Yahweh’s word also came to me, saying, “Son of man, you dwell in the middle of the rebellious house, who have eyes to see, and don’t see, who have ears to hear, and don’t hear; for they are a rebellious house.
“Therefore, you son of man, prepare your stuff for moving, and move by day in their sight. You shall move from your place to another place in their sight. It may be they will consider, though they are a rebellious house. You shall bring out your stuff by day in their sight, as stuff for moving. You shall go out yourself at evening in their sight, as when men go out into exile. Dig through the wall in their sight, and carry your stuff out that way. In their sight you shall bear it on your shoulder, and carry it out in the dark. You shall cover your face, so that you don’t see the land, for I have set you for a sign to the house of Israel.”
I did so as I was commanded. I brought out my stuff by day, as stuff for moving, and in the evening I dug through the wall with my hand. I brought it out in the dark, and bore it on my shoulder in their sight.
In the morning, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, “Son of man, hasn’t the house of Israel, the rebellious house, said to you, ‘What are you doing?’
“Say to them, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “This burden concerns the prince in Jerusalem, and all the house of Israel among whom they are.” ’
“Say, ‘I am your sign. As I have done, so will it be done to them. They will go into exile, into captivity.
“ ‘The prince who is among them will bear on his shoulder in the dark, and will go out. They will dig through the wall to carry things out that way. He will cover his face, because he will not see the land with his eyes. I will also spread my net on him, and he will be taken in my snare. I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet he will not see it, though he will die there. I will scatter toward every wind all who are around him to help him, and all his bands. I will draw out the sword after them.
“ ‘They will know that I am Yahweh when I disperse them among the nations, and scatter them through the countries. But I will leave a few men of them from the sword, from the famine, and from the pestilence, that they may declare all their abominations among the nations where they come. Then they will know that I am Yahweh.’ ”
Moreover Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, “Son of man, eat your bread with quaking, and drink your water with trembling and with fearfulness. Tell the people of the land, ‘The Lord Yahweh says concerning the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the land of Israel: “They will eat their bread with fearfulness, and drink their water in dismay, that her land may be desolate, and all that is therein, because of the violence of all those who dwell therein. The cities that are inhabited will be laid waste, and the land will be a desolation. Then you will know that I am Yahweh.” ’ ”
Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, “Son of man, what is this proverb that you have in the land of Israel, saying, ‘The days are prolonged, and every vision fails?’ Tell them therefore, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “I will make this proverb to cease, and they will no more use it as a proverb in Israel;” ’ but tell them, ‘ “The days are at hand, and the fulfillment of every vision. For there will be no more any false vision nor flattering divination within the house of Israel. For I am Yahweh. I will speak, and the word that I speak will be performed. It will be no more deferred; for in your days, rebellious house, I will speak the word, and will perform it,” says the Lord Yahweh.’ ”
Again Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, “Son of man, behold, they of the house of Israel say, ‘The vision that he sees is for many days to come, and he prophesies of times that are far off.’
“Therefore tell them, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “None of my words will be deferred any more, but the word which I speak will be performed,” says the Lord Yahweh.’ ”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26 Because God was about to give a command to…
Because God was about to give a command to his servant, he wished to inspire him with fortitude of mind, lest, when he saw that he was consuming his labor in vain, he should withdraw from his course. For we know how severe is that temptation to God’s servants when they speak to the deaf, and not only is their doctrine rejected but even refused with ignominy. They think, therefore, that nothing is better than silence, because where their word is so despised it only exposes the name of God to the reproaches of the impious. Now then we understand for what purpose God admonishes his Prophet about the contumacy of the nation. The Prophet had tried enough, and more than enough, how unmanageable the Israelites were, but God confirms by his judgment what the Prophet had discovered sufficiently in practice. Then we must observe another reason, for God not only commanded his Prophet what to say, but he added an outward symbol, as we shall see. But the Prophet might object, that it would be ridiculous to take a staff, and scrip, and hat, as a traveler about to commence a journey. Nor is it doubtful that the Israelites derided through perverseness what he was doing, as a boyish amusement.
Lest, therefore, the Prophet should think what he was commanded to do absurd, God instructs him, and gives him the reason of his plan. He says, therefore, the house of Israel is rebellious, and then he expresses the greatness of their contumacy, namely, that they are deaf, though endued with ears: that they are blind, and yet do not want eyes God here shows that the Israelites could not defend their error, as if they had sinned without consideration; but he assigns their neither hearing nor seeing to their obstinacy. And this must be diligently remarked, because hypocrites, when convicted, catch as much as possible at this excuse, that they fell through error or ignorance. But God on the contrary here pronounces that the Israelites were blind and deaf, and shows that their blindness was voluntary. When, therefore, unbelievers pretend that they have not been illuminated by the Lord, it may be conceded to them that they are blind and deaf: but we must often proceed beyond this, since their own obstinacy is the fountain of their blindness and deafness: and God blinds them, because they will not admit the light offered them, but stop their ears. In God’s judgments, indeed, the causes do not always appear, for we sometimes see a whole nation Minded without any reason apparent to us; but as far as the ten tribes are concerned, there can be no excuse for their error, since they were brought up from childhood in God’s law, so that their pride and contempt caused God to reject them. Hence they were so stupified that they neither saw with their eyes nor heard with their ears. And this the Prophet expresses significantly, they hear not, says he, since they are a rebellious house; he does not say, because their senses do not penetrate to the secrets of God, are not sufficiently acute, are not endued with such great prudence; but because they are a rebellious house, that is, because they have stupified themselves. Hence it happens that they neither hear nor see. It follows —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 13, 16, 22, 27 That is, they receive not the fruit of that…
That is, they receive not the fruit of that which they see and hear.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–28 Eze 12:1 The word of the LORD also came…
Eze 12:1 The word of the LORD also came unto me, saying,
Ver. 1. The word of the Lord also came unto me.] This variety of visions shows the great unbelief of the people, whose captivity and calamity is here further described and assured by a new type, which is set out in Eze 12:1-6 :, and then applied in Eze 12:7-16. One sermon pegs in another, and the man of God must stick to his work, and επιστηθι, stand over it. {2Ti 4:2}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 A Divine prediction of what was both sure and…
A Divine prediction of what was both sure and near to come to pass.
Came unto me, in the sixth and seventh years of Jeconiah’s captivity, and of Zedekiah’s reign; in the latter end of the three hundred and eighty-seven of Ezekiel’s lying on his side, three years before the fatal siege began.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 17, 21 Perhaps Ezekiel reflected with so much pleasure upon the…
Perhaps Ezekiel reflected with so much pleasure upon the vision he had had of the glory of God that often, since it went up from him, he was wishing it might come down to him again, and, having seen it once and a second time, he was willing to hope he might be a third time so favoured; but we do not find that he ever saw it any more, and yet the word of the Lord comes to him; for God did in divers manners speak to the fathers (Heb 1:1) and they often heard the words of God when they did not see the visions of the Almighty. Faith comes by hearing that word of prophecy which is more sure than vision. We may keep up our communion with God without raptures and ecstasies. In these verses the prophet is directed,
I. By what signs and actions to express the approaching captivity of Zedekiah king of Judah; that was the thing to be foretold, and it is foretold to those that are already in captivity, because as long as Zedekiah was upon the throne they flattered themselves with hopes that he would make his part good with the king of Babylon, whose yoke he was now projecting to shake off, from which, it is probable, these poor captives promised themselves great things; and it may be, when he was forming that design, he privately sent encouragement to them to hope that he would rescue them shortly, or procure their liberty by exchange of prisoners. While they were fed with these vain hopes they could not set themselves either to submit to their affliction or to get good by their affliction. It was therefore necessary, but very difficult, to convince them that Zedekiah, instead of being their deliverer, should very shortly be their fellow-suffered. Now, one would think it might have been sufficient if the prophet had only told them this in God's name, as he does afterwards (Eze 12:10); but, to prepare them for the prophecy of it, he must first give them a sign of it, must speak it to their eyes first and then to their ears: and here we have, 1. The reason why he must take this method (Eze 12:2): It is because they are a stupid, dull, unthinking people, that will not heed or will soon forget what they only hear of, or at least will not be at all affected with it; it will make no impression at all upon them: Thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, whom it is next to impossible to work any good upon. They have eyes and ears, they have intellectual powers and faculties, but they see not, they hear not. They were idolaters, whose character it was that they were like the idols they worshipped, which have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, Psa 115:5, Psa 115:6, Psa 115:8. Note, Those are to be reckoned rebellious that shut their eyes against the divine light and stop their ears to the divine law. The ignorance of those that are wilfully ignorant, that have faculties and means and will not use them, is so far from being their excuse that it adds rebellion to their sin. None so blind, so deaf, as those that will not see, that will not hear. They see not, they hear not; for they are a rebellious house. The cause is all from themselves: the darkness of the understanding is owing to the stubbornness of the will. Now this is the reason why he must speak to them by signs, as deaf people are taught, that they might be either instructed or ashamed. Note, Ministers must accommodate themselves not only to the weakness, but to the wilfulness of those they deal with, and deal with them accordingly: if they dwell among those that are rebellious they must speak to them the more plainly and pressingly, and take that course that is most likely to work upon them, that they may be left inexcusable. 2. The method he just take to awaken and affect them; he must furnish himself with all necessaries for removing (Eze 12:3), provide for a journey clothes and money; he must remove from one place to another, as one unsettled and forced to shift; this he must do by day, in the sight of the people; he must bring out all his household goods, to be packed up and sent away (Eze 12:4); and, because all the doors and gates were either locked up that they could not pass through them or so guarded by the enemy that they durst not, he must therefore dig through the wall, and convey his goods away clandestinely through that breach in the wall, Eze 12:5. He must carry his goods away himself upon his own shoulders, for want of a servant to attend him; he must do this in the twilight, that he might not be discovered; and, when he has made what shift he can to secure some of the best of his effects, he must himself steal away at evening in their sight, with fear and trembling, and must go as those that go forth into captivity (Eze 12:4); that is, he must cover his face (Eze 12:6) as being ashamed to be seen and afraid to be known, or in token of very great sorrow and concern; he must go away as a poor broken tradesman, who, when he is forced to shut up shop, hides his head, or quits his country. Thus Ezekiel must be himself a sign to them; and when perhaps he seemed somewhat backward to put himself to all this trouble, and to expose himself to be bantered and ridiculed for it, to reconcile him to it God says (Eze 12:3) "It may be they will consider, and will by it be taken off from their vain confidence, though they be a rebellious house." Note, We must not despair even of the worst, but that yet they may be brought to bethink themselves and repent; and therefore we must continue the use of proper means for their conviction and conversion, because, while there is life, there is hope. And ministers must be willing to go through the most difficult and inconvenient offices (for such was this of Ezekiel's removing), though there be but the it may be of success. If but one soul be awakened to consider, our care and pains will be well bestowed. 3. Ezekiel's ready and punctual obedience to the orders God gave him (Eze 12:7): I did so as I was commanded. Hereby he teaches us all, and ministers especially, (1.) To obey with cheerfulness every command of God, even the most difficult. Christ himself learned obedience, and so we must all. (2.) To do all we can for the good of the souls of others, to put ourselves to any trouble or pains for the conviction of those that are unconvinced. We do all things (that is, we are willing to do any thing), dearly beloved, for your edifying. (3.) To be ourselves affected with those things wherewith we desire to affect others. When Ezekiel would give his hearers a melancholy prospect he does himself put on a melancholy aspect. (4.) To sit loose to this world, and prepare to leave it, to carry out our stuff for removing, because we have here no continuing city. Arise, depart, this it not your rest, for it is polluted. Thou dwellest in a rebellious house, therefore prepare for removing; for who would not be willing to leave such a house, such a wicked world as this is?
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II. He is directed by what words to explain those signs and actions, as Agabus, when he bound his own hands and feet, told whose binding was thereby signified. But observe, It was not till morning that God gave him an exposition of the sign, till the next morning, to keep up in him a continual dependence upon God for instruction. As what God does, so what he directs us to do, perhaps we know not now, but shall know hereafter.
1. It was supposed that the people would ask the meaning of this sing, or at least they should (Eze 12:9): "Hath not the house of Israel said unto thee, What doest thou? Yes, I know they have. Though they are a rebellious house, yet they are inquisitive concerning the mind of God," as those (Isa 58:2) who sought God daily. Therefore the prophet must do such a strange uncouth thing, that they might enquire what it meant; and then, it may be hoped, people will take notice of what is told them, and profit by it, when it comes to them in answer to their enquiries. But some understand it as an intimation that they had not made any such enquiries: "Hath not this rebellious house so much as asked thee, What doest thou? No; they take no notice of it; but tell them the meaning of it, though they do not ask." Note, When God sends to us by his ministers he observes what entertainment we give to the messages he sends us; he hearkens and hears what we say to them, and what enquiries we make upon them, and is much displeased if we pass them by without taking any notice of them. When we have heard the word we should apply to our ministers for further instruction; and then we shall know if we thus follow on to know.
2. The prophet is to tell them the meaning of it. In general (Eze 12:10), This burden concerns the prince in Jerusalem; they knew who that was, and gloried in it now that they were in captivity that they had a prince of their own in Jerusalem, and that the house of Israel was yet entire there, and therefore doubted not but in time to do well enough. "But tell them," says God, "that in what thou hast done they may read the doom of their friends at Jerusalem. Say, I am your sign," Eze 12:11. As the conversation of ministers should teach the people what they should do, so the providences of God concerning them are sometimes intended to tell them what they must expect. The unsettled state and removals of ministers give warning to people what they must expect in this world, no continuance, but constant changes. When times of trouble are coming on Christ tells his disciples, They shall first lay their hands on you, Luk 21:12. (1.) The people shall be led away into captivity (Eze 12:11): As I have done, so shall it be done unto them; they shall be forced away from their own houses, no more to return to them, neither shall their place know them any more. We cannot say concerning our dwelling-place that it is our resting-place; for how far we may be tossed from it before we die we cannot foresee. (2.) The prince shall in vain attempt to make his escape; for he also shall go into captivity. Jeremiah had told Zedekiah the same to his face (Jer 34:3): Thou shalt not escape, but shalt surely be taken. Ezekiel here foretels it to those who made him their confidence and promised themselves relief from him. [1.] That he shall himself carry away his own goods: He shall bear upon his shoulder some of his most valuable effects. Note, The judgments of God can turn a prince into a porter. He that was wont to have the regalia carried before him, and to march through the city at noon-day, shall now himself carry his goods on his back and steal away out of the city in the twilight. See what a change sin makes with men! All the avenues to the palace being carefully watched by the enemy, they shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby. Men shall be their own house-breakers, and steal away their own goods; so it is when the sword of war has cancelled all right and property. [2.] That he shall attempt to escape in a disguise, with a mask or a visor on, which shall cover his face, so that he shall be able only to look before him, and shall not see the ground with his eyes. He who, when he was in pomp, affected to be seen, now that he is in his flight is afraid to be seen; let none therefore either be proud of being looked at or over-much pleased with looking about them, when they see a king with his face covered, that he cannot see the ground. [3.] That he shall be made a prisoner and carried captive into Babylon (Eze 12:13): My net will I spread upon him and he shall be taken in my snare. It seemed to be the Chaldeans' net and their snare, but God owns them for his. Those that think to escape the sword of the Lord will find themselves taken in his net. Jeremiah had said that king Zedekiah should see the king of Babylon and that he should go to Babylon; Ezekiel says, He shall be brought to Babylon, yet he shall not see it, though he shall die there. Those that were disposed to cavil would perhaps object that these two prophets contradicted one another; for one said, He shall see the king of Babylon, the other said, He shall not see Babylon; and yet both proved true: he did see the king of Babylon at Riblah, where he passed sentence upon him for his rebellion, but there he had his eyes put out, so that he did not see Babylon when he was brought thither. These captives expected to see their prince come to Babylon as a conqueror, to bring them out of their trouble; but he shall come thither a prisoner, and his disgrace will be a great addition to their troubles. Little joy could they have in seeing him when he could not see them. [4.] That all his guards should be dispersed and utterly disabled for doing him any service (Eze 12:14): I will scatter all that are about him to help him, so that he shall be left helpless; I will scatter them among the nations and disperse them in the countries (Eze 12:15), to be monuments of divine justice wherever they go. But are there not hopes that they may rally again? (he that flies one time may fight another time); no: I will draw out the sword after them, which shall cut them off wherever if finds them; for the sword that God draws out will be sure to do the execution designed. Yet of Zedekiah's scattered troops some shall escape (Eze 12:16): I will leave a few men of them. Though they shall all be scattered, yet they shall not all be cut off; some shall have their lives given them for a prey. And the end for which they are thus remarkably spared is very observable: That they may declare all their abominations among the heathen whither they come; the troubles they are brought into will bring them to themselves and to their right mind, and then they will acknowledge the justice of God in all that is brought upon them and will make an ingenuous confession of their sins, which provoked God thus to contend with them; and, as by this it shall appear that they were spared in mercy, so hereby they will make a suitable grateful return to God for his favours to them in sparing them. Note, When God has remarkably delivered us from the deaths wherewith we were surrounded we must look upon it that for this end, among others, we were spared, that we might glorify God and edify others by making a penitent acknowledgment of our sins. Those that by their afflictions are brought to this are then made to know that God is the Lord and may help to bring others to the knowledge of him. See how God brings good out of evil. The dispersion of sinners, who had done God much dishonour and disservice in their own country, proves the dispersion of penitents, who shall do him much honour and service in others countries. The Levites are by a curse divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel, yet it is turned into a blessing, for thereby they have the fairest opportunity to teach Jacob God's laws.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–23 The word of the Lord came unto me, saying.…
The word of the Lord came unto me, saying. The word of prophecy, as the Targum; the vision of the cherubim being over, this, very likely, immediately followed upon the former; though the exact time of the prophecy cannot be fixed, because the date is not given; it must be between the sixth month of the sixth year of Jehoiachin's captivity, Eze 8:1; and the fifth month of the seventh year, Eze 20:1.
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Ezekiel 12:2
eze 12:2
eze 12:2
eze 12:2Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house,.... The captives in Babylon, who murmured at their present condition and circumstances, and looked upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem to be in happy ones, and believed they would continue in them, as the false prophets persuaded them; not believing the prophets of the Lord; and encouraged them to stand out against the king of Babylon, repenting that they had surrendered to him, and hoped they should by their means be delivered see the same character of them, Eze 2:3;
which have eyes to see, and see not: they have ears to hear, and hear not; they had natural sense and understanding, and means and opportunities of being better informed, and of knowing the true state of things, and how they were, and would be; but they wilfully shut their eyes against all light and evidence, and stopped their ears, and would not hearken to the words of the prophets:
for they are a rebellious house; stubborn, obstinate, and self-willed: or, "a house of rebellion" (r).
(r) "domus rebellionis", Montanus, Vatablus, Starckius; "domus inobedientiae", Cocceius.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25 The prophet by removing his stuff, and quitting his…
The prophet by removing his stuff, and quitting his lodgings is a sign of Zedekiah's flight out of Jerusalem, ver. 1-16. By eating his meat with trembling, he is a sign, to set forth the famine and consternation in the city, ver. 17-20. An assurance that these things shall be fulfilled, ver. 21-28.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 13, 18, 22, 23, 25, 28 The prophet proceeds, by a variety of types and…
CHAPTER XII
The prophet proceeds, by a variety of types and parables, to
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convince those of the captivity that their brethren who were
left behind to sustain the miseries of a seige and the insults
of a conqueror, would be in a much worse condition than they
who were already settled in a foreign land. In the beginning of
this chapter he foretells the approaching captivity of Judah by
action instead of words, 1-7.
He predicts particularly the flight, capture, captivity, and
sufferings of Zedekiah and his followers, 8-16,
compared with Jer 52:11.
He is to eat his food with trembling and signs of terror, as an
emblem of the consternation of the Jews when surrounded by
their enemies, 17-20;
and then he answers the objections and bywords of scoffers and
infidels, who either disbelieved his threatening or supposed
the accomplishment of them very distant, 21-28.
Josephus (Antiq. xi. 10) tells us that Zedekiah thought the
prophecy of Ezekiel in the thirteenth verse inconsistent with
that of Jeremiah, (Jer 34:3,)
and resolved to believe neither. Both, however, were literary
fulfilled; and the event convinced him that they were not
irreconcilable. Thus, blinded by infidelity, sinners rush on to
that detruction against which they are sufficiently warned.
NOTES ON CHAP. XII
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 9, 17, 22 Eze 12:1-2. The word of the Lord also came,…
Eze 12:1-2. The word of the Lord also came, &c. — This is supposed to have happened in the sixth year of Zedekiah, and five years before the siege of Jerusalem: and the prophecies contained in the following chapters, to the twentieth, are thought to be of the same year. Thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house — “He was among them of the captivity in Chaldea, as appears from Eze 12:10, Eze 11:24; Eze 14:22, and Eze 24:2. And these seem to have disbelieved the prophecies that Jerusalem should be smitten and burned, and its inhabitants scattered abroad: see Eze 4:2; Eze 9:5; Eze 10:2; Eze 11:9.” — Newcome. They saw Jerusalem still inhabited, and under the government of its own king. And as they who were left in Judea thought themselves much more highly in God’s favour than those who had been carried away captives, so those who had been made captives repined at their lot, and thought those who remained in their own country were in a much better condition than themselves; therefore the following symbolical representations were designed to show, that they who were left behind, to endure the miseries of a siege, and the insults of a conqueror, would be in a much worse condition than those who were already settled in a foreign land: see Lowth. Which have eyes to see, and see not, &c. — Who will not make use of that sense and understanding which God has given them, nor learn from those examples and incidents which have happened, and by which God intended they should be instructed.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 13, 16, 18, 19, 21 Compare Deu 1:26; margin reference; Rom 10:21. The repetition…
Compare Deu 1:26; margin reference; Rom 10:21. The repetition of such words from age to age, shows that the prophet’s words are intended to reach beyond the generation in which he lived.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv3, 6, 10, 13, 14, 18, 22, 23 Removing. Literally, "vessels of transmigration," (Haydock) or bundles, (Calmet)…
Removing. Literally, "vessels of transmigration," (Haydock) or bundles, (Calmet) and what was requisite for travelling, (Worthington) or in exile. (Haydock) --- All this, to chap. xx., happened five years before the fall of Jerusalem. (Calmet) --- See chap. viii. 1. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 2. The Signs (Eze_12:1-20)
2. The Signs (Eze_12:1-20)
1. The Sign of the King’s Departure (Eze_12:1-16)
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1And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, 2Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of the house of rebelliousness, who have eyes to see, and they see not; and they have ears to hear, and they hear not: for they are an house of 3rebelliousness. And thou, son of man, make thee [therefore make thee, thou son of man] baggage of the emigrant, and remove by day before their eyes. And thou shalt remove from thy place to another place before their eyes,—perhaps they will 4see?—for they are an house of rebelliousness. And thou shalt bring forth thy baggage as baggage of the emigrant by day before their eyes. Yet thou shalt 5go forth at even before their eyes, like the removals of the emigrant. Before 6their eyes break thee through the wall, and bring forth thereby. Before their eyes shalt thou lift up upon thy shoulder, in the darkness shalt thou bring forth; thou shalt cover thy face, and thou shalt not see the land: for as a wonder-sign have I given thee to the house of Israel. 7And I did so as I was commanded; my baggage brought I forth, as baggage of the emigrant, by day, and at even I dug through with my hand; in the darkness brought I 8forth, I lifted up upon my shoulder before their eyes. And the word of Jehovah came unto me early in the morning, saying, 9Son of man, said they not unto thee, the house of Israel, the house of rebelliousness, What doest 10thou? Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: The prince is this lifting up [Eze_12:7] in Jerusalem, and the whole house of Israel that [are] among them [or, therein]. 11Say, I am your wonder-sign; as I have done, so shall it be done unto them; into banishment, into captivity they shall go. 12And the prince who is in their midst, to his shoulder shall he lift up, in the dark, then shall he go forth; through the wall shall they break to bring forth thereby; he shall cover his face, because he shall not see with his eye, he [shall not see] the 13land. And I spread My net over him, and he is taken in My snare; and I bring him to Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans; and he shall not see it, 14and there shall he die. And all that are round about him, his help and all his forces, will I scatter toward every wind, and a sword will I draw out after 15them. And they know that I am Jehovah, when I disperse them among the 16nations, and scatter them in the countries. And I leave over of them men of number, from the sword, from the famine, and from the pestilence, in order that they may declare all their abominations among the heathen, whither they come; and they know that I am Jehovah.
2. The Sign of Bread and Water (Eze_12:17-20)
17And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, 18Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with anxiety. 19And say unto the people of the land, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah of the inhabitants of Jerusalem on the soil of Israel: They shall eat their bread with anxiety, and drink their water in pain, that her land may become waste from its fulness, because of the violence of all the dwellers in it. 20And the cities, the inhabited ones, shall be laid waste, and the land shall become desolate; and ye know that I am Jehovah.
Eze_12:2. Sept.: ... ἐν μεσω των ἀδικιων αὐτων—
Eze_12:3. Sept.: ... ὁπως ἰδωσιν διοτι—
Eze_12:6. …ἐπ̓ ἐμων ἀναληφθηση κ. κεκρυμμενος ἐξελευση—
Eze_12:7. …κ κεκρ. ἐξηλθον, ἐπ̓ ὠμ. ἀνεληφθην
Eze_12:10. Sept.: ... ταδε λεγει... εἰτον τω ἀρχοντι κ. τω ἀφηγουμενω ἐν...κ. παντι οἰκω—
Eze_12:11. ... εἰπον ὁτι ἐγω τερατα τοιω ἐν μεσω αύεης. (Another reading: יעשה לכם, Syr.)
Eze_12:12. …ἐπ̓ ὠμων ἀρθησεται κ. κεκρ. ἐξελευσεται δια τ. τοιχου, κ. διορυξει του ἐξελθειν δἰ αὐτου—
Eze_12:19. For ארצה there is a reading: ארצם and ארץ without the suffix. For ממל׳ there is a reading: ומלאה.
EXEGETICAL REMARKS
The visions in Ezekiel 8-9 have the connection we have seen with the vision in Ezekiel 1. Ch. 12. now, in the first place, takes up what is said in Ezekiel 2, 3, in order afterwards to give us, in close connection with Ezekiel 4-5, the continuation of the prophet’s discourse in the language of signs. If we take Ezekiel 8 sq. along with Ezekiel 4 sq., then we get information about the siege, the taking of Jerusalem, and we are made acquainted, not only generally, but in detail, with the destiny of the inhabitants. The fate of the distinguished popular leaders (Ezekiel 11) offers the most natural transition to the person of the king in its meaning for the whole. If, moreover, what has hitherto been referred to from Eze_3:24 onwards was transferred inter parietes, then so much the more strikingly does the prophet now step abroad.
Eze_12:2. Comp. on Eze_2:5 sq., Eze_3:26 sq. The description of the state of the exiles is kept in accordance with what they have seen (especially Eze_4:5) and also heard (Eze_11:25). Thus it is with them at the time, while at another time, which the promise has in view, it is to be as in Eze_11:16 sq. Comp. Isa_6:9-10; Jer_5:21. The reason given is the universal and all-pervading rebelliousness (different from Deu_29:3 [4]). Hence in Eze_12:3, “perhaps they will see;” and because of this possibility, which would not be supposed in the case of hardening in consequence of judgment, Ezekiel is to perform the sign in question before their eyes (repeated). כִּי׳ is, just because of the parallel close of Eze_12:2, not to be rendered by “that” (Hitz.). The thing meant also is merely “seeing” (i.e. in the sense of hearing how it will happen to them), and not by any means comprehending what they are. We are to think of a question implying doubt, whose doubtful purport, and along with that (or merely in general) the action commanded, is supported by a reason.—גּוֹלָה, “emigration” (Hengst.: “the emigrants,” an ideal gathering into one of the emigrants), consequently utensils such as are usual in a case of the kind,—not simply travelling gear, as hat, staff, bag (Mat_10:9-10), but rather vessels for food and drink, household furniture, as distinguished from personal apparatus for a journey. Hence עָשָׂה is not: “to make,” or: “to furnish oneself with” (Klief.), but equivalent to: “to put together” (comp. Eze_12:4). גּוֹלָה (Jer_46:19) is immediately explained, but, as the more detailed definitions which, follow show, the explanation is kept general. Comp. on Eze_12:6. The emigration is specified as regards its starting point and goal.—In favour of the objective reality of the action to be performed, the remarks made on Eze_4:5, as against Hävern., Hitz., Hengst., have a still more pointed application in the present case.
Eze_12:4. The bringing forth of his household stuff, so far as it can be taken with him, describes more fully the “make thee,” etc. of Eze_12:3; and it becomes clear at the same time how the expression there, וּגְלֵה יוֹמָם, must be understood, viz. of the beginning of the emigration, of the first preparation for it. Lastly, יוֹמָם is explained, by means of בָּעֶרֶב, as meaning the daytime in its most proper sense; and the prophet’s own migrating from his dwelling-place is characterized in the most definite way, in contrast with a mere journey, by the expression כְּמוֹצָאֵי גוֹלָה (comp. on Eze_12:6), a comparison which Hävern. considers applicable to the time of departure alone. Comp. Hengst. on Mic_5:1. His rendering here is: “as emigrants go forth,” in the costume and garb of emigrants, combining, as he does, “bag on shoulder, staff in hand,” with their being “sad, and their heads drooping” (Num_33:2).
Eze_12:5 describes more minutely the bringing forth of the stuff in question (Eze_12:4). The prophet is to break for himself a hole for the purpose (וְהוֵצאתָ, as in Eze_12:4) in the wall, i.e. of course, of his house, perhaps a clay wall; for were it to be the city wall of Tel-Abib, as Hengstenberg, in the interest of his “subjectivity” of the symbolic action, asserts, thereby throwing into confusion the occurrence and the text, then it must, especially with this detailed description here, have been expressed more definitely. Hengstenberg makes Ezekiel bring his baggage as far as the city wall, and when the darkness came on, break a hole through it, etc. The text, on the other hand, makes the breaking through of a hole in the house wall (instead of the usual exit by the house door), for bringing forth the stuff, take place, like the bringing forth itself (Eze_12:4), before their eyes, consequently in clear daylight, since the taking up upon the shoulder (Eze_12:6), though happening also “before their eyes,” has to take place (comp. Eze_12:4) “at even,” both as distinguished from בָּעֲלָטָה (עֲלָטָה, from עָלָט, the restrained light), in thick darkness (Gen_15:17). It may be taken for granted that Ezekiel, with this breaking through, for which he is not forbidden to use a tool, will have the whole day to do it. Neither Klief. nor Keil has correctly apprehended the course of the action. As Eze_12:6 portrays sufficiently the departure of Ezekiel himself, when he puts his goods and chattels on his shoulder, there is no need for understanding the Hiphil תּוֹצִיא intransitively, or for supplying נַפְשְׁךָ. Moreover, by the expression is meant the emigration with bag and baggage from his own place to “another” (Eze_12:3); hence the complete departure, as distinguished from וְהוֹצֵאתָ, like תֵּצֵא and וְהוֹצֵאתָ in Eze_12:4. It corresponds to the darkness about him that he is to cover his face besides; and in this way the expression כְּמוֹצָאֵי גוֹלָה (Eze_12:4) is explained for us, inasmuch as emigrants’ departures usually take place with shame and sorrow, which do not allow themselves to be seen, and which will no longer cast a look on the home that is to be forsaken (2Sa_15:30). Yet the land which he is not to see (comp. Eze_12:12-13) is perhaps still more that to which he is going forth. Hence Eze_12:5-6 are two parallel (לְעֵינֵיהֶם—לְעֵינֵיהֶם) and more minutely descriptive statements as regards Eze_12:4.—מוֹפֵת (either from יָפָה, “something shining,” similar to the derivation of the German “Wunder” (miracle), or from an assumed root יָפַת, what is suddenly “turned,” singularly “twisted,” “turned away” from what is usual), therefore, not merely אוֹת, simply a significant sign, but specially a sign of a divine sort, and that, in the sense of our context, equivalent to τύπος, Psa_71:7. In this word there meet together the superhuman (miraculous) character alike of the purport and of the cause, the surprising character of the spectacle, as well as the manner of working of the astonishment and the typical object in view.
In Eze_12:7 Ezekiel reports as to his execution of the divine command, whose objective reality Keil admits in the case before us. The report of the prophet is a recapitulation, in which the points of time (by day, at even, in the darkness) form the salient points, to which, without keeping up the order of succession as to the rest (since this is certainly contained in the preceding command of God, according to which Ezekiel acted), the detail with reference to the interpretation (of the symbolical action) which follows is attached. As in what follows the double reference—to the people as a whole, and to the prince in particular—comes out, so Ezekiel makes prominent in his report, (1) what is the thing which is impending over them in general (my baggage, etc., as emigrants’ baggage, by day), and (2) in what way the prince personally gets out, viz. by breaking through in the night-time. Accordingly, because of the significance attached to the digging through the wall, which may possibly be indicated even in Eze_12:5 by the expression חַתָר־לךָ, and which becomes complete only when the prophet himself comes through the hole in the wall, he connects his day’s work with his own departure at even. בְּיָד is meant to express in general the idea: with my own hand, as contrasted with the help of others. The emphasis lies on the personal element in the action. As distinguished from: I brought forth … by day, the expression: I brought forth in the darkness, refers to the removing from out of the dwelling-place. לְעֵינֵיהֶם at the close adjusts the execution of the command to the object in view, and at the same time to the explanation which follows; and for this reason the thing which lies nearest and is still visible, although occurring before the complete “darkness” of the departure properly so called, viz. the taking up upon the shoulder at even, is mentioned. The transaction is (and this is also Umbreit’s view) to be conceived of in this way: the elders (Ezekiel 8.) might have left the house of the prophet. In accordance with what has been remarked at the commencement of the chapter, the impression made by Ezekiel’s disclosures (Eze_11:25) may have been but slight, or not lasting. Just then a hole is opened in the wall of his house, ever growing wider and wider. It is easily understood how the multitude gathers from curiosity. Perhaps late in the afternoon of the day, what a man can carry of household furniture is brought out through the opening in the wall. At even the prophet himself steps forth, loads himself with the emigrant’s baggage, and takes his departure, with his head covered, in the midst of total darkness, etc., from Tel-Abib for some other place.
Eze_12:8 assigns the divine word of interpretation to the early morning of next day. Comp. 2Ch_36:15.
Eze_12:9. הְַלֹא (as against Klief., who does not admit a question at all) presupposes that they have asked Ezekiel for the meaning of what he has done. By means of the expression: house of Israel, the exiles are put on an equal footing with those in Jerusalem; just as by means of the expression: the house of rebelliousness (see on Eze_12:2), they are at the same time characterized as regards their disposition while putting the question. Therefore Ezekiel is, in reply to what they have said unto him, in Eze_12:10 to say unto them what Jehovah says. He has answered them the evening before by silence (Eze_3:27), and has merely done as he was commanded (Eze_12:7).—הַנָּשִׂיא, either passively: “he who has been lifted up” or: “he who lifts himself up.”—Hengst.: “one on whom something is laid, who is burdened with the government, which he bears, as it were, on his shoulder,” Isa_9:6 (?)—as בִּירוּשַָׁלִם shows, the king (Eze_7:27) Zedekiah. There is an unmistakable play upon the word הַנָּשִׂיא in הַמַּשָּׂא, which (likewise derived from נָשָׂא) means: the lifting up, and, without our being obliged with all the expositors to think of the meaning “sentence” (judicial utterance of God) or “burden” (threatening prediction), as elsewhere, refers simply to the statement (Eze_12:7): עַל כָּתֵף נָשָׂאתִי, which paves the way for the interpretation. Comp. the Syriac translation. Hence the meaning is: this lifting up on the shoulder of emigrants’ stuff on my part means the prince. The meaning is not (as Hengst.): “prince and burden, as it were, cover each other,” so that he is wholly swallowed up by misfortune, the crushing burden leaves nothing of him remaining; but this: the prince is what the prophet represents by his action. The exalted personage in Jerusalem, still seated on a regal throne, and this lifting up of mere emigrants’ baggage, impressively confront each other. Thus a day, an evening, a night changes everything! [Commonly (and so Eng. Vers.): the prince is the subject of this burden or of this sentence. Hitzig refers to Jer_23:33; but Kliefoth: this burden-bearing, undertaken as a sign, concerns the prince and the house of Israel (as accusatives!). Ewald: “O thou crown-bearer of this burden in Jerusalem, and those of the whole house of Israel who are in its midst!” הַנָּשִׂיא being imagined to be in the construct state to what follows.] Because emigration is to be the common lot, the people are added to the king, and in fact the whole house of Israel (according to the older expositors: those out of the ten tribes who had fled to Jerusalem), among whom, especially as having already emigrated, the fellow-exiles of Ezekiel are included (בְּתוֹכָם, like אְַשֶׁר, referring to the house of Israel); or better, because of what follows, as Hengstenberg does, referring the suffix to Jerusalem or its inhabitants, inasmuch as there was yet another house of Israel; Eze_11:15.—Quite evidently he speaks now of the fate of the whole in Eze_12:11. With the expression: “your wonder-sign,” the exiles (in conformity with Eze_12:6), for whom it is meant in the first place, are addressed; while לָהֶם refers to those at Jerusalem, hence also, perhaps, הֵמָּה in Eze_12:10.—כֵּן יֵעָשֶׂה לָהֶם might also mean: so will it be done by them. In any case it is an explanation of what precedes. בַּגּוֹלָה בַשְּׁבִי, an emphatic asyndeton: it will be no voluntary, but a compulsory emigration.
Eze_12:12. The king specially. אְַשֶׁר בְּתוֹכָם, the reference being undoubted, confirms the interpretation we have preferred of בְתוֹכָם אְַשֶׁר־הֵמָּה. So also אֶל־כָּתֵף יִשּׂא confirms our view of וְיֵצֵא—ּהַנָּשִׂיא הַמַּשָּׂא הַוֶּה, then, etc., lingering over the picture of the moment. Keil, like Klief., against the accents: “he will lift it up in the darkness and will go forth.” יַחְחְרוּ, i.e. the attendants, his suite. (Rosenm.: in order to bring him forth.) The prediction of what is recorded as having happened some years later (Jer. 39. 52.; 2 Kings 25). As the lifting up upon the shoulder of the baggage does not necessarily indicate any selfish grasping at the valuables, but may symbolize the emigration, so the breaking through the wall does not necessarily mean this in a literal sense but the haste and hurry of the flight by the speediest available route; and just as little have we to prove the covering of his face to be historical. Besides, the latter was among the circumstances, as is understood of itself, suggested by prudence even; pain or shame is not to be thought of at all. Comp. on Eze_12:6. Certainly there was yet another object in view beyond that, which had influence, as is expressed in Eze_12:13. לַעַיִן and the הוּא placed after it draw attention to something peculiar, and אֶת־הָאָרֶץ is the land of the Chaldeans. (Eze_12:13.) The being taken prisoner,—in addition to the emigration (Eze_12:11),—which, the prophet had not prefigured, is depicted by means of the figurative mode of speech borrowed from the catching of fish, from the chase (Isa_19:8; Jer_16:16). In spite of his hasty, violent flight, he does not escape his fate; like the darkness of night, the holy penal order of the Judge and Avenger in heaven is laid around him. Umbreit, who views the breaking through the wall as a breaking forth from the city perforated by the enemy, finds in the circumstance that the king shall not see the land of the Chaldeans, his full and complete imprisonment expressed.—To Babylon, etc., is the “other place” of Eze_12:3.—In how far the king would not see the land where he was to die, must remain incomprehensible for so long, until the blinding (a common punishment with the Persians, and probably also with the Babylonians, for the dethroned) of Zedekiah at Riblah, after he had been caught in his nocturnal flight not far from Jericho, by the Chaldeans, made it palpable to the senses.
Eze_12:14. What is round about him may be the attendants fleeing along with the king, and his help may perhaps be the hoped-for Egyptian help. עֶזְרֹה (עְזְרוֹ) is a play upon words with אֲגַפִּים ּאֱזָרֶה, only in the plural, and peculiar to Ezekiel; according to Gesen.: “wings” (Isa_8:8); according to Hitzig: “bands,” the whole military power, with which a king stands or falls. Comp. Jer_40:7; Jer_40:12; Jer_52:8. We may compare besides, Eze_5:2; Eze_5:10; Eze_5:12.
Eze_12:15. Eze_5:13; Eze_6:8.
Eze_12:16. Eze_6:8. Men of number—Hitzig: that may be counted. Few in comparison with Eze_12:14.—Comp. on Ezekiel 5, 6.—Narrators of their guilt with the knowledge gained from experience of the holy punitive justice of God. [Rosenm., Hitzig, and others refer the refrain thus repeated to the heathen! Klief. translates: “count,” that they shall ponder their sins one by one thoroughly!]
The second and connected sign which is introduced in Eze_12:17, like the preceding one in Eze_12:1, but which has along with it its divine interpretation without an introduction, as is the case in Eze_12:8, depicts (with an allusion to Eze_4:16) the misery of the inhabitants, just as the interpretation by the word of Jehovah (similarly to Eze_6:14) announces the misery of the land inhabited by them.
Eze_12:18. Bread and water, not exactly scanty food (Klief.), but merely the food that is necessary. The significant thing, however, is the quaking, trembling, and anxiety which the prophet’s expression of countenance, appearance, and demeanour must have expressed during the carrying out of the divine command (which is not indeed narrated, because understood as a matter of course). The people of the land in Eze_12:19, those addressed, are the poor, wretched Jewish people in Chaldea (Eze_12:12-13); according to Cocc., the message is meant for the heathen, that these might not ascribe the fate of the Jews to their Bel, inasmuch as Jehovah has caused it to be represented three years before by Ezekiel.—Comp. besides Eze_12:10. The inhabitants of Jerusalem may possibly be (in accordance with Eze_11:15) those who at the time were still there, although in the condition during the impending siege (so Hengst.). But in connection with the preceding sign they are rather the poorest remnants of the people still remaining on the soil of Israel (אֲדָמָה, comp. on Eze_7:2) after the flight of the king and the leading captive of the people, Jer_39:10; Jer_52:16. And such an explanation corresponds also with what follows. לְמַעַן (Eze_4:17) is meant (according to Hitzig) to be a particle assigning the reason: because their land, stripped of its fulness, will become stiff; that is to say, their torpid amazement mirrors forth the motionless stiffening of the land. Certainly with more correctness, and more in accordance with the context: their misery will cause the land’s also (אַרְצָהּ, i.e. Jerusalem’s), which is the design of Jehovah; they will in their anxiety and anguish content themselves with mere necessaries (bread and water), and not cultivate its fruitfulness, etc. According to the other explanation, the invasion of the enemy will leave the land waste behind them. Comp. besides Eze_7:23; Eze_8:17.
Eze_12:20. Eze_6:6.—Cocc. (comp. above) refers the clause: “and ye know,” etc., to the heathen, the Chaldeans, just as in Eze_12:16.
DOCTRINAL REFLECTIONS
1. When Stephen (according to Act_7:51) brings the charge against the Jews, that they were always resisting (ἀντιπίπτειν—using this strong and, in the New Testament, unusual expression) the Holy Ghost, that they, like their fathers, were stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, we need not, with the expositors since Hävernick, fall back upon Deu_29:3 [Deu_29:4]; and this the less, as the meaning is certainly somewhat different in this so-called fundamental passage. In Isa_6:9-10 it may be made use of as a text; Ezekiel, like Jeremiah (Jer_5:21 sq.), has to do with the bad national character of the Jewish people. The “perverse will” is brought into special prominence by both prophets, as Hävernick remarks, continuing as follows: “a feature which runs through their whole history, down to the appearance of the Redeemer.” But who will be able to deny that in this way, in the bad character of the Jews as a nation, the corrupt nature of fallen humanity as a whole is portrayed? This people have merely exhibited it carried to its farthest consequences, inasmuch as they were placed in a position, by means of the law and the prophets, and lastly God’s Son, where they must either let their wills be broken or ruin themselves. But then, farther, as the Jews are a standing historical decision with respect to natural men, so, on the other hand, in contrast with their national character (here also: “perhaps they will see?”), we have mirrored forth all the riches of divine long-suffering and patience. “Ye would not,”—this on the one hand; but on the other: “how often would I have gathered thy children together!” (Mat_23:37.) The mirror of human perversity is at the same time the mirror of divine grace, Rom_5:20.
2. “If any one is so far enlightened that he is able to see and understand what is necessary, then it may be said that he has eyes to see, etc. The natural (unregenerate) man perceiveth not, etc. (1Co_2:14). But any one may also be so far enlightened that he sees much, and by this means he may be brought to see what is necessary to be seen; and especially that he recognises the word which contains the true wisdom as being God’s word. Those who have come this length may, however, neither see nor hear what is necessary to be seen and heard, in so far as they cannot rightly judge of what they see and hear, through the opposition of their fleshly wisdom, which perverts God’s words. Such parties no longer err in the usual way, but are hardened, so that they fancy their error is God’s word. They are also difficult to cure. The cause of one’s not understanding God’s word is disobedience. For fleshly wisdom and the love, of it is in truth disobedience” (Cocc.).
3. From the importance which is attached in the history of the Jews, in a good as well as a bad sense, yea, in the highest sense (i.e. the Messianic), to the king, in asking whom (1 Sam.) the people at first expressed their wish to be “like the other nations,” we can understand the express symbolical representation, in this special and preeminent way, of the fate of Zedekiah. “The mass of mischief is concentrated first of all in the king,” for which Hävernick adduces as a farther reason “the existing circumstances,” among which “the political faithlessness and dishonesty of the king, as well as his anti-theocratic conduct, his idolatry, his mockery of all prophetic warnings and threatenings,” were prominent, “although he was in Jerusalem and among the exiles the idol of trust.” Hengst. in this connection designates the king as “the centre of their dreams of the future, which were preventing repentance.”
4. The prediction in our chapter—of which Tholuck (The Prophets and their Predictions, p. 108) gives the following estimate, that “against the prophetic character of the passage no critical objection is raised from any quarter; the genuineness of the book and the integrity of the passage are beyond a doubt; that divergent interpretations found no place; and that reference is made merely to its fulfilment according to the authentic testimony of history”—ought properly to have been removed from all the attempts at half or wholly naturalistic interpretation, by the repeated divine explanation that it is a “mopheth” (see the explanation of the word at Eze_12:6). Nevertheless, while Eichhorn and Hitzig decree simply a prophecy after the event, and while Ewald makes it out that the prophet had happy presages, correct foresight, Umbreit attempts as far as possible to keep the text free from what might press us to the acceptance of a supernatural prediction. On the other hand, Josephus even (Antiq. x. 10. 11) has in his mind our prophetic testimony when he tells us how Zedekiah may not have been able to give credence to Ezekiel, because he said that the king would not see Babylon, whereas Jeremiah had prophesied Jo him that he would be carried captive thither. To Nitzsch, the prediction of occurrences resting on divine communication is neither so impossible as Cicero asserted it, nor so useless or even hurtful as Kant attempted to show. The prediction sustains interest in this way, by announcing a result which could not have been known beforehand by any human means. Even in the case where the foreknowledge is of no use, it may yet awaken a wholesome attention, and, confirmed by the result, it may, by producing a testimony for persons and affairs, come to serve important ends in other directions. J. D. Michaelis holds the view that the exact announcement beforehand was of service against the communis sensus of polytheism at the time, when even among the Jews the faith in one God alone kept its ground only in a sickly way, as being to every one an easily understood and irrefragable confirmation of the true religion. One may have recourse to the genius of great minds, their far - reaching historical glance in certain cases; may lay stress upon the secret power of divination in the human mind, the connection of the human conscience with the judicial steps of the moral order of the world (Herzog, Realencycl. xvii. 640 sq.); but what Ezekiel here expresses in symbol, he knows he has received from Jehovah’s mouth, and every criticism of this consciousness runs the risk either of accusing the prophet of self-deception, or even of making him a hypocritical deceiver, especially where a chapter like the 13th follows.
HOMILETIC HINTS
Eze_12:1 sq.: “We ought not, therefore, to allow ourselves to be deterred either by the view that we ourselves and the doctrine which we teach would be rejected, or even by the impression that we would be engaged in something ridiculous” (Calv.).—“Rebelliousness does not spring from weakness, but from wickedness” (Stck.).—“How many there are who are sharpsighted in earthly and temporal things, and who know how to turn everything prudently to their own advantage, but who, on the other hand, in what is spiritual, are found to the last degree blind and stupid, as well as incapable of faith! Hence they have ears likewise to hearken to what pleases the flesh, and to the talk and lies of the false prophets, but they have no ears to hear God’s voice. They hear and hear, but not with obedience and faith” (Berl. Bib.).—“They had ears to hear, because from youth up they were instructed in the law of God, and the threatenings were held up before them by the prophets” (Calv.).—The natural blindness and deafness of man in spiritual things causing God to proclaim His word. The wilful blindness and intentional deafness of him who yields to God with suffering and affliction. The blindness and deafness which God hangs as punishment over the hardened sinner.
Eze_12:3 sq. “Perhaps they will see?” Thus God leaves nothing untried: this is the exercise of His long-suffering and patience.—“When we see that others are falling into misfortune, trouble, adversity, we ought to reflect: This is a sign to me, and ought to apply it to our own improvement, Luk_13:2-3” (Würtemb. Bib.).
Eze_12:5. “What fear can do ! For it no door was high enough or broad enough; in their flight they ofttimes squeeze themselves through the most miserable wretched hole” (Stck.).
Eze_12:6. The earthly mind will see only the earth—nay, such an one will at length become earth; yet, when the eye is darkened, and the gloom of death covers everything, he will no longer see even the earth.
Eze_12:7. “Such things would call to mind the days of Noah and Lot” (Calv.).
Eze_12:8. God’s grace is new every morning. They who seek Him early find Him; and those who ask after Him will be answered by Him.
Eze_12:9. There is something precious about a right question.
Eze_12:10. “Princes are called exalted, but certainly not because they are to exalt themselves; for He that is enthroned in heaven knows how to humble princes even” (Stck.).—“Every ruler, prince, or king, however little he may have taken up upon his shoulders, will at least be compelled to bear the burden of his sins and the wrath of God, which will fall heavily enough upon him, provided the burden of his duties has been sitting easily upon him” (Berl. Bib.).—“God does not overlook the mighty even when they sin, but makes them feel His heavy hand” (Starke).—God’s judgment on a laud embraces prince and people alike, although a people may also have God’s judgment already in their prince, and a prince may have it in his people.
Eze_12:12. “The ungodly walk about with a bold countenance, but in the judgment they will conceal it” (Stck.).
Eze_12:13. First the net of pleasure and vanity, then the net of death and hell.—“He that lives wildly is hunted and taken like the wild beasts” (Stck.).—God a fisher and hunter.
Eze_12:14. “Of what avail to the sinner all his imagined succours and pretended helpers?” (Stck.)—We will by and by withdraw our confidence from all creatures.—The Eternal blew, and the Armada was scattered to all the winds of heaven.—“If God is our enemy, we have no friend in heaven or upon earth” (Stck.).
Eze_12:15. Alas that we should become wise only by injury, and should come to know God only from experience of punishment, instead of tasting and thus seeing how good the Lord is!
Eze_12:16. Thus it is that God receives honour because of His righteousness, when His grace is despised.—“God blesses the chastisements which He sends forth upon His people to unbelievers also” (Starke).
Eze_12:18. “Only those who have their standing in grace can eat their bread without fear and carefulness” (Starke).—It is not in vain that Christ has taught us the petition: Give us this day our daily bread.—“A verse which we may read with profit in the midst of plenty” (Stck.).
Eze_12:19. “That one is able to eat and drink in rest and peace is a great benefit from God, but one that is not known by the thousandth part of men” (Starke).—“Jerusalem and her inhabitants are eloquent orators, and preach with unction” (Stck.).
Eze_12:20. “If one will not learn to know God from His benefits, then he must often do so in the midst of punishment, Dan_4:30-31” (Starke).—Thus the wilderness was Israel’s school, and became Israel’s judgment.
3. The Near Execution of the Punishment (Eze_12:21 to Eze_24:27).
1. The Repeated Preliminary Announcement (Eze_12:21-28)
21And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, 22Son of man, what [meaneth] this proverb of yours upon the land of Israel, saying, The days are prolonged; 23and every vision comes to nought? Say unto them therefore, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel: but speak unto them, The days are at hand, and the word of every vision. 24For there shall be no more any vision 25of deceit nor flattering divination in the midst of the house of Israel. For I, Jehovah, will speak whatever word I will speak, and it will [shall] come to pass; it shall be no more prolonged, for [but] in your days, O house of rebelliousness, I will speak a word, and perform it: sentence of the Lord Jehovah. 26And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, 27Son of man, behold the house of Israel, who say, The vision that he seeth is for many days, and he prophesieth for [of] times afar off. 28Therefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: There shall none of my words be prolonged any more; the word which I shall speak shall be done: sentence of the Lord Jehovah.
Eze_12:24. Sept.: ... και μαντευομενος τα προς χαριν.—(Another read.: ומקסם חדל, and divination shall cease. בני ישׂ, all the versions.)
EXEGETICAL REMARKS
Announcement of the end as one that is near, and that repeated (Eze_12:26 sq.). For after the wind-up, as it were, which precedes, with the misery coming upon land and people, there remained only the announcement of the same, preliminary to its near occurrence. Hitherto it has been a going back upon Ezekiel 6, now we have a return to what was said in Ezekiel 7.
Eze_12:22. Derived as it is from a verb meaning: to go before, to lead, to preside,—to represent something, to signify,—to pronounce a sentence, etc., מָשָׁל is equivalent to “maxim,” the form being always that of similitude, proverb, derisive verse (Isa_14:4). Here also not without the derisive element. The common saying, in which the current sentiment among those still dwelling in the land of Israel (Eze_12:19) had found for itself suitable expression (beati possidentes), derided the Eternal in His prophets by means of the comfort of the time, that the time is passing away, and what was alleged to be seen in vision is passing away with it; as nothing is coming out of it, so neither shall there be anything in it. The days that are being prolonged may refer to Jeremiah’s long ago uttered prediction of ruin; comp. too on Eze_11:3.—לָכֶם combines the prophet with the mockers, as being his people. On such fellowship of the servants of God with their people is based at last in a pre-eminent sense the relation of the incarnate Son of God to the human race (Exo_16:28).
Eze_12:23. הִשְׁבַּתִּי, prophetic preterite: “to bring to rest;” after the trouble they give themselves, their inventive labours, comes the Sabbath of Jehovah (Gen_2:1 sq.).—Are at hand (Eze_9:1; Eze_11:3), in contrast with the preceding: “are prolonged,”—וּדְבַר כָּל חָזוֹן, the verbal contents of every vision of His prophets,—the word, and the thing meant by the word. Keil rightly: the days in which every predicted word shall be realized. (Hengst: “as against a merely partial fulfilment, as if the prophets had exaggerated somewhat,” etc.)
Eze_12:24. As there is also a false (2Pe_2:1) prophecy (שָׁוְא),—mere divination (מִקְסָם), which deceives in the way of flattery with its smoothness,—the divinely inspired prophecy is distinguished first of all from it, as the following contrast shows, and as will, of course, be shown still more in Ezekiel 13. There shall be no more, etc., is parallel with: “and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel” (Eze_12:23): that mocking proverb had taken shape with the help of the false prophecy in Israel. Hence in Eze_12:25 a co-ordinate or resumed כִּי. The disjunctive accent (rebii) over יְהוֹה makes “I Jehovah” a sentence by itself, so that the Author of true prophecy sets Himself face to face with the false. In like manner, pashta at the end of אְַדַבֵּר acts as a disjunctive, while the conjunctive telisha-kethannah with אֵת׳ connects what follows. Jehovah reserves for Himself uncontrolled power to speak, and almighty power to make it good. And with this is joined the statement that there will be no farther delay, no longer postponement (with reference to that proverb): in your days (Mat_16:28; Mat_24:34), therefore with a subjective, personal application. Such a fulfilment of the divine prediction will at the same time be the end of the false divination, which by this very means is covered with disgrace. In some sense also the I Jehovah, as being Messianic, is contrasted with preceding prophecy in general. Comp. besides on Eze_12:2, Eze_11:8.
In Eze_12:27 there follows the more objective application, referring to the matter itself. The statement that if there is a prophecy at all that will yet be fulfilled, it at all events refers to times that are far off (Dan_8:26; Dan_8:17), is rejected by the Lord as regards Ezekiel. Before it was a mockery of Jehovah, here we have a mockery of His prophet rather in the words quoted.
Eze_12:28. See as to the feminine תִּמָּשֵׁךְ here, as in Eze_12:25, Ewald, Gram. § 295a.
DOCTRINAL REFLECTIONS
1. The significance of prophecy and its fulfilment for the divine credibility of the prophetic testimonies, and thus of Holy Scripture generally, has been understood by Apologetics from the beginning. See Keith’s Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion derived from the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy. Besides, already in Deu_18:21-22, the fulfilment of what has been predicted is put as a characteristic mark of genuine prophecy.
2. If the absolute and almighty power which God attributes to Himself in the section before us, as contrasted with false divination, is our creed, then the word of prophecy ranks with the word of creation, and what serves as an argument for the divine sovereignty in the latter connection is not less an argument in the former. By the word of the Eternal were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth (Psa_33:6). The living God is also the law of prophecy as regards its fulfilment.
3. What is accepted as true of the divine power in Creation comes to be applied for the fulfilment of prophecy still more by faith in Divine Providence, the co-operation and government of God. The Eternal (“Jehovah,” Eze_12:25) is not merely the God of the beginning and the end, of the origin and the goal, but also He who is co-existent with the life of the world and specially of mankind. It is the divine element in and mixed up with the history of the world with which prophecy has to do. But this is not merely the eternal idea, which is continually realizing itself anew, so that what refers to time and place would in comparison with it have to be regarded as the mere form of representation, but this divine element is alike the real which is predicted, and the necessary which is prophesied. As respects the divine decree, which because of sin has developed itself from the world-plan of the Creator into the counsel of salvation in Christ for the world, things small and great may be distinguished; but because both are serviceable in carrying out the decree of God, both alike are divine, and therefore suitable for prophecy.
4. It is of importance, however, as respects the delay, as respects the postponement, e.g. of the realization of the prophecies of judgment, that there is a correspondence between the prolonging of the days and the divine long-suffering and forbearance (2Pe_3:9), as in the case before us in Ezekiel. The prophecy of judgment is besides a preaching of repentance, so that if it produces the repentance which it preaches, the fulfilment of the prophecy may be hindered. But even apart from such conditionality lying in the thing itself, other circumstances, always, however, willed by God, may give to a prophecy the character of perspective foreshortening.
5. “Prophecy was an act of faith; it likewise demanded faith. And as what true prophecy insisted on above all was conversion of heart, it resisted the sinful consciousness and life of unbelief, and was resisted by it (Amo_6:3). It is the nature of sin to reckon itself to be no sin, and hence as far as possible to break up the connection and separate between sin and punishment” (Häv.).
ADDITIONAL NOTE
[“We cannot but think with wonder, when we look back upon the times of these Old Testament prophets, of the obstinate incredulity and measureless content in which so many of the people seem to have shut themselves up, alike in defiance of the most solemn warnings of God, and in spite of several lowering appearances in Providence, which seemed to give no doubtful indications of a coming storm. … But it is well for us to bear in mind, that the spirit of unbelief and false security, which prevailed so extensively then, is ever springing forth anew, and is plainly announced in New Testament Scripture as destined to form a distinguishing characteristic of the last times. It was a significant question of our Lord, and evidently pointed to the great defect in this respect that should discover itself before the consummation of all things, ‘When the Son of man comes, shall He find faith in the earth?’ Such faith, namely, as He had been speaking of,—faith realizing in firm confidence the certainty of the Lord’s manifestation to put a final end to the evils that afflict His Church, and in this confidence waiting, hoping, praying to the last. The apostle Peter also still more distinctly intimates in his second epistle what might be looked for: ‘There shall come in the last days, scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world.’ It will readily be understood that the danger from this source to this faith of God’s elect will always be the greater, the more the time is lengthened out that is to intervene between the first and second coming of the Lord. For time, which is justly said to try all things, in this respect also tries faith, that it silently impairs in men’s minds the foundation on which faith rests—the word of God. In common with other things of meaner value, this, too, seems to wax old as time proceeds, and to become, the longer it is in use, the less in power and value. Even already it is looked upon by many as comparatively antiquated, out of date; the facts of which it testifies are but faintly descried in the distant past; centuries have rolled away since they took place and were put on record; and the record itself has been so long in existence, so frequently handled, and so fully discussed, that, with those to whom nothing is interesting but what possesses the freshness of novelty, the sacred volume, so far from being able to nourish and support a living faith, has itself become stale and dead.
“Thus it is that natural men judge of God’s word, as if, like their own productions, it were subject to wasting and decay. They know not that this word of God, being the expression of His own eternal nature, has in it what lives and abides for ever,—what is as new and fresh to the heart of faith still, as the very moment when, ages ago, it proceeded from the lips of those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Then, along with a prevailing ignorance or forgetfulness of this great truth, there is the fascinating influence which is apt to be wielded over men’s minds by the onward movements of society in knowledge and civilisation. Here they find an attractive contrast to the stationary character of the ground and objects of faith. For everything in this lower field seems constantly in progress, and big with hope for the future. It is deemed incredible, that while such vital powers are at work, and such a career of advancement is in prospect, God should lay a sudden arrest on the vast machinery, and wind up the affairs of the world by bringing in the fixed and final issues of eternity. Nay, the belief of a personal God, separate from the workmanship of his own hands, and capable of suddenly introducing a state of things altogether new, is, in many quarters, fast giving way. In a new and peculiarly subtle form, the old carnal and idolatrous tendencies are reviving, impiously commingling the divine and human, identifying the creature with the Creator. And, judging from present appearances, there is too much reason to conclude that, precisely as before Christ came to execute judgment upon Jerusalem, a rage for worldly saviours was one of the reigning delusions of the time, so, as the period draws on for His coming to execute judgment upon the world, a like rage will prevail for a worldly gospel,—one that will seek to confound heaven and earth, God and man, and, in a manner, possibly even more daring and presumptuous than in the Papacy, will dispose man to ‘exalt himself in the temple of God, and show himself that he is God.’ What need, then, for those who would escape the condemnation of the wicked, to look well to the foundation of their faith, and to see that this stands not in the wisdom of man, but in the word of God! How careful should each be to dwell beside the fountain of Israel! For times of trial manifestly are coming, in which they only who are taught of God, and kept by the power of His Spirit, can expect to resist the swelling tide of delusion, and maintain even the appearance of godliness.”—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel, pp. 124–126.—W. F.]
HOMILETIC HINTS
Eze_12:22. “God spares the ungodly, and thereby invites them to repentance. But what is it they do? They scoff at the servants of God, and reckon their words to be idle tales” (Heim-Hoff.).—“Thus they despised the riches of divine goodness and forbearance and long-suffering, and instead of allowing themselves to be led thereby to repentance, after their hardness and impenitent heart they treasured up unto themselves wrath, etc., Rom_2:4-5, 2Pe_3:4” (Cocc.).
Eze_12:23. The Sabbath which awaits the proverbs of the world, when every tongue which has not suffered itself to be hallowed to the Lord shall be hallowed to the Lord by the judgment of condemnation. To be compelled to confess that Jesus is Lord is indeed a terrible Sabbath, if one has not otherwise hallowed Him.—The lying mouths which God’s word cannot stop are removed by God’s deeds.
Eze_12:24. “Prophecy and roughness, these go hand in hand among a sinful people” (Hengst.).—“If Jesus, who came after the Babylonian captivity, had been a false prophet, or His disciples, as the Jews assert, then must the promise of this verse have been false” (Cocc.).—“And so also shall all flattering representations of a flourishing state of the Church, which have sprung from reason and fleshly learning, come to an end” (Berl. Bib.).
Eze_12:27-28 : “What God says we are not to separate’ ‘from its fulfilment, because God who speaks is not in Himself divided; when He opens His mouth, He stretches out His hand at the same time to the work, so that the hand itself is in a manner included in the word” (Calv.).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27 stuff for removing--rather, "an exile's outfit," the articles proper…
stuff for removing--rather, "an exile's outfit," the articles proper to a person going as an exile, a staff and knapsack, with a supply of food and clothing; so "instruments of captivity," Jer 46:19, Margin, that is, the needful equipments for it. His simple announcements having failed, he is symbolically to give them an ocular demonstration conveyed by a word-painting of actions performed in vision.
consider-- (Deu 32:29).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 21, 23, 26 2. Which have eyes to see, and see not…
2. Which have eyes to see, and see not — This rebellious nation (Eze_2:3; Eze_2:8; Eze_3:26-27) have had their eyes blinded and their ears deafened by their rebellion (Isa_6:9; Isa_42:20; Jer_5:21; Mat_13:14-15). They have seared their consciences and deadened their moral perception until even the prophecies just uttered have not moved them to faith and reformation. This is true not only of the hopeless Israelites in Jerusalem now, forsaken by Jehovah, but of many even of the true Israel who are in exile. (See notes Eze_11:16-21.) They need simpler and more impressive picture-sermons to bring them to a conscious recognition of their spiritual condition and the fate which awaits impenitence — even the destruction of the holy city.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28 2. The people of Israel among whom the prophet…
2. The people of Israel among whom the prophet dwells is a rebellious house (ch. Eze_2:3; Eze_2:6-8, Eze_3:26-27). His former signs meet with no belief from them. They have eyes but see not: they behold events and history with their bodily eyes, but fail to discern the moral meaning in them. Events are just events to them, the nature of the God who animates the events remains undiscovered by them (Isa_6:9; Isa_42:20; Jer_5:21; Mar_8:18). And the signs and words of the prophet make no impression on them; they say, “Doth he not speak parables?” (ch. Eze_20:49). Therefore new signs must be given them (Eze_12:4).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 (2) A rebellious house.—Comp. Deu_1:26; Rom_10:21. The seeing not…
(2) A rebellious house.—Comp. Deu_1:26; Rom_10:21. The seeing not and hearing not is that perverse refusing to see and to hear so often spoken of in Scripture. (See Deu_29:4; Isa_6:9; Jer_5:21; Mat_13:14-15.) It was because of this disposition that the prophet was to give them a sign to which they could not shut their eyes.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 The word of the Lord, etc. This formula, so…
The word of the Lord, etc. This formula, so familiar in Isaiah and Jeremiah, appears for the first time in Ezekiel, but occurs repeatedly afterwards, especially in this chapter. (vers. 8, 17, 21, 26 and again Eze_13:1 Eze_14:2, et al. ) The teaching by "the visions of God" ceases, and that of direct message or symbolic acts is resumed. In each case the point aimed at was the same. The people who heard the one or saw the other were to be taught how utterly groundless was the hope that Jerusalem could hold out against its enemies. The interval between the two was probably a short one, and the new teaching, we may conjecture, had its starting point in the prophecies of a speedy deliverance which were current both at Jerusalem and among the exiles at Babylon.
HOMILIES BY J.D. DAVIES
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Vers. 1-16. The dramatic form of prophecy.
It is of the first moment that men should have right and adequate impressions of the truth. A man"s life is properly moulded through his intelligence. His intelligence moulds his tastes, feeds his emotions, inspires his purposes, directs his life. Clear convictions of truth and duty possess unspeakable value.
I MORAL OBTUSENESS IN MEN IS A GRIEF TO GOD. Eyes have been conferred for the sole reason that men may see; and ears, that they may hear. Yet men often misuse and neglect them. By indulgence in vicious likings they wilfully blind the inner eye and make deaf the inner ear. "None are so blind as those who will not see." "If the eye be evil, the whole body is full of darkness." If the sole channel of truth be choked, the man is the victim of falsehood. This is a grief to God, and he adopts a thousand methods to illumine the dark understanding. He sometimes blinds the eye of sense that the eye of the mind may open. He finds his way into the heart of men through some other avenue hitherto untried; for he who made man will find some method of access to his soul.
II A NOVEL FORM OF PROPHECY A DRAMA IN ACTUAL LIFE. Instruction, as a rule, is addressed to the ear; but for the deaf and for infants it is often addressed to the eye. So, in olden times, God often gave to men an object lesson. We have the narrative of such an event in the fourth chapter, where Ezekiel was required to lie on free side of his body during three hundred and ninety days. When Zedekiah the prophet was summoned to the court of Ahab, to give counsel respecting the projected war, Zedekiah entered the king"s presence furnished with horns of iron. The appearance of these was to add impressiveness to the prophet"s words. So when Paul was journeying for the last time to Jerusalem, Agabus, a prophet, came to him at Caesarea, and, taking Paul"s girdle, bound his own hands and feet, then added, "So shall the Jews bind the man that owneth this girdle." This appeal to the eye by living action strengthens conviction in the minds of spectators of the truth and importance of the message. By every possible method God accommodated himself to the necessities of the people for whom he still designed kindness.
III MEDIATORAL SERVICE BY MAN FOR MEN. The labour of a true prophet is no sinecure. It is the hardest of toil. He must have no care for himself in his solicitude for others. To be a true prophet he must be like-minded with God. The self-forgetful, self sacrificing love of God must flow in his veins. He must be completely devoted to the good of those to whom he is sent. No labour must be accounted arduous, no pain severe, in order to success in his undertaking. Now Ezekiel is required to array himself in an emigrant"s attire; provide himself with the usual baggage for foreign travel; take his staff in his hand; carry his equipment on his shoulder; leave his home in the sight of men, yet with face veiled; and dig a hole through the city wall, to secure exit from the city. To do all this in the town of Tel-Abib would excite public attention, surprise, and wonder. The people would consider the prophet mad. Yet this was the very end God had in view, viz. to arrest attention and to produce reflection. This strange action would indicate the strength of Ezekiel"s faith, and strong faith awakens faith in others. He was willing, like Paul, "to become all things, so that by any means he might save some.
IV INQUIRY LEANS TO CLEARER REVELATION OF TRUTH. The knowledge which man gets in response to inquiry is more appreciated and more pondered than that which is given unasked. A great triumph is gained over the sluggishness of our nature when a spirit of inquiry is stirred within. If a man desires knowledge, it is an omen for good; it is the dawn of blessing. Clearer and fuller information can come through the gateway of the ear than through the gateway of the eye. The people to whom Ezekiel addressed himself were those of the Captivity at Tel-Abib. They were fostering a false hope (aided by vain counsels sent from brethren in Jerusalem) that their captivity would be very brief, and that new political combinations would result in speedy restoration to Palestine. Thus their minds would be disturbed; their simple trust was diverted from God, and they were losing the spiritual benefit which the exile was intended to bring. Inquiry after the truth would lead the way to mental tranquillity and submission. The clear fulfilment of prophecy would strengthen faith in God.
V FOLLY OF ALL EFFORT TO EVADE GOD. In the fourteenth verse we read, "I will scatter toward every wind all that are about to help him, and all his bands." This announcement would embrace the Egyptian host which came to help Zedekiah, as well as his own people. To resist Jehovah is to resist the granite rock. A single word from God ought to suffice in order to obtain our readiest obedience. Patriotism is an excellent virtue in its place, but very often it is only a poor admixture of vanity and selfish ambition. Pious trust and pious obedience are far superior. To be wise we must always be on the side of God. God"s will is supreme, and, in the end, is irresistible. Oneness with that will is life and peace.
VI TO KNOW GOD THIS IS THE FINAL ISSUE. It is instructive to observe how that this is the frequent refrain: "They shall know that I am the Lord." This was a lesson which the Hebrews would not learn in days of prosperity; therefore they were led into the deep shades of adversity to acquire it. The discipline, though severe, was successful. Experience is an excellent school, though a costly one. It cured them of their foolish belief in idols, and wrought in them the conviction that the unseen Jehovah alone was God. Yet in many persons this knowledge was only intellectual. It did not command their affection, nor draw after it spontaneous service. The knowledge of God which becomes to us salvation, is an experimental knowledge. It is knowledge of God as our God our reconciled Father. We know him with personal intimacy. We admit him to the inmost chamber of our hearts. He becomes Emmanuel, i.e. God with us God in us. We grow up into his likeness, We imitate his qualities. We yield to him will and heart and life. D.
HOMILIES BY W. JONES
Vers. 1-16. It parabolic appeal to a rebellious people.
word of the Lord also came unto me, saying, Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house," etc. "Now begin the amplifications," says Hengstenberg, "the marginal notes, so to speak, on the great text in ch. 8-11., which extend to ch. 19., and these terminate in a song, corresponding to the song in the first group in ch. 7. The approaching catastrophe of Jerusalem forms the central point throughout. The prophet is inexhaustible in the announcement of this, as the false patriotism was inexhaustible in its announcements of salvation." We are not certain whether this parable of Ezekiel"s removing was really acted by him or only visional. But we incline to the opinion that it was internal and visional, for the following reasons:
1. This communication (vers. 1-16) refers chiefly to the king and thepeople in Jerusalem, while the prophet dwelt at Tel-Abib. So that so far as the people principally interested in it are concerned, it would be as impressive to them if it took place in the region of the prophet"s soul as if it were outwardly enacted in a country far away from them.
2. The prophet is represented as dwelling in the midst of the people towhom this communication chiefly applies, and as doing these things in their sight; but seeing that he actually dwelt at Tel-Abib on the Chebar, we think that his dwelling and acting spoken of in this chapter must have been visional.
3. If it had been an actual and external occurrence it would not, at least inone respect, have well answered the end designed. That end was to set forth the truth that the king and the people in Jerusalem should be carried into captivity. But inasmuch as Ezekiel was already in exile, if he actually went forth thus from his Babylonian residence, the action would more fitly symbolize the return of the exiles to their own land than the carrying of others into exile. Such a return many of the exiles were hoping for and expecting speedily; and the prophet was not likely to be told to do anything that would encourage the vain expectation. Jeremiah had already written to them, exhorting them to build houses and settle peacefully in the land of their captivity, because they should not return to their own land until seventy years of exile were accomplished. For these reasons we incline to the opinion that the doings of vers. 3-7 were not external and actual, but internal and visional; but, as we have said above, we are not certain of this. Of this we feel assured, that, if they were visional, they were impressed upon the mind of Ezekiel with all the vividness of actual transactions. But, happily, this question does not affect the permanent and universal teachings of the incident. Notice
I THE DEPLORABLE MORAL CONDITION OF REBELLIOUS SINNERS. "Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house," etc.
1. A condition of sad moral obtuseness. "Which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not". (cf. Deu_29:4; Isa_6:9, Isa_6:10) The will of God was made known unto them, and theyhad the mental and moral faculties which are necessary for its apprehension, yet they did not apprehend it; they misapprehended or disregarded it. "When men see, hear, and do not profit by their seeing or hearing, then they neither see nor hear in Scripture sense." In this respect how great is the moral insensibility, not only of the openly profane, but of many who attend the public means of grace! They unite in forms of public worship without any spiritual improvement; they hear the ministry of redemptive truth without any saving impression. They "have eyes to see, and see not; they have cars to hear, and hear not.
2. Moral obtuseness arising from persistent wickedness. "For they are a rebellious house." Their moral insensibility was a consequence of their habitual sin. "The cause is all from themselves; the darkness of the understanding is owing to the stubbornness of the will." The practice of sin blunts the spiritual susceptibilities, tends to destroy the capacity for receiving religious impressions or perceiving spiritual truth; and when fully developed it ends in moral sensibility, and makes a man "past feeling.
II THE PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE OF THE DIVINE EFFORTS FOR THE CONVERSION OF THE WICKED. "Therefore, thou son of man, prepare thee stuff for removing," etc. (ver. 3). Many means had been tried to lead them to repentance, but without a satisfactory result. Still, God does not yet abandon them, but directs that other means shall be tried, saying, "It may be they will consider, though they be a rebellious house." The truth must "be set before their eyes," says Hengstenberg, "in rough, palpable, overpowering reality, if it is to find entrance to their minds, and succeed in emancipating them from those dreams of the future which are preventing their repentance....The greater the weakness of their eyes, the more conspicuous must he the exhibition of the truth." God is unwilling to abandon the wicked to their sin and doom. He has long patience with them, sends to them messenger after messenger, and employs means after means, both various and oft-repeated, in order to lead them to turn from sin to himself. In illustration and confirmation of this, see Eze_33:11; Jer_44:4; Hos_11:8, Hos_11:9; Neh_9:26-31; Mat_21:33-44. And in the incident before us, he not only addresses to them this stirring parable to arrest their attention and awaken their consideration, but he also instructs the prophet to make known to them the interpretation of it, that even the most indifferent and the most insensible might be made acquainted with the truths communicated.
III THE EXTRAORDINARY DIVINE APPEAL TO THE INCONSIDERATE AND REBELLIOUS PEOPLE. This parable (vers. 37) was the Lord"s appeal to the insensible and rebellions people. It does not require any exposition from us, as the inspired interpretation is here given (vers. 8-16), and this also is interpreted by its remarkable fulfilment in history. But we may mark the several stages of the mournful history hero predicted, the fulfilment of which is recorded in 2Ki 25; Jer_39:1-10 Jer_52:1-30.
1. Here is a picture of the king and people of Jerusalem going into captivity. (Vers. 3, 4, 10, 11.) "The stuff for removing," or "baggage of the emigrant" (vers. 3, 4), "is the equipment made by one who enters on a journey never to return." And "as they that go forth into captivity," or "like the removals of the emigrant" (ver. 4), signifies, according to Hengstenberg, "in the costume and with the maimer of emigrants; "with a bag on the shoulder and a staff in the hand;" "sad and with drooping head. Thus Ezekiel was to typify the departure of prince and people into exile.
2. Here is a picture of going into captivity by sorrowful and stealthy flight. (Vers. 5-7, 12.) He is to go forth in the twilight so as to elude the vigilance of the enemies, and with his face covered so as not to see the b loved land which he is leaving. And all the accounts of the flight agree that it was made in fright and furtively under cover of night.
3. Here is a veiled announcement of the kings deprivation of sight and an explicit declaration of his destination as an exile. (Ver. 13.) According to Josephus ("Ant.," 10. 7:2), Ezekiel sent an account of this prophecy to Jerusalem to strengthen the influence of Jeremiah with the king, who was personally considerably disposed to heed the counsel of that prophet. But the king compared the announcements of the two prophets, and finding that while Jeremiah said he should be carried in bonds to Babylon, Ezekiel said he should not see it, he disbelieved both of them. And yet the event showed that both of them were true. The king was carried as a prisoner to Babylon, but he did not see it, for Nebuchadnezzar had put out his eyes at Riblah in the land of Hamath.
4. Here is a declaration that the king should be left without defence or helper. "I will scatter toward every wind all that are about him to help him, and all his bands" (ver. 14). And the sacred historian tells us that when the army of the Chaldeans overtook the fleeing king "in the plains of Jericho, all his army were scattered from him.
5. Here is the intention expressed to spare a small remnant for the acknowledgment of the supremacy of Jehovah and the confession of their sins. (Vers. 15, 16.) Only "a few men," or "men of number," should be left, i.e. so few that they might be easily counted; and they should be spared in order that they might acknowledge the many aggravated and persistent sins of the people, which had led to these stern judgments, and so vindicate the justice of God in the infliction of them. And by these judgments they would become convinced that Jehovah is the living and the true God. "They shall know that I am the Lord." These words, which "recur as a refrain" in these prophecies, we have already considered in Eze_6:7, Eze_6:10.
CONCLUSION. Learn:
1. The peril of disregarding the Word of the Lord. Such conduct, persisted in, leads to spiritual blindness and deafness.
2. The obligation of the good to put forth persistent efforts for the conversion of the wicked.
3. The importance of employing various means for the conversion of thewicked. W.J.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 6, 22, 24, 27 Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of…
Eze_12:2
Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see and see not.
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The disuse of spiritual faculties
Eyes and ears are for many reasons the most important and valuable organs of the human body, the chief gates--to use the language of Bunyan--to the famous town of Mansoul. The one brings us into contact with form, the other with sound; the one has relation to space, the other to time. No part in the human frame is so wonderful in their execution as these. The eye, says one, by its admirable combination of coats and humours and lenses, produces on the retina, or expansion of nerve at the back of the socket or bony cavity, in which it is so securely lodged, a distinct picture of the minutest or largest object; so that, on a space that is less than an inch in diameter, a landscape of miles in extent, with all its variety of scenery, is depicted with perfect exactness of relative proportion in all its parts. Nor is the ear less wonderful. It is a complicated mechanism lying wholly within the body, showing only the wide outer porch through which the sound enters. It conveys the sound through various chambers to the inmost extremities of those nerves which bear the messages to the brain. So delicate is this organ, that it catches the softest whispers, and conveys them to the soul, and so strong that it hears the roll of the loudest thunder in the chamber of its mistress. Now, the text--as well as other parts of Scripture--teaches that mans spiritual nature has organs answering to those organs of the body. The text calls us to notice the spiritual disuse of these faculties.
I. It involves the greatest deprivation.
1. The disuse shuts out the grandest realities of existence. What are the immutable principles of rectitude, what is the great spiritual universe, what is God Himself, to the man who is morally blind and deaf?
2. The disuse shuts out the sublimest joys of existence. What are the charms of physical to moral beauty, the beauty of holiness and God? What are the charms of physical harmony to those of that great moral anthem that fills the spiritual universe with rapture and delights the ear of God Himself? How great then the deprivation of the spiritually blind and deaf! God is with them, His pure, happy heavens lie about them, and they know it not.
3. The disuse deteriorates the faculties themselves. Unused organs often die out.
II. It involves the greatest wickedness.
1. It is an abuse of talent. All the powers we possess, we possess as trustees, not as proprietors; they are entrusted to us for a specific purpose.
2. It is an abuse of the greatest talents. These spiritual faculties are the highest we have--higher than bodily power, higher than intellectual ability, higher than natural genius.
Conclusion--
1. The sad condition of the unregenerate world.
2. The deeply needed mission of Christ. (Homilist.)
Rebelliousness means loss of faculty
You cannot commit sin and be as clear-minded as you were before you committed it. The obscurity of mind may not be immediately evident; but let a man allow one bad thought to pass through his brain, and the brain has lost quality, a tremendous injury has been inflicted on that sensitive organ; by and by, after a succession of such passages, there will be no brain to injure. Sin tears down whatever it touches. Your habit is bringing you to imbecility, if it is a bad habit. You must name it; preachers may not speak distinctly and definitely, but they create a standard by which men may judge themselves, and by which preachers may also judge their own aspirations and purposes. You are losing your eyesight by your sin; you are becoming deaf because you are becoming worse in thought and desire and purpose; you are not the business man you were a quarter of a century ago, when you were a disciplinarian, a Spartan, a self-critic, when you held yourself in a leash, and would not allow yourself to go an inch faster than your judgment approved; since then you have loosened the reins, you have allowed the steeds to go at their own will, and the consequence is that you miss one-half of what is spoken to you, and you fail to see Gods morning and Gods sunset; they are but commonplaces to you, mayhap but broad vulgarities. Men should be good if they wish to keep their genius. The bad man goes down. His descent may not be palpable today or tomorrow, but the process is not the less certain and tremendous because it is sometimes imperceptible. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 21 Eze_12:1-15; Ezekiel 17; Ezekiel 19
THE END OF THE MONARCHY
Eze_12:1-15; Ezekiel 17; Ezekiel 19
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IN spite of the interest excited by Ezekiels prophetic appearances, the exiles still received his prediction of the fall of Jerusalem with the most stolid incredulity. It proved to be an impossible task to disabuse their minds of the pre-possessions which made such an event absolutely incredible. True to their character as a disobedient house, they had "eyes to see, and saw not; and ears to hear, but heard not". {Eze_12:2} They were intensely interested in the strange signs he performed, and listened with pleasure to his fervid oratory; but the inner meaning of it all never sank into their minds. Ezekiel was well aware that the cause of this obtuseness lay in the false ideals which nourished an overweening confidence in the destiny of their nation. And these ideals were the more difficult to destroy because they each contained an element of truth, so interwoven with the falsehood that to the mind of the people the true and the false stood and fell together. If the great vision of chapters 8-11 had accomplished its purpose, it would doubtless have taken away the main support of these delusive imaginations. But the belief in the indestructibility of the Temple was only one of a number of roots through which the vain confidence of the nation was fed; and so long as any of these remained the peoples sense of security was likely to remain. These spurious ideals, therefore, Ezekiel sets himself with characteristic thoroughness to demolish, one after another.
This appears to be in the main the purpose of the third subdivision of his prophecies on which we now enter. It extends from chapter 12 to chapter 19; and in so far as it can be taken to represent a phase of his actual spoken ministry, it must be assigned to the fifth year before the capture of Jerusalem (August, 591-August., 590 B.C.). But since the passage is an exposition of ideas more than a narrative of experiences, we may expect to find that chronological consistency has been even less observed than in the earlier part of the book. Each idea is presented in the completeness which it finally possessed in the prophets mind, and his allusions may anticipate a state of things which had not actually arisen till a somewhat later date. Beginning with a description and interpretation of two symbolic actions intended to impress more vividly on the people the certainty of the impending catastrophe, the prophet proceeds in a series of set discourses to expose the hollowness of the illusions which his fellow exiles cherished, such as disbelief in prophecies of evil, faith in the destiny of Israel, veneration for the Davidic kingdom, and reliance on the solidarity of the nation in sin and in judgment. These are the principal topics which the course of exposition will bring before us, and in dealing with them it will be convenient to depart from the order in which they stand in the book and adopt an arrangement according to subject. By so doing we run the risk of missing the order of the ideas as it presented itself to the prophets mind, and of ignoring the remarkable skill with which the transition from one theme to another is frequently effected. But if we have rightly understood the scope of the passage as a whole, this wilt not prevent us from grasping the substance of his teaching or its bearing on the final message which he had to deliver. In the present chapter we shall accordingly group together three passages which deal with the fate of the monarchy, and especially of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah.
That reverence for the royal house would form an obstacle to the acceptance of such teaching as Ezekiels was to be expected from all we know of the popular feeling on this subject. The fact that a few royal assassinations which stain the annals of Judah were sooner or later avenged by the people shows that the monarchy was regarded as a pillar of the state, and that great importance was attached to the possession of a dynasty which perpetuated the glories of Davids reign. And there is one verse in the Book of Lamentations which expresses the anguish which the fall of the kingdom caused to godly men in Israel, although its representatives were so unworthy of his office as Zedekiah: "The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Jehovah, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow shall we live among the nations". {Lam_4:20} So long therefore as a descendant of David sat on the throne of Jerusalem it would seem the duty of every patriotic Israelite to remain true to him. The continuance of the monarchy would seem to guarantee the existence of the state; the prestige of Zedekiahs position as the anointed of Jehovah, and the heir of Davids covenant, would warrant the hope that even yet Jehovah would intervene to save an institution of His own creating. Indeed, we can see from Ezekiels own pages that the historic monarchy in Israel was to him an object of the highest veneration and regard. He speaks of its dignity in terms whose very exaggeration shows how largely the fact bulked in his imagination. He compares it to the noblest of the wild beasts of the earth and the most lordly tree of the forest. But his contention is that this monarchy no longer exists. Except in one doubtful passage, he never applies the title king (melek) to Zedekiah. The kingdom came to an end with the. deportation of Jehoiachin, the last king who ascended the throne in legitimate succession. The present holder of the office is in no sense king by Divine right; he is a creature and vassal of Nebuchadnezzar, and has no rights against his suzerain. His very name has been changed by the caprice of his master. As a religious symbol, therefore, the royal power is defunct; the glory has departed from it as surely as from the Temple. The makeshift administration organised under Zedekiah had a peaceful if inglorious future before it, if it were content to recognise facts and adapt itself to its humble position. But if it should attempt to raise its head and assert itself as an independent kingdom, it would only seal its own doom. And for men in Chaldea to transfer to this shadow of kingly dignity the allegiance due to the heir of Davids house was a waste of devotion as little demanded by patriotism as by prudence.
I.
The first of the passages in which the fate of the monarchy is foretold requires little to be said by way of explanation. It is a symbolic action of the kind with which we are now familiar, exhibiting the certainty of the fate in store both for the people and the king. The prophet again becomes a "sign" or portent to the people-this time in a character which every one of his audience understood from recent experience. He is seen by daylight collecting "articles of captivity"-i.e., such necessary articles as a person going into exile would try to take with him-and bringing them out to the door of his house. Then at dusk he breaks through the wall with his goods on his shoulder; and, with face muffled he removes "to another place." In this sign we have again two different facts indicated by a series of not entirely congruous actions. The mere act of carrying out his most necessary furniture and removing from one place to another suggests quite unambiguously the captivity that awaits the inhabitants of Jerusalem. But the accessories of the action, such as breaking through the wall, the muffling of the face, and the doing of all this by night, point to quite a different event-viz., Zedekiahs attempt to break through the Chaldaean lines by night, his capture, his blindness, and his imprisonment in Babylon. The most remarkable thing in the sign is the circumstantial manner in which the details of the kings flight and capture are anticipated so long before the event. Zedekiah, as we read in the Second Book of Kings, as soon as a breach was made in the walls by the Chaldaeans, broke out with a small party of horsemen, and succeeded in reaching the plain of Jordan. There he was overtaken and caught, and sent before Nebuchadnezzars presence at Riblah. The Babylonian king punished his perfidy with a cruelty common enough amongst the Assyrian kings: he caused his eyes to be put out, and sent him thus to end his days in prison at Babylon. All this is so clearly hinted at in the signs that the whole representation is often set aside as a prophecy after the event. That is hardly probable, because the sign does not bear the marks of having been originally conceived with the view of exhibiting the details of Zedekiahs punishment. But since we know that the book was written after the event, it is a perfectly fair question whether in the interpretation of the symbols Ezekiel may not have read into it a fuller meaning than was present to his own mind at the time. Thus the covering of his head does not necessarily suggest anything more than the kings attempt to disguise his person. Possibly this was all that Ezekiel originally meant by it. When the event took place he perceived a further meaning in it as an allusion to the blindness inflicted on the king, and introduced this into the explanation given of the symbol. The point of it lies in the degradation of the king through his being reduced to such an ignominious method of securing his personal safety. "The prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in the darkness, and shall go forth: they shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby: he shall cover his face, that he may not be seen by any eye, and he himself shall not see the earth". {Eze_12:12}
II.
In chapter 17 the fate of the monarchy is dealt with at greater length under the form of an allegory. The kingdom of Judah is represented as a cedar in Lebanon-a comparison which shows how exalted were Ezekiels conceptions of the dignity of the old regime which had now passed away. But the leading shoot of the tree has been cropped off by a great, broad-winged, speckled eagle, the king of Babylon, and carried away to a "land of traffic, a city of merchants." The insignificance of Zedekiahs government is indicated by a harsh contrast which almost breaks the consistency of the figure. In place of the cedar which he has spoiled the eagle plants a low vine trailing on the ground, such as may be seen in Palestine at the present day. His intention was that "its branches should extend towards him and its roots be under him"-i.e., that the new principality should derive all its strength from Babylon and yield all its produce to the power which nourished it. For a time all went well. The vine answered the expectations of its owner, and prospered under the favourable conditions which he had provided for it. But another great eagle appeared on the scene, the king of Egypt, and the ungrateful vine began to send out its roots and turn its branches in his direction. The meaning is obvious: Zedekiah had sent presents to Egypt and sought its help, and by so doing had violated the conditions of his tenure of royal power. Such a policy could not prosper. "The bed where it was planted" was in possession of Nebuchadnezzar, and he could not tolerate there a state, however feeble, which employed the resources with which he had endowed it to further the interests of his rival, Hophra, the king of Egypt. Its destruction shall come from the quarter whence it derived its origin: "when the east wind smites it, it shall wither in the furrow where it grew."
Throughout this passage Ezekiel shows that he possessed in full measure that penetration and detachment from local prejudices which all the prophets exhibit when dealing with political affairs. The interpretation of the riddle contains a statement of Nebuchadnezzars policy in his dealings with Judah, whose impartial accuracy could not be improved on by the most disinterested historian. The carrying away of the Judaean king and aristocracy was a heavy blow to religious susceptibilities which Ezekiel fully shared, and its severity was not mitigated by the arrogant assumptions by which it was explained in Jerusalem. Yet here he shows himself capable of contemplating it as a measure of Babylonian statesmanship and of doing absolute justice to the motives by which it was dictated. Nebuchadnezzars purpose was to establish a petty state unable to raise itself to independence, and one on whose fidelity to his empire he could rely. Ezekiel lays great stress on the solemn formalities by which the great king had bound his vassal to his allegiance: "He took of the royal seed, and made a covenant with him, and brought him under a curse; and the strong ones of the land he took away: that it might be a lowly kingdom, not able to lift itself up, to keep his covenant that it might stand" (Eze_17:13-14). In all this Nebuchadnezzar is conceived as acting within his rights; and here lay the difference between the clear vision of the prophet and the infatuated policy of his contemporaries. The politicians of Jerusalem were incapable of thus discerning the signs of the times. They fell back on the time-honoured plan of checkmating Babylon by means of an Egyptian alliance-a policy which had been disastrous when attempted against the ruthless tyrants of Assyria, and which was doubly imbecile when it brought down on them the wrath of a monarch who showed every desire to deal fairly with his subject provinces.
The period of intrigue with Egypt had already begun when this prophecy was written. We have no means of knowing how long the negotiations went on before the overt act of rebellion; and hence we cannot say with certainty that the appearance of the chapter in this part of the book is an anachronism. It is possible that Ezekiel may have known of a secret mission which was not discovered by the spies of the Babylonian court; and there is no difficulty in supposing that such a step may have been taken as early as two and a half years before the outbreak of hostilities. At whatever time it took place, Ezekiel saw that it sealed the doom of the nation. He knew that Nebuchadnezzar could not overlook such flagrant perfidy as Zedekiah and his councillors had been guilty of; he knew also that Egypt could render no effectual help to Jerusalem in her death-struggle. "Not with a strong army and a great host will Pharaoh act for him in the war, when mounds are thrown up, and the towers are built, to cut off many lives" (Eze_17:17). The writer of the Lamentations again shows us how sadly the prophets anticipation was verified: "As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us". {Lam_4:17}
But Ezekiel will not allow it to be supposed that the fate of Jerusalem is merely the result of a mistaken forecast of political probabilities. Such a mistake had been made by Zedekiahs advisers when they trusted to Egypt to deliver them from Babylon, and ordinary prudence might have warned them against it. But that was the most excusable part of their folly. The thing that branded their policy as infamous and put them absolutely in the wrong before God and man alike was their violation of the solemn oath by which they had bound themselves to serve the king of Babylon. The prophet seizes on this act of perjury as the determining fact of the situation, and charges it home on the king as the cause of the ruin that is to overtake him: "Thus saith Jehovah, As I live, surely My oath which he hath despised, and My covenant which he has broken, I will return on his head; and I will spread My net over him, and in My snare shall he be taken and ye shall know that I Jehovah have spoken it" (Eze_17:19-21).
In the last three verses of the chapter the prophet returns to the allegory with which he commenced, and completes his oracle with a beautiful picture of the ideal monarchy of the future. The ideas on which the picture is framed are few and simple; but they are those which distinguished the Messianic hope as cherished by the prophets from the crude form which it assumed in the popular imagination. In contrast to Zedekiahs kingdom, which was a human institution without ideal significance, that of the Messianic age will be a fresh creation of Jehovahs power. A tender shoot shall be planted in the mountain land of Israel, where it shall flourish and increase until it overshadow the whole earth. Further, this shoot is taken from the "top of the cedar"-that is, the section of the royal house which had been carried away to Babylon-indicating that the hope of the future lay not with the king de facto Zedekiah, but with Jehoiachin and those who shared his banishment. The passage leaves no doubt that Ezekiel conceived the Israel of the future as a state with a monarch at its head, although it may be doubtful whether the shoot refers to a personal Messiah or to the aristocracy, who, along with the king, formed the governing body in an Eastern kingdom. This question, however, can be better considered when we have to deal with Ezekiels Messianic conceptions in their fully developed form in chapter 34.
III.
Of the last four kings of Judah there were two whose melancholy fate seems to have excited a profound feeling of pity amongst their countrymen. Jehoahaz or Shallum, according to the Chronicler the youngest of Josiahs sons, appears to have been even during his fathers lifetime a popular favourite. It was he who after the fatal day of Megiddo was raised to the throne by the "people of the land" at the age of twenty-three years. He is said by the historian of the books of Kings to have done "that which was evil in the sight of the Lord"; but he had hardly time to display his qualities as a ruler when he was deposed and carried to Egypt by Pharaoh Necho, having worn the crown for only three months (608 B.C.). The deep attachment felt for him seems to have given rise to an expectation that he would be restored to his kingdom, a delusion against which the prophet Jeremiah found it necessary to protest. {Jer_22:10-12} He was succeeded by his elder brother, Eliakim, (Jehoiakim) the headstrong and selfish tyrant, whose character stands revealed in some passages of the books of Jeremiah and Habakkuk. His reign of nine years gave little occasion to his subjects to cherish a grateful memory of his administration. He died in the crisis of the conflict he had provoked with the king of Babylon, leaving his youthful son Jehoiachin to expiate the folly of his rebellion. Jehoiachin is the second idol of the populace to whom we have referred. He was only eighteen years old when he was called to the throne, and within three months he was doomed to exile in Babylon. In his room Nebuchadnezzar appointed a third son of Josiah-Mattaniah-whose name he changed to Zedekiah. He was apparently a man of weak and vacillating character; but he fell ultimately into the hands of the Egyptian and anti-prophetic party, and so was the means of involving his country in the hopeless struggle in which it perished.
The fact that two of their native princes were languishing, perhaps simultaneously, in foreign confinement, one in Egypt and the other in Babylon, was fitted to evoke in Judah a sympathy with the misfortunes of royalty something like the feeling embalmed in the Jacobite songs of Scotland. It seems to be an echo of this sentiment that we find in the first part of the lament with which Ezekiel closes his references to the fall of the monarchy (chapter 19). Many critics have indeed found it impossible to suppose that Ezekiel should in any sense have yielded to sympathy with the fate of two princes who are both branded in the historical books as idolaters, and whose calamities on Ezekiels own view of individual retribution proved them to be sinners against Jehovah. Yet it is certainly unnatural to read the dirge in any other sense than as an expression of genuine pity for the woes that the nation suffered in the fate of her two exiled kings. If Jeremiah, in pronouncing the doom of Shallum or Jehoahaz, could say, "Weep ye sore for him that goeth away; for he shall not return any more, nor see his native country," there is no reason why Ezekiel should not have given lyrical expression to the universal feeling of sadness which the blighted career of these two youths naturally produced. The whole passage is highly poetical, and represents a side of Ezekiels nature which we have not hitherto been led to study. But it is too much to expect of even the most logical of prophets that he should experience no personal emotion but what fitted into his system, or that his poetic gift should be chained to the wheels of his theological convictions. The dirge expresses no moral judgment on the character or deserts of the two kings to which it refers: it has but one theme-the sorrow and disappointment of the "mother" who nurtured and lost them, that is, the nation of Israel, personified according to a usual Hebrew figure of speech. All attempts to go beyond this and to find in the poem an allegorical portrait of Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin are irrelevant. The mother is a lioness, the princes are young lions and behave as stalwart young lions do, but whether their exploits are praiseworthy or the reverse is a question that was not present to the writers mind.
The chapter is entitled "A Dirge on the Princes of Israel," and embraces not only the fate of Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin, but also of Zedekiah, with whom the old monarchy expired. Strictly. speaking, however, the name qinah, or dirge, is applicable only to the first part of the chapter (Eze_19:2-9), where the rhythm characteristic of the Hebrew elegy is clearly traceable. With a few slight changes of the text the passage may be translated thus:-
1. Jehoahaz.
"How was thy mother a lioness!-
Among the lions,
In the midst of young lions she couched-
She reared her cubs;
And she brought up one of her cubs-
A young lion he became,
And he learned to catch the prey-
He ate men."
"And nations raised a cry against him-
In their pit he was caught;
And they brought him with hooks-
To the land of Egypt" (Eze_19:2-4).
2. Jehoiachin.
"And when she saw that she was disappointed-
Her hope was lost.
She took another of her cubs-
A young lion she made him;
And he walked in the midst of lions-
A young lion he became;
And he learned to catch prey-
He ate men".
"And he lurked in his lair-
The forests he ravaged:
Till the land was laid waste and its fulness-
With the noise of his roar".
"The nations arrayed themselves against him-
From the countries around;
And spread over him their net-
In their pit he was caught.
And they brought him with hooks-
To the king of Babylon;
And he put him in a cage,
That his voice might no more be heard-
On the mountains of Israel" (Eze_19:5-9).
The poetry here is simple and sincere. The mournful cadence of the elegiac measure, which is maintained throughout, is adapted to the tone of melancholy which pervades the passage and culminates in the last beautiful line. The dirge is a form of composition often employed in songs of triumph over the calamities of enemies; but there is no reason to doubt that here it is true to its original purpose, and expresses genuine sorrow for the accumulated misfortunes of the royal house of Israel.
The closing part of the "dirge" dealing with Zedekiah is of a somewhat different character. The theme is similar, but the figure is abruptly changed, and the elegiac rhythm is abandoned. The nation, the mother of the monarchy, is here compared to a luxuriant vine planted beside great waters; and the royal house is likened to a branch towering above the rest and bearing rods which were kingly sceptres. But she has been plucked up by the roots, withered, scorched by the fire, and finally planted in an arid region where she cannot thrive. The application of the metaphor to the ruin of the nation is very obvious. Israel, once a prosperous nation, richly endowed with all the conditions of a vigorous national life, and glorying in her race of native kings, is now humbled to the dust. Misfortune after misfortune has destroyed her power and blighted her prospects, till at last she has been removed from her own land to a place where national life cannot be maintained. But the point of the passage lies in the closing words: fire went out from one of her twigs and consumed her branches, so that she has no longer a proud rod to be a rulers sceptre (Eze_19:14). The monarchy, once the glory and strength of Israel, has in its last degenerate representative involved the nation in ruin.
Such is Ezekiels final answer to those of his hearers who clung to the old Davidic kingdom as their hope in the crisis of the peoples fate.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 17, 21 2. FULLER DETAILS RELATING TO THE SINS OF THE…
2. FULLER DETAILS RELATING TO THE SINS OF THE PEOPLE AND THEIR PUNISHMENT (Chaps. 12–19)
Intercourse with their countrymen in Jerusalem deeply affected the views and hopes of the exiled Jews, as the feelings and expectations in British colonies are affected by the discussions and decisions in the mother-country. The kingdom of Judah still maintained its existence, notwithstanding the prophetic threatenings of Jeremiah. That gave apparent denial to his dismal prediction, and a bold, defiant attitude was assumed respecting them. The captivity took the cue from this, and the vision of the Holy City, its abominations and departed glory, by which Ezekiel had intimated to his hearers the utter ruin of the Jewish state, found no belief among them. The training through which God was taking them required that this state of mind should be mastered. A true view of their guilt and their dependence on the Law could not be arrived at except as illusions were dissipated. Ezekiel is therefore entrusted with further messages, both for Judah and the captivity, exposing the fatuity of all suppositions that the calamity denounced could be averted. “The prophet is inexhaustible in the announcement of this, as the false patriotism was inexhaustible in its announcements of salvation.”—Heng.
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(1.) SYMBOL AND INTERPRETATION OF THE KING’S FLIGHT (Chap. Eze_12:1-16)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—Eze_12:1-3. Ezekiel has to do that which must excite public attention at Tel-Abib, but the primary application of his action is to Jerusalem, and so secondarily to the captives. He is not to scruple to carry out palpable and strange movements or to refrain from prophesying as he has done before, because he has to speak to a people who, with capacities for learning, are too perverse to learn (Eze_12:3). “And thou, son of man, make thee utensils of captivity,” a phrase found in Jer_46:19 (marginal rendering), and there and here signifying such few things as could be taken into the unfriendly and hard conditions of exile. “And remove [as a captive] by day before their eyes.” In broad daylight he was to gather his articles and carry them out of his house, thus making secure of the observation of his neighbours. “And thou shalt remove [as a captive] from thy place to another place before their eyes, perhaps they will see,” but it is not likely: their disposition evokes the refrain, “for they are an house of rebelliousness.”
Eze_12:4-6. Though the articles were brought out, they were left while daylight lasted. At its departure, but before total darkness came on, Ezekiel was to act again; “and thou shalt go forth in the evening before their eyes;” in some way which would clearly appear to be that of a captive, “as the goings forth of a captivity.” He was to proceed furtively, while they were looking on. “Before their eyes dig through the wall, and go forth by it”—by the opening thus made (Eze_12:6). In full view of the people, “upon thy shoulder shalt thou lift;” but by the time he had digged through night had fallen, such as fell over Abram (Gen_15:7; Genesis cf.12), and so “in the darkness thou shalt go forth; thy face thou shalt cover,” as one who does not wish to be recognised, “and not see the earth.” These proceedings were intended to represent very ominous incidents, “for a wonder-sign I give thee to the house of Israel.” There was nothing in Ezekiel’s own surroundings which required this course of action, but it was typical of the fate of King Zedekiah. As yet prosperous, the inhabitants of Jerusalem rashly assumed that his kingdom would continue; but events were preparing which would prove the utter futility of trusting such a shaken reed.
Eze_12:7-16. Ezekiel fulfilled his instructions to the letter, and on the following morning received, in plain terms, an explanation of what he had been doing. He was thus put in a position to answer the curiosity of the people as to what was meant, and with painful distinctness describes the disasters which were to befall the realm (Eze_12:10). “Say thou unto them, The prince is this lifting up in Jerusalem,” i.e., this taking up on my shoulder is a lesson, the prophetic burden which refers to him who occupies the throne in Jerusalem—he must remove as a captive. It refers also “to all the house of Israel that are among them;” both the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the members of the ten tribes who have joined themselves to their brethren the Jews will be involved in the same calamity. By this sign also the exiled were informed that if they were envious of the lot of those who still remained in Judea that was a groundless feeling, because the latter also would suffer exile (Eze_12:13). Further details than those found in the symbolic action are given. “And I spread my net over him;” the Lord will, by means of the Chaldean army, catch the prince in meshes, and his escape will be prevented; “And I will bring him to Babylon, to the land of the Chaldeans;” yet, in a manner which the event alone can explain, “he shall not see it though he shall die there” (2Ki_25:1-7, and Jer_52:1-11). Eze_12:14. All his friends, all his forces, “I will scatter toward every wind of heaven, and a sword I draw out after them.” They would not all perish; “I leave over of them men of number,” men who can be easily counted; and it is done to this end, “that they may declare all their abominations among the heathen among whom they come;” their recitals would explain that it was not weakness on the part of the God of Israel which bad occasioned the distress and subjection of His people, but their offences against His holy laws. His unfaltering purpose is that “they know that I am the Lord.” Human foresight might have signified that the king and people of Jerusalem would be mastered by the Chaldeans, but that the king should flee from the city by night, be caught in his attempt, be taken to Babylon after his eyes had been put out, could not have been forecast by any mere human intelligence, except as the intelligence was enlightened by the God who seeth all events that are to come.
Josephus (Antiq. x. 7) reports that an account of this prophetic action and its explanation was sent to Zudekiah, but that he, on comparing it with the danger which Jeremiah had warned him of, found that the latter said that he should be carried to Babylon, while Ezekiel said that he should not see it. The discrepancy was so glaring in the king’s view that he concluded, not that one was right and the other wrong, but that both were false! “In this he but showed the captious disposition of superficial inquirers and shallow unbelievers of all ages, who no sooner discover some obvious difficulties on the surface of Revelation than they conclude the whole to be a cunningly devised fable, or treat it as unworthy of their serious consideration. Would they but search a little deeper, and survey, in a spirit of impartiality, the entire field of Revelation, they would find that the things which at first stagger their belief disappear on closer inspection, or remain only as difficulties inseparable from communications which bear respect to the character and purposes of Godhead.”—Fairbairn.
HOMILETICS
SOME ASPECTS UNDER WHICH GOD COMMUNICATES WITH MEN (Eze_12:1-16)
Taking for granted—that which both human history and experience bear witness to—not only that God is able to communicate with man, but also that man is capable of receiving His communications, we are presented here with certain features of that process.
I. It is carried on with a clear view of all human conditions. It could not be otherwise, because He is God and not man. He has respect
(1.) to all with whom He may enter into communication. The king is not too exalted for His message; nor are the princes. Soldiers are open to Him and every member of a quiet habitation. It can be said, “I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me.”
(2.) To their preparedness for His communications. They have faculties to apprehend all truth that He may impart. Eyes have they to see, and ears have they to hear, and He wants to bring the faculties for seeing and hearing into use. He well knows that eyes may be used for selfish interests, and not for the things that are unseen and eternal, that ears hear the enticements of the flesh and lies of deceiving prophets, but do not listen to the just and holy and good commandment, giving knowledge of sin and need of the righteousness of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Thus He estimates the power of all forces that are favourable or opposed to His aims.
(3.) To the possibility of mastering men’s indisposition. Whatever may be the blindness or deafness exhibited in regard to the wisdom and truth and love of God’s words, He still acts in hope of a change. “It may be they will consider though they be a rebellious house.” His graciousness is a perennial spring for parched and hardened hearts. In New Testament as in Old Testament times, with us as with the Jews, He is “long suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” The Israelites of Ezekiel’s day are illustrations of what the Word of the Lord encounters in most of those to whom it is sent; they are its hearers but not its doers, and punishment is impending over them. The Lord’s treatment of them is a type of His riches of mercy, which leaves no means untried, and would hope against hope. “The mirror of human perversity is at the same time the mirror of divine grace.”
II. It proceeds by stages.
(1.) They are varied in appearance. Actions are alone at one time; at another they are followed by words. Common and uncommon things are summoned in order to impress His thoughts and ways. It would be quite unfair to argue from these grotesque proceedings of Ezekiel, that any methods, however outlandish, may be pursued in order to secure men’s attention to spiritual facts. The method should be such as will impress a truth, not such as may excite little else but wonder or amusement or sympathy. Under such a restriction and by the pressure of divine leading, symbolical actions may first be used, and instruction follow after them; but it ought ever to be realised that no action, even though it may be apparently impressive, is of any worth in God’s judgment unless it end in making men know that He is Lord.
(2.) Constant in progress. So it seems to us, and so it is, only we sometimes conclude that God is in a hurry when He is not. The suffering which looks as if it had burst suddenly upon a people or an individual is the result of preceding events which may have been occurring through some, it may be many, years. The destruction of the plain of Sodom in a morning was physically the outcome of material forces which had been long in gathering and pent up, and was, morally, the final consequence of lengthened and highhanded wickedness. This incident in Ezekiel’s history shows how God lets the minds of prophet and people simmer till morning over the odd conduct of the prophet on the day and night before. Then He explained what was in prospect; but the event, which the action referred to, was not brought to pass till about six years had gone away. God gives line upon line, precept upon precept, before the guilty fall backward and are broken and are snared and taken. The apostle who “ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears” was a pupil of God, who is full of compassion. Does His goodness and forbearance lead us to repentance? Have we the love which suffers long and is kind?
(2.) Culminating in acknowledgment of Him. As Ruler over all He makes the end of His revelations of Himself to be that “all should know the Lord, from the least to the greatest.” He has the right to supreme homage, and He will arrange to spare some of those who have felt the consequences of withholding that homage, so that they shall speak of what He has done. They will make known His deeds among the people, and the heathen shall fear His great and terrible name. Thus shall His way be known upon earth; His saving health among all nations.
THE TIME OF GOD’S COMMUNICATION IS WORTHY TO BE NOTED (Eze_12:8)
I. Because the coming of the Word of the Lord to us is an important event in our history.
(1.) Sometimes it produces terror and conviction of evil. Moses on Sinai, Job under the whirlwind, Saul near to Damascus. We are to be brought to see our need.
(2.) Sometimes it is attractive and tender. As to Samuel when a youth, and to Lydia when Paul preached.
(3.) Sometimes it is for consolation. As the still small voice to Elijah when he was cast down, with its, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” And as Christ came to the disciples on the lake with His, “It is I.”
(4.) Sometimes to unfold and urge to duty. As to Ezekiel here, and as to Paul when he was praying in the temple in a trance.
II. Because it comes at a noticeable season. “In the morning.” God regards the time we have been under His teachings, what our attitude to Him has been, and how we have profited, or the reverse. “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?”
(1.) The word may come in the morning, literally. Give God your first thoughts, meditate early on His ways; “My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord,” and let us say, “I will hear what God the Lord will speak.”
(2.) In the period of youth. Samuel, Josiah, Timothy. Good to begin well, in hope of ending well. “Wilt Thou not cry unto me, My Father, Thou art the guide of my youth?”
(3.) After a period of anxiety and suffering. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Martha said to Mary, “The Master is come, and calleth for thee.” “Pay thy vows.” “Arise, go to Bethel, and make there an altar unto God, that appeared to thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.”
Let us look for the day when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and come forth from their graves.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Section 2 (Eze 12:1-28; Eze 13:1-23; Eze 14:1-23; Eze…
Section 2 (Eze 12:1-28; Eze 13:1-23; Eze 14:1-23; Eze 15:1-8).
The judgments in detail.
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The story having been told, we have in what follows the detail of exactly measured judgment in relation to the various classes.
1. First of all, therefore, we begin with the king, of so great significance in Judah as the one who "sat upon the throne of the Lord" in Jerusalem (1Ch 29:23). The removal of the king means, therefore, that the representative throne exists no more. Yet how many hopes had been centred in it! Throughout the history of the Judges we find that the great necessity was that a king should come. Even if men did that which was right, it was "that which was right in their own eyes;" that only made the need more apparent. There was no king yet in Israel. When he came, he was ushered in by the prophet, as we know, so in Ezekiel the prophet announces his removal; for the prophet remains through all this time the witness for God and of His ideal in government; but from the very first, we see how the ideal of the people diverged from God’s thought. Saul, who was really the man of the people, as such had to be removed; and David, though the man after God’s heart, fails in his turn, and is himself the witness that, although in his house the promise of sovereignty remains, yet it must be fulfilled in some higher way than man can accomplish it -the true King must come. Whatever faint shadows of Him there might be, as shadows they could not be permanent, and as they more and more departed from their character as witnesses to Him that was to come, always the more clear it becomes that they must pass. The meaningless king must be removed; he cannot be left for a reproach as God’s king -an imbecile, and worse. Ezekiel is now summoned, therefore, to announce his definite removal from the land, no more to return there. During the time in which the desolate land keeps its sabbaths, which it keeps yet, it cannot prosper in their hands; thus we have here the connection of the two parts of the prophecy.
All is simplicity itself with regard to the prophecy, however little they, who were a rebellious house, as Ezekiel was told from the beginning, might see what was meant. Eyes they had to see, and saw not; ears they had to hear, and heard not; yet God acts for Himself, and unhindered by this incapacity on their part. Ezekiel is instructed to prepare the baggage of an exile and to remove by day in their sight. "Perhaps they will see," says Jehovah; for we know there were still those who were capable of doing so; and, as for the rest, God would still make things so plain that on His part there should be no possible misunderstanding -nothing wanting to complete conviction.
He is to gather together his baggage by day, but himself was to go forth at evening, under the cover of darkness, digging through the wall to carry off just what he can bear upon his shoulder, and no more; covering his face also, so as not to see the ground -a pregnant sign to the house of Israel of what was to take place. All this, of course, was not in vision, but in reality; expressly intended to awaken question by those who saw these enigmatical doings, and would naturally inquire into what they meant. He is to tell them that the burden concerns the prince still in Jerusalem, with all the signs of his royalty about him, but who is to go forth into exile, into captivity, with no sign of his forfeited rank, but as a mere ordinary fugitive; and even so, not to be allowed to go safely away, but to be taken in the net by Him whose hand was acting through the Chaldeans. And yet the very land to which he would be removed he should not see, although he should die there. His eyes, in fact, were put out, according to a common custom of the Babylonians in such cases. His following would be all dispersed, the mass of them slain by the sword, by famine and by pestilence, and the few left would be but as witnesses of the state of things amongst them which had provoked Jehovah’s wrath; for in all this, as it is repeated again and again, they were to know that He was Jehovah.
To this burden concerning the king, there is appended, as naturally connected with it, the burden of the land left waste and desolate; for as long as the king continued, even though he might be but the shadow of royalty at the last, this was a testimony that the covenant between God and Israel was yet not wholly gone. The land itself also, as Jehovah’s land, which they enjoyed as sojourners with Him, as His guests, was another sign of this: it could not pass wholly into other hands; and in this way even still remains, until the people of God are brought back to enjoy it. Thus, in one way or another, the curse of barrenness must be upon it. The hands that should have wrought in its harvests are scattered far away, and the few that remain, remain but to eat their bread with anxiety and drink their water with astonishment, while their cities should be laid waste and the land a desolation -and this, though Jehovah were His covenant name, that all might know Him to be the Unchangeable, as His name implied.
To this is appended another solemn testimony against the vain hopes of those who, expecting the message of peace which the false prophets had given them, and grounding it upon all the promises to their fathers, were already realizing the failure of their vision, which was no true vision. How often people imagine a failure of God’s word, when the failure is only that of hopes falsely built upon His word! But the true word was not of smooth things, but of judgment, which would not linger now. It was at hand. In the very days of those that spoke, the Lord Jehovah would fulfil at once that which He was declaring He would bring upon them. Again the word comes re-affirming this: "Son of man, behold they of the house of Israel say, The vision that he seeth is for many days, and he prophesieth of times that are afar off. Therefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: There shall none of my words be deferred any more, but the word which I speak shall be performed, saith the Lord Jehovah."
2. (1) When the priesthood (the first link between God and Israel) failed, the prophet was raised up extraordinarily of God, in sovereign goodness, to stand between the people and Himself. When the kings failed afterwards, the prophet again came forward, the sign, on the one hand, of the broken condition of things, and yet on the other, of God’s patience, waiting for possible recovery. Priest and king belonged to the established order of things, and therefore their office passed in the ordinary way from father to son. With the prophet it was otherwise. There was no provision for the continuance of the prophet. He was specially raised up by the goodness of God, as His messenger, to bring His word to the people in such a condition of things as was, or should have been, exceptional altogether. Alas, the adversary of God and man might find his opportunity in this very way to imitate that which is of God, bringing forth prophets of his own invention to speak falsehood as from God, so as to lead more entirely astray their followers.
Naturally, therefore, Ezekiel now turns to these, to prophesy to and against these prophets -prophesying out of their own hearts and seeing nothing. The word which the prophet spoke was not simply something evolved out of a man’s "inner consciousness," as men represent it today, a divination as it were of a spiritual mind prognosticating the future from what he saw before him. On the contrary, it was no human judgment that they professed to bring, but the judgment of God Himself. Thus it was not their own saying, but Jehovah’s saying. And so thoroughly was this known in Israel, that the false prophets themselves had to go as far as this in their pretension. If they saw nothing, they must feign that they saw. But the true heart of the prophet was not seen in them, nor, therefore, the true voice of Jehovah heard. The priest’s breastplate was typical of what made the priest the true expression of the Lord’s mind towards His people. It contained the Urim and Thummim, by which the priest gave answer from God; the precious jewels which shone in it representing the various attributes of the Unchangeable. They were "the lights and perfections" of Him who is the true and perfect Light, abiding unalterably in Him as the lustre in the gem. But upon these jewels also the names of the people of God were indelibly engraved. Thus the priest bore upon his heart before God the interests of God’s people, and God’s interests, therefore, in His people. If the priest had now passed, and the king also, any one raised up of God as His prophet must be marked by these very characteristics. Thus, in Ezekiel’s day, the prophets should have been men "gone up into the breaches," not ignoring them nor what had been the occasion of them, but proclaiming the faithful word of Jehovah, while at the same time seeking, if it might be, to build up the wall which had been broken down, that it might stand in the battle, even in the day of Jehovah.
But these false prophets had failed in all this. Great as was their pretension, it was as far as possible from the reality. "O Israel, thy prophets have been like jackals in waste places" -a significant figure indeed of those who preyed upon the corruption around, hiding from the light in the barren wilderness which could only furnish them the covert that they sought. In pretension they were angels of light indeed -as Satan’s emissaries among God’s people constantly are -but the evil which prospered around them bore them true witness. They had seen but vanity, says the Lord, and divined lies. They should not, therefore, be in the counsel of His people, nor written in the register of the house of Israel, nor possess themselves of that land which could be held only according to the tenure of the covenant. Thus they too must know that He was the Lord Jehovah. Yet these were the men that swarmed around in proportion as the true prophet of the Lord was scarce, banding together, confirming one another’s words, one building up a wall and another daubing it with untempered mortar, which could never stand the storm that was at hand. God would bring it down completely to the dust, so that the foundation upon which it was built would be discovered -a lie, all through, which could work but the destruction of those who trusted in it. For their prophesying of peace could but provoke war, and the pretension of security provoke God to sweep away the refuge of lies for, however men misrepresent Him, Jehovah must still and evermore be the Lord; and as against the men who misrepresent Him the Lord will be found Jehovah -the unchanging One. This is the constant reiteration all the way through. Jehovah is arising in His own behalf when there remains as it were no longer any witness for Him.
(2) But there were not only prophets, but prophetesses. Beautiful it is to see that, when it is God’s grace that is raising up help, the expression of it will be found in those who in their very weakness will thus be most competent witnesses. There were no priestesses in Israel; nor, saving usurpation, any queens that reigned in their own right, but there were prophetesses. The grace of God did not in the same way regard distinctions such as these. Nay, if the men of Israel failed, the rise of a prophetess might be a more signal rebuke to them -thus Deborah, in the days of the Judges, and others at other times. And if after all there were but few women of this class, we know how slow God’s people are to accept the grace which thus visits them in its fulness of blessing. And God’s delight is shown in various instances, as in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad, who claimed their portion in Jehovah’s land when a weaker faith might have thought it humility to make no claim. The heart that counts upon God’s grace, how much may it enjoy of the grace it counts upon! Grace is the same grace towards all, and God answers faith. Alas, we ourselves put limit where God puts none. If we make our portion in the land the whole question, we may hesitate to ask for the needed springs -which Achsah did -to make the very land that is our own, fruitful! Beautiful is the recognition, which even a false prophecy is forced to make, as to the sovereign grace of God in the instruments that it employs. But, alas, even such precious grace as this could find those who would pervert it, and Ezekiel has now to utter Jehovah’s voice against the daughters of his people, who prophesied out of their own heart merely.*
{*It has been suggested, by Hengstenberg, that these may not have been literal women, but effeminate men, whom in derision the prophet calls prophetesses, and who address themselves to the love of luxury and pleasure which appeals to effeminate natures. "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth" (1Ti 5:6). It is very significant that it was "that woman Jezebel who calleth herself a prophetess" (Rev 2:20) who is the type of the luxurious seductions of the "great harlot" described in Rev 17:1-18; Rev 18:1-24. These seductions were for ease and a smooth path by which the people were ensnared, and these snares might well be spread by men who had lost all true manliness of spirit. "As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them." -S. Ridout.}
The words that describe the conduct of these have been differently interpreted. What was this sewing of cushions upon all arm-holes, and making veils for the head of every stature to catch souls? Many have interpreted these things literally, as magic fillets worn by these women after the manner of sorceresses, to impose upon their dupes, and which perhaps imposed upon themselves also But this seems nothing but conjecture; there is no proof, if it be not in the words before us; and while it is easy to recognize the feminine character of these doings, it is surely not necessary to make them seamstresses for such occasions, nor would it mark them out with any plausibility as prophetesses of Jehovah. On the other hand, we may easily read Ezekiel’s language here as figurative. They did in fact, by their prophecies of soft and pleasant things, sew cushions upon the arm-holes, upon which those who listened to them might repose themselves and be at rest; while the veils for the head might, on the one hand, suit what was a mere false humility, and be, on the other, a blinding of the eyes, so as not to see things as they were. These prophetesses sold cheap their sophistries, as Jehovah says, working destruction by them, perverting judgment, so as "to slay souls that should not die, and to save souls alive that should not live." Here again Jehovah must come in to manifest Himself and tear from them the cushions which were upon their own arms also for repose -their false confidence, which infected others. As the constant repetition shows, Jehovah must be and must prove Himself, Jehovah. No lie can avail before Him who is the living Truth, and before whose presence every delusion must at last be broken and pass away; and then what would be the condition of those who had prophesied deceits? Would they catch souls of His people and yet save their own souls alive?
3. The idolatry in the heart of those who professed to be inquiring of the Lord is now exposed in the very elders of Israel who should have led the people in Jehovah’s ways, and from whom the revival of the nation should have been looked for. Certain of them come and sit before the prophet, and before they speak God anticipates their inquiry. Only the fact that they are elders is given, those who should have the wisdom of age, therefore, and from whom came the judges of the people. Moreover, they had before their eyes the judgment of God already taking effect upon the nation; a judgment of which they themselves, in their scattered and captive condition, were witnesses. Yet, among those who thus have a decorous outside of orthodoxy, the heart is found, for the most part at least, gone after the common idolatry. It was in this way that false prophets rose up among the true, finding their inspiration, as we presently see, from the desire of the people who, under whatever name, really coveted gods of their own -manageable gods, as the idols certainly were, although the power of Satan was not deficient in them. They were now treating Ezekiel as a false prophet himself, and thus putting Jehovah also among the false gods, as one who could be flattered, wheedled and bribed into conformity with their own desires. How strange is the mystery of the human heart that must, after all, have a god, and yet will not bow to him! -must have a god, yet in reality be its own god; "serving," but even with professing Christians, "serving their own belly," as Scripture says! What a strange and terrible conflict this between their interests and their convictions; and what folly it writes upon this creature of God, intended for communion with Himself, but who has made itself so incapable of it! Their false gods are but the expression of how their hearts and their convictions are opposed to one another.
God therefore meets them, as we see, first of all with the assurance of how truly He discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart, arresting the very inquiry which is upon their lips by giving them the answer which indeed they do not seek, but with all the evidence that it is God who gives them answer. It was but their doom, however; it could be nothing else, as they were but too truly representatives of the house of Israel as a whole, and are addressed therefore as such. They are to learn that the prophet, who truly represents Jehovah, is no advocate to make terms between the people and their offended God. Thus God declares that if they approach Him through one upon whom they can work more easily than upon Himself, in hope that such an one can draw God to be of their mind, they shall find that He will answer for Himself, to manifest the more His own unchangeable nature. He therefore declares the doom of those who set up their idols in their hearts, yet came to the prophet with an outward semblance of obedience to inquire from Jehovah. He would answer for Himself -not merely by the prophet -setting His face against such, making them a sign and a proverb by His dealing with them. Moreover, if they could entice, as, alas, they did entice prophets professedly of God, to utter a word such as they coveted to hear, Jehovah might permit them to have the message which they craved from such a prophet, but they would both alike find the penalty of their iniquity, and be destroyed from among the people whom God would have in result as His people, and to whom He would be God, according to the name by which He was in covenant with them, the unchangeable Jehovah.
4. A solemn appendix to this follows. These elders would fain have had an answer of peace without righteous foundation to it, and would have made the prophet the mediator of such a peace. God answers them now, although not with a direct message to them, but as it were with His face turned away; addressing the prophet merely, He announces the principles of His own holy government under which they and all must come. Thus "the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, when a land sinneth against Me by working unfaithfulness, and I stretch out my hand upon it and break the staff of bread thereof, and send famine upon it, and cut off man and beast from it: though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job, should be in it. they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord Jehovah."
Thus, in the condition of which the Lord speaks, and in which the people of Israel were at this time, no human mediation could be at all available, even of the righteous. Of these, God chooses three who might of all men be most suited as intercessors; if even they were before Him at the present time, their pleading would alter nothing in such a case. Noah had stood at the wreck of one world, and alone was spared with his house to begin another; when the after-world was once again departing far from Him, Job was declared by God Himself to have no equal upon the earth. Noah and Job had long since passed away. It is remarkable to find Daniel associated with such men as these -a young man as Daniel surely was at this time, and in the court of the king of Babylon; but this has no doubt to do with his fitness to represent hopes that might be very much centered in him; his great place with Nebuchadnezzar being gained in so remarkable a way, and so conspicuous. It had been, too, by actual prevailing with God in prayer -prayer which had availed for others as much as for himself, a sample of the "effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous," of which James speaks. It was as one of these practically righteous ones his prayer had prevailed with the Lord. It was not the favor of man that had raised up Daniel, but the favor of God. How much might be hoped for from such a conspicuous representative of God in a day like that! Yet, while recognizing Daniel’s eminent place, and associating him with the prominently righteous of by-gone generations, all human hopes that might be based upon this are refused. Not Noah, Daniel and Job together could avert a judgment which was already in fact begun!* Indeed, if only one of God’s four sore plagues had been in question, they could not have turned it away; but these four plagues were all of them together now upon the land.
{*There seems a contrast here too with the Lord’s mercy when there is the least indication of a possibility of any returning to Him. "Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now . . . if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment . . . and I will pardon it" (Jer 5:1). So in Abraham’s intercession for Sodom, God declared He would spare the city if but ten righteous were found there. It is to be noted that Abraham ceased asking for any further lowering of the number; as long as he asked, God granted his request. "Ye are the salt of the earth;" but the time comes, as in the days of Noah, when the salt was taken away and the corrupt earth left to its doom. So will it be at the coming of the Lord for His church. A similar moral state is here described by Ezekiel. The testimony of the few faithful ones, like Jeremiah, was helpless in the face of universal apostasy. Therefore nothing but judgment was left. -S. Ridout.}
The sentence had been pronounced; judgment was already begun; how vain to think of altering the word which had thus gone forth from God! All that remained was to acquiesce in it; and in a strange and terrible way would God work, as He assures Ezekiel, to produce this acquiescence. There should be left in Jerusalem a remnant who would escape, and be brought out of it, sons and daughters: Behold, they shall come forth unto you, and ye shall see their way and their doings; and ye shall be comforted concerning the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, as to all that I have brought upon it; yea, they shall comfort you when ye see their way and their doings, and ye shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done in it." Such language is as unmistakable as solemn. This spared remnant, alas, a remnant not of the righteous, but of the wicked, after all God’s mercy to them would demonstrate by their very doings the necessity of God’s judgment. God would be vindicated in such a way that every upright heart must acquiesce in it.
5. And still there is a supplement, as we may say, even to. this. "And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, what is the wood of the vine more than any wood? -the vine-branch which is among the trees of the forest? Shall wood be taken thereof to do any work? or will men take a pin of it to hang any vessel thereon?" The vine, as we know, is of use simply for one thing, for its fruit. If it bear no fruit, there is no reason for its existence. What is its wood? Compare it, says the Lord, with those trees of the forest among which it twines its branches. Has it wood like their wood? Can you manufacture anything from it? or can it serve any purpose? Only for one thing is it of the least use, it is for the fire.* And, as already shown, God was acting thus with regard to Israel. Its two ends, the kingdom of Ephraim and the kingdom of Judah alike, were manifestly being consumed in the fire which was burning the whole of it. How useless now to expect anything from what was so manifestly a mere brand for the burning! Thus it was with the inhabitants of Jerusalem; at the time the prophet spoke they were as between two fires from both sides -Egypt and Babylon -ready to lay hold of them; and to the fire they would be given up. That which they dreaded would come upon them; they should know that He was Jehovah when He set His face in unchangeable holiness against them.
{*Israel had been brought as a vine out of Egypt (Psa 80:8). Everything had been done to secure fruit. The heathen had been displaced, it had been cared for, and had flourished, but all had been in vain. With a slight change of figure, the prophet Isaiah pleads with Israel, which had been planted as a vine in a very fruitful hill, fenced, guarded and tended, but which had borne only wild grapes. "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel . . . and He looked for judgment, but behold, oppression; for righteousness, but behold, a cry" (Isa 5:1-7). Their vine had become as the vine of Sodom (Deu 32:32), although planted a noble vine (Jer 2:21). Israel had become an empty vine (Hos 10:1). Therefore, failing utterly to bear fruit, nothing but judgment was left for it. -S. Ridout.}
One cannot but remember, in connection with what is here, the Lord’s word to us as Christians, in which He declares Himself the true Vine, the stock of the vine for His people, from which all the sap and nourishment must come; in whom alone, therefore, all ability for fruit is found: "I am the Vine," says the Lord to His disciples: "ye are the branches." There is nothing strange, therefore, in the choice of this image for Jerusalem. In God’s people is found at all times that weakness and impotence which belong to man, apart from Him who alone can be to them the source of supply -the all-sufficient Source. It is ours to recognize this feebleness and nothingness on our part; not merely such as is necessarily in the creature, but more, in the ruined creature; as hopelessly ruined as Israel in the picture here. To be connected with Israel, now cast out of the land, could be no cause of hope, apart from the grace of God which could alone fulfil to them those promises which in grace He had given, which He would fulfil, therefore -must fulfil -for His own sake, for He can neither change nor repent. Nevertheless, no individual in Israel could claim their fulfilment. God’s grace itself was manifestly out of their reach, save only as in the confession of this helplessness faith turned to Him who, because of His own nature, could not turn away from the prayer of the destitute confiding in Him. Here is where we find our place and portion still, who have indeed no part in these promises which are to be fulfilled to Israel, but who enjoy, nevertheless, the sweet new covenant assurances in their fullest reality.
How blessed to know Christ as the unfailing resource of His people; from whom they have but to draw, as the branch from the vine, for unlimited capacity for fruitfulness! We are "blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus." What we want, therefore, is but the faith which claims and looks for the fulfilment of these blessings -the actual ministry of them for actual need. And of what use are we if we do not bear fruit? "In this," says the Lord, "is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples."
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v27
Ezekiel
A COMMON MISTAKE AND LAME EXCUSE
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Eze 12:27.
Human nature was very much the same in the exiles that listened to Ezekiel on the banks of the Chebar and in Manchester to-day. The same neglect of God’s message was grounded then on the same misapprehension of its bearings which profoundly operates in the case of many people now. Ezekiel had been proclaiming the fall of Jerusalem to the exiles whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the incredulity which fancied that it had a great many facts to support it, and so it generalised God’s long-suffering delay in sending the threatened punishment into a scoffing proverb which said, ‘The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.’ To translate it into plain English, the prophets had cried ‘Wolf! wolf!’ so long that their alarms were disbelieved altogether.
Even the people that did not go the length of utter unbelief in the prophetic threatening took the comfortable conclusion that these threatenings had reference to a future date, and they need not trouble themselves about them. And so they said, according to my text, ‘They of the house of Israel say, The vision that he sees is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off.’ ‘It may be all quite true, but it lies away in the distant future there; and things will last our time, so we do not need to bother ourselves about what he says.’
So the imagined distance of fulfilment turned the edge of the plainest denunciations, and was like wool stuffed in the people’s ears to deaden the reverberations of the thunder.
I wonder if there is anybody here now whom that fits, who meets the preaching of the gospel with a shrug, and with this saying, ‘He prophesies of the times that are far off.’ I fancy that there are a few; and I wish to say a word or two about this ground on which the widespread disregard of the divine message is based.
I. First, then, notice that the saying of my text-in the application which I now seek to make of it-is a truth, but it is only half a truth.
Of course, Ezekiel was speaking simply about the destruction of Jerusalem. If it had been true, as his hearers assumed, that that was not going to happen for a good many years yet, the chances were that it had no bearing upon them, and they were right enough in neglecting the teaching. And, of course, when I apply such a word as this in the direction in which I wish to do now, we do bring in a different set of thoughts; but the main idea remains the same. The neglect of God’s solemn message by a great many people is based, more or less consciously, upon the notion that the message of Christianity-or, if you like to call it so, of the gospel; or, if you like to call it more vaguely, religion-has to do mainly with blessings and woes beyond the grave, and that there is plenty of time to attend to it when we get nearer the end.
Now is it true that ‘he prophesies of times that are far off’? Yes! and No! Yes! it is true, and it is the great glory of Christianity that it shifts the centre of gravity, so to speak, from this poor, transient, contemptible present, and sets it away out yonder in an august and infinite future. It brings to us not only knowledge of the future, but certitude, and takes the conception of another life out of the region of perhapses, possibilities, dreads, or hopes, as the case may be, and sets it in the sunlight of certainty. There is no more mist. Other faiths, even when they have risen to the height of some contemplation of a future, have always seen it wrapped in nebulous clouds of possibilities, but Christianity sets it clear, definite, solid, as certain as yesterday, as certain as to-day.
It not only gives us the knowledge and the certitude of the times that are afar off, and that are not times but eternities, but it gives us, as the all-important element in that future, that its ruling characteristic is retribution. It ‘brings life and immortality to light,’ and just because it does, it brings the dark orb which, like some of the double stars in the heavens, is knit to the radiant sphere by a necessary band. It brings to light, with life and immortality, death and woe. It is true-’he prophesies of times that are far off’ and it is the glory of the gospel of Christ’s revelation, and of the religion that is based thereon, that its centre is beyond the grave, and that its eye is so often turned to the clearly discerned facts that lie there.
But is that all that we have to say about Christianity? Many representations of it, I am free to confess, from pulpits and books and elsewhere, do talk as if that was all, as if it was a magnificent thing to have when you came to die. As the play has it, ‘I said to him that I hoped there was no need that he should think about God yet,’ because he was not going to die. But I urge you to remember, dear brethren, that all that prophesying of times that are far off has the closest bearing upon this transient, throbbing moment, because, for one thing, one solemn part of the Christian revelation about the future is that Time is the parent of Eternity, and that, in like manner as in our earthly course ‘the child is father of the man,’ so the man as he has made himself is the author of himself as he will be through the infinite spaces that lie beyond the grave. Therefore, when a Christian preacher prophesies of times that are afar off, he is prophesying of present time, between which and the most distant eternity there is an iron nexus-a band which cannot be broken.
Nor is that all. Not only is the truth in my text but a half truth, if it is supposed that the main business of the gospel is to talk to us about heaven and hell, and not about the earth on which we secure and procure the one or the other; but also it is a half truth because, large and transcendent, eternal in their duration, and blessed beyond all thought in their sweetness as are the possibilities, the certainties that are opened by the risen and ascended Christ, and tremendous beyond all words that men can speak as are the alternative possibilities, yet these are not all the contents of the gospel message; but those blessings and penalties, joys and miseries, exaltations and degradations, which attend upon righteousness and sin, godliness and irreligion to-day are a large part of its theme and of its effects. Therefore, whilst on the one hand it is true, blessed be Christ’s name! that ‘he prophesies of times that are far off’; on the other hand it is an altogether inadequate description of the gospel message and of the Christian body of truth to say that the future is its realm, and not the present.
II. So, then, in the second place, my text gives a very good reason for prizing and attending to the prophecy.
If it is true that God, speaking through the facts of Christ’s death and Resurrection and Ascension, has given to us the sure and certain hope of immortality, and has declared to us plainly the conditions upon which that immortality may be ours, and the woful loss and eclipse into the shadow of which we shall stumble darkling if it is not ours, then surely that is a reason for prizing and laying to heart, and living by the revelation so mercifully made. People do not usually kick over their telescopes, and neglect to look through them, because they are so powerful that they show them the craters in the moon and turn faint specks into blazing suns. People do not usually neglect a word of warning or guidance in reference to the ordering of their earthly lives because it is so comprehensive, and covers so large a ground, and is so certain and absolutely true. Surely there can be no greater sign of divine loving-kindness, of a Saviour’s tenderness and care for us, than that He should come to each of us, as He does come, and say to each of us, ‘Thou art to live for ever; and if thou wilt take Me for thy Life, thou shalt live for ever, blessed, calm, and pure.’ And we listen, and say, ‘He prophesies of times that are far off!’ Oh! is that not rather a reason for coming very close to, and for grappling to our hearts and living always by the power of, that great revelation? Surely to announce the consequences of evil, and to announce them so long beforehand that there is plenty of time to avoid them and to falsify the prediction, is the token of love.
Now I wish to lay it on the hearts of you people who call yourselves Christians, and who are so in some imperfect degree, whether we do at all adequately regard, remember, and live by this great mercy of God, that He should have prophesied to us ‘of the times that are far off.’ Perhaps I am wrong, but I cannot help feeling that, for this generation, the glories of the future rest with God have been somewhat paled, and the terrors of the future unrest away from God have been somewhat lightened. I hope I am wrong, but I do not think that the modern average Christian thinks as much about heaven as his father did. And I believe that his religion has lost something of its buoyancy, of its power, of its restraining and stimulating energy, because, from a variety of reasons, the bias of this generation is rather to dwell upon, and to realise, the present social blessings of Christianity than to project itself into that august future. The reaction may be good. I have no doubt it was needed, but I think it has gone rather too far, and I would beseech Christian men and women to try and deserve more the sarcasm that is flung at us that we live for another world. Would God it were true-truer than it is! We should see better work done in this world if it were. So I say, that ‘he prophesieth of times that are far off’ is a good reason for prizing and obeying the prophet.
III. Lastly, this is a very common and a very bad reason for neglecting the prophecy.
It does operate as a reason for giving little heed to the prophet, as I have been saying. In the old men-of-war, when an engagement was impending, they used to bring up the hammocks from the bunks and pile them into the nettings at the side of the ship, to defend it from boarders and bullets. And then, after these had served their purpose of repelling, they were taken down again and the crew went to sleep upon them. That is exactly what some of my friends do with that misconception of the genius of Christianity which supposes that it is concerned mainly with another world. They put it up as a screen between them and God, between them and what they know to be their duty-viz., the acceptance of Christ as their Saviour. It is their hammock that they put between the bullets and themselves; and many a good sleep they get upon it!
Now, that strange capacity that men have of ignoring a certain future is seen at work all round about us in every region of life. I wonder how many young men there are in Manchester to-day that have begun to put their foot upon the wrong road, and who know just as well as I do that the end of it is disease, blasted reputation, ruined prospects, perhaps an early death. Why! there is not a drunkard in the city that does not know that. Every man that takes opium knows it. Every unclean, unchaste liver knows it; and yet he can hide the thought from himself, and go straight on as if there was nothing at all of the sort within the horizon of possibility. It is one of the most marvellous things that men have that power; only beaten by the marvel that, having it, they should be such fools as to choose to exercise it. The peasants on the slopes of Vesuvius live very careless lives, and they have their little vineyards and their olives. Yes, and every morning when they come out, they can look up and see the thin wreath of smoke going up in the dazzling blue, and they know that some time or other there will be a roar and a rush, and down will come the lava. But ‘a short life and a merry one’ is the creed of a good many of us, though we do not like to confess it. Some of you will remember the strange way in which ordinary habits survived in prisons in the dreadful times of the French Revolution, and how ladies and gentlemen, who were going to have their heads chopped off next morning, danced and flirted, and sat at entertainments, just as if there was no such thing in the world as the public prosecutor and the tumbril, and the gaoler going about with a bit of chalk to mark each door where were the condemned for next day.
That same strange power of ignoring a known future, which works so widely and so disastrously round about us, is especially manifested in regard to religion. The great bulk of English men and women who are not Christians, and the little sample of such that I have in my audience now, as a rule believe as fully as we do the truths which they agree to neglect. Let me speak to them individually. You believe that death will introduce you into a world of two halves-that if you have been a good, religious man, you will dwell in blessedness; that if you have not, you will not-yet you never did a single thing, nor refrained from a single thing, because of that belief. And when I, and men of my profession, come and plead with you and try to get through that strange web of insensibility that you have spun round you, you listen, and then you say, with a shrug, ‘He prophesies of things that are far off.’ and you turn with relief to the trivialities of the day. Need I ask you whether that is a wise thing or not?
Surely it is not wise for a man to ignore a future that is certain simply because it is distant. So long as it is certain, what in the name of common-sense has the time when it begins to be a present to do with our wisdom in regard to it? It is the uncertainty in future anticipations which makes it unwise to regulate life largely by them, and if you can eliminate that element of uncertainty-which you can do if you believe in Jesus Christ-then the question is not when is the prophecy going to be fulfilled, but is it true and trustworthy? The man is a fool who, because it is far off, thinks he can neglect it.
Surely it is not wise to ignore a future which is so incomparably greater than this present, and which also is so connected with this present as that life here is only intelligible as the vestibule and preparation for that great world beyond.
Surely it is not wise to ignore a future because you fancy it is far away, when it may burst upon you at any time. These exiles to whom Ezekiel spoke hugged themselves in the idea that his words were not to be fulfilled for many days to come; but they were mistaken, and the crash of the fall of Jerusalem stunned them before many months had passed by. We have to look forward to a future which must be very near to some of us, which may be nearer to others than they think, which at the remotest is but a little way from us, and which must come to us all. Oh, dear friends, surely it is not wise to ignore as far off that which for some of us may be here before this day closes, which will probably be ours in some cases before the fresh young leaves now upon the trees have dropped yellow in the autumn frosts, which at the most distant must be very near us, and which waits for us all.
What would you think of the crew and passengers of some ship lying in harbour, waiting for its sailing orders, who had got leave on shore, and did not know but that at any moment the blue-peter might be flying at the fore-the signal to weigh anchor-if they behaved themselves in the port as if they were never going to embark, and made no preparations for the voyage? Let me beseech you to rid yourselves of that most unreasonable of all reasons for neglecting the gospel, that its most solemn revelations refer to the eternity beyond the grave.
There are many proofs that man on the whole is a very foolish creature, but there is not one more tragical than the fact that believing, as many of you do, that ‘the wages of sin is death, and the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ,’ you stand aloof from accepting the gift, and risk the death.
The ‘times far off’ have long since come near enough to those scoffers. The most distant future will be present to you before you are ready for it, unless you accept Jesus Christ as your All, for time and for eternity. If you do, the time that is near will be pure and calm, and the times that are far off will be radiant with unfading bliss.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On vv1, 21 § 4. Further Prophecies of Israel's Guilt and approaching…
§ 4. Further Prophecies of Israel's Guilt and approaching Punishment (Ezekiel 12-19)
This is a somewhat miscellaneous group of prophecies intermediate in date between the preceding (August-September, 591 b.c.) and succeeding (July-August, 590 b.c.) sections. It includes fresh symbols of exile, flight, and famine (Eze_12:1-20), a doctrine of prophecy, true and false (Eze_12:21 to Eze_14:11), an explanation of God's exceptional treatment of Jerusalem in sparing a remnant (Eze_14:12-23), Ezekiel's parable of the Vine (Ezekiel 15), the parable of the Foundling Child (Ezekiel 16), a parable of Zedekiah's perfidy and its punishment (Ezekiel 17), a vindication of God's equity (Ezekiel 18), and a lament over the royal house of Judah (Ezekiel 19).
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Symbols of Exile, Flight, and Famine
Ezekiel's audience being blind to the meaning of the vision he has just described, he is commanded to give them, in new symbolic actions, a further representation of the coming fate of Jerusalem and its king and people. He is told to gather together such things as one leaving home would take with him, and to carry these out of his house by day. At night he is to dig a hole in a wall, and pass through it with his face covered and his baggage on his shoulder. When the people ask hun next morning what these proceedings mean he is directed to tell them that the action of the daytime is a symbol of the captivity awaiting Jerusalem, and that the action of the evening foreshadows the secret flight which Zedekiah will attempt, and the punishment of blindness which will prevent him from seeing the land of his exile (Eze_12:1-16). Another symbolic action, resembling that of Eze_4:9., is also commanded. Ezekiel is to eat and drink sparingly and with trembling, in token of the famine which the coming siege will cause in Jerusalem (Eze_12:17-20).
2. The story of the vision seems to have produced no impression.
5. The wall] Some understand the town-wall of Tel-abib, or the wall of the courtyard of Ezekiel's house, but we cannot be sure that these walls existed, The house-wall itself may be meant, but in j that case Ezekiel would have to carry his luggage indoors again.
6. Twilight] RV 'dark,' and so in Eze_12:7,
12. Cover thy face] A natural emblem for disguise and secrecy, but with a special reference, as Eze_12:13 shows, to Zedekiah's blindness.
7. Captivity] RV 'removing,' as in Eze_12:4.
10. The prince] Zedekiah, the last king of Judah: see Intro. That are among them] Changing one letter we may render, 'that are in it.' The prince.. shall go forth] Zedekiah attempted to escape from Jerusalem towards the end of the siege, but was captured and brought to Nebuchadrezzar at Riblah. There his eyes were put out, and he was then taken to 1 Babylon (2Ki_25:4-7; Jer_39:4-7; Jer_52:7-11).
12. That he see not] RV 'because he shall not see.'
16. I will leave a few] This is really an explanation of the symbol in Eze_5:3.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv10, 25 See note 1, (See Scofield "Isa 13:1").
burden
See note 1, (See Scofield "Isa 13:1").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Signs, Messages, and Parables
CHAPTERS 12-19
Signs, Messages, and Parables
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1. Signs given through the prophet (Eze 12:1-20)
2. The message of speedy judgment (Eze 12:21-28)
3. The message against false prophets and prophetesses. (Eze 13:1-23)
4. The message against the elders (Eze 14:1-23)
5. The parable of the vine given to the fire (Eze 15:1-8)
6. The parable of the abandoned child and Israel’s whoredom (Eze 16:1-63)
7. The parable of the riddle of the two eagles and the vine (Eze 17:1-24)
8. The message of the righteous judgments of God (Eze 18:1-32)
9. The Lamentations for the Princes of Israel (Eze 19:1-14)
With the twelfth chapter a new section of this book begins, ending with chapter 19.
Eze 12:1-20. They were a rebellious house and the prophet is told to do something, that they might consider. He was to attire himself like one who goes on a journey with sandals on his feet, a staff in his hand, a burden on his shoulder. He was told to move from place to place. The meaning of all this is explained in Eze 12:8-16. The prince in Jerusalem is Zedekiah. His attempt to flee from Jerusalem, and his fate of having his eyes put out by the king of Babylon, his captivity and death are here clearly predicted. The following passages must be read and studied in connection with this chapter Jer 39:4; Jer 52:10-34; 2Ki 25:1-30.
Eze 12:21-28. The false prophets had preached a false hope, “The days are prolonged and every vision faileth.” God had announced another message. Had they believed what God had spoken, that judgment was imminent, they would have surely repented and turned unto the Lord. Unbelief was responsible for their condition; in this they were sustained by lying prophets. And the Lord answered these false prophets. He changed the lying message and told them “the days are at hand”--the effect of every vision. All false visions, divinations and hopes were to cease. His Word is now to be done.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 17 The Sign of the Kings Departue
The Sign of the Kings Departue
v. 1. The word of the Lord also came unto me, saying,
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v. 2. Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, literally, "in the midst of a house of rebelliousness art thou living," which have eyes to see and see not; they have ears to hear and hear not, thus proving themselves to be deliberately perverse and willfully obstinate; for they are a rebellious house.
v. 3. Therefore, thou son of man, prepare thee stuff for removing, an exile’s outfit, utensils needed to sustain life during a journey of some length, and remove by day in their sight, in broad daylight, thereby drawing the attention of men to his actions; and thou shalt remove from thy place, where he as then living, to another place in their sight; it may be they will consider, contemplate the prophet’s action and make the proper application, though they be a rebellious house.
v. 4. Then shalt thou bring forth thy stuff, such as his staff, his dunnage sack, his cooking utensils, by day In their sight, as stuff for removing; and thou shalt go forth at even, after the coming of twilight, in their sight, as they that go forth into captivity, not emigrants of their own free will, but under restraint.
v. 5. Dig thou through the wall in their sight, the mud walls of most Oriental houses being easily broken down, and carry out thereby, through the hole thus produced.
v. 6. In their sight shalt thou bear it upon thy shoulders, loading himself with the utensils which he had gotten ready, and carry it forth in the twilight, as the darkness of night was falling; thou shalt cover thy face, that thou see not the ground, muffling his face, as one afraid of being recognized by any one meeting him, as one heaped with shame and sorrow; for I have set thee for a sign unto the house of Israel, a type which they should recognize and whose lesson they should heed.
v. 7. And I did so as I was commanded; I brought forth my stuff by day, as stuff for captivity, as the outfit of an exile, and in the even I digged through the wall with mine hand, performing the work in person, all the more strongly to convey the lesson of his action; I brought it forth in the twilight, at nightfall, and I bare it upon my shoulder in their sight, as one emigrating under the stress of adverse circumstances, as one going into captivity. Thus the sign, the portent of evil, was set before the eye of Ezekiel’s countrymen.
v. 8. And in the morning came the word of the Lord unto me, saying,
v. 9. Son of man, hath not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, that is, all those who were witnesses of his symbolical act, said unto thee, in a natural curiosity concerning the meaning of his act, What doest thou?
v. 10. Say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, in explaining the act and reproving the spirit of blasphemous jesting which possessed them. This burden concerneth the prince in Jerusalem and all the house of Israel that are among them.
v. 11. Say, I am your sign, Ezekiel himself serving as a type; like as I have done, so shall it be done unto them; they shall remove and go into captivity, literally, "into banishment, into captivity, they shall go. "
v. 12. And the prince that is among them, the king of Judah at that time, shall bear upon his shoulder in the twilight, trying to make his escape at nightfall, and shall go forth; they shall dig through the wall, hurrying away by the speediest available route, to carry out thereby, to bring forth whatever he hoped to save in flight; he shall cover his face that he see not the ground with his eyes, taking all precautions lest he be recognized.
v. 13. My net also will I spread upon him, in this case the Chaldean army, and he shall be taken in My snare, for the host of the invaders, even without knowing and intending it, were God’s instruments of punishment; and I will bring him to Babylon, to the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it, having been blinded at Riblah, though he shall die there. All this was fulfilled at the time of Zedekiah, when he tried to escape from the doomed city, but was ignominiously caught by the Chaldean army and met the fate which the Lord had determined for him. Cf Jeremiah 39; Jeremiah 52; 2 Kings 25.
v. 14. And I will scatter toward every wind, to all parts of the world, all that are about him to help him, his counselors and his body-guard, and all his bands, literally, "all his wings of an army," the military forces under his command; and I will draw out the sword after them.
v. 15. And they shall know that I am the Lord, the argument of His sentence carried out upon them being sufficiently emphatic to make this fact clear, when I shall scatter them among the nations and disperse them in the countries.
v. 16. But I will leave a few men of them, the prophecy thus merging into the usual Messianic promise, from the sword, from the famine, and from the pestilence, these people representing the Church of God on earth, that they may declare all their abominations among the heathen whither they come, frankly confessing their transgressions and vindicating the punishment of God upon their sins; and they shall know that I am the Lord. It was the Israelites in truth who were led to repentance by God’s punishment; and they were also the ones to perpetuate the knowledge of Jehovah, the God of the covenant, to their children after them. The Lord has always had His children on earth, at times even in the midst of heathen nations.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 14, 17, 19, 21, 24, 26 The word of Yahweh came
The word of Yahweh came
This is an idiom that is used to introduce something that God told his prophets or his people. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 3:16. AT: "Yahweh spoke this message" or "Yahweh spoke these words" (See: Idiom)
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Son of man
"Son of a human being" or "Son of humanity." God calls Ezekiel this to emphasize that Ezekiel is only a human being. God is eternal and powerful, but humans are not. AT: "Mortal person" or "Human"
a rebellious house
The word "house" is a metonym for the family that lives in the house, in this case the Israelites, the descendants of Jacob over many years. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 2:5. AT: "a rebellious people" (See: Metonymy)
they have eyes to see but they do not see ... they have ears to hear but do not listen
People being unable to understand Yahweh's message and what he is doing is spoken of as if the people were unable physically to see and hear. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
word of God
Son of Man
life
rebel
house
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 5, 12, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 26 12:1–24:27 This section collects diverse prophecies and sign acts…
12:1–24:27 This section collects diverse prophecies and sign acts that are united in their condemnation of Jerusalem and its leaders.
12:1-2 The inhabitants of Judah were not the only ones who had stony, stubborn hearts that were reluctant to hear the prophet’s message (11:19). The exiles among whom Ezekiel lived were also rebellious people who would refuse to see that their ways were evil and decline to hear his message, just like those left behind in Judah.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.