading commentators, both ancient and modern, still lays stress on this expression, " Son of man," so frequently applied to Ezekiel, and regards it as containing a perpetual admonition to him of his own weakness and frailty. It seems rather strange, however, that this pro- phet alone should be so often plied with such an admonition, and that it should
CALL TO THE PROPHETICAL OFFICE. 35
speak to thee. 2. And the spirit came into me as he spoke to me, and he set me upon my feet, and I heard him speaking to me. 3. And he said to me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to the rebellious peo- ples,^ who have rebelled against me; they and their fathers have trans- gressed against me, unto this very day. 4. And they are children of a stiff countenance, and an hard heart; I do send thee unto them, and thou shalt say to them. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah. 5. And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear — for they are a rebellious house — shall yet know that a prophet was among them. 6. And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their words; for nettles ^ and thorns are with thee, and thou dwellest with scorpions ; be not afraid of their words, neither be confounded at their faces, for they are a re- bellious house. 7. And thou shalt speak my words to them, whether they shall hear, or whether they shall forbear; for they are rebellious. 8. And thou, son of man, hear what I say to thee; be not thou re- bellious like the rebellious house ; open thy mouth, and eat what I give thee. 9. And I looked, and behold a hand stretched toward me, and behold in it a book-roll. 10. And he spread it out before me, and it was written within and without ; and there was written on it lamentations, and mourning, and woe.
Chap. iii. Ver. 1. And he said to me, son of man, that which thou findest eat ; eat this roll, and go speak to the house of Israel. 2. And I opened my mouth, and he made me eat that roll. 3. And he said to me, son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this great roll, which I give thee. And I did eat it ; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness. 4. And he said to me, son of man, go, get thee to the house of Israel, and speak my words to them. 5. For not to a people of obscure speech and
have been conveyed under so general a form. We are rather disposed to concur with Lightfoot : " This expression is of frequent use in Scripture, in the Hebrew Rabbins, but more especially in the Chaldean and Syrian tongues. .... Why Ezekiel, and no other prophet, should have been so often styled thus, has been ascribed to different reasons by different commentators. To me, at least, who am much inferior to them all, the principal reason appears to be this — that, as his prophecy was written during the Babylonish captivity, he naturally made use of the Chaldean phrase, Son of many that is, O man. The same phrase was also used by Daniel in Chaldea, chap. x. 16." EruUm, chap. iv.
1 It is, literally, to peoples, the rebellious ones — Israel being not only called peoples (n-^ir^, the common epithet of the heathen), but with the addi- tional epithet of the rebellious. They were thus virtually put on a level with the heathen, who might be addressed by God as Loammi, not my people ; with the additional aggravation, that they had brought themselves into that condition, after having been in covenant with God. The Septua- gint, with its characteristic laxity, altogether omits the expression.
^ The precise meaning of a^a^a is involved in some doubt. The sense of rebellious or refractory, has often been ascribed to it, which it bears in the Chaldee ; but this would not suit here, being coupled with thorns, and hence that of pricking briers or nettles has been adopted. Gesenius, however, still prefers rebels.
36 EZEKIEL II.-III. 1-11.
hard language^ art tliou sent, — to the house of Israel. 6. Not to many nations of obscure speech and hard language, whose words thou dost not understand. Surely had I sent thee to them, they would have listened to thee. 7. And the house of Israel will not be willing to hearken to thee ; for they are not willing to hearken to me ; for all the house of Israel are of an hard forehead, and a stiff heart. 8. Behold I make thy face hard against their faces, and thy forehead hard against their foreheads. 9. As an ada- mant harder than flint I make thy forehead ; thou shalt not be afraid of them, nor be confounded at their looks ; for they are a rebellious house. 10. And he said to me, son of man, all my words that I shall speak to thee, receive in thy heart, and hear with thine ears. 11. And get thee away to the captives, to the children of thy people, and speak to them and say to them. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.
The most striking thing in this section is the strong delinea- tion that is given of the backslidden state, and confirmed de- generacy of the people. Not only are they compared to such things as briers and scorpions, but, with painful and emphatic reiteration, they are declared to be altogether infected with the spirit of rebellion, setting their face, with determined and insolent effrontery, against the will and purposes of Heaven. No doubt the description is to be taken with some limitation, as applicable in its full sense to the greater portion of the captives, though not absolutely to the whole. But that such a gemeral description should have been given of them by the God of truth, was a clear indication that they were in a most sunk and degraded condition, and that the remnant who were animated by a better spirit, must have been comparatively few.
How distinguished a proof of covenant love and faithfulness in God, that he should condescend to deal with such a people, and send a prophet yet again to instruct them ! And for that prophet, what an arduous and vexing enterprise, to prosecute among them the business of a faithful ambassador of heaven !
But to render him more fully alive to what awaited him in this respect, a symbolical action was added. Looking up, he saw a hand stretched out towai'd him, and in the hand the roll of a book, written within and without, but written only " w ith lamentations, and mourning, and woe." This was significant of the heavy tidings w^hich were to form the chief burden of his communications to the people. For, broken and afflicted as they
^ The expressions are literally, " deep of lip, and heavy of tongue,'* which can only mean obscurity of speech, and language hard to be understood — a foreign tongue.
CALL TO THE PROPHETICAL OFFICE. 37
already were in their condition, they were not yet weaned from their false hopes, nor had they reached the darkest period of their history. Troubles and calamities still more disastrous than those which had yet been experienced, were needed to crush their proud and refractory spirit ; and in such a time of spiritual dis- order and corruption, it was only through a season of midnight darkness that light could arise to the church of God. Therefore, the prophetic roll delivered into the hands of Ezekiel, was necessarily much written with the dark forebodings of tribula- tion and sorrow. And as God's representative at such a time, and to such a people, he must eat it (chap. iii. 1, 2), not, of com'se, literally, swallow the roll, but so receive and appropriate its unsavoury contents, that these should infuse themselves, as it were, into his very moisture and blood, and imbue his soul with a feeling of their reality and importance. Hence the bitter as well as the sweet which followed in the experience of the pro- phet (chap. iii. 3, 14), — " sweet as honey in his mouth," yet afterw^ards causing him to go " in bitterness, in the heat of his spirit;" bitter indeed, because he had to announce a message and prosecute a work which was to be peculiarly painful and arduous ; but sweet notwithstanding, because it was the Lord's service in which he was to be engaged, and a service which had the full consent and approval of his own mind. It was sweet to be the representative and agent of the Most High, however contrary to flesh and blood might be the special embassy on which he was sent; as Jeremiah also says, chap. xv. 16, "I found thy words, and ate them ; and thy words were to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart : for 1 am called by thy name, O Lord God of Hosts." " The action denotes that the prophet, being carried in a manner out of himself, entered into the room of God ; and divesting himself of carnal affection, rising into the region of pure and spiritual contemplation, whatever the will of God might call him to do for magnifying the justice as well as goodness of God, he was thoroughly to approve in his own mind, and derive pleasure from the words of God, whatever might be the tenor of their announcements."^ Li short, like every true reformer, and every faithful ambassador of Heaven, it must henceforth be his to count God's glory his own highest good,
^ Vitringa in Apoc, p. 441, on Chap. x. 8-11.
'nHI7BRSIT7]
38 EZEKIEL II.-III. 1-11.
and to make all subordinate to the one end, of fulfilling with joy the ministry he had received from above.
And most nobly did this man of God execute his high commission, proving himself to be an Ezekiel indeed — a man strengthened with the might of God — a most powerful and effective instrument of divine working. In the resolute and devoted spirit of his pious ancestry, " he said not nnto his father and to his mother, I have seen them ; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor know his own children, that he might teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law," (Deut. xxxiii. 9). How valiantly did his heroic bearing rebuke the spirit of despondency, and against hope still inspire the hope of better days to come ! And even now, when he has so long since rested from his labours, may it not be an instructive and soul-refreshing thing to look back upon the struggle which he so vigorously main- tained— to see him lifting his giant form above the deep waters of adversity that surrounded him, and the more the evil pre- vailed, raising himself, in God's name, to a more determined and strenuous resistance against it ! In such a spiritual hero, we recognise a sign of the ever-during strength and perpetual revirescence of the cause of God, which, like its Divine author, carries in its bosom the element of eternity — survives all changes — amid all death, lives. If this cause should appear for a season to decline and languish, let us never doubt that it shall again rise into prosperity. Its winters are sure to be succeeded by returning springs. And standing, as it pre-eminently does, in the righteous principles, which have a witness and an echo in every bosom, there only needs the consecrated energies of courageous hearts and strenuous arms, like those of Ezekiel, to raise it from the most oppressed condition, and infuse into it the energy of a renovated life. Lord God of Ezekiel, imprint the image of this thy faithful and devoted servant deep upon our hearts ! Let the thought of his holy daring and triumphant faith put to shame our cowardice and inaction ! And do thou find for thyself, in these days of evil, many who shall be wilHng, like him, to make Heaven's cause their own, and shall count nothing so dear to them as its prosperity and progress !
THE prophet's CHARGE. 39
CHAPTER III. 12-27.
ezekiel's entrance on his mission, and the first message imparted to him.
Verse 12. And the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a loud tumultuous noise, " Blessed be the glory of Jehovah from his place." 13. And I heard the noise of the wings of the living creatures embracing each other, and the noise of the wheels over against them, and the voice of a loud tumultuous noise. 14. And the Spirit lifted me up, and laid hold of me, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit ; and the hand of Jehovah was strong upon me. 15. And I came to the captives at Tel-abib, that were dwelling (or sitting) by the river Chebar, and 1 beheld them dwell- ing there ; ^ and I sat down there seven days (i. e. in lonely and silent grief) among them. 16. And it came to pass at the end of the seven days, that the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 17. Son of man, I have set thee a watchman to the house of Israel ; and thou shalt hear the word at my mouth.
^ This clause has from an early period been felt to be a difficulty, and given rise to different modes of solution. The Jewish critics could not find their way to the interpretation, as is evident by their suggesting for 'niasi of
•'••t
the text, the Kri a'rs% which has been adopted by our translators : " And I sat where they sat." Various conjectures, though not of a satisfactory kind, have been resorted to, with a view of making out a somewhat similar meaning from the text. Rosenmuller's, for example, by ascribing to "•mm the sense of the Chaldean s'l'r, and Maurer's, who would identify it with 'nos. Havemick would take it simply for the relative, and renders the clause, " And those who were settled there," that is, as he supposes, the older class of settlers, as contradistinguished from the more recent ones, who were mentioned in the preceding clause, as sitting down or settling beside the Chebar. But the distinction, it must be confessed, is very faintly marked, if two separate com- panies were meant, and there is no difference of time noted in the verbs. I incline, on the whole, to agree with Hitzig, that the pointing should be ^tcsi
••.-IT
from the verb ^^ts to see or behold. (For similar cases he refers to 1 Kings iii. 21 ; Zech. vi. 1 ; Lev. xx. 23 ; and for rr>sr:j in the sense of them, Jer. xlvi. 6). The prophet first went to them, then saw their condition, and lastly sat down in pensive solitude, giving vent to his grief; for such the verb t3to^ imports, rather than being astonished. As for the idea of Hav., that the older settlers, whom he supposes to be mentioned here, were the captives of the ten tribes, and that the Habor in 2 Kings xvii. 6, is but another name for the Chaboras, it is against all probability. The region of the captivity of the ten tribes is said to have been in the " cities of the Medes," and by " the river Gozan," — viz., the Kissilozan, that runs into the Caspian.
40 EZEKIEL III. 12-27.
and give them warning from me. 18. When I say to the wicked, Thou shalt surely die ; and thou dost not warn him, and dost not speak to warn the wicked away from his wicked way that he may live, he, that is wicked, shall die in his iniquity, and his blood will I require at thy hand. 19. And thou, if thou dost warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wicked- ness, and from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity ; and thou hast delivered thine own soul. 20. And when a righteous man turns from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him (i. e. appoint for him an occasion and instrument of rebuke), he shall die ; because thou didst not warn him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous- ness which he has done shall not be remembered, and his blood will I require at thy hand. 21. And thou, if thou dost warn the righteous, that the righteous should not sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live ; for he was warned, and thou hast delivered thine own soul.
Verse 22. And the hand of Jehovah was upon me there ; and he said to me, Arise, go forth into the plain, and there I will speak Avith thee. 23. And I arose, and went forth into the plain : and, behold, there the glory of the Lord stood, as the glory which I saw by the river Chebar : and 1 fell on my face. 24. And the Spirit came into me, and made me stand upon my feet, and spake with me, and said to me, Go, shut thyself within thy house. 25. And thou son of man, behold, they lay bands upon thee, and bind thee with them, that thou mayest not go forth amongst them. 26. And I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth, and thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them for a reprover ; for they are a rebellious house. 27. And when I speak to thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, let him hear that will hear, and let him forbear that will forbear ; for they are a rebellious house.
This section, which should have formed a separate chapter, records the entrance of Ezekiel on his high vocation, and con- tains the first message dehvered to him respecting it. His former place of abode, it would seem, was not the most advan- tageously situated for prosecuting, with success, the w^ork com- mitted to him ; and, in consequence, he removed to Tel-abib, which is nowdiere else mentioned, but was, in all probability, the best peopled locality, or the chief town of the Jewish colony. When he came and saw the captives dwelling there, in a de- jected and mournful condition, he sat down among them for seven days continuously — sitting being the common attitude of grief (Ezra ix. 3 ; Lam. i. 1-3), and seven days being the usual period for the manifestation of the heaviest sorrow (Job ii. 13). By thus spending, at the outset, so many days of desolation and sadness, he gave proof of his deep fellow-feeling with his exiled brethren in their depressed condition, and showed how entirely he entered into their state. Thus sorrowing in their sorrow, and breathing the tenderness of a sympathising spirit toward them, he sought to win their confidence, and secure
THE prophet's CHARGE. 41
a favourable hearing for the words of mercy and of judgment, which he was, from time to time, to press upon their notice.
The prophet, iiowever, did not go alone to this mournful field of prophetic agency. He was borne thither under the conscious might of the {Spirit of God, and was attended by the symbols of the Divine presence and glory. When he rose to proceed on his course, the whole machinery of the heavenly vision began also to move ; and amid the crashing or tumultuous noise which broke upon his spiritual ear, he heard the words, " Blessed be the glory of Jehovah from his (or its) place" — certainly a some- what peculiar utterance, and one not found in any other part of Scripture ; yet not materially different from another in frequent use, " Blessed be the name of the Lord." The glory of Jehovah here was that manifested glory which had appeared in vision to the prophet, and which was, in other words, a revelation of his glorious name. To pronounce it blessed from its place, was in effect to bless God himself, as thus and there revealing his adorable perfections and Divine will. And as the prophet was going to be the representative and herald of these in a sphere where there was much to damp his spirit, and withstand his faithful agency, it was fit that he should go with the solemn word pealing in his ears, from those ideal ministers of heaven, " Blessed be the glory of the Lord." As much as to say. Let this above all be magnified ; whatever is experienced or done, let nothing interfere with that pure and majestic glory of Jehovah, which has now in emblem been exhibited.
In regard to the message communicated to the prophet, after the seven days of sadness had expired, there is also something peculiar in it ; for it is only Ezekiel, among the prophets, who is described as a watchman appointed by God, to give timely and faithful warning to the people. Habakkuk speaks of standing upon his watch-tower (chap. ii. 1), but this was only in respect to his eager and anxious outlook for the manifestations he was expecting of Divine power and faithfulness. Ezekiel alone is represented as called to do for others the part of a watchman ; and, in doing it, he was most strictly charged, on the one hand, to receive all his instructions from God as to the existence of whatever danger there might be in the condition of the people ; and, on the other, to sound a loud and solemn alarm when he might perceive it actually besetting them. That such should
42 EZEKIEL III. 12-27.
have been the distinctive character given to his position and calHng, manifestly bespoke the very perilous condition of those to whom he was sent. It indicated that he had something else to do than merely to sympathise with them in their afflicted state, and speak soothing words to their downcast and drooping spirits. It was to be his rather to open their eyes to the pro- founder evils that encompassed them, to break the spell of inveterate and cherished delusions, and raise the cry of danger where none was suspected. So that the very form of the com- mission given to him was Hke the deliverance of a strong and impressive testimony to the people of the latent corruptions and imminent perils with which they were beset.
If we look also to the substance of the communication, or to the particular instructions given to the prophet concerning the discharge of his office, we see at once the grand principle dis- closed, on which the destiny of Israel was to turn. The ques- tion, whether life or death, blessing or cursing, was to be their portion, hung upon another, whether they were to make right- eousness or sin their choice ? Their return to righteousness was the indispensable condition of their restoration to blessing. If, in despite of this, the wicked should persevere in his evil ways, or even the righteous man should turn aside and practise iniquity, the visitation of wrath must be looked for — the original sentence against sin, to which the language designedly points, that the purpose of Gqd in this respect might be seen to be fixed and un- alterable— the sentence, that he who transgresses " shall surely die," must take effect ; for God is unchangeably the same, and what he appointed at first as the wages of sin must continue to be its wages still.
But while this part of the charge cut off all hope from a backsliding and impenitent people, the other part of it held out ample encouragement to such as remained stedfast in the cove- nant of God, or repented of their evil ways. The man who continued to love the paths of righteousness, and the man also who, after having forsaken, again returned to them, was to be assured of the blessings of life ; these should as surely live as the others should die. For the prophet, as God's watchman, was to represent the mercy as well as the justice of God's administration ; he was to have a wakeful eye upon the good, not less than the evil, that appeared among the people; and was
THE prophet's CHARGE. 43
to stretch out the hand of fellowship, and display the banner of Divine love and protection, in behalf of all v^^ho might be inclined or moved to cleave to the service of Heaven. Thus v^^ere they to know from the outset that, for the people as a whole, and for each individual amongst them, this one path lay open for their return to peace and blessing.
We shall not go into the question too often raised from this representation, as to the possibility of the righteous falling from a state of grace. For it seems to us a misapplication of this passage, to introduce it in such a connection. Its direct and immediate bearing had respect only to the inseparable connec- tion between righteousness and life, sin and death. And cer- tainly by the former is meant a real participation of the Divine likeness and blessing, and by the latter the loss of both. Calvin plainly errs in maintaining the contrary. But whether this loss may ever be sustained by any who have properly enjoyed the good — whether those who have been truly renewed by grace ever fall back again into the corruption and ruin of nature — this is not to be determined by a passage like the present, which being intended only for a direction to the prophet, in regard to his public ministrations, of necessity spake of the appearances, as indicative of the realities of things." Unquestionably there were persons then, as there are persons still, who to all human appearance have lived for a time in the fellowship and favour of God, and yet afterwards turn again to folly. And it is well tliat the possibility of this should be borne in mind, both by pastors and people, that there may be preserved in their minds a wakeful jealousy in regard to the vital bond, which connects, in the experiences of men, life with righteousness, and death with sin. Even the most established believer is not safe, unless he keep constantly in mind the dangers of his condition, and, with a godly jealousy over himself, perpetually watch and pray lest he fall into evil.
At the very outset, therefore, and by the terms of his Divine commission, the prophet seeks to recall the people to the main point at Issue, and urges them to a right settlement of the con- troversy between them and God. Individually and collectively they must come to be at one with God in respect to the love of righteousness, and the hatred of iniquity. This is the grand turning-point on which hangs the destiny that awaits them, as
44 EZEKIEL III. 12-27.
it is also the vital thread that runs through all the prophet's future ministrations and announcements. Once and again he presses it on their notice in the same terms that he does here, only with more fulness of detail, and greater urgency in the application (chap, xviii. xxxiii.), while, in one form or another, the subject is perpetually referred to throughout the book of his prophecy. Here also he was reminded of the necessity of this repeated earnestness in the matter, and of the arduous and diffi- cult task that was given him to accomplish in respect to it. For, immediately after he has received his charge, the hand of the Lord was upon him, and he was ordered to go forth into the plain, that the Lord might there talk with him alone (ver. 22). And when there, and favoured again with a manifestation of the Divine glory, as at the first, the Spirit enters into him, and directs him to go and shut himself up in his house ; thus giving him to understand, that in the work he had to do, he must look for no sympathy and support from man, but must be alone with his God, reverently hearing his word, and receiving strength from his hand. The reason follows, " And thou, son of man, behold they lay bands upon thee, and bind thee with them, that thou mayest not go forth amongst them ;" that is, their obstinate and wayward disposition shall be felt upon thy spirit like re- straining fetters, repressing the energies of thy soul in its spiritual labours, so that thou shalt need to look for thy encouragement elsewhere than in fellowship with them. For, that the imposi- tion of bands must be understood spiritually, of the damping effect to be produced upon his soul by the conduct of the people, can admit of no doubt. It is a marked specimen of the strong idealism of our prophet, which clothes everything it handles with the distinctness of flesh and blood. "And I will make thy tongue (it is added) cleave to the roof of thy mouth, and thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them for a reprover ; for they are a rebellious house." So deeply rooted and inveterate is the evil in them, that it shall prevail over thee ; thou shalt not pre- vail over it ; after thou hast plied every weapon, thou shalt need to sit down in silence, as one baffled of his purpose ; but still not as if the work were altogether in vain, or the cause absolutely hopeless. It is Jehovah's word that is to be spoken, and this cannot for ever be in vain : " And when I speak to thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say to them. Thus saith the
VISION OF SIEGE AND INIQUITY-BEAHING. 45
Lord Jehovah, Let him hear that will hear, and let him forbear that will forbear ; for they are a rebellious house." The word is true, and must ultimately prevail, because it is Divine; and however those may deal with it to whom it is immediately addressed, it is thine to utter it w^th unswerving faithfulness as the Lord's true message.
A salutary lesson and instruction to all who are put in trust with souls, as well in regard to the nature of the charge itself, as to the manner in which it ought to be fulfilled ! It is emphati- cally the work of God they have to do, and the instrument to be wielded in the doing of it is his own Word. Let this be plied with unwearied diligence, and earnest strivings for success ; for the w^ork is of infinite importance, and results past reckoning depend on it. Eternal weal or woe grows out of it to all who come within the field of its operations. And for one's self- whatever may be the result for them — the path of duty is the only path of safety ; faithfulness to God must be the supreme rule, and his glory the chief aim. " I have a commission to fulfil, I must deliver my own soul," — let this be the one answer to all counter-solicitations from the flesh or the world ; and it will also be the best guarantee of ultimate success. For it is to the labours of those who thus supremely eye and honour God, that the "harvest of souls is usually given ; and the more that any one proves himself to be such a workman, the less shall he need to be ashamed either here or hereafter.
CHAPTER IV.
THE VISION OF THE SIEGE AND THE INIQUITY-BEARING.
Ver. 1. And thou, son of man, take thee a brick, and set it before thee, and engrave on it the city Jerusalem. 2. And lay siege against it, and build a watchtower ^ against it, and cast a mound against it, and order a camp
1 The sense oi fort, which, in the received translation, as in most earlier versions and commentators, was ascribed here to p^rr, is now generally abandoned, and it is most commonly taken in the sense of watch-tower, such as besiegers were wont to erect in front of a city, for the purpose of descry-
46 EZEKIEL IV.
against it, and set against it battering-rams round about.^ 3. And do thou take thee an iron pan and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city, and direct thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. It is a sign to the house of Israel. 4. And thou shalt lie upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it ; according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity. 5. And I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days — three hundred and ninety days ; and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. 6. And when thou hast accomplished these, thou shalt lie again upon thy right side, and shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days ; a day for a year, a day for a year,^ have I appointed it to thee. 7. And thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm uncovered ; and thou shalt prophesy against it. 8. And behold I lay upon thee bands, that thou mayest not turn from one side to another, till thou hast accomplished the days of thy besieging. 9. And do thou take to thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and miUet, and spelt, and put them into one vessel, and make thee bread of them ; according to the number of the days that thou liest upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof. 10. And thy food which thou shalt eat is by weight, twenty shekels a day ; from time to time shalt thou eat it. II. And water by measure shalt thou drink, the sixth part of an liin ; from time to time shalt thou drink it.^ 12. And barley- cakes (i.e. after the manner of these) shalt thou eat it; and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight. 13. And Jehovah said to me, Thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them. 14. And I said, Ah, Lord Jehovah,
ing the motions of the besieged. So it is taken by the Syriac, and though the Septuagint has here rt^Uuxes, yet, in chap. xxvi. 8, it uses ^^otpvx^x^ for the same word. So too Gesenius, in the last edition of his Lex., also Ha- vernick, Henderson (on Jer. Ivi. 4), and Maurer. The last, however, hesitates between this sense, according to which the word is derived from pl% to look out, speculari, still found in the Aramaic, and that of a battering machine, from p^n.
1 Instead of battering-rams, Havemick would render w^^'z) through-borers, or through-breakers, on the ground that ^^ does not signify ram, but lamb, and in particular a fat lamb. He would, therefore, take it as a noun from rr^s, to dig or bore through. The thing indicated, however, is still much the same ; and, allowing the derivation, which cannot be regarded as certain, there seems no need for altering the translation, which gives the usual term for the old warlike instrument referred to. The Targum gives the same sense, and Kimchi explains, "iron rams to batter down the walls." The LXX, however, render by the more general term fitXoa-Tiffus, engines for throwing some sort of missiles.
2 The expression, « a day for a year," is twice used, as in Numb. xiv. 34, instead of a day for every year, in order to render the reference to the pas- sage in Numbers more manifest.
3 The allowance of provisions specified would form, if reduced to English measure, about a pound weight of bread per day, and from a pint and a half to two pints of water — barely enough to support life.
VISION OF SIEGE AND INIQUITY-BEARING. 47
behold my soul has not been polluted, and neither of carcase nor of what is torn in pieces, have I eaten from my youth even until now ; nor has abominable flesh come into my mouth. 15. And he said to me, See, I have given thee cow's dung instead of human ordure, and thou shalt make thy bread of it. 16. And he said to me, Son of man, behold I break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care ; and they shall drink water by measure, and in desolateness ; 17. That they may want bread and water, and be desolate one toward another, and pine away in their iniquities. •
The prophet is here commanded to take a tile or brick, and engrave on it an outline of the city Jerusalem. Having done this, he is instructed to direct against the city the usual means and appliances of a siege — to build a tower of observation, to cast up a mound against it, to prepare battering-rams, or instruments for effecting breaches in the walls ; and with an iron frying-pan, set up between him and the city, and as with a wall of metal separating him from it, to carry on a close and vigorous siege. At the same time, and while this action was proceeding (see ver. 7 and 8), the prophet is enjoined to Jie first upon his left side for 390 days, bearing for so long a time the iniquity of the house of Israel ; then to turn to the other side, and for forty days more to bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. These daj^s of iniquity- bearing, he is also given to understand, represent so many years, during which the people whom he personified were destined to bear their iniquity. Nor was there to be any release from the appointed doom ; for in token of the Divine determination to execute what was decreed, bands were to be laid upon him, to hold him in his place till the whole w^as accomplished. Still further, he is directed to take different kinds of grain, from the richest to the poorest (wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, spelt or dhourra, the three last being the poorer kinds of grain), and mix them all together for bread, as if no choice was to be exer- cised about the quality, but the worst, as well as the best, had to be turned to account. He was also to bake them with the foulest and most offensive ingredients ; and eat what was baked in scanty portions, with an accompanying pittance of water, as is usual in times of straitness and scarcity. This he was to do for the period of " 390 days, — the days he was to lie upon his side ;" for thus, it is added by way of explanation, " even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them." And after having com-
48 EZEKIEL IV.
plained of the defilement necessarily connected with the order, (" Ah ! Lord God, behold my soul hath not been polluted !"), and having obtained a slight modification of the order, though the bread was still to be scant and abominable, the Divine com- munication was thus briefly and mournfully wound up : " And he said to me, Son of man, behold I break the staff of bread in Jerusalem ; and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care ; and they shall drink water by measure, and in desolateness ; that they may want bread and water, and be desolate one toward another, and pine away in their iniquities."
In this singular communication, there is fortunately no diffi- culty worth naming as regards the meaning of the words or the construction of the sentences. And in regard to the part required to be played by the prophet himself, however it may have been understood in former times, we should suppose few now will be disposed to doubt, that the successive actions spoken of took place only in vision, and are no more to be ranked among the occur- rences of actual life than the eating of the prophetic roll men- tioned in the preceding chapter. Indeed, such actions as are described here, though well fitted, when rehearsed as past, and read as narratives of things ideally done, to make a strong and vivid impression upon the mind, would plainly have had an opposite effect if transacted in real life. It would have been impossible for ordinary spectators to see Ezekiel conducting a miniature siege with a tile and a sauce-pan, and such like implements of war, without a feeling of the puerile and ludicrous being awak- ened ; and the other symbolical actions mentioned, especially his lying for 390 days motionless on one side, if literally understood, can scarcely be regarded as coming within the limits of the pos- sible. And along with the physical impossibility of one part of the requirement, there was the moral impossibility of another ; since to eat bread composed of such abominable materials would have been (if performed in real life) a direct contravention of the law of Moses — that law, respectful submission to which was ever held to be the first and most essential characteristic of a true prophet (compare Deut. xiv. 3, xxiii. 12-14, with xiii. 1-5). Besides, we find the prophet (chap. viii. 1) represented as sitting in his house before the number of the days to be spent in a lying posture could have been completed.^ So that, on every account,
^ Dr Pradus and others have sought to lengthen out the time between the
VISION OF SIEGE AND INIQUITY-BEARING. 49
it is necessary to consider the actions to have taken place in vision, as, indeed, was usually the case in prophetical actions, and uni- formly so, as we shall find in Ezekiel.
But if there is little room for diversity of opinion as to the visionary nature of the scene described in this chapter, or to the import of the terms employed, wdien we look to the message itself contained in the vision, there is something so peculiar and enig- matical in its structure, that it would be difficult to point to a single chapter in the whole prophetical scriptures where our com- mentators have found themselves so entirely at sea, and so unable to satisfy either themselves or their readers. It is of great im- portance, however, to find the right clue here, as a good deal de- pends on it for a correct understanding of the peculiar manner of our prophet generally, and for the satisfactory explanation of the more obscure portions of his writings. Nor is there any insur- "mountable difficulty in the way, if only we view the different parts of the vision in their due connection one with another, and give to the language of the prophet its fair and legitimate import.
1. Let it first be noted, then, for a right interpretation of the vision, that the sev^eral parts form but one great whole. What is first symbolised by the prophet's laying siege to Jenisalem, is not to be regarded as something diverse and apart fi*om what is afterwards indicated by his lying so many days upon his side, and eating scant and abominable bread ; for the two actions are distinctly represented as contemporaneous. It is while in the act of lying upon his side that he is to set his face toward Jeru- salem, and to stretch out toward it his uncovered arm as a sign of the Lord's displeasure manifested against it (ver. 7, 8.) Nor is he allow^ed to change his posture " till the days of the siege are ended." So that the second line of action must have been de- signed to be supplementary to the first, and was merely added to bring out more fully and distinctly the instruction sought to be conveyed. But such being the case, the action of the siege, which forms the first part of the vision, cannot have been in-
two periods given at the beginning of this and the eighth chap., by resorting to the fiction of an intercalary month. But shifts of this kind, to say the least, are always unsatisfactory, and the defective time taken along with the other considerations mentioned, are quite conclusive against a literal under- standing of the vision.
I)
50 EZEKIEL IV.
tended to depict the calamity of an actual siege of Jerusalem ; for then, by the other and contemporaneous actions, it must needs have been protracted for centuries, and must also have been a calamity, in which the house of Israel shared as well as the house of Judah. We must, therefore, dismiss from our minds the thought of an actual siege (which has so commonly embarrassed the views of interpreters), excepting in so far as that may have formed a constituent part of the contemplated troubles. Jeru- salem, the common mother — the centre of the whole covenant- people, appearing as a besieged city, assailed with all the means and implements of war, and these plied by the immediate direc- tion and agency of the living God — this stands here as an image of the people themselves, lying under the ban of Heaven, given up as a prey to the powers of evil, and doomed to experience at their hands the most severe and painful indignities. Hence, also, as the siege itself was comprehensive of the whole that was to be experienced, we are told merely of its continued pressure, but not of its result ; for, in the present case, nothing really depended on that, and the mention of it might even have tended to convey a false impression, by leading us to fix our minds simply on the literal besieging and overthrow of Jerusalem.
2. It must be noted again, in regard to the second action in the vision, that by the heamig of the people^ s iniquity must be understood the punishment due to their sins. If the expression had been in itself a doubtful one, the instruction \^q have seen to be imparted by the action of the siege would have obliged us to take it in the sense now" mentioned. But the expression is one that very frequently occurs in Scripture, and always in the sense of sustaining the punishment due to sin. We point only to a few examples out of many which might be given. Numb. xiv. 33 ; Lev. xix. 8 ; Isa. liii. 12 ; and in Ezekiel himself, chap, xviii. 19, 20 ; xxiii. 35. The corresponding years, therefore, on the part of the people, represented by the days of iniquity-bearing in the prophet, must be years of trouble and affliction — ^years, not of committing sin, but of receiving chastisement for sin already com- mitted— years during which the Divine judgment, rather than the Divine mercy and forbearance, came into exercise. The same also appears still further from the kind of treatment they were to receive during the period in question, which has its most prominent representation in the destination to eat defiled bread.
VISION OF SIEGE AND INIQUITY-BEARING. 51
and that only in small portions, among the Gentiles. What could more impressively denote a people bearing a load of unpar- doned guilt, and groaning under the rebuke and chastisement of heaven ? It implies tliat Israel's peculiar distinction, as compared with others, was to be virtually abolished, and that, as they had degraded themselves spiritually to a level with the heathen, so the Lord would make their condition outwardly to correspond, by subjecting them to a base and dishonourable treatment before the world. This is said with respect more immediately to the house of Israel ; but of entirely similar import is the other, and less prominent part of the representation, which points more directly to the house of Judah ; that they should " eat bread by w^eight and with care : and drink water by measure and in desolateness, and consume away in their iniquities." In respect to both departments alike of the covenant-people, it is manifestly the in- fliction of a penalty that is meant by the e\al suffered — the just desert of sin.
3. These things being premised and explained, we come now to what may be called the grand difficulty of the scene — the time during which the iniquity-bearing was to proceed with its humi- liating and afflicting treatment : 390 years for the house of Israel, and 40 for the house of Judah. It is clear from the remarks already made, that the period mentioned can have no respect to the time that may have actually been consumed in the last siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. For, it is not a literal siege at all which the vision properly contemplates ; and if it could be proved (which it never can with certainty) that the time actually spent by the Chaldeans in besieging Jerusalem precisely corre- sponded with the number of days during which the prophet was to lie on his two sides, what should thereby be gained ? These days have no independent worth in themselves ; they merely re- presented the nwnher of years during which the people were to be dealt with for their sins. Neither can the periods mentioned bear respect to the times during which the houses of Israel and Judah respectively pursued their course of rebellion, provoking, but still not properly experiencing, the execution of Heaven's judgments : as if it might be enough to verify the prophetic de- lineation, could 390 years be ascertained of open defection for the house of Israel, and 40 for the house of Judah, before the de- struction of Jerusalem. It was palpably the reverse, at least in the
52 EZEKIEL IV.
case of Judab ; for the vigorous reformation of Josiah took place tviihin these last forty years, and the history of the period does not present such a continued prosecution of rebellious courses, as the supposition would require. But besides this evident failure in respect to the one house, such a line of inquiry leads entirely in the wrong direction for both houses ; as it refers to the time of iniquity being committed, not of iniquity being borne — to the contracting of the guilt, not to the enforcing of the penalty. Calculations, therefore, of the kind just referred to, tend only to mislead ; and we must look elsewhere altogether for the proper clue to this part of the vision.^
The 390 years for the house of Israel, and 40 for the house of Judah, it will be observed, make up together 430 years — a period famous in the earlier history of the covenant-people, being the term of their sojourn in the land of Egypt (Exod. xii. 40, 41). The thought of a reference to this could scarcely escape the notice of a Hebrew scholar or careful student of the prophet ; and, accordingly, we learn from Jerome, in his notes on the pas- sage, that the Jews of his time understood the prophet to inti- mate, that " as the children of Israel had been 430 years in Egypt, so, in the same number, would their final captivity be completed." The commencement of this final captivity, he fur- ther tells us, they dated from the second year of Vespasian, when Jerusalem was taken by the Eomans, and the temple
^ It is by the neglect of the considerations adduced above, that the false in- terpretations of the vision — which unfortunately comprehend all that have been current in this country — have gone so much astray. They all lose themselves in unsatisfactory and needless attempts to show, partly how the number of days assigned to the prophet for lying on his side, coincided with the time consumed in the siege of Jerusalem, and partly how the 390 years for the house (^f Israel, and the 40 for the house of Judah, corresponded with the respective periods of transgression, down to the taking of Jerusalem. The Duke of Manchester in his Times of Daniel, p. 20, etc., has recently pro- duced some calculations of his own on the subject, and dates the 390 years from the first public defalcation of Rehoboam, a little before the revolt of the ten tribes, the usual starting-point, in order to make the time square more exactly with the 390 of the prophet ; and the 40 years he transfers altogether to another age — to the period between John the Baptist's public appearance and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. It is needless to go into such calculations and conjectures, as they proceed on an entire misconception of the subject, and refer the prophetic periods to times of God's forbearance with iniquity, instead of times of direct and formal chastisement for its guilt.
VISION OF SIEGE AND INIQUITY-BEARING. 53'
destroyed ; and they were living in the hope, that when 430 years from that memorable era had run their course, a career of uninterrupted prosperity was to be entered on by the Jewish people. In this anticipation, however, they showed but too clearly that they had already lost the key to the right interpre- tation of the mystery — which requires us, indeed, to connect the whole time specified, with the 430 years formerly spent in the house of bondage, yet so as not to overlook the division of this term into the two unequal portions of 390 and 40. For in the 40 years assigned to the house of Judah, there is the recurrence of another remarkable period in the history of ancient Israel, — that of the sojourn in the wilderness. We can the less suppose this latter period to have been overlooked by the prophet, as in the very structure of this part of the vision — in the adoption of the principle, a day for a year- — there is an evident reference to that passage in Numbers, which records the doom of the Israel- ites to their long sojourn in the desert : " And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whore- doms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness. After the number of the days in which ye searched in the land, forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise" (Numb, xiv. 32-34).!
Keeping in view, then, this twofold allusion in the periods be-
^ Of course it will be understood, that the two periods of 430 years for Egypt, and 40 for the desert, are referred to as well-known periods of chas- tisement and trouble, marked historical periods of that description — although in reality a portion of each of them was not exactly of that description. Their leading character as great passages in God's dealings with his people, is constantly presented in that light. There is, therefore, no necessity for raising the question, whether the whole 430 years were actually spent by the children of Israel in Egypt, or whether this period did not also comprehend the previous sojourning of the patriarchs in the land of Canaan. The Sama- ritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint translation have both changed the text at Exod. xii. 40, so as to express this latter idea, thereby reducing the sojourn in Egypt to about the half only of the 430. This appears to have been done with the view of making the Egyptian period suit better with the genealo- gical table in Exod. vi., which gives only three generations between Levi and Moses. But it is well known, that particular links in the chain were often omitted in such tables ; and as in another table (1 Chron. vii. 23-27), so many as eight generations are given for another tribe during the same period, there is no ground for doubting on that score, that the whole 430 years were
54 EZEKIEL IV.
fore ns to the earlier history of the covenant-people, the solution of the prophet's enigma will not occasion any extreme difficulty. But it will open itself out more easily and naturally to our view, if we first point to one or two prior revelations, which, in a sim- pler form, set forth the principle of the representation, and pre- pared the way for its development in the more hidden and enig- matical shape it assumes in the hands of Ezekiel. The first is the word of Moses, in Deut. xxviii. 68, where, speaking of the evils which were likely to befall the people for their sins, he says, " And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake to thee ; thou shalt see it no more again, and there ye shall be sold to your enemies for bondmen and bond- women, and no man shall buy you." This striking announce- ment of Moses had already proved a fertile word for Hosea, who says, with manifest reference to it, " Now will he remember their iniquity, and visit their sins ; they shall return to Egypt." And again, " They shall not dwell in the Lord's land, but Eph- raim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria" (Hos. viii. 13 ; ix. 3). This last clause shows beyond a doubt, that when the prophet speaks of the Israelites being sent back to Egypt, it is not the exact country, but the state of bondage and misery with which, from past experience, that country had become identified in their minds, that he has in view. For, as the power that was now in readiness to do the part of the oppressor was the proud Assyrian, so it was in this direction, the opposite one to where it formerly had been, that the new Egypt was to be found ; they were to " eat unclean things in Assyria." That such was really the meaning of Hosea, is rendered still more manifest by another passage (chap. xi. 5), " He shall not return into the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be his king." He shall return there, and yet not return. What can this mean ? but that the Egypt-state shall once more become his, the dominion of sin calling for another house of bondage with . its oppressions and miseries, though the place where the evil was to be endured should no longer be the same ;
spent in Egypt. The facts of the case, indeed, will scarcely stand with any smaller number. But the prophet is merely to be regarded as pointing to the well-known historical period, though his doing so may justly be regarded as an incidental testimony to the truth of the longer period.
VISION OF SIEGE AND INIQUITY-BEARING. 55
it should be transferred to Assyria. Nor, indeed, did the original announcement of Moses mean otherwise ; for, in the same chap- ter, in which he held out the threat of a return to Egypt, he also speaks of their being brought to a nation " which neither they nor their fathers had known," and of their being " scattered among all people, from one end of the earth to the other " So that what was indicated by the return to Egypt, might be found in any region of the earth where God was pleased to drive them in his anger. And the same, also, substantially holds of another prophecy of Hosea (chap. ii. 14, 15), where the Lord speaks of bringing Israel again into the wilderness, of giving them their vineyards from thence, and rendering the valley of Achor to them a door of hope ; that is, he was to deal with them much as he had dealt with their forefathers, when he tried and humbled them in the wilderness.
Now, Ezekiel here resumes these earlier announcements of prophecy, and with that minuteness of detail and vividness of colouring which so remarkably characterise his prophetical deli- neations, throws the ideas they embody into a specific and nu- merical form. The covenant-people, as a whole (for they must still in some sense be regarded as one), were now again to suffer for their sins the same sort of hardship and discipline which had of old been laid upon their fathers during the period of their servitude in Egypt ; the doleful past was again substantially to repeat itself in the future ; the dark season of oppression and exile was again to come back with its sad and sorrowful expe- riences. Yet, with this general similarity, there was also a difference — a difference first in the respective spiritual conditions of the two branches of the covenant-people, and requiring to be met by a corresponding difference in the dealing they might expect from God. The house of Israel were spiritually in a much worse case than Judah ; for, from the time of their revolt, they threw off their allegiance to God, and separated themselves from his life-giving ordinances of worship ; in defiance, also, of God's appointment, they renounced their connection vnth the house of David, to which, by an everlasting covenant, he had given the power and the dominion. Therefore, by much the greater part, not far from the whole of the period, which symbolised the Egypt- state of bondage and exile, is assigned to this house of Israel ; for, with them, all, in a manner, was out of course — they were
56 EZEKIEL IV.
on the borders of perdition— they virtually needed to be again redeemed.
But with the house of Judah, notwithstanding their many sins and backshdings, there ivas redemption, although they had greatly impaired its value, had well nigh rendered it of no effect, by their continued obstinacy and perverseness. They had the covenant of promise, and the tabernacle of David, with which God had irrevocably associated the good of the world. The ele- ments of life, the true grounds of hope, were theirs, yet mixed up with so much that was false and perilous, that severe and painful experiences were needed to fit them for enjoying the good that was within their reach. Therefore, if not precisely the Egypt-state of bondage in all its rigour, yet that which was most nearly akin to it, what was indeed but a continuation of it in a modified form, and in more hopeful circumstances, the course of trial and discipline in the wilderness : this must now again substantially become the portion for a season of the house of Judah. They needed it, much as their fathers of old, who, even after they w^ere redeemed from the house of bondage, still required the forty years of additional troubles and discipline in the wilder- derness, to prepare them for the inheritance and service of God. So these degenerate children of the house of Judah, who could not be moved by all they had experienced of the goodness and severity of God to forsake their evil ways, wdio had seen their brethren of the house of Israel sent anew into the Egypt-state of worldly oppression, and seemingly hopeless exile, and yet would not be warned to abandon the paths of ungodliness and corrup- tion ; for these, now, there was of necessity coming a relegation to the sifting and sore troubles of the wilderness, and there they must be made to know, after the manner of their forefathers, the determination of God to have a people cleansed from the abo- minations of sin, before they can be raised to the sunshine of his favour and blessing.
Thus understood, the several parts of the vision receive a per- fectly natural and harmonious meaning. Jerusalem in a state of siege represents the covenant-people, as a whole, straitened and oppressed by the powers of this world, as the instruments of God's just displeasure. And the prophet being appointed to bear, during its continuance, the iniquity of the people, with stinted and foul provisions, points in another form to the same visitation
VISION OF SIEGE AND INIQUITY-BEARING. 57
of evil — only with a more particular respect to the cause from which it was to spring, and the penal character it should wear. That the time specified should haVe been in all 430 years, denoted that the dealing was to form a kind of new Egyptian exile and bondage to the elements of the world ; but much more so in the case of the one house than the other. The house of Israel having cast off nearly all that was distinctive in the position and privi- leges of the covenant-people, they had consequently sunk into a condition of greatest danger, one bordering on heathen darkness and perdition — nigh unto cursing. What they might expect was to be bruised and crushed to the dust, as if under the rod of Egypt. But Judah was not so far gone ; she had the true priesthood to minister at her altars, and the house of David to rule by Divine right over the heritage of God : so that her sub- jection to the powers of evil was only to be like the time of chas- tisement and trial in the wilderness, out of which she might again emerge into a state of peace and blessing. As the prophet also again declared, in a later prophecy, " And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples (not the wilderness merely, but the wilderness of the peoples, to show that it was to be the same only in character as of old, but not in geographical position), and there will I plead with you face to face ; like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God" (chap. xx. 35-38). A new time of chastisement, but mingled, as of old, with mercy ; severe and earnest dealing, but for a gracious result — that they might be refined and purified, so as to become fit for enjoying the good, which, as a redeemed people, was secured to them for a heritage of blessing. And if any hope remained for the other branch, the house of Israel — if they were ever to escape from their state of Egyptian darkness and bondage, it must be by their going to join their brethren of Judah in the wilderness, and sharing in their peculiar treatment and prospects. On which account, it is not the whole of the 430 years of the Egypt- state, that is appointed toward the house of Israel in the vision, but this shortened by the 40 years of the wilderness sojourn ; to teach them that a way still lay open for their return to life, but only by their having the Egypt-state merged into that of the wilderness; in other words, by ceasing from their rank idolatries and open apostacy from the way of God, and coming
58 EZEKIEL IV.
to seek, along with Judah, through God's covenant and. ordi- nances, a restoration to righteousness, and peace, and bless- ing.^
4. But why should the prophet, in thus announcing the future dealings of God, have thrown the delineation into so peculiar, so enigmatical a form ? Why should he have presented it to the view as a returning again " of the years of former generations V Not, certainly, on the principle of a bald and meagre literalism, as if he meant us to understand, that the clock of Providence was actually to be turned back, and the identical ground trodden over again, the precise measures of time filled up anew, of which we read in the earlier history of the chosen race. He who would interpret in such a style the symbolical visions of an Ezekiel, is incapable of entering into the rapt emotions of such a mind, and
^ It may be not improper to note farther, that it is the prophet's desire to make quite plain the reference for Judah to the 40 years' sojourn in the wilderness, and the modified character of the evil this suggested, that an ex- planation arises of an apparent anomaly, of which no express notice has been taken above. At ver. 9, he is ordered to " make bread according to the number of the days that he should lie upon his side ; three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof." Here the 40 days are left out, although during them also he was to lie upon his side — not, as commentators generally, and still also Havernick, suppose, from the first period being by much the larger of the two, and as such standing for the whole ; but to keep the reference clear to the distinctive character of the wilderness-period, which was the point chiefly to be had in view by the Jewish exiles. The eating of polluted bread as a symbol, properly implied a constrained residence in a Gentile country — an unclean region ; hence, in the explanation given of the symbol at ver. 13, it is declared of the house of Israel, that " they shall eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles.'''' But in the wilderness Israel stood quite separate from the Gentiles, though still under penal treatment, and in a sense still connected with Egypt (hence " the wilderness of Egypt," xx. 86) ; and so, they who were in a manner to return to that state again, were merely to " eat bread by weight, and with care, and drink water by measure, and in desolateness." A state of chastisement and trouble, but not by any means so heathen-like, so depressed and helpless as the other. — It is proper to state, that the path to the right interpretation of the vision as a whole, began to be opened up by Hengstenberg in his Christology, and his work on the Pentateuch, though without any special reference to this passage of Ezekiel. Havernick has taken the right course in regard to its general character ; but by understanding the first part of an actual siege of Jerusalem, and the eating of defiled bread only of subsequent calamities, he has greatly embarrassed his interpretation ; he has also failed to bring fully out the application of the two periods of chas- tisement to Israel and Judah respectively.
VISION OF SIEGE AND INIQUITY-BEARING. 59
must necessarily flounder at every step. For here we have to do, not only with a lively and fervid mind, which is ever breathing life, as it were, into the dead, but that mind in a state of ecstasy, a kind of Divine dream, in which the past appeared to return again, the old forms were seen springing up anew ; yet only that the prophet might find in them the fitting shapes in which to clothe the new things concerning God's kingdom, that were through the Spirit fashioning themselves in his bosom. And, indeed, the very imperfection that usually appears in the frame of such historical visions, as compared with the past realities, — the partial mingling together here, for example, of the tw^o great consecutive periods of past judgment and trial in the history of the covenant-people, so as to make the second begin before the first had ended — this very imperfection shows, as it was doubtless intended to do, that an exact reproduction of the past was not in the eye of the prophet ; and that the nature of God's contemplated designs, rather than any definite hounds and limits respecting them, were imaged under those ancient periods of tribulation in Egypt and the wilderness.
There were three reasons chiefly why the prophets in general, and this prophet in particular, might be often led to speak of the future under the form and image of the past. In the first place, as the meaning obviously did not lie upon the surface, it called for serious thought and inquiry regarding the purposes of God. A time of general backsliding and corruption is always a time of superficial thinking on spiritual things. And just as our Lord, by his parables, that partly veiled, w^iile they disclosed the truth of God, so the prophets, by their more profound and enigmatical discourses, sought to arouse the careless from their security, to awaken inquiry, and stir the depths of thought and feeling in the soul. It virtually said to them. You are in imminent peril ; direct ordinary discourse no longer suits your case ; bestir your- selves to look into the depths of things, otherwise the sleep of death shall overtake you.
Then, again, it conveyed in a few words — by means of a brief allusion — what the most lengthened description without it could scarcel}^ have accomplished. It was employing a device, which the most powerful and effective orators have sometimes resorted to with the gi'eatest effect — as in the memorable w^ords of Mira- beau, when wishing to repel the thought of danger, he flashed
60 EZEKIEL IV,
ont the pregnant interrogation, — " Is Hannibal at the gates ?" In h'ke manner, the prophet here, seeking to impress upon his countrymen the certainty and the awfulness of God's impending judgments on account of sin, carries them back to the past; he brings up to their view Egypt and the wilderness as ready to re- new themselves again in their experience. What thoughts of terror and alarm were these fitted to awaken in their minds ! Centuries of bondage and oppression ! A wearisome sojourn amid drought and desolation ! And then this foreshadowing of the future, not only rendered more distinct, but also strengthened as to its credibility, authenticated by those stern realities of the past ! It has been, shall it not be again ?
But this suggests another, and indeed still deeper reason for such a mode of representation having been adopted. For such renewed exhibitions of the past were among the means specially chosen by God for the purpose of enforcing on men's notice the uniformity of his dealings, and teaching them to regard the pro- vidential facts of one age, as substantial predictions of what are to be expected in another. It told men then, and it tells us now (only it was more peculiarly adapted to those who lived in ancient times, as the revelations they possessed consisted, much more than now, in the records of history — yet it tells all alike), that the forms alone are transitory in which Divine truth and righteousness manifest themselves, while the principles embodied in these forms are eternal, and can never cease, amid all outward varieties, to be giving forth similar exhibitions of their life and power to those which have already appeared. The eye that can thus look through the shell into the kernel, may see the future things of God's administration mirrored in the past — not, indeed, the exact copy and image of what is to be^ yet its essential character and necessary result. Even those very periods of bygone tribulation and chastisement, which the prophet here represents as coming to life again in his day — have they not also a voice for other times ? Are they not still reiter- ating their lessons, and perpetually renewing their existence, in the case of impenitent transgressors now, as well as formerly, in that of drooping exiles in the cities of the Medes, or on the banks of Chebar? One of these periods — the sojourn in the wilderness — the Baptist still finds prolonging itself to the era of his own ministry. His word of stern expostulation and solemn
VISION OF THE SHORN HAIR. 61
warning makes itself heard as " the voice of one crying in the wilderness ;" for he sees everywhere around liim trackless deserts where ways of God need to be opened up — elements of corrup- tion working, which require to be purged away by the searching application of divine righteousness, before the Canaan of God's inheritance can be properly entered and enjoyed. And the lukewarm and fruitless professor still — so long as he cleaves to the ways of iniquity, and refuses to yield a hearty surrender to the will of God — what else is his condition ? He is in bondage to the elements of the world, and therefore can have no part in the Lord's inheritance, that floweth with milk and honey. The doom of Heaven's condemnation hangs suspended over his head ; and if not averted by a timely submission to the righteousness of God, and a cordial entrance into the bond of the covenant, he shall infallibly perish in the wilderness of sin and death.
CHAPTER V. VL
THE VISION OF THE SHORN HAIR AND ITS FORESHADOWING DESOLATIONS.
Ohap. V. 1. And thou, son of man, take thee a sharp sword ; a barber's razor shalt thou take to thee, and cause it to pass over thy head, and over thy beard ; and take the weighing-balances, and divide them (i. e. the hairs). 2. A third part thou shalt burn with fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are accomplished ; and thou shalt take the third part, to smite with the sword round about it ; and the third part (viz., the remain- ing third part) thou shalt scatter in the wind : and I will draw out a sword after them. 3. And take of them a few in number, and bind them in thy skirts. 4. And take of them again, and cast them into the midst of the fire, and bum them in the fire ; from it {i. e. from the fire, emblem of God's righteous judgment) shall go forth a fire to all the house of Israel. 5. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, This is Jerusalem : in the midst of the nations did I set her, and the countries were round about her. 6. And she rebelled against my judgments, for wickedness ^ (^. e. to increase their wickedness, to have it) above the heathen, and against my statutes, more than the countries that were round about her ; for they have refused my judgments, and in my statutes they have not walked. 7. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah,
^ The authorised version, along with some, both ancient and modern, ex- positors, have rendered this clause, "And hath changed my judgments into wickedness." But the verb n'^'s never signifies to chapge. It is always used
62 EZEKIEL V. Yf.
Because ye have acted more outrageously than the heathen^ which were round about you, have not walked in my statutes, and my judgments have not kept, nor have done according to the judgments of the nations that were round about you ; 8. Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I am against thee, even I, and I will execute judgments in the midst of thee, in the sight of the heathen. 9. And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and the like of which I shall not do any more, because of all thine abominations. 10. Therefore, fathers shall eat their sons in the midst of thee, and sons shall eat their fathers ; and I shall execute judgments upon thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter to every wind. 1 1 . Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, surely, because thou hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all thine abominations, I also will withdraw,^ and mine eye shall not spare, neither also will I have any pity. 12. A third part of thee shall die of the pestilence, and with famine shall they be con- sumed in the midst of thee : and the third part shall fall by the sword round about thee ; and the third part will I scatter to every wind, and will draw out the sword after them. 13. And mine anger is accomplished, and I will make ray fury to rest upon them, and am comforted ; and they know that I, Jeho- vah, have spoken in my zeal, while I expend my fury upon them. 14. And I will make thee a desolation, and a reproach among the nations, which are round about thee, in the sight of all that pass by. 15. And it shall be a re- proach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment, to the nations that are round about thee, when I shall have executed in thee judgments in anger,
in the sense of resisting, rebelling against, or something similar ; and is often, as here, coupled with the accusative of the object against which the resistance i^ made, — the Lord's word, or statutes, Numb. xx. 24 ; 1 Sam. xii. 15 ; Jer. iv. 17, etc. The sin of the Israelites lay, not in changing the Lord's statutes, but, from their prevailing wickedness, setting them aside, and so exceeding the heathen in guilt.
^ Probably the precise meaning of ass'^n here, is that given by Gesenius, in his Thes. tumultuaraini, ye tumultuate ; and this sense we substantially adopt; though the meaning given in the received translation is entitled to regard, and makes an intelligible sense. The children of Israel had " multi- plied," or heaped up, in the line here referred to by the prophet, above the heathen ; that is, had outdone them in iniquity. The verb certainly is not found in this sense, but its derivative, ••i?:-:, is often used for multitude or heaps, only with the collateral idea of noise or turmoil. And as it seems probable, that the tendency of a multitude to cause such noise or turmoil was the reason of the noun coming to have the sense of multitude, we rather in- cline to take the verb in the same sense. It also agrees well with what was said before, about their doing the part of rebels ; as such they raged, or did outrageously.
2 This is the proper meaning of the verb y.^ ; and, though it may seem here to be used somewhat abruptly, yet if viewed, as it should be, with refer- ence to Deut. iv. 2, where the people were forbidden to withdraw any thing from God's statutes, its propriety and force will be manifest. They had now withdrawn from God's sanctuary all its sacredness, and in return he withdraws from thera— namely, his favour and protection, life and blessing.
VISION OF THE SHORN HAIR. 63
and in fury, and in vehement rebukes — I, Jehovah, have spoken it. 1 6. When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which are for their destruc- tion, which I shall send to destroy you ; and I will increase famine upon you, and will break for you the staff of bread. 17. And I will send upon you fa- mine, and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee ; and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee ; and I will bring the sword upon thee,— I Jehovah have spoken it.'
Chap. vi. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me saying: 2. Son of man, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophecy against them and say, 3. Ye mountains of Israel hear the word of the Lord Jehovah ; Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers and to the valleys : Behold I, even I am bringing a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high-places ; 4. And your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken ; and I will make your slain to fall before your idols ; 5. And I will lay the carcases of the children of Israel before their idols, and scatter their bones round about your altars. 6. In all the places of your abode the cities shall be laid waste, and the high-places shall be desolate ; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols be broken and abolished, and your images be cut down, and your works be extirpated. 7. And the slain shall fall in the midst of you ; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah. 8. And I will leave a remnant, in that there shall be some escaped to you from the sword, among the nations, when ye are scattered among the countries. 9. And those of you that escape shall remember me among the heathen, whither they shall be led captive, whose wanton heart, that depart- eth from me, I will break, and their eyes that lust after their idols ; and they shall loathe themselves for the evils which they have done in respect to all their abominations. 10. And they shall know that I, Jehovah, have not in vain declared, that 1 would bring this evil upon them. 11. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, smite with thy hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Ah ! to all the vile abominations of the house of Israel ! that they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and the pestilence. 12. He that is far off shall die by the pestilence, and he that is near shall fall by the sword, and he that remains and is besieged shall die by the famine ; and I will accomplish my fury upon them. 13. And ye shall know that I am Jehovah, when their slain shall be among their idols, round about their altars, at every high hill, upon all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak; the place where they offered sweet savour to all their idols. 14. And 1 stretch out my band upon them, and make the land desolate, and a desolation more than the wilderness toward Diblath,^ in all the places of their abode ; and they shall know that I am Jehovah.
In the vision of the siege and the iniquity-bearing, a heavy burden of troubles, partly in progress, and partly still impending,
1 Very characteristic, in the latter part of this chapter, of Ezekiel's style, are the frequent transitions from the objective to the subjective, and inversely : they and you, it and thou, alternating with each other ; also the tendency to repeat over and over again the same thought, and even the same expressions, for the sake of deepening the impression.
2 It is not certain what precise district is referred to by the name of Dib- lath. We read elsewhere of the cities, that had Diblathaim as part of their names (Numb, xxxiii. 46 ; Jer. xlviii. 22) ; but not of any wilderness so designated. It is needless to notice the different conjectures which have been thrown out upon the subject, for no certain result has been attained.
64 EZEKIEL V. VI.
had been announced by the prophet as determined against the covenant-people. The afflictions of Egypt and the trials of the wilderness were, in a manner, to pass over them again. But even that was not enough ; for as their guilt exceeded the guilt of their forefathers, so the chastisement now to be received from the hand of God was to surpass all that had been experienced in the history of the past. This more severe message is unfolded in the next vision, that recorded in these chapters— in which the prophet is commanded (after having finished the days of the siege, {. e.j spent in vision, not in real life, the time during which it was to be prosecuted) to take a sharp sword, and also a razor, to shave off the whole hair of his head and beard — itself a sym- bol of violent and humiliating treatment. For the priests were enjoined to nourish their hair, and avoid baldness, in token of their peculiar consecration to the Lord (Lev. xxi. 5). There- fore, to have this hair, which was at once the natural ornament of the head and the symbol of its sacredness, cut off by an instru- ment of war, plainly bespoke a work of severe and desolating judgment. But the same was still more strikingly indicated by the use to be made of the hair — of which one-third part was to be burned in the fire, another smitten about with a sword, and the last scattered to the winds, and pursued by a drawn sword. A few of this last division the prophet was instructed to bind in the skirts of his garment, in token of safe preservation ; for even of these, a portion only were to be saved, while others were to be again cast into the fire and burned, a flame issuing from the con- flagration which was to " come forth against all the house of Israel."
In these last words, which form the conclusion of ver. 4, the description of the symbol, as sometimes happens in the prophets, passes into the reality, the house of Israel being substituted for the hairs which represented it. This is followed, however, by an express and pointed application of the different parts of the vision to the circumstances and prospects of the covenant-people. Jerusalem, we are again told, was the object of the whole ; but Jerusalem, as in the former vision, standing for the people at large, of which it was the proper centre and natural represen- tative. For the prophet presently proceeds to speak of this Jerusalem as a people set in the midst of surrounding heathen ; and in the two following chapters, which are merely a con-
VISION OF THE SHORN HAIR. 65
tinuation and further enlargement of what is contained in chap. v., we find substituted for the name of Jerusalem, " the moun- tains of Israel," " the land of Israel," and " the children of Israel." There can be no doubt, therefore, that the prophecy has the most extensive bearing, and that we are no more in this case, than in that of the siege, to think of the single city Jeru- salem— though, from being the appointed centre of the whole, both the city itself, and that portion of the people more imme- diately connected with it, might expect their full share in the judgments announced.
The judgments themselves are distributed into three classes, according to the threefold division of the hair ; the sword was to devour one-third of the people; famine and pestilence, another; and that which remained was to be scattered among the nations. The strongest language is employed to describe the calamities indicated under these various heads, and everything is introduced that might have the effect of conveying the most appalling idea of the coming future. Amid the horrors to be produced by famine and pestilence, the dreadful words of Moses, that " their fathers should eat their sons in the midst of them," are reiterated, with the addition of the still darker feature, that "the sons should also eat their fathers " (ver. 10). The wild beasts of the field, too, were to embitter by their ravages the calamities pro- duced by the evil arrows of famine ; and the sword was to pass through the land in such fury, that none should be able to escape, rendering all a desolate wilderness (chap. vi. 14), destroy- ing also their idols, and scattering around them the dead carcases of the people, so that the things in which they had foolishly trusted, should only in the day of evil prove the witnesses and companions of their ruin (chap. vi. 3-6). Finally, in respect to those who should escape the more immediate evils, not only should they be scattered far and wide among the nations, but should there also meet with taunting and reproaches ; nay, a sword should be drawn out after them, as had already been predicted by Moses (chap. v. 12 ; Lev. xxvi. 33) ; they, too, were to be for burning (so also Isa. vi. 13) ; for the anger of the Lord was still to pursue after them with " furious rebukes," until he had completely broken their rebellious hearts, and wrought in them a spirit of true contrition for sin and perfect reconciliation of heart with God (chap. vi. 9).
66 EZEKIEL V. VI.
Nothing of a definite nature is mentioned as to time and place in this dark outline of revealed judgments. That the doom of evil was by no means to be exhausted by the troubles connected with the Chaldean conquest, is manifest; for that portion of the people, who were to go into exile, and be dispersed among the nations, were appointed to other and still future tribulations. There was to be a germinating evil in their destiny, because there would be, as the Lord clearly foresaw, a germinat- ing evil in their character ; and so long as this root of bitterness should still be springing up into acts of rebellion against God, it should never cease to be recoihng upon them with strokes of chastisement in providence. In this there was nothing abso- lutely singular as to the principle on which the Divine govern- ment proceeded — only, as God had connected himself with Israel in a manner he never had done with any nation before, nor would with any other again, there should be a certain sin- gularity in their case as to the actual experience of suffering on account of sin. In their history as a people, the footsteps of God's righteous judgment would leave impressions behind it of unexampled severity, according to the word here uttered, " And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abomina- tions."
But there is no caprice in the dealings of God. When he afflicts with the rod of chastisement and rebuke^ it is only be- cause the righteous principles of his government demand it ; and the fearful burden of evils here suspended over the heads of ancient Israel sounds also a warning-note of judgment to all nations and all ages of the world. There have been, it is true, such changes introduced into the outward administration of God's kingdom, as render it, for the most part, impossible to trace the execution of his judgments with the same ease and certainty with which we can mark their course in the history of ancient Israel. But it is not the less certain, that the principles which produced such marked effects then, are in active operation still ; and wherever Israel's guilt is incurred anew, there will infallibly be experienced a renewal of Israel's doom. For the gospel has brought no suspension of God's justice any more than of his mercy. It contains the most glorious exhibition of his grace to sinners, but along with this it contains the most affecting and
VISION OF THE SHORN HAIR. 67
awful display of his righteous indignation against sin. Both features, indeed, of the Divine character have reached under the gospel a higher stage of development ; and so far has the intro- duction of the new covenant been from laying an arrest on the severity of God, that not till it appeared did the Jews themselves experience the heaviest portion of the evils threatened against them ; then only did the wrath begin to fall upon them to the uttermost, and the days of darkness and tribulation come, such as had not hitherto been known. This vision of woe, therefore, extends alike over both dispensations, and speaks to men of every age and clime ; it is a mirror, in wdiich the justice of God reflects itself for the world at large ; with no further alteration for gospel times than such as is implied in the w^ords of the apostle, " Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace ! "
Such being the case in respect to the execution of Divine judgment, it becomes the more necessary that we should mark distinctly the nature of the guilt, on account of which the judg- ment was to be executed. We are the rather called to be par- ticular in marking this, as the prophet' so emphatically and re- peatedly presses the circumstance, that the treatment to be given to Israel in the way of punishment, was to be a dealing with them after their own ways, or a meting back to them of their own measure. The passages which more particularly refer to this portion of the subject, are the following : — " This is Jerusa- lem ; In the midst of the nations I set her, and the countries were round about her. And she rebelled against my judgments, for wickedness above the heathen, and against my statutes more than the countries that are round about her," et(;. And again, " Surely because thou has defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all thine abominations, therefore will I also withdraw, neither shall mine eye spare, neither will I have any pity."
The stress laid here upon defilement of the sanctuary is in- tended to single out this profanation as the very climax of the prevailing iniquity, and the sign that it had now reached the last stage of Heaven-daring wickedness. But the grand charge
68 EZEKIEL V. VI.
which the prophet evidently means to bring against them, was the utter discordance which appeared between their conduct and their calling; they had failed to maintain the position and fulfil the design for which especially they had been settled in Canaan, and had acted so as utterly to defeat the intentions of God respecting them. Let us glance for a little both at what the calling itself was, and at this unfaithfulness in regard to it, that we may thus more clearly perceive the reasonableness of this severity which the Lord exercised toward them, and discern the lessons of instruction which the whole furnishes to future times.
1. In respect to the peculiar calling of the Israelites, the pro- phet represents them as having been placed by God, with the charge of his statutes and judgments, in the midst of the nations. This is not, certainly, to be understood in the sense adopted by some of the earlier commentators, that Jerusalem stood precisely in the centre of the natural world, and on this account was chosen to be the peculiar dwelling-place of God. But neither is it to be understood, with many later ones, as simply meaning, that Israel in Canaan alone possessed as a nation the true know- ledge of God, and that the surrounding nations were all plunged in heathenish darkness and corruption. It rather indicates that the land of Canaan did form a kind of centre for the nations of heathen antiquity, and was designed on that account to be a position of power and influence in respect to the knowledge and worship of God. Viewing the world as it existed at the time of Israel's settlement in Canaan, and for a thousand years after- wards, we believe it would be impossible to fix upon a single region so admirably fitted, at once to serve as a suitable dwelling- place for such a people, and to enable them, as from a central and well-chosen vantage-ground, to act with success upon the heathenism of the world. It lay nearly midway between the oldest and most influential states of antiquity, — on the one side Egypt and Ethiopia, with their dependencies ; on the other, Babylon, Nineveh, India, — the seats of art and civilization, when the rest of the world still lay in comparative barbarism, and to which the much later, but ultimately more powerful, commonwealths of Europe were primarily indebted for their skill, and even their philosophy and religion. Then in the immediate neighbourhood were the Phoenician mariners, whose sails fre-
VISION OF THE SHORN HAIR. 69
quented every harbour of the civilized world ; and all around, the Ishmaelite tribes, the great inland traders, who kept up a perpetual and most extensive intercourse among the different communities of southern Asia and northern Africa. So that isolated as the land of Canaan in some respects was, it was the very reverse of being -svithdrawn to a comer ; and no region in the whole ancient world could have been selected, that afforded more obvious and varied facilities for exerting a beneficial and commanding influence on the mind of ancient heathendom.
That the children of Israel, by being appointed to occupy such a central position, were also called to take advantage of it for making known the character, and extending the worship of Jehovah, was to be understood of itself from their being the chosen depositories of God's will, and the peculiar seed " in whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed." The dis- tinguished marks of Divine favour they were to enjoy, and the political ascendancy that was to be granted them over the nations of the earth, were made expressly to depend upon their remain- ing stedfast to the covenant of God, and being faithful witnesses of its truth and holiness. " This," said Moses, in Deut. iv. 6, when urging them to fidelity in keeping God's statutes and judg- ments, " this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say. Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." And again, in chap, xxviii., he holds out to them the elevated prospect, if they would only keep the commandments of God and walk in his ways, of being " the head only and not the tail, above only and not beneath," and of causing " all the people of the earth to see that Jehovah had established them to be an holy people to himself, and called them by his name." How thoroughly David, and other pious men in the better periods of Israel's history, understood the high calling they thus held of God, is evident from many passages in the Psalms. For example, in Ps. ix., '^ Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked. .... Sing praises to the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion, declare among the people his doings." In Ps. lix., perhaps the very earliest of David's compositions, " O Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit all the heathen. . . . Consume them (mine enemies) in wrath ; consume them that they may not be ; and let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the
70 EZEKiEL V. yr.
ends of the earth." So again, in Ps. Ixviii., probably one of his latest, " Because of thy temple in Jerusalem shall kings bring presents unto thee. Princes shall come out of Egypt ; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands to God. Sing unto God, ye kingdoms of the earth," etc. And in the Psalm immediately before this, the inspired writer, in the name of the true Israel, and in the most enlarged spirit of philanthropy, entreats God to make his face to shine upon therrij that so his way might be known upon earth, and his saving health among all nations. He desired an increased manifestation of Divine goodness, not so much for its own sake, as for the ulterior good of which it might be productive — " God shall bless usj and all ends of the earth shall fear him." Undoubtedly this wide-spreading effect may, in such cases, have been contemplated as very much a result that was to grow spontaneously out of the good that should appear in Israel, the mere exhibition of God's rich blessing upon them being expected to prompt and allure the nations of the earth to seek that the same might be realised also in their own experience. But still the personal good for Israel was viewed as strictly subservient to the more general good for the nations ; and such desires and expectations toward the world at large could not possibly be cherished without the obligation being recognized and felt to employ every available means for extend- ing the true knowledge of God in the world. So utterly false is the idea — the spurious brood of an unscriptural and exclusive Pharisaism — that the Israelites were placed in Canaan for their own private advantage, and in a sort of unfriendly antagonism to the other nations of the earth ! On the contrary, they were placed there as on a high vantage-ground, for acting the part of the world's benefactors ; placed aloft as God's lights in the earth, that through them the nations around might learn his will, and come to obtain an interest in his blessing.
This calling of Israel in respect to the nations of the world is precisely that which now rests upon the Christian church. There is no difference between the two in nature^ though in regard to the manner of its execution the change that has meanwhile entered into the character of God's kingdom, and the general aspect of the world's condition, naturally gives rise to correspond- ing differences. It was necessary that the impulse should be communicated more nationally before, more individually now.
ISRAEL'S PECULIAR CALLING AND GUILT. 71
And as the religion of God's ancient people was predominantly of a symbolical, outward and national character ; so, in the manner of its propagation in the world, fleshly weapons, outward pros- perity, the visible sunshine of Heaven's favour and loving- kindness, necessarily played an essential and prominent part. But now, on the other hand, when the discoveries of the gospel have laid open Divine realities themselves to the eye of faith, and thereby given a more spiritual and elevated tone to the true religion, there is greatly less need of those external appli- ances. The grand element of power now lies in the truth itself; and, by means of this, exhibited in the lives of God's people, and plied on every hand by their instrumentality, is the triumph of righteousness chiefly to be sped forward in the world. With such diff*erences, however, as to the method of working, the obli- gation itself remains substantially the same. The Christian church is now, just as Israel was of old, set in the midst of the nations, and charged in all her members to give faithful testi- mony to the truth, by which she has herself been blessed, that others may come and partake of the blessing. What a noble function ! and, as the result of its faithful discharge, what an unspeakable good has to be realized ! Nothing less than the possession of the world under Christ as the field which the Lord doth bless ! The right to this possession is Christ's, who has received from the Father the heritage of the earth ; and he com- mits it to his church, as the instrument of his working, to make good the title. With her people, therefore, lies the weighty responsibility of the world's regeneration ; they are, individually and collectively, the light of the world ; they are the salt of the earth. Happy if they are so in reality ! but if not, heavy above all others, must be their condemnation.
2. In the case of ancient Israel, it was their misfortune to incur the condemnation. They failed to take advantage of their favourable position for extending the knowledge and glory of God among the nations; but, imbibing the corruptions they should have striven to abolish, they dealt more treacherously toward the true religion than the surrounding nations did toward their false ones. That in charging them with an excess over these very nations, the prophet meant that they went absolutely beyond them in the practice of abominable idolatries, we can scarcely suppose. But in sinning against such privileges and
72 EZEKiEL V. vr.
obligations, their guilt was unquestionably much greater ; and ill goiug so readily over to the corruptions of heathenism, they so far did worse than others, that they betrayed a looser attach- ment to their religion, than those heathens did to their respective idolatries. " They have not walked in my statutes, neither have kept my judgments, neither have done according to the judgments of the nations that are round about you ;" neither adhered to the one, nor wholly espoused the other, — therefore inferior in point of religious principle to those wretched idolaters who cling with inveterate fondness to their several superstitions. Jeremiah had already called attention to this singular fact, and mourned over the amazing infatuation it displayed : " Pass over the isles of Chittim, and see ; and send unto Kedar, and con- sider diligently, and see if there be such a thing : Hath a nation changed her gods, which yet are no gods *? but my people have (changed their glory for that which doth not profit" (chap. ii. 10, 11).
There must have been some ground in the nature of things for this apparent anomaly ; some veiy powerful and constraining impulse, which so incessantly led Israel, in the face of all remon- strances and warnings in Providence, to prefer and fall in with the Gentile superstitions — where shall we seek it ? Undoubtedly the main and fundamental reason is to be sought in their own prevailing carnality and corruption of heart, which the mere nature-religions of heathenism did nothing to check, but rather fostered and sanctioned. Outward and carnal as the Jewish worship was in its character, compared with the Christian, it still was immeasurably less so, than the idolatrous religions of Paganism, in which not only every god had its representation in a visible idol, but the gods themselves were precisely such as the natural heart desires — gods " whose attributes were pride, revenge, and lust." In Judaism, on the contrary, amid all that was outward and showy in its observ^ances, there still was in the bosom of every service a spiritual and holy God as the sole object of veneration, and a conformity to his righteous will, as the one great end to be aimed at. Therefore, whenever the people lost the true spirit of piety, they of necessity lost, at the same time, their relish for the pure service of Jehovah ; they became at once unfit for its duties, and ashamed of its sanctity ; and gladly accepted from the hands of their neighbours what
Israel's peculiar calling and guilt. ' 73
might render their religion more palatable to their ungodly dispositions.
Shall we wonder at such behaviour in Israel? We may, indeed, wonder at it, when we think of their singular advan- tages, and the astonishing things which God had done in their behalf; but the same perversity, which ran such a career of wickedness in them, lives still in the Christian church; nor is there a country in Christendom, where Israel's folly is not on a large scale perpetually repeating itself. What are the corruptions of Popery but so many accommodations of the pure spirit of the gospel to the grovelling tendencies of the flesh ? And even in Protestant lands, with by far the greater proportion of wor- shippers, the religion actually embraced is not that of the Bible ; but this moulded and shaped into a form more agreeable to the natural heart. It borrows from the thoughts and maxims of the world fully as much as it derives from the gospel ; and gathers up from the two such a compound of flesh and spirit, purity and corruption, as the natural man finds little occasion either to quarrel with or to be ashamed of. Hence the spiritual languor, the worldly-mindedness, the numberless forms of vanity and pollution, which are so commonly seen going hand in hand with a religious profession, and which have at once robbed the church of her power to conquer and bless the world, and miserably curtailed her own inheritance of good. The spiritual adversary, who sought in vain to strangle Christianity in her birth, has too well succeeded in impeding her progress, by cor- rupting the purity of her worship, and replenishing her with the means of worldly honour and enjoyment. Nor can she ever fulfil aright her destiny, or be safe from the rod of chastisement and rebuke, till the foul admixtures she has contracted from the world are purged out, and in the simple spirit of an implicit reliance on the Divine word, and an unswerving adherence to the cause of truth and righteousness, she goes forth to resist and put down whatever is opposed to the wall of Heaven.
It may be proper, before closing our remarks on the vision contained in these three chapters, to refer to a style of inter- pretation which is unhappily too current in the present times, and which is equally remarkable for the groundlessness and the confidence of its assertions. " Look," says a popular writer, in a discourse on Ezekiel, ix. 4-6, " into the fifth chapter of
74 EZEKIEL Y. IV.
Ezekiel, ver. 12, and you will see a passage which w^as not fulfilled in the days of Zedekiah. There it was predicted, that a third part of the nation should die by pestilence — that a third part should die by the sword — and that another third part of the nation should be scattered unto all the winds, and a sword sent after them. In the days of Zedekiah no such thing occurred. There was nothing of famine or pestilence ; there was no destruc- tion of a third part with the sword ; and those that were carried captive, instead of being scattered unto all the winds, were taken into one country, and were kept in one country all the time of their captivity."
It is not saying too much of this passage, that it contains as many errors as sentences. For (1), in regard to the threefold destination of the people to the pestilence, the sword, and dis- persion, it might be as correct to affirm that no such thing was spoken by Ezekiel of the days of Zedekiah, as that no such thing occurred then. The prophet, as we have already shown, is not here speaking of Jerusalem alone, or even of the people of Judah alone, but of the covenant-people at large, as inhabitants of the land of Canaan ; so that we are to take in, not simply what happened in the days of Zedekiah, but what all Israel had been suffering, or were still to suffer, by means of the calamities which the Lord sent against them for their sins. (2.) It is a rash, and utterly groundless affirmation to say, even of those who lived in the days of Zedekiah, that a third part were not destroyed by pestilence, and a third by sword; for that vast numbers perished by both causes, is manifest from the face of the history — and where did the author learn that it was less than two-thirds ? As for the remaining third being all carried captive to one country, and kept there, we have simply to ask whence, then, came the Jews mentioned in the book of Esther, who were scattered through all the provinces of the Persian empire ? Or how should the decree of Cyrus, authorising their return to Palestine, have been addressed to the seed of Israel throughout the whole kingdom, to "every man in the place where he sojoumeth ? " Or why should a special cm'se have been pronounced over Edom, because they sought to cut off, and to some extent did cut off, the miserable fugitives from the land of Israel, who, in the day of their calamity, fled from the face of the adversary? (Obad. v. 14). In short, it is a mere
ISRAEL'S PECULIAR CALLING AND GUILT. 75
assertion, and utterly opposed to the well-known facts of history, to affirm that all who survived the Chaldean desolations were carried to the region of Babylonia, and kept there. The larger portion were so, but by no means the whole ; there was a scat- tering to the winds of heaven.^ (3.) It is quite untenable, and is in fact betraying the truthfulness of the prophet into the enemies' hands, to assert, regarding such a vision as this, that the infliction of those calamities, which it marks as presently to be expected, was to be postponed for many centuries, and not to take place till an entirely different state of things had entered. For, in the prophecy, the calamities announced are not merely predicted as events, but threatened as Divine judgments for the sins of that particular period ; and if they were not inflicted in connection with that period, they were plainly not inflicted at all ; the penalties threatened against the prevailing sinfulness were not enforced ; the prophecy, as it stands here, lies unful- filled. Besides, when the prophet so distinctly indicates a cer- tain series of judgments, and so solemnly and repeatedly declares that the time was close at hand for their taking effect, — if, after all, they were not to take effect till seven hundred years had elapsed, and the condition of things in Israel had become so essentially changed, that the special characteristics here given — the copying after the ways of the heathen, and the erection of many altars — were precisely those most carefully avoided at that later period — then it is manifest we must have diff'erent rules for interpreting such portions of vScripture from those we would adopt in regard to any other book. The process of interpreta- tion, in short, becomes a matter of caprice, and the manner of fulfilment is simply what the interpreter himself thinks fit, not what the writing itself seems to indicate. If the prophetical Scriptures really needed such arbitrariness of interpretation to preserve their conformity with the course of things, sceptics would require nothing more to justify their unbelief. But, in the present case, it is merely the interpreter, and not the prophetic word, that is at fault. Amid the desolations of long sieges and bloody conquests, produced by the invading hosts of the Assy-
1 See also chap. xvii. 21, where the remnant of the people of the very king that Nebuchadnezzar was to carry to Babylon, is expressly said to be scat- tered to all the winds of heaven.
76 EZEKIEL VII.
rians and Chaldeans, beyond all doubt one large portion of the people perished by famine and pestilence, and another large portion by the sword ; and that the remaining portion was scat- tered into many countries, and even amid these was subjected to ever-recurring troubles and calamities, is as certain as anything of which the record has been handed down to us from ancient times. To deny this, is at once to throw discredit on the plainest utterances of prophecy, and bring into doubt the most unques- tionable facts of history.
CHAPTER VII.
LAMENTATION OVER THE GUILT AND FALL OF ISRAEL.
This chapter does not contain anything properly new. It simply describes the mournful feelings and reflections which the pre- ceding revelations of guilt and judgment had awakened in the mind of the prophet ; and it hence naturally takes the form of a poetical dirge or lamentation over the unhappy case of his infatu- ated country. Some particular words and allusions require ex- planation ; but otherwise the sentiments uttered are so simple and appropriate that no comment is needed to exhibit their import.
Ver. 1. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying; 2. And thou, Son of man, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the land of Israel : An end ! the end is come upon the four corners of the land I 3. Even now the end is upon thee ; and I send forth mine anger against thee ; and I judge thee according to thy ways ; and I lay upon thee all thine abominations. 4. And mine eye shall not have compassion upon thee, nor shall I pity ; for I lay thy ways upon thee, and thine abominations shall be in the. midst of thee ; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah.
6. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Evil, only evil, behold it cometh ! 6. An end cometh — come is the end ; it waketh for thee, lo ! it cometh. 7. The morning has come to thee,^ O inhabitant of the land ; the time has come ; the day is near, the day of distress, and there is no brightness upon the
* The morning^ n^-^sss : this is a word of very doubtful import and deriva- tion, and there is great diversity among commentators as to the proper way of rendering it. The most natural sense, however, is that adopted by our translators, aurora, the morning — a sense which has been preserved both in the Syriac and the Chaldee.