You, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel, and say, “You mountains of Israel, hear Yahweh’s word. The Lord Yahweh says: ‘Because the enemy has said against you, “Aha!” and, “The ancient high places are ours in possession!” ’ therefore prophesy, and say, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Because, even because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that you might be a possession to the residue of the nations, and you are taken up in the lips of talkers, and the evil report of the people;” therefore, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh: The Lord Yahweh says to the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and to the cities that are forsaken, which have become a prey and derision to the residue of the nations that are all around; therefore the Lord Yahweh says: “Surely in the fire of my jealousy I have spoken against the residue of the nations, and against all Edom, that have appointed my land to themselves for a possession with the joy of all their heart, with despite of soul, to cast it out for a prey.” ’ Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel, and tell the mountains, the hills, the watercourses and the valleys, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Behold, I have spoken in my jealousy and in my wrath, because you have borne the shame of the nations.” Therefore the Lord Yahweh says: “I have sworn, ‘Surely the nations that are around you will bear their shame.’
“ ‘ “But you, mountains of Israel, you shall shoot out your branches, and yield your fruit to my people Israel; for they are at hand to come. For, behold, I am for you, and I will come to you, and you will be tilled and sown. I will multiply men on you, all the house of Israel, even all of it. The cities will be inhabited, and the waste places will be built. I will multiply man and animal on you. They will increase and be fruitful. I will cause you to be inhabited as you were before, and you will do better than at your beginnings. Then you will know that I am Yahweh. Yes, I will cause men to walk on you, even my people Israel. They will possess you, and you will be their inheritance, and you will never again bereave them of their children.”
“ ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Because they say to you, ‘You are a devourer of men, and have been a bereaver of your nation;’ therefore you shall devour men no more, and not bereave your nation any more,” says the Lord Yahweh. “I won’t let you hear the shame of the nations any more. You won’t bear the reproach of the peoples any more, and you won’t cause your nation to stumble any more,” says the Lord Yahweh.’ ”
Moreover Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, “Son of man, when the house of Israel lived in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and by their deeds. Their way before me was as the uncleanness of a woman in her impurity. Therefore I poured out my wrath on them for the blood which they had poured out on the land, and because they had defiled it with their idols. I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries. I judged them according to their way and according to their deeds. When they came to the nations where they went, they profaned my holy name; in that men said of them, ‘These are Yahweh’s people, and have left his land.’ But I had respect for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations where they went.
“Therefore tell the house of Israel, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “I don’t do this for your sake, house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am Yahweh,” says the Lord Yahweh, “when I am proven holy in you before their eyes.
“ ‘ “For I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness, and from all your idols. I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes. You will keep my ordinances and do them. You will dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. You will be my people, and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain, and will multiply it, and lay no famine on you. I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field, that you may receive no more the reproach of famine among the nations.
“ ‘ “Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations. I don’t do this for your sake,” says the Lord Yahweh. “Let it be known to you: be ashamed and confounded for your ways, house of Israel.”
“ ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “In the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited and the waste places will be built. The land that was desolate will be tilled instead of being a desolation in the sight of all who passed by. They will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden. The waste, desolate, and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.’ Then the nations that are left around you will know that I, Yahweh, have built the ruined places, and planted that which was desolate. I, Yahweh, have spoken it, and I will do it.”
“ ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “For this, moreover, I will be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them: I will increase them with men like a flock. As the flock for sacrifice, as the flock of Jerusalem in her appointed feasts, so the waste cities will be filled with flocks of men. Then they will know that I am Yahweh.’ ”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 31, 36 That is, the Edomite.
That is, the Edomite.
That is, Jerusalem, which for God’s promises was the chiefest of all the world.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–38 Eze 36:1 Also, thou son of man, prophesy unto…
Eze 36:1 Also, thou son of man, prophesy unto the mountains of Israel, and say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the LORD:
Ver. 1. Prophesy to the mountains of Israel.] Better things than thou didst to Mount Seir in the foregoing chapter. See Isa 3:10-11. {See Trapp on "Isa 3:10"} {See Trapp on "Isa 3:11"}
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Ye mountains.] That is, ye mountaineers, qui sere asperi atque inculti. Sed
“ Nemo adeo ferus est qui non mitescere possit,
Si modo culturae patientem accommodet aurem. ”
- Horace
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, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38 Also, Heb. And.
Also, Heb. And.
Prophesy, declare from me, and in my word,
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unto the mountains of Israel; the inhabitants wasted or in captivity, speak concerning the mountains, that is, the land of Judah and Israel, which was a country full of mountains, which were now horrid, unplanted.
Hear what further revenge I will take on Edom, and on other nations that wasted you: this continued to the end of the 6th verse. And hear what good I will do to you: this from the 7th to the end of the chapter.
The word of the Lord; the severe judgments against your enemies, his gracious promises to you.
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, 16, 25 The prophet had been ordered to set his face…
The prophet had been ordered to set his face towards the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them, Eze 6:2. Then God was coming forth to contend with his people; but now that God is returning in mercy to them he must speak good words and comfortable words to these mountains, Eze 36:1 and again Eze 36:4. You mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord; and what he says to them he says to the hills, to the rivers, to the valleys, to the desolate wastes in the country, and to the cities that are forsaken, Eze 36:4. and again Eze 36:6. The people were gone, some one way and some another; nothing remained there to be spoken to but the places, the mountains and valleys; these the Chaldeans could not carry away with them. The earth abides for ever. Now, to show the mercy God had in reserve for the people, he is to speak of him as having a dormant kindness for the place, which, if the Lord had been pleased for ever to abandon, he would not have called upon to hear the word of the Lord, nor would he as at this time have shown it such things as these. Here is,
I. The compassionate notice God takes of the present deplorable condition of the land of Israel. It has become both a prey and a derision to the heathen that are round about, Eze 36:4. 1. It has become a prey to them; and they are all enriched with the plunder of it. When the Chaldeans had conquered them all their neighbours flew to the spoil as to a shipwreck, every one thinking all his own that he could lay his hands on (Eze 36:3): They have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that you might be a possession to the heathen, to the residue of them, even such as had themselves narrowly escaped the like desolation. No one thought it any crime to strip an Israelite. Turba Romae sequitur fortunam ut semper - The mob of Rome still praise the elevated and despise the fallen. It is the common dry, when a man is down, Down with him. 2. It has become a derision to them. They took all they had and laughed at them when they had done. The enemy said, "Aha! even the ancient high places are ours in possession, Eze 36:2. Neither the antiquity, nor the dignity, neither the sanctity nor the fortifications, of the land of Israel, are its security, but we have become masters of it all." The more honours that land had been adorned with, and the greater figure it had made among the nations, the more pride and pleasure did they take in making a spoil of it, which is an instance of a base and sordid spirit; for the more glorious and prosperity was the more piteous is the adversity. God takes notice of it here as an aggravation of the present calamity of Israel: You are taken up in the lips of talkers and are an infamy of the people, Eze 36:3. All the talk of the country about was concerning the overthrow of the Jewish nation; and every one that spoke of it had some peevish ill-natured reflection or other upon them. They were the scorning of those that were at ease and the contempt of the proud, Psa 123:4. There are some that are noted for talkers, that have something to say of every body, but cannot find in their hearts to speak well of any body; God's people, among such people, were sure to be a reproach when the crown had fallen from their head. Thus it was the lot of Christianity, in its suffering days, to be every where spoken against.
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II. The expressions of God's just displeasure against those who triumphed in the desolations of the land of Israel, as many of its neighbours did, even the residue of the brethren, and Idumea particularly. Let us see, 1. How they dealt with the Israel of God. They carved out large possessions to themselves out of their land, out of God's land; for so indeed it was: "They have appointed my land into their possession (Eze 36:5), and so not only invaded their neighbour's property, but intrenched upon God's prerogative." It was the holy land which they laid their sacrilegious hands upon. They did not own any dependence upon God, as the God of that land, nor acknowledge any remaining interest that Israel had in it, but cast it out for a prey, as if they had won it in a lawful war. And this they did without any dread of God and his judgments and without any compassion for Israel and their calamities, but with the joy of all their hearts, because they got by it, and with despiteful minds to Israel that lost by it. Increasing wealth, by right or wrong, is all the joy of a worldly heart; and the calamities of God's people are all the joy of a despiteful mind. And those that had not an opportunity of making a prey of God's people made a reproach of them; so that they were the shame of the heathen, Eze 36:6. Every body ridiculed them and made a jest of them; and the truth is they had by their own sin made themselves vile; so that God was righteous herein, but men were unrighteous and very barbarous. 2. How God would deal with those who were thus in word and deed abusive to his people. He has spoken against the heathen; he has passed sentence upon them; he has determined to reckon with them for it, and this in the fire of his jealousy, both for his own honour and for the honour of his people, Eze 36:5. Having a love for both as strong as death, he has a jealousy for both as cruel as the grave. They spoke in their malice against God's people, and he will speak in his jealousy against them; and it is easy to say which will speak most powerfully. God will speak in his jealousy and in his fury, Eze 36:6. Fury is not in God; but he will exert his power against them and handle them as severely as men do when they are in a fury. He will so speak to them in his wrath as to vex them in his sore displeasure. What he says he will stand to, for it is backed with an oath. He has lifted up his hand and sworn by himself, has sworn and will not repent. And what is it that is said with so much heat, and yet with so much deliberation? It is this (Eze 36:7), Surely the heathen that are about you, they shall bear their shame. Note, The righteous God, to whom vengeance belongs, will render shame for shame. Those that put contempt and reproach upon God's people will, sooner or later, have it burned upon themselves, perhaps in this world (either their follies or their calamities, their miscarriages or their mischances, shall be their reproach), at furthest in that day when all the impenitent shall rise to shame and everlasting contempt.
III. The promises of God's favour to his Israel and assurances given of great mercy God had in store for them. God takes occasion from the outrage and insolence of their enemies to show himself so much the more concerned for them and ready to do them good, as David hoped that God would recompense him good for Shimei's cursing him. Let them curse, but bless thou. In this way, as well as others, the enemies of God's people do them real service, even by the injuries they do them, against their will and beyond their intention. We shall have no reason to complain if, the more unkind men are, the more kind God is - if, the more kindly he speaks to us by his word and Spirit, the more kindly he acts for us in his providence. The prophet must say so to the mountains of Israel, which were now desolate and despised, that God is for them and will burn to them, Eze 36:9. As the curse of God reaches the ground for man's sake, so does the blessing. Now that which is promised is, 1. That their rightful owners should return to the possession of them: My people Israel are at hand to come, Eze 36:8. Though they are at a great distance from their own country, though they are dispersed in many countries, and though they are detained by the power of their enemies, yet they shall come again to their own border, Jer 31:17. The time is at hand for their return. Though there were above forty years of the seventy (perhaps fifty) yet remaining, it is spoken of as near, because it is sure, and there were some among them that should live to see it. A thousand years are with God but as one day. The mountains of Israel are now desolate; but God will cause men to walk upon them again, even his people Israel, not as travellers passing over them, but as inhabitants - not tenants, but freeholders: They shall possess thee, not for term of life, but for themselves and their heirs; thou shalt be their inheritance. It was a type of the heavenly Canaan, to which all God's children are heirs, every Israelite indeed, and into which they shall shortly be all brought together, out of the countries where they are now scattered. 2. That they should afford a plentiful comfortable maintenance for their owners at their return. When the land had enjoyed her sabbaths for so many years, it should be so much the more fruitful afterwards, as we should be after rest, especially a sabbath rest: You shall be tilled and sown (Eze 36:9) and shall yield your fruit to my people Israel, Eze 36:8. Note, It is a blessing to the earth to be made serviceable to men, especially to good men, that will serve God with cheerfulness in the use of those good things which the earth serves up to them. 3. That the people of Israel should have not only a comfortable sustenance, but a comfortable settlement, in their own land: The cities shall be inhabited; the wastes shall be builded, Eze 36:10 And I will settle you after your old estates, Eze 36:11. Their own sin had unsettled them, but now God's favour shall resettle them. When the prodigal son has become a penitent he is settled again in his father's house, according to his former estate. Bring hither the first robe, and put it on him. Nay, I will do better unto you now than at your beginnings. There is more joy for the sheep that is brought back than there would have been if it had never gone astray. And God sometimes multiplies his people's comforts in proportion to the time that he has afflicted them. Thus God blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning, and doubled to him all he had. 4. That the people, after their return, should be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the land, so that it should not only be inhabited again, but as thickly inhabited, and as well peopled, as ever. God will bring back to it all the house of Israel, even all of it (observe what an emphasis is laid upon that, Eze 36:10), all whose spirits God stirred up to return; and those only were reckoned of the house of Israel, the rest had cut themselves off from it; or, though but few, in comparison, returned at first, yet afterwards, at divers times, they all returned; and then (says God) I will multiply these men (Eze 36:10), multiply man and beast; and they shall increase, Eze 36:11. Note, God's kingdom in the world is a growing kingdom; and his church, though for a time it may be diminished, shall recover itself and be again replenished. 5. That the reproach long since cast upon the land of Israel by the evil spies, and of late revived, that it was a land that ate up the inhabitants of it by famine, sickness, and the sword, should be quite rolled away, and there should never be any more occasion for it. Canaan had got into a bad name. It had of old spued out the inhabitants (Lev 18:28), the natives, the aborigines, which was turned to its reproach by those that should have put another construction upon it, Num 13:32. It had of late devoured the Israelites, and spued them out too; so that it was commonly said of it, It is a land which, instead of supporting its nations or tribes that inhabit it, bereaves them, overthrows them, and causes them to fall; it is a tenement which breaks all the tenants that come upon it. This character it had got among the neighbours; but God now promises that it shall be so no more: Thou shalt no more bereave them of men (Eze 36:12), shalt devour men no more, Eze 36:14. But the inhabitants shall live to a good old age, and not have the number of their months cut off in the midst. Compare this with that promise, Zac 8:4. Note, God will take away the reproach of his people by taking away that which was the occasion of it. When the nation is made to flourish in peace, plenty, and power, then they hear no more the shame of the heathen (Eze 36:15), especially when it is reformed; when sin, which is the reproach of any people, particularly of God's professing people, is taken away, then they hear no more the reproach of the people. Note, When God returns in mercy to a people that return to him in duty, all their grievances will be soon redressed and their honour retrieved.
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 vv1–38 Also, thou son of man, prophesy unto the mountains…
Also, thou son of man, prophesy unto the mountains of Israel,.... The land of Judah, which was very mountainous, at least one part of it, called the hill country, Luk 1:39 and now the country being cleared of men through the captivity, and other desolating judgments, there were none but bare mountains to speak unto: or, "prophesy concerning the mountains of Israel" (d); the inhabitants of them, or those that should be restored to them, concerning their future happiness and comfort: some render it, "against the mountains of Israel" (e); but the later prophecies of them are in their favour, and not against them:
and say, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord; concerning the destruction of their enemies, and concerning the temporal blessings that should be bestowed on them.
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(d) "de montibus Israelis", Junius & Tremellius, Polanus. (e) "Contra montes Israelis", Vatablus.
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, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 35, 37, 38 A promise of the restoration of Israel, from their…
A promise of the restoration of Israel, from their present deplorable condition, ver. 1-15. They are reminded of their former sins, and God's judgments, ver. 16-20. A promise of pardon, ver, 21-24. And sanctification, 25-38
The mountains - The inhabitants being in captivity, speak to the mountains, that is, the land of Judah, and Israel, which was a country full of mountains.
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, 4, 8, 9, 11, 17, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 38 The Edomites or Idumeans, during the Babylonish captivity, took
CHAPTER XXXVI
The Edomites or Idumeans, during the Babylonish captivity, took
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possession of the mountainous parts of Judea, and the
fortresses which commanded the country, intending to exclude
the Jews if ever they should return from their captivity. The
prophet therefore, by a beautiful personification, addresses
the mountains of Israel; and, ascribing to them passions and
emotions similar to those of his own breast, consoles them with
the prospect of being soon rid of those usurping foes; of being
freed from the dishonour of idols under which they groaned; and
of flourishing again in their ancient glory under their
rightful owners, 1-15.
The idolatry and other sins of the Jews are then declared to be
the cause of their captivity and dispersion, 16-20;
from which however they are promised a deliverance in terms of
great force and beauty, 21-38.
This chapter contains also, under the type of the happy
condition of the Israelites after their restoration from the
Babylonish captivity, a glorious prophecy of the rich blessings
of the Gospel dispensation.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXXVI
Verse 1. Prophesy unto the mountains of Israel] This is a part of the preceding prophecy though it chiefly concerns the Jews. In it they are encouraged to expect a glorious restoration; and that none of the evil wishes of their adversaries should take place against them.
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, 2, 8, 13, 17, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 31, 37 Eze 36:1. Son of man, prophesy unto the mountains…
Eze 36:1. Son of man, prophesy unto the mountains of Israel — The prophet had been ordered, Eze 6:2, to set his face toward the mountains of Israel, and to prophesy against them. Then God was coming forth to contend with his people; but now he is returning in mercy to them, and his prophet must speak good and comfortable words to these mountains; and what he saith to them, he saith to the hills, to the valleys, to the desolate wastes in the country, and to the cities that were forsaken, Eze 36:4, and again, Eze 36:6. The people were gone, some one way and some another; nothing remained there to be spoken to but the places, the mountains and valleys: these the Chaldeans could not carry away with them. Now to show the mercy God had in reserve for the people, the prophet is to speak of him as having a regard for the country, which if the Lord had been pleased for ever to abandon, he would not have called upon it to hear his word, nor would he have showed it such things as these.
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 vv1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 25, 28, 36, 37, 38 The “mountains of Israel” are opposed to “Seir,” the…
The “mountains of Israel” are opposed to “Seir,” the mount of Edom Eze 35:3.
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 vv1, 2, 3, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22, 25, 26, 27, 37 Israel. The restoration of the Jews and the redemption…
Israel. The restoration of the Jews and the redemption of Christ, constitute this fourth division. (Worthington) -- Edom has seized parts of the country, as if I had abandoned my people for ever.
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 1And thou, son of man, prophesy to the mountains…
CHAPTER 36
1And thou, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel, and say, Mountains of Israel, hear the word of Jehovah. 2Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because the enemy says over you, Aha! and the everlasting heights have become a possession for us; 3Therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because, because “make desolate” [is said to you], and they snap after you round about, that ye may be [become] a possession to the remnant of the heathen, and ye are lifted up on the lip of the tongue and 4are become a people’s talk [a calumny]; Therefore, mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Jehovah. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the, valleys, to the desolate ruins and to the forsaken cities, which have become a prey [booty] and a derision to 5the remnant of the heathen who are round about; Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Surely in the fire of My jealousy I have spoken regarding the remnant of the heathen and regarding the whole of Edom, who gave themselves My land for a possession, in joy of the whole heart, in contempt of 6soul, on account of its pasturage, for a prey. Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel, and say to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I, I have spoken in My jealousy and in My fury, because ye have borne the reproach of the heathen; 7Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I, I have lifted up My hand; surely the heathen that are round about you, they shall bear their 8shame. And ye mountains of Israel shall give your foliage and bear your fruit to My people Israel; for they draw near to come. 9For, behold, I come 10to you, and turn Myself to you, and ye are tilled and down. And I multiply upon you men, the whole house of Israel, all of it; and the cities are 11inhabited and the ruins built. And I multiply upon you man and beast, and they multiply themselves and are fruitful, and I settle you [make you inhabited] as at your origin, yea, I do you good more than in your beginnings, 12and ye know that I am Jehovah. And I make men walk over you, My people Israel, and they shall possess thee, and thou art to them for an inheritance, and thou shalt no more make them childless. 13Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because they say to you, A devourer of men art thou, and hast made 14thy people childless; Therefore shalt thou no more devour men, and no more 15make thy people stumble,—sentence of the Lord Jehovah. And I will no more let be heard against [over] thee the reproach of the heathen, and thou shalt no more bear the contumely [mockery, scorn] of the nations, and shalt no 16more make thy people stumble,—sentence of the Lord Jehovah. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 17Son of man, the house of Israel were dwelling on their land, and they defiled it by their way and by their works, as the uncleanness of the monthly separation was their way before Me. 18And I poured out My fury upon them on account of the blood which they 19shed upon the land, and by their foul idols defiled they it. And I dispersed them among the heathen, and they were scattered in the lands; according to 20their way and according to their works have I judged them. And it came to the heathen whither they came, and they profaned the name of My holiness, since it was said of them, Jehovah’s people are these, and out of His land 21have they gone forth. And I felt pity for the name of My holiness, which they, the house of Israel, profaned among the heathen whither they came. 22Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Not for your sakes act I, O house of Israel, but on account of the name of My 23holiness, which ye profaned among the heathen whither ye came. And I sanctify My name, the great, the profaned among the heathen, which ye profaned in their midst, and the heathen know that I am Jehovah,—sentence of the Lord Jehovah,—when I sanctify Myself on [in] you before their [your] eyes 24And I take you out of the heathen, and gather you out of all lands, and 25bring you into your land. And I sprinkle upon you clean water, and ye become clean from all your defilements [uncleannesses, Eze_36:17 sq.], and from all your foul idols will I cleanse you. And I give you 26a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I take away the heart of stone out of your 27flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And My Spirit will I put within you, and cause that ye shall walk in My statutes, and keep and do My judgments. 28And ye dwell in the land which I have given to your fathers, and are to Me 29a people, and I will be to you a God. And [yea] I help you from all your defilements, and I call to the corn and multiply it, and will not send upon 30you hunger. And I multiply the fruit of the tree, and the produce of the field, that ye may no longer have to bear the reproach of hunger among the 31heathen. And ye remember your evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and loathe your own faces, for your iniquities and for your abominations 32Not for your sakes act I,—sentence of the Lord Jehovah,—be it known to you; be ashamed, yea, shame yourselves away from your ways, O house of Israel. 33Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, In the day of My cleansing you from all your iniquities, I make the cities inhabited, and the ruins shall be built. 34And the desolated [devastated] land shall be cultivated, instead of being 35a waste in the eyes of every passer-by. And they say, This land, the desolated, is become as the garden of Eden, and the ruined and desolated and 36demolished cities are securely inhabited. And the heathen that are left round about you know that I, Jehovah, built the demolished [cities], and planted the desolated [land]; I, Jehovah, spoke and did. 37Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I will still in regard to this let Myself be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them; I will multiply them in men as a flock. 38As a flock of sacred rites, as the flock of Jerusalem in her festal seasons, so shall the ruined cities be full of flocks of men, and they know that I am Jehovah.
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Eze_36:2. Sept: ... εἰπεν … ἐρημκ αἰωνια—
Eze_36:3. ... ʼΑντι του ἀτιμκασθηναι ὑμας κ. μισηθηναι ὑμας ὑπο τ. ἐθνων—Vulg.: quod desolati estis et conculcati per circuitum—(Another reading: בהיותכם.)
Eze_36:4. ... κ. τ. ναπαις τ. ἑρημωμεναις κ. ἠφανισμεναις, κ. τ. πολεσιν τ. καταλελειμμεναις … κ. εἰς καταπατημα—
Eze_36:5. Another reading: כלה c. ה and כנפש, Sept.: ... ἀτιμασντες ψυχας του ἀφανισας ἐν προνομη. Vulg.: … et ex animo, et ejecerunt eam ut vastarent.
Eze_36:8. Sept.: ... τμν σταφυλην κ. τον καρπον ὐμων φκγεται ὁ λαος μον, ὁτι ἑλπιζουσιν του ἐλθειν.
Eze_36:10. ... παν οἰκον ʼΙσρ. εἰς τελος
Eze_36:12. ... ἐτι ἀτεκνωθναι ἀπ’ αὐτων. Vulg.: et non addes ultra, ut absque eis sis.
Eze_36:13. ... κ. ἠτεκνωμενη ὑπο του ἐθνους, Vulg.: … et suffocans gentem tuam.
Eze_36:14. Vulg.: … Gentem tuam non necabis ultra—
Eze_36:17. Sept.: ... ὁδω . . κ. ἐν τ. εἰδωλοις … κ. ἐν τ. ἀκαθαρσικις αὠτοων.
Eze_36:19. ... κ. ἐλικμησα αὐτους—
Eze_36:20. Another reading: ויבאו, so the old translations.
Eze_36:21. Κ. ἐφεισαμην αὐτων—Et peperci nomini—
Eze_36:23. Another reading: בהם and לעיניהם (so also the Masora).
Eze_36:31. Sept.: ... κ. προςοχθιειτε κατα προςωπον αὐτων ἐν ταις—
Eze_36:32. Sept.: ... κ. ἐντραπητε ἐκ τ. ὁδων—
Eze_36:35. ... ὡς κηπος τρυφης … ὀχυραι ἐκαθισαν.
Eze_36:37. ... ζητηθησομαι τω—Vulg.: … invenient me—Another reading: אֶדרשׁ, active (Syr. Arabs.)
Eze_36:38. ... ὡς προβατα ἁγια—
[“In this chapter we have a continuation of the present great theme of the prophet—Israel’s prospective revival and prosperity as the Lord’s covenant-people. But it treats of this under different aspects. In the first section (Eze_36:1-15) the prophet unfolds the essential distinction between Israel and Edom with the other nations of heathendom, in that the former had, what the others had not, an interest in the power and faithfulness of God, in consequence of which Israel’s heritage must revive and flourish, and the hopes of the heathen concerning it must be disappointed. In the next section (Eze_36:16-21) the reason is given why the Lord had for a time acted toward His land and people as if their connection with Him was an evil rather than a blessing; it is traced up to the incorrigible wickedness of the people, and the necessity of God’s vindicating the cause of His holiness by exercising upon them the severity of His displeasure. Then in another section (Eze_36:22-33) the purpose of the Lord for their future good is unfolded—His purpose for His own name’s sake to revive His cause among His people, and that in the most effectual manner, by first renewing their hearts to holiness, and then by restoring them to a flourishing condition outwardly. And in a short concluding section (Eze_36:34-38) the general result is summed up, and the impressions noticed which the whole was fitted to produce upon the minds of others.”—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel, p. 386.—W. F.]
EXEGETICAL REMARKS
Eze_36:1-15.The Mountains of Israel.
After that Ezekiel 35, which is connected with the one that follows as antithesis and thesis, has already (Eze_36:12) introduced the mountains of Israel, parallel to Mount Seir (again Eze_35:15 for the last time), and reminding us of Ezekiel 6 (comp. also Eze_33:28), as that to which the prophecy before us is directly addressed, they now form the immediate theme of the divine sayings.
Eze_36:1. אֶל, see on Eze_6:2. Here, too, by the mountains of Israel it is not the land that is characterized after its most prominent part, but, as Eze_36:2 will immediately show, the mountains come into consideration according to their religious signification for Israel.
Eze_36:2. The phrase: thus saith the Lord Jehovah, which, when one cannot put one’s self in the position of those concerned, is repeated to weariness in our chapter, belongs to its peculiarities. It is intended not only to contradict the saying of the adversary, but still more to contravene what the poor doubting heart itself says, when looking at that which the eyes see; at the same time the divine comfort appears in presence of this visibility as a comfort solely in word, as correspondingly in the closing part of the chapter the name of the Lord will come forth above all.—The enemy is, as the word implies, he who turns himself against any one, in the connection here Edom (Eze_35:10), but in the signification developed Ezekiel 35; hence, as we go on farther, illustrated also by the heathen round about (Eze_36:5; Eze_25:3; Eze_25:8; Eze_25:12).—Comp. on Eze_25:3. That the everlasting heights refer primarily to the temple is clear; at the same time, however, Zion will have to be viewed as the seat of the everlasting royal dominion. “An allusion to the inmost and most tender feelings of Israel” (Schmieder). [Hävernick refers to Gen_49:26 (Deu_33:15), according to which the mountains are held to stand in relation to the promises of Israel as imperishable memorials of the patriarch’s blessing. Hengst: The natural mountains as a figure of the unchangeable grandeur of which Israel boasted, because it had in the Eternal its protector and the guarantee of its own perpetuity (Psa_125:2).]—Eze_35:10.
Eze_36:3. Ewald directs attention to the first five repetitions of therefore, because the grounds against these enemies always press on anew before the discourse becomes calmer, and will have it observed that, as in Eze_5:12 sq., sacred numbers (Eze_3:5) fit into one another, and that in various ways, as for most certain assurance; there is a threefold address to the mountains; and the assignment of reasons has five steps in its process.—Ezekiel 21:14, 33.—יַעַן בְּיַעַן, see Eze_13:10.—שַׁמּוֹת (Ewald, Ausf.-Lehrb. 8th ed. p. 611), according to Gesenius, properly nom. verbale, but here only for the inf. Kal of שָׁמַם transitive: “to devastate.” [Ewald: “they snap and puff at you round about.” Hitzig: “they puff and snap after you,” under a mistaken comparison of Isa_42:14 from נָשַׁם] Now if it cannot be rendered: “they devastate you” (Keil), and will scarcely be rendered, with Hengst.: “ye are devastated,” then perhaps the most obvious thing is, in accordance with Eze_35:12; Eze_35:14 sq., to think of the standing: “make desolate,” “desolation”! They appear to the enemy round about as a morsel ready for swallowing, that they are already a possession for the remnant of the heathen, as מִםָּבִיב is more definitely explained to he. The presupposition in שְׁאֵדִית (what remains after defeat) is the judgment inflicted by the Chaldeans. As with a little brotherly love the injury received would have kept them back, so with their enmity against Israel it goaded them on to commit still farther injury to indemnify themselves on Israel.—וַתֵּעֲלוּ, according to Rosenm., imperf. Niph. from עָלַה (to be lifted or taken up); according to Ewald, intransitive imperf. Kal from עָלל (Aramaic, “to press in,” “to go in”); according to Hitzig, 2d plur. Kal from עָלַה, for וַתַּעֲלוּ (“ye are gone up”). The lip as instrument, the tongue as originator; the former having as its parallel calumny, and the latter, people; so that שָׂפָה is not = talk, and לָּשׁוֹן not a personification for talkers, as Klief. thinks, yet it need not be tautology (Gesen.), or לָשׁוֹן=; speech, people (Hävern.).
Eze_36:4. Eze_6:3. (“The mountains are for the land what the heads of the tribes are for the people, as it were the elders, the venerable fathers of the land, to whom the word of the Lord which is applicable to the whole land is announced,” Schmieder.) The mention of particulars is meant to point to the eye which observes all, the divine care which beholds each and all, over which only a human eye weeps, or on the contrary rejoices. As a prey points back to the beginning of Eze_36:3, so a derision points to its close.
Eze_36:5.The fire of my jealousy reminds of Eze_35:11.—Eze_35:15.—Ch. 25 and 35 also testify that Jehovah has spoken in this manner.—Comp. Eze_25:6; Eze_25:5, although the application here is somewhat different. Ewald: “in mortal contempt.” Hitzig: “contempt from the soul” (?).—מִגְרָשָׁהּ, according to Gesenius, an Aramaic infinitive from נָּדַשׁ, “in order to empty it (the uninhabited land) for a prey.” But what would be still there to empty? Ewald’s translation: “in order to drive it out for pillage,” is quite as unsuitable. Hitzig does better, taking, it as a substantive, but wrongly in the sense of ‘produce,’ and according to a peculiar construction translating: “in order to plunder (לָבֹז) its produce.” Hengst. (Cocc.): “that its environs should be a prey to them.” But which environs? of the land? Hence he is obliged to substitute the capital as the centre! The signification pasturage would at least be simpler; and the emptied land is in keeping with this, and is consequently a desirable prey. [Many interpret also: “on account of the expulsion of the land” (land for people), Eze_31:11, whereby it (now again the land) has become a prey.]
Eze_36:6. עַל־אַדְמַת, hence as the native home of Israel, with precursory reference to the return of the people, Eze_36:8 sq., 28 sq.—Partly a repetition of Eze_36:4.
Eze_36:5. The reproach is to be understood of words (invectives, Eze_36:3-4) as well as of deeds.
Eze_36:7. Eze_20:5. The attitude of swearing, yet not that alone, but also a sign of the intended action.—The roles shall change. Eze_36:6, Eze_16:52. Upon the heathen the reproach shall abide, but not upon the land which they have thus reproached to its inhabitants !
Eze_36:8. The honour to be restored to the land is represented as the causing of it to yield leaves and fruit; Hengst. thinks: leaves and branches as food for cattle, while the fruit is for man.—קֵרְבוּ לָבוֹא can only be individuals concerned of the people. “Of the seventy years of Jeremiah, twenty had already elapsed (Eze_33:21)” (Hengst.).
Eze_36:9. Because hitherto (as late as Eze_34:10) employed in a hostile sense, an explanation follows the הִנְנִיִ אֲל׳ (Deu_11:12). The sowing shows that the work of cultivation is the subject spoken of, hence already with reference to men.
Eze_36:10. Then farther in correspondence with the cultivation of the land is the peopling of it.—כָּל־בֵּית׳ כֻּלִּה, antithesis to Eze_35:15.
Eze_36:4.
Eze_36:11. To the men also cattle.—Gen_1:28. “A new creation-blessing, as it were” (Hävern.). The more than indicates the figurative in the manner of expression (Deu_30:5), as does also the fact that the mountains are addressed.
Eze_36:12 rounds off as commerce (וְהוֹלַבְתִּי) what has been said of the peopling, after there has previously been a rural population with tilling of fields and rearing of cattle, and a town population with building of ruins; and the mention is made of the abiding, enduring possession of the land (לְנַחֲלָה, as inheritance).—־ךָ, what must be meant is the land, mountains and all; masc., which אֶרֶץ (Eze_36:5) may be also, as afterwards fem. gen.—The make childless, said of the land, may also be referred to the wild beasts introduced in consequence of its desolation (Eze_5:17; Eze_14:15).
Eze_36:13. What is here said has in reality as little to do with Num_13:32 (observe, however, the statement of motive there) as with 2Ki_2:24 (a mere particular case). The promised land was neither in itself of such a kind (Deu_8:7 sq., Eze_11:10 sq.), nor, without giving a forced meaning, can we, with Hengst., understand a reference to its position between Asiatic and African powers; but what is here said to the mountains of Israel (as previously, Eze_36:12, of the land) is directed against the reproach, the scorn of the heathen (Eze_36:15), who would draw an inference from the desolation of the capital against its holy character as this land of divine promise. The reference here made to Numbers 13. can only be this, that what the adversaries say appears as a repetition of the unbelieving speech of those spies (אֶרֶץ אִכֶלֶת יוֹשְׁבֶיהָ), with which they brought out דִּבַּת הָאָרֶץ (comp. here Eze_36:3); hence here somewhat in the sense of: Israel should have stayed away from it, not have come into the land, not have trod on the trap (birdlime) of the promise. [Ewald: “an exterminator of men art thou, and an unnatural mother of thy people wast thou.” Hävern.: “a swallower of men,” and “making nations (Israel and Judah) childless.” Hitzig observes: שִׁכֵּל is said of a mother—to bring children dead into the world, or to kill them afterwards. But is it, then, the children of the land, and not rather of the inhabitants, that are here spoken of?] The land is desolation, fit now only for pasture (Eze_36:5), thinks and says the surrounding heathen world. In opposition to this there was forcibly set forth the cultivation of the land already and the peopling of it with men, to whom the cattle (Eze_36:11) were only an adjunct; also the rebuilding of the ruins, in view, however, of the cities being again inhabited (Eze_36:10). But the sight of the desolation of the land took this general form in the mind and the mouth of the heathen, that this promised land consumes those who receive it, and especially that it can be no possession for their children, and consequently no inheritance. Comp. on this what was said in reference to the wilderness, Num_14:16; Deu_9:28; Exo_32:12 sq. (Ezekiel 20). To this repeated reproaching, which is at the same time a reproaching of the name of Jehovah as the promiser of the land,—especially, however, to the second part of it (Eze_36:12-13), the making childless, a statement immediately, Eze_36:12, explained perfectly by: and thou art to them for an inheritance,
Eze_36:14 forms a parallel, with repetition only of the phrase: to devour men. The alliterative (כִּשֵּׁל, Piel instead ofשִׁכֵּל), “making to stumble (to fall),” of the Kethib is significant, for thus is brought to view what the heathen standpoint of reproach so entirely overlooked, what, when the promised land had to be spoken of, should have been said of its abundance and beauty, namely, that thereby, by the misuse of its resources, it had been the occasion of Israel’s sin and downfall; and thus also a preparation is already made for speaking of, first, the profaning, and then the sanctifying of the name of Jehovah treated of in the course of the chapter. (Keil: “if the consuming of the population stands connected with the stumbling, then the people are devoured by the consequences of their sins, that is, by judicial punishments, sterility, pestilence, and war,” etc.) And inasmuch as Israel is now to possess the land abidingly, hence in his descendants, שִׁכֵּל, “to make childless,” is accordingly not repeated. This decides as completely as possible against the Qeri תְשַׁכְּלי (also against Hitzig); while, moreover, כשל is repeated in Eze_36:15 without Qeri in the Hiphil. [Hengst. understands the stumbling in the sense of the Qeri, and evidently under the influence of Hitzig’s absurd objection, as signifying “to make unfortunate”!]
Eze_36:15. According to another translation: “and I will no longer make thee hear” (Keil).
Eze_36:6; Eze_36:3-4.
Eze_36:16-38. Profanation of the Name of Jehovah by Israel (Eze_36:16-21), and Sanctification of it by Jehovah Himself (Eze_36:22-38).
Eze_36:16. A new word of God, but, as we have seen, prepared for by what has preceded (Eze_36:14-15).
Eze_36:17 begins with a retrospect into the moral history of the house of Israel, for which comp. Lev_18:28; Num_35:34; Jer_2:7.—Their way, their walk, as the expression their works explains (Eze_14:22-23), and כְּטֻמְאַת׳ renders still more clear. נִדָּה (from נָדַד) is: “rejection” = abhorrence, abomination, Eze_7:19 sq.; then: separation= purification, especially the monthly purification of a woman by separation, issue of blood (Leviticus 15). Gesen., on the other hand, explains the word by “uncleanness,” i.e., an unclean issue of blood. Comp. besides Isa_64:5 [6]. Yet not, however, as the “most loathsome uncleanness” (Keil)—it is in reality the natural peculiarity of woman—but the comparison appears to be used on account of the blood, as Eze_36:18 makes obvious. Concerning the tenses comp. Hitzig. In Eze_36:17 a habitual state in the past, on which the action in Eze_36:18 breaks in. Eze_7:8.—Eze_22:3; Eze_22:6; Eze_33:25.—Comp. on Eze_6:4 (Eze_8:10). “Murder and idolatry, with reference to the first commandment of the first table and the first of the second” (Hengst.).
Eze_36:19. Eze_22:15.—Eze_7:3; Eze_7:8.
Eze_36:20. The singular is interpreted by Hengst. of the fate spoken of in Eze_36:19, namely, the news (!) of it, although he goes on giving the following turn: the news came at the same time with themselves; they were the embodied intelligence. Keil understands it more simply as meaning the house of Israel. Hitzig, like the ancient versions, reads the plural, which, however, should be doubly avoided. That they themselves came to the heathen is repeatedly expressed in what follows, and that for the very purpose of explaining the fact therewith connected, the actual profanation of the name of the Lord by Israel’s presence there. As in their own land, so also outside of it. The name of My holiness is not simply: the holy name of Jehovah, but the name in which His holiness is manifest, so that by it man names His holiness, and hence the Holy God Himself. The profanation is traced home to the Jews as originators, as occasion of the saying which follows; and hence it is said indefinitely בֶּאֱמֹר לָהֶם, so that the heathen, who certainly also desecrated the name of Jehovah in their mouth, are yet not looked upon as the desecrators of the name of His holiness, but the Jews [Hengst.: “not by their doing, Rom_2:24, but by their suffering, because they had brought on the fate by their active desecration”], who, moreover, unrepentingly remained silent concerning their sin and guilt. They just came where they came; and with their impenitence gave there the impression merely of wretched, unfortunate, deceived, betrayed beings, in whom the blame was not to be sought, but in their God, who was powerless in comparison with the gods of the heathen, or unfaithful to His chosen people.—עַם׳ has also been interpreted interrogatively by various expositors.—יָצָאוּ is as much as to say: and they have run away out of Jehovah’s land which He had promised to them, where He dwelt among them; so that their having gone might be ironically held as a voluntary departure.
Eze_36:21. חָמַל is: to draw one’s self together, to bend over (על) any one, to incline one’s self to him; hence: to compassionate him. [Hävern, wrongly: “and I spared for My holy name’s sake” (Sept.). The Vulgate is confused. Rosenm.: “I will take care for it, so that it shall not come to harm.” In this striking expression also lies something more active than: “to have compassion” (Klief.), or as Hengst.: “I had pity for My,” sq.] What follows shows what is contained in this prophetic preterite.
Eze_36:22. There is first the announcement, which is at the same time an explanation of the divine pity, as His pitying of Himself in harmony with His holiness, in short, as a holy love,—an explanation which cuts off everything possible with men. The self-existent majesty of the Holy One of Israel, who stands in need of no one, says: לֹא לְמַעַנְכֶם(Deu_9:6). Neither in Israel’s virtue, nor yet in his misery, is there now any ground for Jehovah to act. Israel has no qualification whatever.—אֲנִי עשֶֹׁה, namely, what I do,—thus spoken absolutely, denoting the pure action, just as is specially suitable here. He does it, however, for glory and honour to ( ל, dat. comm.) His name.
Eze_36:23. The “acting” of Jehovah is expressed and here announced as a sanctifying, i.e. of My holiness as expressed in My name, securing due weight to it, so that it shall not simply be named as name, but evidently experienced as fact. In its being the name of His holiness lies the necessity, when the people who can thus name God do not sanctify it, but on the contrary only contribute everywhere to its profanation, that then Jehovah should take in hand the sanctification of His name and thereby of Himself (בְּהִקָּדְשִׁי).—הַגָּדוֹל, together with the following הַמְחֻלָּל, makes observable the infinite grandeur as well as the omnipotence which are able to secure due regard for themselves (Jos_7:9; Mal_1:11). That we might well expect: “before their (instead of: before your) eyes,” which reading is almost universally preferred, Hengst. also acknowledges, but finds, however, the thought of the manifest salvation better expressed in those immediately concerned. These, however, are not the Jews, because they have beheld the misery (Job_19:27), but the heathen as spectators of the profanation of the divine name by the Jews (Eze_20:41; Eze_28:25). The Jews’ part in the matter is sufficiently expressed by בָכֶם (in your persons).
[“The expression: ‘when I sanctify Myself in you before your eyes,’ for which many critical authorities, both ancient and modern, would substitute ‘before their eyes,’ namely, those of the heathen—this expression creates no difficulty to a person who enters thoroughly into the import of the passage. For it points to the fact that Israel, as well as the heathen, needed the manifestation in question of Jehovah’s righteousness. It must be done first before the eyes of the people, who by their depravity had lost sight of God’s real character; and then what was seen by them experimentally would also be seen reflectively by the heathen who dwelt around. This twofold perception of God’s character is also brought out in other passages of our prophet; as in Eze_20:41-42 : ‘And I will be sanctified in you before the eyes of the heathen, and ye shall know that I am Jehovah. ’ ”—Fairbairn’s Ezekiel.—W. F.]
Eze_36:24. The first thing in this self-sanctification of Jehovah is an act of power, which puts an end to the outward occasion for the saying in Eze_36:20, and to the actual profanation of the name of His holiness among the heathen (Eze_11:17; Eze_20:34; Eze_20:41).
Eze_36:25. The next thing, to which the first only subserves, is the raising up of Israel inwardly to a holy nation, so that בָכֶם (Eze_36:23) signifies: in them, as well as: on them; this, too, is a forth-putting, yea, the most mighty forth-putting of power, because wrought in the core of the national life. In Eze_36:24, Israel’s justification before the heathen; in Eze_36:25, Israel’s sanctification in himself as also among the heathen.—The “sprinkling,” as it will be in respect to a nation the only imaginable method of lustration, so, moreover, from the clean water(מַוִים טְהוֹרִים cannot be = מֵי נִדָּה) it cannot in the least point to the rite with the ashes, Numbers 19 (Hengst.); it would be preferable, with Hävern., to think of Num_8:7 sq., but מֵי חַטָּאת there also is something different from what clean water expresses here. The latter is meant expressly to symbolize the idea of purification, and specially from all etc., the טֻּמְוֹתֵיבֶם of the people, which, if not directly explained, is yet illustrated by וִּלוּלֵיכֶם; the “sprinkling,” again (comp. Exodus 25.), is doubtless meant to signify an act of consecration. Because sacrificial blood is not mentioned here, but such emphasis is laid on clean water, the best known means of purification, and also the most suitable for stains which show outwardly, we are as little at liberty to import without farther mediation—as Hengst. attempts under citation of Isa_53:11; Isa_52:15—New Testament ideas into our chapter as into Eze_11:19 sq. (see Comm. there). Neither does Psalms 51 coincide with our passage. The immediate sense of our verse is: That Jehovah leads back Israel from exile into their own land, and consecrates them there to be a people, since the punishment, so characteristic for the sin that occasioned it, is shown to be removed by the bringing of them again into their own land; the forgiveness of sin thereby already proclaimed at once evinces and manifests itself as purification of the people, and the people (as in point of fact took place after the exile) put from them their old life, especially their idolatry (Eze_11:18; Eze_18:31). Certainly not without some ground has Abarbanel referred back to the comparison of the issue of blood used in Eze_36:17.—As to how Eze_36:26 is to be understood, comp. on Eze_11:19. Instead of the new heart here, לֵב אֶחָר is mentioned there, and only the “new spirit” is spoken of; while here both heart and spirit (as Eze_18:31) appear as new, whereby the religious moral regeneration of the nation, a national restoration, is placed in prospect. “It is very consonant to the priestly character to portray the new community as a truly spiritually purified band of Levites or priests, Isa_61:6” (Hävern. ?).
Eze_36:27. Since Jehovah’s Spirit is put בְּקִרְבְּכֶם, and thus is brought to pass that Israel’s conformity to law in walk and honesty of dealing return again, therefore the “new spirit” of Eze_36:26 is primarily to be understood as a divine spiritual impulse back to the law of Jehovah (Eze_11:20).
Eze_36:28. By the dwelling in the land, etc. (the “renewal of old gifts”), we are reminded of the close of Ezekiel 35. [Kliefoth here looks forward as far as the “last times,” since God will gather out of the whole world His people, who are still scattered in a quite different manner and far wider in the world, and will place them in the heavenly Canaan, free them absolutely from sin (Eze_36:25), and as absolutely renew them inwardly (Eze_36:26), and by both acts as absolutely sanctify them (Eze_36:27).] Comp. Lev_25:18; Lev_26:12.
Eze_36:29. וְהוֹשַׁעְתִּי is by anticipation understood Messianically (Mat_1:21) by those resolved to find the New Testament ordo salutis in Ezekiel, interpreted of the divine protection (Eze_34:22), or, by way of distinction from Eze_36:25, referred to the consequences of the defilements of Israel. The expression rather sums up the foregoing, which regarded the people, while now, subjoined to Eze_36:28, a transition is made to the land. Idolatry disappears, and the promises concerning the land are fulfilled, Eze_34:29. (The opposite, although in the same figure, we find in 2Ki_8:1.)
Eze_36:30. Eze_34:27; Eze_34:29.
Eze_36:31. Eze_20:43; comp. on Eze_6:9. The anti-heathen abhorrence and loathing became national, and still speaks out of its distorted pietism in Pharisaism. If the gospel order of salvation were to be sought in Eze_36:25 sq., then we would rather expect to find here joy in the Holy Ghost (Lev_26:40).
Eze_36:32. Comp. on Eze_36:22.—That this acting of Jehovah, irrespective of them, is still so particularly placed before and inculcated on them, is, however, by no means designed to leave the Jews undisturbed, as if they might simply wait for the things which would come upon them and happen to them; but as the love of God, without worthiness deserving it, certainly excludes any merit on the part of man, yet should so much the more awaken to reception and love in return, so there is attached to the promise here the imperative, repeated with additional emphasis, in relation to the family, the household of Israel.
Eze_36:33. Eze_36:25.—Hitzig translates וְהוֹשַׁבְתִּי: “then I again erect the cities,” make them to sit instead of lying, since he denies that it ever (Isa_54:3) signifies: “to make inhabited.” So also Hengstenberg always: “sit,” in contrast to: lie prostrate, and here: “cause to sit.” Gesenius, Ewald, etc., on the other hand, support the causative signification, as: to cause that one sit, dwell therein, to make inhabited. Keil: make stocked with inhabitants.
Eze_36:34. Eze_36:9.—Eze_35:3; Eze_6:14.—Eze_5:14.
Eze_36:35. וְאָמְדוּ are those individualized from כָּל־עוֹבֵר Eze_36:34. (הַלָּזֶוּ only here,= הַלָּזֶה, but probably fem.) Observe the antithesis to Eze_35:12; Eze_35:9, and the probable allusion in Eden to Edom (Eze_31:8-9; Gen_13:10; Isa_51:3; Joe_2:3). From this allegorical way of speaking, Hengstenberg justly rejects the idea of “the restoration of Canaan to a really paradisaic glory.”—Ewald: “flourish, well fortified.” Hengst.: “sit fortified;” whereas a city whose wall is broken lies on the ground. According to another translation, said of the inhabitants, who feel themselves secure, protected therein as in fortresses. (Comp. on Eze_38:11.)
Eze_36:36. The heathen brought in as left (“the remnant of the heathen,” Eze_36:3) are, on the contrary, made known only by the judgments that have passed over them, but by no restitution. Comp. Eze_17:24.
Eze_36:37. Eze_14:3 (1Sa_28:6-7). On לַעֲשׂ׳ לָהֶם, comp. on the opposite, the לֹא׳ אֲנִי־עשֶֹׁה (Eze_36:32; Eze_36:22).—The land—well, we are again in it, but where are the people? This question Jehovah will answer by actual (לַעֲשׂוֹת) increase (Eze_36:10 sq.), in that He will show them as a flock (Ezekiel 34; Mic_2:12). [While Hitzig takes אָדָם as in apposition to אֹתָם (them, the men, as a flock), Kliefoth translates incorrectly: “that they became the flock of mankind.”] Hävernick cites Bochart for the particularly great increase of flocks of sheep. (Comp. also Eze_34:31.) But what Eze_36:38 says on this is more significant. According to Hengstenberg, formal mention is made of the festivals in general, but the connection (as Mar_15:6) points to the great accumulation of sheep at the passover (2Ch_35:7), with which the abundance in men of restored Israel is compared. (Thus the Chaldee.) Hengstenberg translates: “as consecrated flocks of sheep” (the people of the saints of the Lord), and seeks the fulfilment in the Church of Christ rather than in the times between the exile and Christ.—קָדָשִׁים that is, of hallowed ones, in this sense: of sacrificial beasts (Rom_12:1); whereby the reference to the consecration of the people (Eze_36:25) gains confirmation. The people is embraced in its chief points of worship, Deu_16:16.
DOCTRINAL REFLECTIONS
1. The comparison of our chapter with Ezekiel 6 indicates that, in considering the “mountains of Israel,” especially when they are by the best interpreter, the “enemy,” sneeringly termed the “everlasting heights,” we are not to direct our attention to the mountainous character of the Holy Land. Palestine is a hilly country, which leans upon the towering heights of Lebanon and Hermon; but this conformation did not so much qualify it for its significance in the Old World, so that we might at once recur to that, as its position on the boundaries of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and again its peculiar isolation, while occupying such a position in the centre of the Old World. In considering this position of the land, its littleness, ridiculed as is well known by Cicero, and from which the Roman statesman would infer the little god of the Jews, has as little, or rather as much, to say as the grain of mustard seed in the parable, Matthew 13. The focus of the concave mirror is, in like manner, merely a point. The outward littleness of the Holy Land only compels us to one thing, and that is, to keep always in view its spiritual significance. As, then, for such a view, its separation from the other countries, and again, at the same time, its position in the midst of them (Eze_5:5) (the former, that amid the universal blowing of the world and the nations there might be a protecting hand before the light; the latter, that when the light burst forth, its brilliancy might easily shine in all directions), claim our attention much more than its mountainous character,—so under the “everlasting heights,” the “mountains of Israel,” Zion, as seat of the Davidic-Messianic kingdom (Psalms 2), and the temple-mountain, in so far as Israel worshipped what it knew (John 4), and the σωτηρικ ἑκ των ʼΙουδαιων ἐστιν, must come into consideration (Eze_34:26; Isa_2:2; Mic_4:1); however beautifully that reads which has been said by Schmieder, accordant, no doubt, with “natural human feeling,” while citing Psa_90:2 and Job_15:7, and referring to the “ways and manners of mountaineers,” and the thread of “remembrances,” especially Israel’s (Genesis 22; 1 Kings 18).
2. The antithesis of Seir places before our eyes the rugged mountain height and the rude mountain strength, that is, exactly the things which have no value for enduring victory, for abiding blessing in the higher order of things.
3. The combating of the allegorizing method of explanation—for example, by J. A. Crusius, from whom Rosenmüller quotes when commenting on our chapter—is unquestionably in the right against the arbitrary extravagances and exaggerations of Cocceius and his followers; but where the Bible language in general is symbolical, with the prophets, above all, a symbolical way of speaking will be conceded. A natural or historical sub-stratum on which the symbolical is based is supposed with the symbolical itself. Consequently, all that is here said in Ezekiel has a fulfilment in the time after the exile. On the other hand, modern apocalypticism, by its converting the letter of prophecy into future revelations of any and every kind, sets itself against the apocalyptic mode of expression, the characteristic of which is certainly not literality. The national physiognomy of Israel, as Genesis traces it back to Adam, the father of all men, indicates a reference to humanity as a whole. This reference prevails in Noah’s prophetic discourse, Genesis 9, when Japhet is destined to dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan, the son of Ham, to be a servant in the house. The Holy Land fits in with Abraham to this symbolism of the nation, and Abraham is to be a blessing (as is said in Genesis 12 : “to all the families of the earth, Adamah”), through his seed, which is Christ, as the apostle says in Galatians 3 Hence humanity in Christ will also be the theological point of view in the case of the land of Israel. So long as He who is τέλος νόμου (Rom_10:4) was not born in the land of promise, the land remained, in respect to the realization of the blessing of Abraham to the race of Adam, a prophetic symbol of the earth, just as the nation was symbolico-prophetic for the nations of mankind. The land of Israel is also νομός (from νέμω), and, like the legal nationality of Israel, has its final fulfilment in Christ. As His beatitudes (Matthew 5) assign to His people the kingdom of heaven, so also do they the inheritance of the land. Hitherto out of Israel shines humanity, and representatively for it the Son of man, the true Israel. The Christian interpretation of the people of Israel as the Church, the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, embraces now also the Holy Land in the signification of the land of glory, paradise, and Eden. From the standpoint of the fulfilling of Israel as to its universal human signification by Christ, the Old Testament outward expression of the letter, that is, what is said propædeutically and pædagogically in accordance with the economy of the Old Covenant, in the style of the people and the land, may remain in its full force; but what is given with the idea of Israel, namely, that the promises in question are to be fulfilled in a very different sense from the outward literal sense, that they are to be fulfilled “in spirit and in truth,”—this even the literal expression itself demands from its unmistakable depth of meaning, which often makes plainly ridiculous a merely literal interpretation, whether looking to the time after the exile, or to the very last time. All the prophets and the law prophesied until John, the baptizer of Christ (Mat_11:13; Luk_16:16). And what Christ said (John 4) of worshipping at Jerusalem: “the hour cometh, and now is,” bears witness to the Messianic (Christological) and in general the spiritual sense of the Old Testament letter; as the setting of it free from every temporary limitation as to place or nation bears witness to its sense for eternity, and to the spiritual interpretation as that which is at the same time interpretation “in truth,” the true understanding, so that the Christian truth of the prophecies is also to be regarded as their true and full reality. The Jewish Christianity of individual expositors (e.g. of Baumgarten) is not the Old Testament Christianity of the prophets.
4. On Eze_3:17 the characteristic individualization was noted as a mark of the time; but that which is peculiar to the Christological utterances of our prophet (Introd. § 9), his putting of the Christological thought, as Ezekiel 40 sq., in the form of Palestinian worship, and so generally in the manner of the people and land of Israel, is always to be adhered to. Fundamentally, the latter form was only that of the law as early as Exo_20:12. But when the Son of man, of the seed of David according to the flesh, realized the kingdom of Israel as eternal—when, by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, His gift of prophecy became the common property of mankind, then, as with the worshipping in spirit and in truth, the peculiar localization of the sanctuary and the priestly service, always accomplished for the time, ceased; Israel also could, in whatever part of the earth, consider themselves as in their own land, and so much the more as their true King had (John 18) witnessed the good confession of the supra-mundane nature of His kingdom before the representative of the Roman earthly world-power. For the Israel of fulfilment Canaan lay, in the first instance, in the world above with Christ, as the apostle Paul says in Php_1:23, where also paradise is (Luk_23:43; 2Co_12:4); and in this world only, in the renewal of heaven and earth according to the Christian hope. So, likewise, the true, the fulfilled nationality of Israel is to be sought for in the Christian world, in humanity, according to the Spirit of Christ; now in measure, in fulness only hereafter, Rev_21:3.
5. Schmieder sums up the moral guilt of Edom as threefold: (1) taking possession at his own hand; (2) doing this in a bad frame of mind, with malignant joy and scornful laughter; (3) doing this not to keep and cultivate the land (for which man was ordained of God in paradise), but to devastate and plunder it.
6. It belongs to the local colour of the land, that, when it is spoken of distinctively, its fruitfulness also is spoken of. Comp. for climate and nature of the soil, the well-known passages of Scripture. Writers in the first century still bear witness to what heathens and Jews of former times celebrated with one accord, the immense population of the land, corresponding to its great fertility. At present, indeed, Jerusalem, the largest city of Palestine, has scarcely more inhabitants than the smaller towns of Galilee had in the time of Josephus.
7. On the parallel minatory prophecy in Ezekiel 6 it was observed (p. 94) how Israel’s idolatrous self-righteousness is broken in pieces in every way by God’s judgment. A parallel observation will correspond to the kernel and inmost contents of our chapter, namely, that divine grace alone will restore Israel, land and people—the latter especially, in the way of Jehovah’s sanctifying His own name. In this, Israel’s misery is as little the motive as any righteousness on the side of Israel. What befalls the heathen, indeed, with respect to Israel, happens to them because they have insulted in His people the name of Jehovah revealed in Israel. Hence the fundamental reference which Jehovah takes is finally Himself. Israel, as has been repeatedly said, four times in succession (in the cosmic number, Eze_36:20-23), gave by their exile, and hence by their misery, occasion for the profanation of the name of Jehovah. Their misery made the heathen sin against Jehovah; thus it was viewed, but by no means as cause of the divine pity. What is said of pity is Jehovah’s pity for His own name, Eze_36:21. The divine love appears not as compassion in relation to misery, but the misery itself appears as sin, so that the reference is taken simply to sin; the divine love appears purely as grace.
8. Hävernick emphasizes this, that “the holiness of God forms the centre of the discourse before us;” but he makes too little account of the holiness of Jehovah, when he makes no more of it than “the relation therein established of God to the evil,” So also it is not acutely thought, when, in explanation of Eze_36:1-15, that “the punitive judgment threatened against the heathen must have its ultimate explanation ” from the holiness of God, Hävernick places the essence of heathenism in assailing the holiness of God. It must be observed, however, that heathenism knows nothing of God’s holiness. The name of Jehovah’s holiness, as the expression, chosen three times in succession (according to the number of the godhead, Eze_36:20-22), and which is not to be resolved into the “holy name of Jehovah,” significantly runs, is even as “name” (as Beck justly observes) “the expression with living power of the divine presence in revelation,” so that by the name of Jehovah’s holiness this revelation of God as adapted exclusively to Israel is set forth; hence, as to the “transgressions of the heathen,” no direct relation of them to the holiness of God is expressed, but a misapprehension of the revelation of the holy in Israel, consequently a relation to Israel as the people of Jehovah. The holiness of God has, however, so much the more significance in our chapter, as the setting of it forth in Israel is thoroughly in accordance with what is thus emphasized, that what Jehovah does (Eze_36:22; Eze_36:32) He does for His own sake. For God’s holiness is “the real intrinsic ideality of God, His harmoniousness of essence, as it manifests itself also in this, that He makes Himself known in a church of His pure divine consciousness, and preserves and perfects this church in the ideality of its pure essence, until by it the world is restored to perfection in the real ideality, the personal harmoniousness of essence” (P. Lange, Pos. Dogm. p. 95). By setting forth the holiness of God, as is done in our chapter, Ezekiel puts himself in harmony with Isaiah (p. 41).
9. Lange observes on the holiness of God, that the concept of it is “mediated to us through the Old Testament almost more than any other concept;” “the leading thought of the Hebrew view of the world is holiness; the קָדוֹשׁ, or קְדוֹשׁ יִשׂרָאֵל, is He who is pure in essence, true to Himself, corresponding to His name.” Lange finds the “mythologico-typical reflection” of holiness in ideality, the “leading thought of the Hellenic view of the world,” just as he calls “the Greek culture the mythologico-typical counterpart of the theocracy.”
10. Because love, which is God, is holy, breaking of the law, and still more the dishonouring of divine benefits, as in Eze_36:16 sq., can expect no support or indulgence in Him, the righteous God, the “Founder and Guardian of right” (Lange). Since He as the “Holy One,” who is the absolute opposite of the evil, can originate nothing evil, so contrariety to Him as such, and especially misuse of His gifts, here of the land, can find no encouragement with the “Holy One of Israel,” the Giver of righteous recompense. Since the native land of a people, especially like Israel, may be misused as the δος μοι που στω in relation to heaven or higher interests than the earth, the corresponding righteous opposition and reaction of the holiness of God will be either deterioration of such a land (failure of crops and the like), or expulsion of the people from it, or both. So, too, the earth must finally pass away for mankind, although for the people of God there is hope of a “new earth.” The latter gives proof of God’s truth and faithfulness, which, keeping promise, provides for the need of finite spirits not only a corporeity, but also a locality in harmony therewith, according to the purpose of His wise and holy will; and perhaps this is typified also in Israel’s possession of the land in the signification of their native land. But with God not only is goodness accompanied by justice, as that according to which God gave Israel scope and opportunity to expel (exile) themselves from their land among the heathen—just as man can procure hell for himself—and thus left as well as gave their right to Israel, but divine justice as revelation of God’s holiness is more than mere retribution; it becomes on and in the sinner self-sanctification of God.
11. As the Holy One, Jehovah is the God of Israel (Lev_11:44 sq.); and it is only in keeping with this relation that Israel, His people, have to appear before Him, not merely in symbolical but still more in legal moral purity of life, above all in that they keep themselves religiously pure from idols. It is not only this mutual relation that results to Israel from the fact that their God is the Holy One, but also that, so long as the relation of the Holy One to Israel has not ceased, in like manner the holiness of this people is not to be surrendered; hence that, as on them by exile and by restoration, so in them Jehovah will sanctify His name or Himself. “The command: Be ye holy, for I am holy, contains (says Hävernick) at the same time the promise of the realization of a holy kingdom of God as surely as God Himself is holy. But God reveals Himself as the Holy One not merely in condemning evil and destroying the offender, but also in the extirpation of evil and the transformation and renewal of the sinner by virtue of a new divine breath of life, the spiritual creation of God in man.”
12. Sanctification implies in general that something is removed from its common worldly relations. Since this does not usually take place without reference to sinful concomitants, the symbolical act of washing readily connects itself with sanctification; but it is by no means to have a merely negative interpretation, as “annulling of the false profane world-relation of the object” (Lange), especially when, as here in Ezekiel, no mention is made of the positive symbol of anointing; which, moreover, does not symbolize induction into the service of the Lord, the “restoration of the true religious world-relation,” but the divine equipment for the service of the Lord. Even in itself, and still more from its thus standing alone, washing will represent purification, which is consecration.
13. Jehovah sanctifies Himself on Israel before the eyes of the rest of the world (Eze_36:23), in that by taking and gathering Israel out of all nations and countries He actually places them again as His people in the land of promise (Eze_36:24). Jehovah sanctifies Himself in Israel, hence in Israel’s own consciousness, by making them experience, as a fresh national dedication, a moral and religious purification. The expressions employed are to be interpreted as referring to the nation as such, and not to single individuals; we have not so much to understand spiritual states of mind as to think of national regeneration. But if what has been already remarked on Ezekiel 9 suffices as to the letter for our chapter also and Ezekiel 18, the sprinkling of the clean water in Eze_36:25 symbolizes the national moral and religious cleansing of Israel, and the “new heart” in Eze_36:26 is nothing else than a “heart of flesh” instead of a “heart of stone” in the flesh; yet in Eze_36:27 the Spirit of Jehovah (רוּחִי), which the “new spirit” within Israel is interpreted to mean, points beyond Eze_11:19 (Eze_18:31); the Holy One of Israel appears as the spirit of Israel, just as “God as Spirit of the Church and indweller in the human heart is preeminently the Holy One” (Nitzsch). And although Eze_36:25 sq. in relation to Eze_36:8 sq. may be taken as complement of the promise given there, or even as the condition for the promised inheritance continuing to the children, and hence parallel thereto (Eze_36:24 carrying out the declaration: “for they draw near to come,” Eze_36:8), yet we are not hindered from making the Messianic salvation of the people, as the true and full sanctification of Jehovah in as well as on them, shine forth behind all this (p. 24), and the “clean water” of Eze_36:25 approximates to the Holy Ghost (Joe_2:28 sq.). Comp. Umbreit.
14. “The true essence of the Messianic time,” says Hävernick, “its very kernel, from which all its other blessings flow, and its entire glory unfolds itself, is the purification of the people. At the time of Christ this idea was deeply rooted in the national consciousness, and John the Baptist unquestionably adapted to it his rite of lustration, the βαπτισμα της μετανοιας.”
15. Jesus could (Joh_3:5) refer to Eze_36:25 sq. of our chapter, namely, that water and spirit are requisite for regeneration for the kingdom of God, which truth the master in Israel (Eze_36:10) should have known. “For Ezekiel teaches here in clear words that Israel had to receive another and new heart and spirit—that it had to be sprinkled with clean water by the Spirit of God. Thus should a master in Israel have known regarding water and spirit in this relation” (Cocceius).
16. “Striking is the word of the prophet, and pointing exactly to the times of Christian fulfilment,—the people of the new planting shall never again experience the reproach of hunger among the heathen. A deep saying, when we divest it of its allegorical covering, and understand by it the eternal appeasing of hunger of spirit. It was indeed a reproach to Israel, that, nourished as they were by the divine food of life in the words of Moses and the prophets, they went after the imaginary gods of the heathen, and, being carried away into the countries of strangers, were obliged to suffer hunger in a dry land,” etc. (Umbreit).
HOMILETIC HINTS
Eze_36:1 sq. The mountains of Israel not only figures, but also places of the promises to Israel.—Word and name of the Lord; the former the revelation of His will, the latter the revelation of His nature.
Eze_36:2. “Thus they mocked at the promises of God, as if their eternity were now come to an end” (Berl. Bib.).—The scorn of the world an old experience.—“Thus were the prophets and Christ reproached, and the Lord said that men would speak all manner of evil against His disciples, Mat_5:11, and Paul, that we should be a spectacle to the world, 1Co_4:9” (Heim-Hoffmann).—“All things may and shall work for good to Christians, Rom_8:28” (Cr.).—The wicked also shall have an eternity, but of what kind? Just the eternity into the possession of which they have put themselves, according as their works deserve, as death is the wages of sin.
Eze_36:3 sq. God knows, sees, and hears the misery of His children; that must comfort them, therefore they cannot despair.—“How ready men often are not only to count up the sufferings of others, but also in their talk to exaggerate them still more!” (Starck.)
Eze_36:5 sq. What God calls His cannot be lost for ever. He is jealous with but also for His possession.—God lets His people be stricken only by whom He will; one cannot simply open the mouth and devour them at pleasure.
Eze_36:8 sq. “Thus shall the ruined churches bring fruit, wine, and bread, that is, the mysteries of doctrine, to the profit of the people, that they may no longer be rude and ignorant, but a people taught of God. Therefore the spiritual husbandmen, vine-dressers, till and sow diligently. With the plough of fear they turn up the soil of the heart, in which they sow the new word of the gospel, whereby the forsaken churches become planted anew; and these are the mountains which the Lord addresses” (Heim-Hoffmann).—“When He appeared in the holy land who could say of Himself, ‘Come unto Me, ye who labour and are heavy laden,’ He far outshone Solomon in all his glory” (Hengst.).—“The wicked have no cause to rejoice over the chastisement of God’s children, Jer_48:27” (Starke).—“The affairs of the people of God are never in so bad a state that God should be unable to set them right again; nay, experience has taught that the Church after persecution only increases so much the more” (O.).—“They are far wrong who consider a great increase of men as a curse, because it gives rise to want and distress. God can nourish many as well as few, and we should live moderately, avoid endeavouring to surpass others in expenditure, and seek for concord in families, etc.” (Luther).
Eze_36:12 sq. “The promised good is always to be understood with the condition that men repent, Mal_3:7” (Starke).—“The self evident condition is, that they do not fill up the measure of their sins anew. There is no charter of immunity against Ye would not” (Hengst.).—“How often is the country or a district made to bear the blame when there comes a pestilence among men or cattle, when, however, it should be known that sin gaining the upper hand provoked God’s wrath thereto” (O.).—“As already observed by Jerome, the Jews refer this to a kingdom of a thousand years, when Jerusalem shall be built and the temple of the latter chapters of our prophet erected; while in the opinion of others, the fulfilment took place under Zerubbabel, which cannot possibly be the case, as also Jerome grants, and then compares the Christian Chiliasts with the Jewish dreamers of their millennium. Hence we must abide by the spiritual interpretation regarding these blessings promised to the people, to which we are directed besides by Christ and the apostles” (Luther).
Eze_36:16 sq. “Man’s previous course of action is the cause of God’s subsequent course of action, Jer_2:19” (Starke).—“The goodness of God invites us to repentance, but not to evil-doing and pride” (Starck).—We shall have to give account not only because of the evil which we have done, but also for the good things which we have had.—The earth should not be full of wickedness and folly, but full of the knowledge of the Lord and of love unfeigned.—“The world is perfect throughout where man does not come in to disturb it.”—In our impure acting our impure nature also always comes forth. Storms clear the air, an observation which bears application in regard to the judgments of God.
Eze_36:19. The scattering power of sin; in truth, it scatters the souls of men into the whole world, and that is already their judgment which sinners have to experience.
Eze_36:20. With the sinner goes also his curse, his other shadow.—Our misfortunes and mistakes are very often God’s sentence on our transgressions, which, indeed, are best known to Him and ourselves.—How much blasphemy against God and offence against the truth do not those very persons occasion who are called to make God’s word and name honoured, acknowledged, and exalted above the world!—To have regard to the enemy,—a point to be well attended to for the walk of the friends of God in this world.—“Thus this chapter teaches us how the first petition of the Lord’s prayer should be understood. The name of the Lord, to wit, is hallowed as well by the prosperity of the elect, which may obtain even under the cross, as by their purification from sin” (Richter).—A bad life ought not to put good doctrine in question.
Eze_36:21 sq. God His own justification in this world (Theodicy).—“God sanctifies His name among men by benefits as well as by judgments and punishments” (Starck).—“So saints are accustomed to pray who put no trust in their own merit, but humbly entreat God to look to His own name, that it may be praised and sanctified. But Christ is the holy name of God, for whose sake God is gracious to us; whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Heim-Hoffmann).
Eze_36:24. We shall come home out of this world.—Gathering even in the midst of the scattering of this world is of the grace of God.
Eze_36:25 sq. “It is God alone who can truly convert us to Himself, and purify our hearts by His almighty Spirit, Jer_31:18” (Tüb. Bib.).—“Without true purification from sin no one can come into real union and communion with God, Isa_1:16 sq.” (Starke).—“No unclean person shall enter into the New Jerusalem, Revelation 22, hence our cleansing has to take place in this life” (Starck).—“Purification must precede the filling of men with the new spirit. David in the first place supplicates God to wash him quite clean from his guilt, and then prays for the creation in him of a clean heart and of a new sted-fast spirit, Psalms 51” (Umbreit).—“The prophets frequently reproach the Jews, as a stiff-necked people, that they will not hearken to the word of the Lord. Here, on the contrary, a heart and spirit which shall be new is promised to them, that they may not henceforth live after their former custom, but begin a new manner of life, so that the old and disobedient heart of stone may become the new but pliant and submissive heart” (Luther).—“The heart of stone does not bear bending according to God’s will, whereas the heart of flesh is soft, and of such a texture that God can impress into its understanding a living knowledge, into its will a voluntary obedience, and into the inclinations a holy order” (Starke).—“Our heart and inward parts are designed to be occupied as an abode by God Himself, Joh_14:23” (Starck).—For the furniture with which God is accustomed to furnish His abode in man, see Gal_5:22.—“Of flesh and fleshly (carnal) are two different things; the former may be dealt with, the latter becomes always harder” (Starck).—“The new birth does not consist in annihilating the man, nor in the entire removal of sinful corruption and of the old Adamic disposition, but in the creation of an entirely new disposition and nature, 2Co_5:17; Gal_6:15; Eph_4:24” (Starke).—“God gives the Holy Ghost and all the riches of grace not for gold, but He gives all things without price to all who ask Him for them, Isaiah 55” (Cr.).
Eze_36:27. “The Holy Ghost is not inactive in the regenerate, but active and powerful, Rom_8:15 sq.” (Starke).—First the inward and then the outward change is God’s order, while we men always proceed in the reverse order.—“What good, however, a man does is not his, but God’s work in him, Php_2:13” (Starke).
Eze_36:28 sq. To the heavenly among men there is no lack even on earth; to him who has what alone is worth having nothing shall be wanting.—So long as Christ was not born in the land of promise, the land of promise had to be also the home of Israel. Since the time that Christ is in heaven, only heaven can be the true home of the true Israel.—“The regenerate man stands in the covenant of grace with God” (Starke).
Eze_36:30. God will not only finally redeem us from all distress of body and soul, but will also free us from all reproach; so, then, we do not in vain believe in a resurrection of the body and an eternal life.
Eze_36:31. In conversion man regains his memory.—A man can be of good courage when he loathes himself.—Loathing is not a sign of sickness only, but in matters spiritual it is a sign of convalescence.—The loathing of oneself, the requital of self-complacency.—Our life must become sorrow to us, otherwise sorrow will not become life to us.
Eze_36:32 sq. Grace works shame, and so much the more as it makes the wilderness a paradise, the beggar a king, and the sinner a priest.—“Blessed shame” (Schmieder).—We boast of nothing in Christ, and we boast of all things.
Eze_36:35 sq. The last sentence of the world on the people of God will be its own self-condemnation, just as it will be our justification. It will not be in vain that we have comforted ourselves with God in this world.—Our help stands in the name of the Lord.—The comfort of the Church, that God is Builder and Planter.—“Yea, this is the honour of the holy name of God. He, the Creator, who created what was not, is also the Restorer, who creates anew that which was ruined and laid waste by the guilt of disobedient creatures” (Schmieder).
Eze_36:37 sq. “But the men of this flock shall also be as the sheep, that is, no wild beasts shall be among them; hence it follows that God will purify His Church from these noxious animals” (Cocc.).
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, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 38 Literally, "Because, even because."
Literally, "Because, even because."
swallowed you up--literally, "panted after" you, as a beast after its prey; implying the greedy cupidity of Edom as to Israel's inheritance (Psa 56:1-2).
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lips of talkers--literally, "lips of the tongue," that is, of the slanderer, the man of tongue. Edom slandered Israel because of the connection of the latter with Jehovah, as though He were unable to save them. Deu 28:37, and Jer 24:9 had foretold Israel's reproach among the heathen (Dan 9:16).
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 vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 15, 16, 25, 26, 27, 28, 37 1. Mountains of Israel — A common name for…
1. Mountains of Israel — A common name for the land of Israel (Eze_17:22; Eze_33:28; Eze_34:14, etc.). How different this prophecy from that contained in chap. 6! It is not only the prophet’s spirit which has changed, but that of the people. (Compare notes Eze_24:15-27; Eze_33:10-20.)
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, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38 2. Cf. Eze_25:3, Eze_26:2.
2. Cf. Eze_25:3, Eze_26:2.
ancient high places] “High places” is not used here in the usual religious sense of rural sanctuaries, but said of the mountain—land of Israel, cf. Deu_32:13; Mic_3:12. On ancient or “eternal” as an epithet of mountains cf. Gen_49:26; Deu_33:15; Psa_24:7. For “high places” LXX. reads “wastes,” cf. perpetual desolations, Eze_35:9.
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 vv1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 35, 37, 38 (1) The mountains of Israel.—The word “mountains” is used…
(1) The mountains of Israel.—The word “mountains” is used for the land and people of Israel, to keep up the connection (by contrast) with the Mount Seir of the previous chapter. The personification is a strong one, by which the mountains represent the people as well as the land.
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, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38 Vers. 1-38. The present chapter is entirely devoted to…
Vers. 1-38. The present chapter is entirely devoted to the consolation of Israel, though its parts are derived from two separate "words" of Jehovah. Vers. 1-15 belong to the "word" which opened with the first verse of the preceding chapter; ver. 16 begins another "word," which only closes at Eze_37:14. The subject of the first part is the comfort offered to Israel in the destruction threatened against the heathen, and in the blessings promised to her land and people.
Prophesy unto the mountains of Israel. This prediction must be read in contrast, first, to that delivered against the mountains of Seir in the last chapter (35.), and, secondly, to that uttered against the mountains of Israel at an earlier stage of Ezekiel"s activity. (Eze 6) That "the mountains of Israel" was a familiar expression for the land of Israel, see Eze_6:1 Eze_17:22 Eze_33:28 Eze_34:14 Eze_37:22 Eze_38:8; and comp. Isa_52:7.
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HOMILIES BY J.D. DAVIES Vers. 1-15. The material creation sharing in the fortunes of men.
Man has a many-sided nature. He is linked with the past history of angels and with the past history of the entire universe. His interests and fortunes are interwoven with the material creation and with the dynamic forces of nature. He has an interest in heaven and in hell. The intelligences of the universe are interested in him, and he is interested in them.
I THE LAND OF CANAAN IS HONORED BY A DIVINE COMMUNICATION. It is a reasonable conclusion that the main interest God felt in the mountains and hills of Palestine arose from their use as a home and storehouse for his people. Yet it is proper that we should regard God as finding a pleasure in the hills and valleys on account of their native beauty. They were the workmanship of his hand, and there is every reason why he should find pleasure in his creations. The long, past history of their internal structure was open to his eye, and the beauty of their clothing was to him a delight. But why should he dispatch to these unconscious mountains a prophetic messenger? Without doubt, this was intended as a rebuke to the people who had grievously disregarded his messages. It was as if he said indirectly to the nation, "It is vain to speak longer to your stony ears. I turn away in sorrow, and address my message to the unconscious earth. The very mountains will give me better audience than you have done. If I speak to the dew, it will obey. If I speak to the fragrant soil, it will yield its fruit. If I speak to the mountains, they will put on verdure and beauty. But, alas! if I speak to the intelligent sons of Jacob, they turn deaf ears and rebellious wills to my gracious voice! O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord!" By such methods of rebuke God endeavors to bring conviction home to the consciences of the people.
II THE LAND OF CANAAN WAS AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN ISRAEL"S PAST RENOWN. This land had been specially selected by God as the most fitting scene for the training of the Hebrew nation. It was the glory of all lands, the envy of surrounding nations. Compared with the territory north, or east, or south, it was splendidly fertile, while its mountains made it a secure fortress. The diversity of hill and vale gave it peculiar beauty and served to exhilarate the mind. The mountain-peaks drew heavenward men"s thoughts. According to the known law, that the physical features of a country mould unconsciously the character of the inhabitants, Canaan had been a benefit to the Jewish tribes. The land was a contrast to the soft, fertile loam of Egypt. The relaxing climate of Lower Egypt, together with the wondrous facility of obtaining large crops, made the people indolent and effeminate impatient of arduous exertion. In Palestine a totally different condition of things prevailed. For the most part the operations of husbandry were severe. The sides of the hills required to be built in terraces in order to retain the soil. But climate and soil were congenial for almost every kind of fruit. It was a territory in which it was scarcely possible for one to grow rich; it was a territory eminently suitable for the development of hardy and industrious peasants. Especially the land was singularly dependent upon the periodic rainfall. For, devoid of rain and dew, the olives dropped withered and unripe, the vines were blighted, the young corn was shriveled. Hence, in an eminent degree, the people hung in constant dependence on the good will of God. He held in his hand the helm of their prosperity.
III THE LAND OF CANAAN HAD SHARED IN ISRAEL"S DISCOMFITURE AND SHAME. Frequent invasions on their borders had made their homes and crops insecure, and, without security for obtaining crops, men will not sow their fields. Frequent absence also, to serve on the battle-field, drew away the young men from quiet husbandry. Such losses in such a country soon became serious. A diminution in their produce left them unable and unwilling to pay tribute to their foreign conquerors, and this resulted in fresh invasion. Step by step the land went out of cultivation. The terraces on the hillsides were neglected. The people forget God, and God withdrew the light of his favor. The mountain-slopes, denuded of soil, soon became bald, bleached rocks. The high reputation for fertility which the land had enjoyed was gone. Its excellence and glory departed. Sharon was no longer a fold for flocks. Carmel laid aside her bridal garments of floral beauty. Jackals and foxes and hyenas infested the land. With the degradation of the elect people came the degradation of the elect land.
IV THE LAND OF CANAAN WAS ABOUT TO SHARE IN ISRAEL"S NEW PROSPERITY.
1. In proportion to the infamy the land had endured was to be the fertility again to be enjoyed. The prosperity should not only rise to the former level; it should greatly surpass it. The infallible promise was made directly to every part and branch of the territory. God had a tender regard for every mountain and valley, for every river and plain; each should be enriched and gladdened by his favoring smile. The shame of the heathen should be outbalanced by corresponding reputation and honor. On condition of the faithfulness of the people this revival of prosperity should be enduring.
2. God speaks in language adapted to the age. By any other mode of speech God could not have been understood; and in such a case he may as well not have spoken. As men were stimulated to great exertions by a sentiment of national jealousy, so, in accommodation to imperfect men, God speaks of himself as stirred to activity by the fire of jealousy. Such jealousy was only another form of considerate love. It had no respect to himself. It was a jealous regard for the good of Israel, a jealous desire to fulfill his ancient promises.
3. These pledges of good were redeemed in the centuries which followed Israel"s restoration. The land was reclaimed from the ravages of wild beasts. Cities and villages were rebuilt. Many parts of Canaan became fertile as a garden. Confessedly, we feel a disappointment that the revival of prosperity was not more complete, nor more abiding. But this was due alone to the folly and guilt of the people. In every promise of God there underlies a moral condition. For him to give unmingled blessing to evildoers would be a fresh evil and an encouragement to sin. The actual fortunes of Canaan, in the later centuries, prove the faithfulness of God and the fickleness of the people. D.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 1-15. Encouragement in exile.
Israel was in a very deplorable condition. It was away from its native land, in the power and in the service of the enemy; its own "inheritance" was peopled by a poor and weak remnant; it was the prey and the butt of the merciless mocker; its fortunes were low, its heart was sad indeed; it could not sing the Lord"s song in such a strange land as that in which it was exiled. But after words of condemnation comes the language of hope. The prophet of God is commissioned to break into their gloom with some beams of promise. Here are gracious words from his mouth; here is a prophecy delivered to "the mountains of Israel," which may well have filled the hearts of the people of God with great joy and gladness. The lessons we glean from the passage (vers. 1-15) are
I THAT SOMETHING HAS LEFT US WHEN AN ENEMY HAS DONE HIS WORST. As Matthew Henry well remarks, the mountains, the hills, the rivers, and the valleys, the desolate wastes and the forsaken cities (ver. 4) "remained to be spoken to...these the Chaldeans could not carry away with them." They might deport and depopulate, but they could not destroy the land which Jehovah had given to his people. Still the mountains stood, and still the rivers ran, and still the valleys stretched beneath the sun and received the rains of heaven.
1. Our human enemy may do much to harm us, but his power is very limited after all. At the most and the worst, he can but kill the body; after that he hath no more that he can do." He cannot kill the soul; he cannot take away faith, or love, or peace, or hope from the human heart; he cannot rob us of our real inheritance.
2. Or if our spiritual enemy injures us in a more deadly way than the tyrant or the persecutor can do; if he gain dominion over us and rob us of our rectitude, and so of our peace and rest in God; even then there remains a spiritual nature which is capable of redemption; the soil remains, which, sown again with the good seed of the kingdom, may yet bring forth very precious fruit.
II THAT THE TENDENCY OF SIN IS TO A DANGEROUS EXTREME. Edom and other heathen lands carried their enmity and their cruelty so far that they brought down upon themselves the righteous anger of God. "Because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side," etc. (ver. 3), "therefore, thus saith the Lord, surely in the fire," etc. (ver. 5). These persecuting nations had succeeded only too well; they had filled their hands with spoil, and their souls with spiteful pleasure (ver. 5); and the extremity to which they pushed their triumph led to their discomfiture. Such is sin everywhere. It leads to extravagance and excess; to a most guilty and ruinous indulgence; or to a high-handed arrogance and blasphemy which call forth the deep displeasure of the righteous God, and bring down the strong, stern hand of judgment. When we once give way to temptation, of whatever kind it be, we enter a path which leads and lures us on much further than we at first meant to go; and the end of it is condemnation and doom.
III THAT GOD PITIES HIS PEOPLE, THOUGH THEY SURFER AT his OWN HAND. It was God who caused the children of Israel to lose their heritage and to be carried away as they were. Their sorrows were the penalty of their sin; it was the hand of the Lord that was laid upon them. Yet their distressing condition called forth the Divine compassion. It was in mercy, in true pity, that he saw them "bearing the shame of the heathen" (ver. 6; see ver. 15). Even though it is in virtue of God"s own righteous laws that we "are minished and brought low," that we suffer in the flesh or in the spirit, in circumstance or in soul, as the consequence of our wrongdoing, even then, in our straits and in our misery, in our bondage and in our degradation, we are the objects of Divine compassion. God likes not to see his children suffer and "bear shame" as they do. And he sends the messenger of mercy that bids us rise from our wretchedness and ruin and return unto himself.
IV THAT EVERYTHING MAY BE RECOVERED WHEN GOD IS ON OUR SIDE. (Vers. 8-15.) When God says, "I am for you, and I will turn unto you," what is there that we may not hope for? Then the land of Israel might look to be retilled and resown, to yield its fruit as in the best days that were; to be repeopled by those who had a right to walk upon its hills and to cultivate its villages; it should no longer be a grave for the dead, but a home for the living. And when we turn in penitence and in faith to God, and he turns in mercy and in grace to us, what is there that we may not hope for? What glorious spiritual restoration is within our reach! the peace which no earthly good can either give or take away: the joy which abides and which blesses while it lasts; the excellency of character and of life which makes us take rank with the children of God everywhere; the hope which is full of immortality. C.
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 vv9, 11, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 36, 37 And ye shall be tilled and sown.
Eze_36:9
And ye shall be tilled and sown.
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A vision of the field
I. Mans heart by nature is like a waste field.
1. He brings forth no fruit unto God. Leave him alone and he will live unto himself. He will live and he will die a strange monstrosity in the world--a creature that has lived without his Creator. Methinks I see the great God coming to look at the man, even as a farmer might come to look upon his fallow field. He looks the whole field through. There is no thought for God, no consecration of time to God, no desire to honour God, no longing to produce in the world fresh glory to God, no effort to raise up to Him fresh voices that shall praise His name. He lives unto himself or to his fellow men, and having so lived, he so dies.
2. Worse than this; the field that has never been ploughed or sown does produce something. There is an activity about human nature that will not let us live without doing. No man liveth to himself. Is there no wheat growing on that soil? no barley? no rye? Very well, then, there will be darnel, and cockle, and twitch, and all sorts of weed. So it is with the unrenewed heart. It is prolific of evil imaginations, wrong desires, and bitter envyings. As these ripen they bring forth ill words--idle, or, it may be, lascivious words, and perhaps atheistic, blasphemous words; and as these ripen they come to actions, had the man becomes an offender in his deeds, perhaps against man, certainly against God. The apples of Gomorrah hang plentifully upon him.
II. There is no hope for this field, unless God turn to it in mercy. I am for you, and I will turn unto you. Man never does of himself turn unto God, and that for obvious reasons. We are sure he never can, for he is dead in trespasses and sins. We are certain he never will, for by nature he hates anything like a new birth; and if he could make himself a new creature he would not, for Christ has expressly said, Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life. If you have turned, you know that the Lord has done it. Give unto Him the glory. If you have not been converted, God help you to cry unto Him instantly and earnestly, Turn us, and we shall be turned. Look unto Him who is exalted on high to give repentance and remission of sins. Seek ye unto Him, and ye shall live.
III. When the field is to be put under cultivation it must be tilled. So when God turns to any man in His mercy there has to be an operation, a tillage, performed upon his heart. Common calling is addressed to every man, but effectual calling comes only to prepared men, to those whom God makes willing in the day of His power. Now, what is the plough wanted for? Why, it is wanted, first of all, to break up the soil and make it crumble. The more thoroughly pulverised the heart becomes, the better. The seed will never get into an unbroken heart. The plough is also wanted to destroy the weeds, for they must be killed. If the Lord save you, He must kill your drunkenness, He must kill your swearing, He must kill your whoredom, He must kill your lying, He must kill your dishonesty. These must all go; every single weed must be torn up; there is no hope for you while there is a weed living. The Lord make a clean sweep of the weeds, and burn them all! Well, now, mark you, in this tilling there are different soils. There is the light soil and the heavy soil; and so there are different sorts of constitutions. There are some men who are naturally tender and sensitive. Many, too, of our sisters are like Lydia: they soon receive the Word. There are others that are like the heavy clay soil; and you know the farmer does not plough both soils alike, or else he would make a sad mess of it. And so God does not deal with all men alike. Some have, as it were, first a little ploughing, and then the seed is put in, and all is done; but some have to be ploughed and cross ploughed; and then there is the scarifier and the clod crusher, and I know not what, which have to be rolled over them before they are good for anything; and perhaps, after all, they produce very little fruit. And, you know, the farmer has his time for ploughing. Some soils break up best after a shower of rain, and some do best when they are driest. So there are some hearts--ay, and I think almost all hearts--that are best ploughed after a shower of heavenly love has fallen upon them. They are in a grateful frame of mind for mercies received, and then the story of a dying Saviour comes to them as just that which will touch the springs of their hearts.
IV. Unless God has tilled the heart, it cannot be sown with any hope of success. After ploughing there comes the sowing. When the heart is ready God sows it--sows it with the best of wheat. The wise farmer does not sow tail corn, but, as Isaiah says, he casts in the principal wheat. The seed which God sows is living seed. It shall grow, for God has prepared the soil for it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 THE PROMISE OF BETTER DAYS FOR ISRAEL. (Chap. 36)
THE PROMISE OF BETTER DAYS FOR ISRAEL. (Chap. 36)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—Eze_36:1. “Ye mountains of Israel”—in contrast to Mount Seir of the previous prophecy. They are here personified: Israel’s elevation is moral, not merely physical, as Edom’s.
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Eze_36:2. “The ancient high places.” “The perpetual heights are the natural mountains, as a figure of the unchangeable grandeur of which Israel boasted, because it had the Eternal for its protector, and in Him the security of its own perpetuity” (comp. Psa_125:2).—Hengstenberg.
Eze_36:3. “Made you desolate and swallowed you up”—laid you waste, and panted after you on every side; like wild beasts after their prey, implying the greedy cupidity of Edom as to Israel’s inheritance. “Ye are taken up in the lips of talkers”—literally, “Ye are made to go up on the lip of the tongue, i.e., on the lip of the slanderer, the man of tongue. Edom slandered Israel because of the connection of the latter with Jehovah, as though He were unable to save them.”—Fausset.
Eze_36:4. “Thus saith the Lord to the mountains, hills,” &c. The mention of particulars is meant to point to the eye which observes all, the Divine care which beholds each and all, over which only a human eye weeps, or, on the contrary, rejoices. The completeness of the renewed blessedness of all parts of the land is implied.
Eze_36:5. “With joy of heart, despiteful minds, to cast it out as a prey”—“with gladness of heart and deadly scorn, have appropriated My land to desolate and plunder it.”—Geikie.
Eze_36:7. “Shall bear their shame”—shall bear their share of contempt in turn—a perpetual shame, whereas the shame that Israel bore from these heathen was only temporary.
Eze_36:8. “Shall shoot forth your branches and yield fruit to My people, for they are at hand to come”—“shall shoot out your verdure and yield your fruits to My people Israel, for they will soon come.”—Geikie. “Leaves and branches come into view as food for cattle, while the fruit is for man. Of the seventy years Chaldean servitude twenty had already elapsed, so that many of those still living might yet see the joyful day.”—Hengstenberg.
Eze_36:11. “Will do better unto you than at your beginnings”—“better than in your past. This was fulfilled when He appeared in the Holy Land who could say of Himself, ‘Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,’ and who far outshone Solomon in all his glory.”—Hengstenberg.
Eze_36:14. “Thou shalt devour men no more, neither bereave thy nations any more.” “The land of Israel had a dangerous position. It was a land of transit, an apple of discord for the Asiatic and African powers, and exposed to oppression by the surrounding nations of the wilderness, who always went to it for barter. On account of this dangerous position it is designated, even in Num_13:32, as a land that devours its inhabitants. Precisely such a land had God chosen for His people. They should always have occasion to look up to Him; and when they fell away the rods were also laid up. Peaceful seclusion would have produced a stagnant condition, the worst that can befall the people of God. It is essential to the Church in this world to be militant.”—Hengstenberg.
Eze_36:19. “I scattered them among the heathen.” “The reason for their removal was their sin, which God’s holiness could not let pass unpunished.”—Fausset.
Eze_36:20. “They profaned My holy name.” “The name of My holiness is not simply the holy name of Jehovah, but the name in which His holiness is manifest, so that by it man names His holiness, and hence the Holy God Himself.”—Lange.
Eze_36:21. “I had pity for Mine holy name”—“I felt pity for it. God’s own name, so dishonoured, was the primary object of His pitying concern, then His people secondarily through His concern for it.”—Fairbairn.
Eze_36:23. “I will sanctify My great name”—“i.e., My holiness as expressed in My name, securing due weight to it, so that it shall not simply be named as name, but evidently experienced as fact. In its being the name of His holiness lies the necessity, when the people who thus name God do not sanctify it, but, on the contrary, only contribute everywhere to its profanation, that then Jehovah should take in hand the sanctification of His name, and thereby of Himself.”—Lange. “Shall be sanctified in you before their eyes”—“or before your eyes. It must be done first before the eyes of the people who by their depravity had lost sight of God’s real character; and then what was seen by them experimentally would also be seen reflectively by the heathen who dwelt around.”—Fairbairn.
Eze_36:25. “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.” “The external restoration must be preceded by an internal one. The change in their condition must not be superficial, but must be based on a radical renewal of the heart.”—Fausset. “The immediate sense of the verse is: That Jehovah leads back Israel from exile into their own land, and consecrates them there to be a people, since the punishment, so characteristic for the sin that occasioned it, is shown to be removed by the bringing of them again into their own land, the forgiveness of sins thereby already proclaimed at once evinces and manifests itself as purification of the people, and the people put from them their old life, especially their idolatry.”—Lange.
Eze_36:26. “I will give you a heart of flesh”—not carnal in opposition to spiritual, but impressible and docile, fit for receiving the good seed.
Eze_36:27. “I will cause you to walk in My statutes.” “From the bestowment of the new heart flows the altered position toward the law of God.”—Hengstenberg.
Eze_36:29. “I will also save you from all your uncleannesses”—the province of Jesus, according to His name (Mat_1:21). To be specially exercised in behalf of the Jews in the latter days (Rom_11:26). “And I will call for the corn”—“as a master calls for a servant. All the powers and productions of nature are the servants of Jehovah (Psa_105:16; Mat_8:8-9).”—Fausset.
Eze_36:31. “Then shall ye remember your own evil ways”—“with shame and loathing. The unexpected grace and love of God manifested in Christ to Israel shall melt the people into true repentance, which mere legal fear could not (chap. Eze_16:61; Eze_16:63; Psa_130:4; Zec_12:10; Jer_33:8-9).”—Fausset.
Eze_36:35. “This land is become like the garden of Eden.” “We have here the clear counterpart of the night-piece (Joe_2:3). The comparison of this fundamental passage, according to which the figure of the land of Eden can only signify a prosperous state in general, shows how erroneous it is to find in this passage the restoration of Canaan to a really paradisiac glory, and to charge those who cannot find this in it with a spiritualising evaporation.”—Hengstenberg.
Eze_36:36. “I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it.” “I, Jehovah, whose name and nature afford a security that between speaking and doing no gulf can be fixed.”—Hengstenberg.
Eze_36:37. “I will yet for this be inquired of”—“so as to grant it. On former occasions He had refused to be inquired of by Israel, because the inquirers were not in a fit condition of mind to receive a blessing (chap. Eze_14:3; Eze_20:3). But hereafter, as in the restoration from Babylon (Nehemiah 8, 9; Dan_9:3-23), God will prepare His people’s hearts to pray aright for the blessings which He is about to give (Psa_102:13-17; Psa_102:20; Zec_12:10-14; Zec_13:1).”—Fausset.
Eze_36:37-38. “I will increase them with men like a flock, as the holy flock.” “The passover was the only one among the festivals in which there was a great accumulation of sheep, with which the fulness of men in restored Israel is compared. But the consecrated sheep are meant here, not any other gathering of sheep, because the people that is compared with the sheep is the people of the saints of the Lord. The fulfilment is to be sought in the Church of Christ still more than in the times between the exile and Christ.”—Hengstenberg.
HOMILETICS
HOPE FOR A RUINED NATION
Eze_36:1-15.)
In this chapter the prophet continues the theme with which his whole soul was possessed—the prospective revival and prosperity of Israel. In the darkest day of national desolation the lamp of prophecy glowed with a Divinely kindled flame. The land is smitten and helpless; but hope is still left, though that hope is enshrined for the time in the breast of one man, as in the fatal box of Pandora, from which issued all the evils that afflict mankind, hope was still left at the bottom. The keen spiritual insight of Ezekiel saw that, amid the prevailing ruin, Israel still retained an interest in the power and faithfulness of God which would bring about her future restoration, while the exulting hopes of the heathen that her downfall was permanent were doomed to disappointment. Observe—
I. That a ruined nation is an object of Divine compassion.
1. He sees its resources exhausted. “They have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side” (Eze_36:3). The land is denuded of its inhabitants and its wealth. The hills are there, but they are no longer covered with grazing flocks and herds. The valleys are there, but the diligent husbandmen are gone, and the fields and vineyards degenerate into barrenness or are choked with the wild growths of untamed luxuriousness. The cities crumble to ruin and are forsaken. The hum of commerce is hushed, and the animated scenes of a thriving population are no longer visible. The garden has become a wilderness, the ground a grave in which the national life lies buried.
2. He sees its land possessed with strangers. “Even the high places are ours—a possession unto the residue of the heathen—which have appointed My land into their possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds” (Eze_36:2-3; Eze_36:5). The strangers had no right to the land; it belonged to God: nor would they have dared to seize it had His people, to whom it had been given as a heritage, remained faithful to Him. They were marauders, robbers, who pounced upon the land with the avaricious joy with which the wreckers plunder a stranded ship. It was “cast out for a prey.” It moved the compassion and indignation of Jehovah to see His heritage overrun and pilfered by those who fiercely hated both Him and His people.
3. He sees its ruin the sport and mockery of its enemies. “Aha, the places are ours—ye are taken up in the lips of talkers and are an infamy of the people—a prey and derision to the heathen” (Eze_36:2-4). They gloat over the misfortunes of the nation they hated and dreaded. Israel had become a byword and a reproach. The foulest slander was freely circulated, and her enemies chuckled with a hideous satisfaction as they rolled the toothsome morsel in their mouths. Every taunt would rankle like a poisoned barb as the unhappy Israelite reflected it was a just recompense for his inveterate folly. This state of things was faithfully predicted (Jer_24:9), and nothing was done to prevent it. The warning was despised. Abandoned by God and man, Israel was exposed to the pitiless contempt of the wicked. And yet the heart of Jehovah yearned with compassion towards His afflicted people.
II. That Divine Power can restore a ruined nation to prosperity.
1. He can do it speedily. “They are at hand to come” (Eze_36:8). Though there were fifty of the seventy years’ captivity yet to run, it was near at hand in God’s determination. Fifty years is a long period in the life of an individual, but it is insignificant in the life of a nation. The time is near because it is sure to come. Though Israel was far from home, dispersed in many countries, and held in bondage by the power of her captors, she shall be brought again to her own land. Time is a trifling factor in the working out of eternal purposes; and yet many then living were privileged to witness the promised restoration. God is slow to punish; swift to bless.
2. He can do it effectually (Eze_36:8-15). The waste places shall be tilled and sown (Eze_36:8), the earth abound in fruitfulness (Eze_36:8), the hills covered with flocks and herds (Eze_36:11), the cities rebuilt and crowded with inhabitants (Eze_36:10), commerce expand with ever-increasing activity (Eze_36:11), the taunt of desolation silenced (Eze_36:15), and the land that had cast out its people to perish shall support and cherish them on a scale of unexampled munificence (Eze_36:11-15). When a penitent nation returns to God there is no blessing He will withhold: its grievances are redressed, its honour retrieved, its peace and prosperity ensured.
III. That the promise of Divine help inspires national hope. Israel was utterly prostrate. There was no country in that neighbourhood so desolate and forsaken. The laud of plenty was cursed with emptiness, and, like an unnatural mother, had cast out its children to perish. Browbeaten, calumniated, and oppressed by their enemies, the people lost heart and sank into the helplessness of despair. They had no more hope of revival than the salt-encrusted pine-logs that travellers tell us are strewn on the shores of the Dead Sea, saturated for centuries with brine. Left to themselves, there was no possibility of recovery. But they were not to be so completely abandoned. Gradually, and at first faintly, whispers of Divine help reached their ears. The impression grew in distinctness and strength that the promise was real, and at length out of the dark firmament of their miseries the bright star of hope once more shone forth. They had ample evidence, from past experiences, that what Jehovah promised He would surely perform. The worst of sinners need not despair; for him the hope of salvation shines, the promise is still in force. Let him but repent and cry for help, and all will yet be well.
LEARN—
1. That there is power in the midst of apparent impotency.
2. That national revival begins in the putting away of national sins.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Eze_36:1-15. God and Nature.
1. God never forgets His absolute proprietorship in nature. His are the mountains, hills, rivers, and valleys, for He made them (Eze_36:4-6).
2. Nature remains true to God when man is unfaithful. Man may desolate but cannot destroy nature. The unchanging continuity of its mountains, hills, rivers, and valleys rebukes his fickleness and infidelity.
3. Nature is honoured by signal displays of Divine power. “The mountains of Israel” had witnessed the miracles of God on behalf of His chosen people, and while the earth stands their voiceless testimony will abide.
4. Nature responds with grateful quickness to the touch of the Divine blessing. “Ye mountains shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit. I will multiply upon you man and beast, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings” (Eze_36:8-11).
5. God will make nature a fruitful inheritance to the obedient (Eze_36:12-15).
—Man and Nature.
1. Man regards nature as an opportunity to indulge a covetous spirit. “The places are ours in possession” (Eze_36:2).
2. Man abuses the resources of nature by sinful extravagance. “They have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side” (Eze_36:3).
3. It is an evidence of great moral debasement when man exults over the desolations of nature he himself has made. “The enemy hath said against you, ‘Aha!—Ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people—a prey and derision—with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey” (Eze_36:2-5).
4. When man violates nature he violates the laws of God, and suffers accordingly. “Thou land devourest up men, and hast bereaved thy nations” (Eze_36:13).
5. When man obeys God, all the resources of nature minister to his enjoyment (Eze_36:8-15).
Eze_36:1-4. “The grand distinction between the people of God as Israel, and the people of the world as Edom, is, whereas the latter are finally given over to destruction, the former are only chastened for a time, and shall be finally and completely delivered. The people of the world may now seem exalted to a great height, but their elevation is of a carnal and material kind, and is therefore transitory. The elevation of the Israel of God is spiritual, and therefore permanent. Her hills are ‘the everlasting hills’ (Gen_49:26). The Mount Zion, as the seat of God’s earthly throne, cannot be removed, but abideth for ever (Psa_125:1). Therefore Edom’s shout of triumph over the fallen Israel shall be turned into wailing for her own fall. She had greedily thought to take possession of the ancient high places of the people of God. Nay more, she had turned into derision the promise of perpetuity which God had given to His people, as though that promise was now proved to be abortive, and had sneered at Israel’s connection with Jehovah as though He were unable to save them.”—Fausset.
Eze_36:2. “Many were the enemies of God’s people, but they so conspired in one design, and were so one in their humours, enmity, and carriage, that the prophet speaks of them as one, and particularly of Edom.”—Pool.
—“The scorn of the world an old experience. Thus were the prophets and Christ reproached, and the Lord said that men would speak all manner of evil against His disciples (Mat_5:11), and Paul, that we should be a spectacle to the world (1Co_4:9).”—Lange.
Eze_36:3. “Ye are taken up on the lips of talkers, and are an infamy of the people.” Slander.
1. A vice of great talkers.
2. Is devoid of compassion for the unfortunate.
3. Delights in exaggeration and malicious innuendoes.
4. Is frequently employed to disparage and afflict the people of God.
—“Ye are made to ascend upon the lip of the tongue and upon the evil fame of the people. God takes it extreme ill that His people should be traduced and defamed, which hath been their lot in all ages, but He will not fail to vindicate them and to avenge them.”—Trapp.
—“God knows, sees, and hears the misery of His children: that must comfort them, therefore they cannot despair. How ready men often are not only to count up the sufferings of others, but also in their talk to exaggerate still more.”—Starck.
Eze_36:4-6. The Divine Sympathy with Nature.
1. Because it is His handiwork and reflects His character.
2. Because it is the dwelling-place and training ground of man.
3. Because of the havoc wrought in it by the fury of His enemies.
4. Because it is ever faithful and obedient to His laws.
Eze_36:6-7. Wrong-doing.
1. Rouses the Divine anger.
2. Is doomed while it rejoices in its brief triumph.
3. Will suffer the misery it inflicts on others.
4. Is certain to be Divinely punished.
Eze_36:6. “To these lifeless creatures He directeth His speech to show that every creature groaneth and waileth for the redemption of our bodies. It fareth the better also in this life present, for the elect’s sake, as it was once cursed for man’s sin, and hath lain bedridden, as it were, ever since.”—Trapp.
Eze_36:7. “The righteous God, to whom vengeance belongs, will render shame for shame. Those that put contempt and reproach on God’s people will sooner or later have it turned upon themselves; perhaps in this world, either their follies or their calamities, their miscarriages or their mischances, shall be their reproach; at furthest, in that day when all the impenitent shall rise to shame and everlasting contempt.”—M. Henry.
—“They shall be paid home in their own coin, be overshot in their own bow, be covered with their own confusion.”—Trapp.
Eze_36:8-15. The Fertility of Nature.
1. A signal proof of the Divine blessing. “Behold I am for you. And I will multiply” (Eze_36:8-9).
2. Evidenced in the abundant increase of fruit, cattle, men and wealth (Eze_36:8-11).
3. Should be regarded by the people of God as a special blessing. “Even My people Israel shall possess thee, and thou shalt be their inheritance” (Eze_36:12).
4. The more conspicuous because of former barrenness and decay (Eze_36:13-15).
5. A type of the future prosperity of the people of God.
—“While Edom and Tyre rejoiced in their sins at the fall of Jerusalem, the jealousy of the Lord was roused to say that they should return, and as Jeremiah had said that fields and vineyards should again be sold in that city. The promises, like clouds of refreshing rain, scatter their blessings on every age. They were in one form or other continually repeated, and in all the glowing powers of Oriental language. But however justified the prophets might be in the use of hyperbole and metaphor, they could not exceed the truth, which would have been the case had their promises been restricted to the weak but rising times of Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. And if the waste places were rebuilt, why then, whole Palestina, dost thou lie very much in ruins to this day? Consequently the gracious cloud of covenant blessings only scattered its drops on Jewish ages, and gave showers to the primitive church, reserving its fulness, or the residue of the Spirit, for the mountain of His holiness in the glory of the latter day.”—Sutcliffe.
—“A certain fulfilment of the most literal kind began at an early period to be given to the prophecy. People of the stock of Israel did again possess the land of their fathers; by them the mountains of Israel were again cultivated, and for them the land yielded its fruit; there again, as of old, the seed of man and of beast did greatly increase and multiply, so that the region was known for ages as one of the most fertile and prosperous in Asia, and that too while the old and hereditary enemies of Israel in the neighbourhood sank into comparative insignificance and lost their original place in the scale of nations. Had Israel but seen in all this the hand of God, and viewed the whole in connection with His unchangeable righteousness, there should certainly have been nothing wanting to complete the correspondence between the description of the prophet and the facts of history. But the old relations of the covenant people with the kingdom of God give way; the outward Israel are no longer distinctively the covenant people—all the children of faith of every land become the seed of blessing and heirs according to the promise. And while it is only under the Gospel dispensation that we can expect the perfect realisation of the promised good, we must now no longer expect it after the old form, or according to the simply literal interpretation. The good is too great and expansive to be now shut up within such narrow limits, for since wherever there is a royal priesthood offering up spiritual services to God, there the incense and offerings of the temple are perpetuated (Mal_1:11; 1Pe_2:5), so wherever there are members of Christ there also are the mountains of Canaan, there are the people who have the promise of all things for their portion, on whom descends the blessing—life for evermore. Nor can the old evils properly return again, for the good is avowedly connected with nothing but a spiritual qualification, and is entirely dissevered from a merely ancestral relationship or a political existence in the world.”—Fairbairn.
Eze_36:8. “Thus shall the ruined churches bring fruit, wine, and bread, that is, the mysteries of doctrine to the profit of the people, that they may no longer be rude and ignorant, but a people taught of God. Therefore the spiritual husbandmen, vine-dressers, till and sow diligently. With the plough of fear they turn up the soil of the heart in which they sow the new word of the Gospel, whereby the forsaken churches become planted anew; and these are the mountains which the Lord addresses.”—Heim-Hoffman.
Eze_36:9-11. “The Lord declares to the people of Israel, ‘Behold, I am for you.’ Since God is ultimately to be for them, no power can avail anything that is against them. God will ‘turn to’ His people in mercy, and they shall at the same time turn to Him in repentance. The restoration to their own land is to be literal, and all things and all persons in the restored state of Israel are to share in the coming blessedness—‘the mountains, the hills, the rivers, the valleys, the desolate wastes, the houses, the cities, man and beast.’ So in the case of the spiritual Israel, the true Church: she is now a little and despised flock, but she shall at last be a multitude which no man can number (Rev_7:9); whereas the anti-christian faction, and all the carnal, worldly, and unbelieving, who shall for a time seem to triumph over the Church of Christ (Rev_11:7-11), shall perish awfully and everlastingly.”—Fausset.
Eze_36:9. “It is a blessing to the earth to be made serviceable to men, especially to good men that will serve God with cheerfulness in the use of those good things which the earth serves up to them.”—M. Henry.
—“ ‘I will turn unto you.’ Look towards you with regard to what has been and is your estate, your sufferings, which were less than you deserved, yet were the greater because ye are mine. Your inhabitants gave me the back and sinned against me, and I turned the back on you and regarded you not: then all darkness covered you, now my face shall be towards you, and you shall prosper and be fruitful to the comfort of those that shall dwell in you and plough and sow you.”—Pool.
Eze_36:10. “They are far wrong who consider a great increase of men as a curse because it gives rise to want and distress. God can nourish many as well as few, and we should live moderately, avoid endeavouring to surpass others in expenditure, and seek for concord in families.”—Luther.
Eze_36:11. “God’s kingdom in the world is a growing kingdom, and His Church, though for a time it may be diminished, shall recover itself and be again replenished.”—M. Henry.
Eze_36:12. “The promised good is always to be understood with the condition that men repent (Mal_3:7). The self-evident condition is, that they do not fill up the measure of their sins anew. There is no charter of immunity against Ye would not. How often is the country or a district made to bear the blame when there comes a pestilence among men or cattle, when it should be known that sin gaining the upper hand provoked God’s wrath thereto.”—Lange.
HOMILETICS
SIN THE CAUSE OF NATIONAL RUIN
(Eze_36:16-21.)
Once more the Jews are reminded of the reason for the calamities that had overtaken them: the root-cause was their sin. It might seem strange to them that they, of all people, should be so deeply humiliated; but such was the obstinacy of their rebellion that no other course was open but for Jehovah to vindicate the cause of righteousness by unmistakable marks of His displeasure. So far as they were concerned they had no reason to expect anything but a continuance of His righteous severity; but a supreme regard for His holy name, which had influenced Him in bringing about their downfall, is now to operate in promoting their recovery. Their restoration must begin in the conviction and acknowledgment of their sins.
I. Sin is a defilement of the national life (Eze_36:17). It is so because it is a defilement of the individual life. Sin is the polluted heritage of universal man, for all have sinned; but it is intensely individual and personal. Its taint permeates every power and faculty of the man—“The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint: from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.” Its seat is inward, and it is often disguised under a fair and beautiful exterior; but attack it, and its impurities soon become actively manifest, as the cuttle-fish surprised by an enemy emits an inky fluid that darkens and befouls the most pellucid waters. The nation is defiled because the citizen is defiled, and instead of seeking cleansing has stirred up the muddy sediment in himself and others. “Let sin be your deepest sorrow, your heaviest grief, the spring of many tears, the burden of many sighs, the occasion of daily visits to the cross of Calvary.”
“Weep not for broad lands lost;
Weep not for fair hopes crossed;
Weep not when limbs wax old;
Weep not when friends grow cold;
Weep not that death must part
Thine and the best loved heart:
Yet weep—weep all thou can—
Weep, weep, because thou art
A sin-defilèd man.”
II. Sin is a profanation of the Divine holiness (Eze_36:20-21). Sin is not only a degradation to man, but an injustice and injury towards God: it seems to drag Him to the level of man, and to rob Him of every attribute that constitutes Him Divine. The conduct and attendant miseries of the Israelites dishonoured Jehovah in the sight of the heathen, who naturally inferred that if this was all He could do for His worshippers, then He was no better than their own deities, and the morality of His people was in many respects inferior to that of their own. Do not think that your iniquities are unnoticed, or that you are the only one affected by them. The unbelieving world is watching you. The mere profession of religion is a caricature and a hypocrisy, and every act of sin is a defamation of the character of the holy God.
III. Sin is punished by national ruin (Eze_36:18-19). The Jews were driven out of their own land because of their incorrigible wickedness. Their murders, idolatries, and injustice roused the anger of God, and “according to their way and their doings” He adjudged them to punishment. His hand scattered them, and no power could detain them in the land when His hand was against them, just as no power could have disturbed their security if they had remained faithful to Him. The nation that makes an enemy of God is doomed. The strongest fortifications must yield, the astutest policy be confounded, commerce decay, wealth give way to poverty, and the proudest people be humbled to the dust. The first step in national ruin begins in moral wrong.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Eze_36:16-38. “There are mountain regions lying within the tropics where in the course of a single day the traveller finds every vegetable form peculiar to every line of latitude between the equator and the poles, and these all laid out in regular arrangement. Leaving the palms which cover the mountain’s feet, he ascends into the regions of the olive; from these he rises to a more temperate climate, where vines festoon the trees, or trail their limbs along the naked rock; still ascending, he reaches a belt of oaks and chestnuts; from that he passes to rugged heights shaggy with the hardy pine; by-and-by he enters a region where trees are dwarfed into bushes; rising above that his foot presses a soft carpet of lowly mosses, till climbing the rocks where only the lichen lives, he leaves all life below; and now, shivering in the cold, panting in the thin air for breath, he stands on those dreary elevations where eternal winter sits on a throne of snow, and waving her icy sceptre, says to vegetation—‘Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further.’ Like some such lofty mountain of the tropics there are portions of the Divine Word where in a space of limited extent—within the short compass of a chapter, or even part of it—the more prominent doctrines of salvation are brought into juxtaposition and arranged side by side almost in systematic order. This portion of Scripture presents an epitome or outline of the Gospel. Its details, with their minute and varied beauties, are here, so to speak, in shade; but the grand truths of redemption stand boldly up, much as we have seen from sea the summits of a mountain range, or the lofty headlands of a dim and distant coast. We are aware that the Mosaic economy, and many of God’s dealings with His ancient people, were but the shadows of good things to come; and when the things are come, why look at the shadow when you possess the substance? However valued in his absence the portrait of a son, what mother, when her boy is folded in her arms, and she has his loved and living face to gaze on, turns to the cold picture? What artist studies a landscape in the grey dawn when he may see it in the blaze of day? True. Yet such study has its advantages. It not seldom happens that a portrait brings to view certain shades of expression which we had not previously observed in the face of the veritable man; and when some magnificent form of architecture, or the serried ridges and rocky peaks of a mountain, have stood up between us and the lingering lights of day, we have found that although the minor beauties of fluted columns or frowning crags were lost in the shades of evening, yet, drawn in sharp and clear outline against a twilight sky, the effect of the whole was even more impressive than when eyed in the glare of day. Thus it may be well occasionally to examine the Gospel in the broad shadows and strongly defined outlines of an old economy; and through God’s government of His ancient people to study the motives, the nature, and ends of His dealings with ourselves. In this way the passage before us has peculiar claims upon our attention.”—Guthrie’s Gospel in Ezekiel.
Eze_36:16. “Man’s previous course of action is the cause of God’s subsequent course of action. We shall have to give account not only because of the evil which we have done, but also for the good things which we have had. The world is perfect throughout where man does not come in to disturb it. Storms clear the air, an observation which bears application in regard to the judgments of God.”—Lange.
Eze_36:16-17. “The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man.” The Human Side of the Divine Message. “The rain in its descent from heaven falls upon the surface of our earth, percolates through the porous soil, and flowing along rocky fissures or veins of sand, is conveyed below ground to the fountain whence it springs. Now, although rising out of the earth, that water is not of the earth earthy. The world’s deepest well owes its treasures to the skies. So was it with the revealed will of God. It flowed along human channels, yet its origin was more than celestial, it was Divine. Those waters at whose pure and perennial springs faith drinks and lives, while conveyed to man along earthly channels, have their source far away—in the throne of God. No doubt God could have used other instrumentality. He might have commissioned angels on His errands of mercy, and spoken at all times, as He did sometimes, by seraph lips. With rare exceptions His ambassadors were men. The patriarchs, prophets, and apostles—those inspired missionaries of heaven—were all sons of men. In this arrangement observe—
1. The kindness of God to man. Who has read the story of Moses without feeling that it was a very great kindness both to the infant and his mother that he had her bosom to lie on, and that God in His providence so arranged matters that the very mother of the child was hired to be its nurse. Who else could be expected to treat the outcast so lovingly and kindly? And I hold it a singular kindness to man that he is selected to be the instrument of saving his fellow-men. If that parent is happy who has snatched a beloved child from the flood or fire, and the child saved and thus twice given him becomes doubly dear, what happiness in purity or permanence to be compared with his who is a labourer with God in saving souls!
2. The honour conferred on man. What dignity does this world offer, what glittering stars, what jewelled honours flash on her swelling breast, to be for one moment compared with those which they win on earth and wear in heaven who have turned souls from darkness to light? As yon planet worlds that roll above us draw bright radiance from the sun around which they move, so surely shall they shine who spend and are spent in Jesus’ service; they shall share His honours and shine in His lustre. It was the prayer of Brainerd, ‘Oh that I were a flaming fire in the service of my God!’
3. The wisdom of God. Mirabeau said of a man who addressed the French Convention for the first time, ‘That man will yet act a great part; he speaks as one who believes every word he says.’ Much of pulpit power under God depends on that. They make others feel who feel themselves. It is true a man may impart light to others who does not himself see the light. It is true that like a concave speculum cut from a block of ice, which, concentrating the rays of the sun, kindles touchwood or explodes gunpowder, a preacher may set others on fire when his own heart is cold as frost. Yet commonly it happens that it is what comes from the heart of preachers that penetrates and affects the hearts of hearers. Like a ball red-hot from the cannon’s mouth, he must burn himself who would set others on fire. If man may not feel what he preaches, angels could not. Man saved himself the more earnestly seeks the salvation of his perishing fellow-man. During a heavy storm off the coast of Spain a dismasted merchantman was observed by a British frigate drifting before the gale. Every eye and glass were on her, and a canvas shelter on a deck almost level with the sea suggested the idea that even yet there might be life on board. With all their faults no men are more alive to humanity than our rough and hardy mariners; and so the order instantly sounds to put the ship about, and presently a boat is lowered, and starts with instructions to bear down upon the wreck. Away after that drifting hulk go these gallant men over the mountain swell of a roaring sea; they reach it, they shout, and now a strange object rolls from that canvas screen against the lee shroud of a broken mast. It is hauled into the boat. It proves to be the trunk of a man, bent head and knees together, so dried up and shrivelled as to be hardly felt within the ample clothes—so light that a mere boy lifted it on board. It is conveyed to the ship and laid on the deck. In horror and pity the crew gather around it. These feelings suddenly change into astonishment. The object shows signs of life. The seamen draw nearer; it moves and then mutters—in a deep sepulchral voice, mutters—‘There is another man.’ Rescued himself, the first use the saved one made of speech was to try to save another.”—Guthrie.
Eze_36:17. The Defiler. “
1. Sin a defilement. Look at sin, pluck off that painted mask and turn upon her face the lamp of God’s Word. We start, for it reveals a death’s head. I stay not to quote texts descriptive of sin. It is a debt, a burden, a thief, a sickness, a leprosy, a plague, a poison, a serpent, a sting—everything that man hates it is. Name me the evil that springs not from this root—the crime that lies not at this door. Hypocrite and dead professor! let us open thy bosom: full of all corruption, how it smells like a charnel house! We are driven back by the noisome stench—we hasten to close the door. It is a painted, putrid sepulchre, whose fair exterior but aggravates the foulness within.
2. The nature of this defilement. (a.) It is internal. Like snowdrift, when it has levelled the churchyard mounds, and glistening in the winter sun, lies so pure, white, fair, and beautiful above the dead that fester and rot below, a plausible profession may wear the look of innocence and conceal from human eyes the foulest heart-corruption. The grass grows green upon the sides of the mountain that holds a volcano in its bowels. Behind the rosy cheek and lustrous eye of beauty how often does there lurk a deadly disease, the deadliest disease of all. Like these maladies, sin has its seat within. It is a disease of the heart, and the worst and deadliest of all heart-complaints. (b.) It is universal. Although the hues of the skin differ, the form of the skull and the features of the face are cast in different moulds, the features, colour, and character of the heart are the same in all men. In Adam all have died—have sinned, and therefore died. Thus sin, like our atmosphere, embraces every region of the world. Like death, it is universal. The tree is diseased not at the top, but at the root, and therefore no branch of the human family can possibly escape being affected by sin. (c.) It is incurable. What moral effect had God’s judgments on His ancient people? As always happens in incurable diseases, the patient grew worse instead of better. As always happens when life is gone, the dead become more and more offensive. This internal and universal defilement is one which neither sorrows can atone for nor sufferings remove. I have seen the characters of the writing remain on paper which the flames had turned into a film of buoyant coal; I have seen the thread that had been passed through the fire retain in its cold grey ashes the twist which it had got in spinning; I have found every shivered splinter of the flint as hard as the unbroken stone; and let trials come in providence sharp as the fire and ponderous as the crushing hammer, unless a gracious God send along with these something else than these, bruised, broken, bleeding as thy heart may be, its nature remains the same.”—Guthrie.
—Man Sinning. “
1. Man is fallen. Compare man with any other of the creatures of God, and how directly we come to the conclusion that he is not, nor can be, the creature he came from his Maker’s hands. Turn to the bloody horrors of this battlefield. The trampled ground lies thick with the mingled brave, the air is shaken with the most horrible sounds, every countenance expresses the passions of a fiend. Covering her eyes, humanity flies shrieking from the scene and leaves it to rage, revenge, and agony. Fiercer than the cannon’s flash flames of wrath shoot from brothers’ eyes; they draw, they brandish their swords, they sheath them in each other’s bowels; every stroke makes a widow, every ringing volley scatters a hundred orphans on a homeless world. Sooner would I be an atheist, and believe there was no God, than that a man appears in this scene as he came from the hand of a Benignant Divinity. Man must have fallen.
2. Apart from derived sinfulness man has personal sins to answer for. You may deny original, but can any man in his senses deny actual sin? You may as well deny your existence; it sticks to you like your shadow. If every thread of life’s web were yet to weave, what man would make the future a faithful copy of the past] No man living would. 3 The guilt of these actual sins is man’s own. We attempt in vain to fix the blame on others—to lay the burden on any shoulders but our own. We talk of the strength, we plead the suddenness of temptation; but how often have we sinned designedly, deliberately, repeatedly? We have sinned when we knew we were sinning; we have repaired to scenes where we knew that we were to sin. We have done what the heathen never did, what Sodom and Gomorrah never did, what Tyre and Sidon never did—we have rejected a Saviour, and insanely refused eternal life.”—Guthrie.
Eze_36:18-19. God’s Punitive Justice. “
1. God is slow to punish. No band of clock goes so slow as His hand of vengeance. Look, for example, on the catastrophe of the Deluge. There was a truce of one hundred and twenty years between the first stroke of the bell and the first crash of the thunder. Noah grew grey preaching repentance. The ark stood useless for years, a huge laughing-stock for the scoffer’s wit. Most patient God! God does pour out His fury; but His indignation is the volcano that groans loud and long before it discharges the elements of destruction and pours its fiery lavas on the vineyards at its feet.
2. The truth of God requires the punishment of sin. God has reiterated in a thousand ways the awful sentence—‘The soul that sinneth it shall die.’ Let sin go unpunished either in person or substitute; this saves the sinner—no doubt of that; but at what price? You save the creature’s life at the expense of the Creator’s honour. Your scheme exalts man, but far more than man is exalted is God degraded. By it no man is lost; but there is a greater loss—something more awful happens. The truth of God is lost; and in that loss His crown is spoiled of its topmost jewel, His kingdom totters, and the throne of the universe is shaken to its foundations.
3. The love of God requires the punishment of sin. Love for those who have the highest claim on a sovereign’s protection requires that justice take her course and the guilty die. That the community may live in peace, that the citizen may feel safe in the bosom of his family, that streets may be safe to walk on, that beds may be safe to lie in, that our country may be fit to live in, crime must be punished. Divine love is no blind Divinity, and God being as wise as tender, sinners may rest assured that out of mere pity for them He will neither sacrifice the interests nor peril the happiness of His people.
4. Unless sin is punished the language of Scripture appears extravagant. Let me beseech, implore you to read with tears and prayers those passages of Scripture that unveil the miseries of the lost. Blot not from your minds what you cannot blot out of the book of God. The sufferings and miseries which await the impenitent and unbelieving, God has painted in most appalling colours. They are such that, to save us from them, His Son descended from these heavens and expired upon a cross. They are such that when Paul thought of the lost he wept like a woman. The Gospel has in it elements of terror. But it is like our atmosphere—occasionally riven by the thunder and illumined by the fatal flash, at times the path of the stealthy pestilence, charged with elements of destruction and impregnated with the seeds of disease; but how much more a great magazine of health, filled with the most harmonious sounds, fragrant with the sweetest odours, hung with golden drapery, the pathway of sunbeams, the womb of showers, the feeder of fertilising streams, the parent of harvests, and the fountain of all earth’s life! And, just as in that atmosphere which God has wrapped around our globe there is much more health than sickness, much more food than famine, much more life than death, so in the Bible there is much more love than terror.”—Guthrie.
Eze_36:19. “ ‘The scattering power of sin: in truth, it scatters the souls of men into the whole world, and that is already their judgment which sinners have to experience.”—Lange.
—“God frequently repeats that His judgments upon the Jews were no more than what their own ways or doings obliged Him to inflict. There was in His dealings with them no arbitrary exercise of sovereignty, but they were dealt with according to their own conduct. And thus God deals with mankind in general: His actions in regard to them are not founded in an arbitrary exercise of His absolute sovereignty over them, but in impartial justice, wisdom, and goodness; and He judges them according to their own ways, and not according to the dictates of an arbitrary will.”—Benson.
Eze_36:20-21. The Name of God—
1. Is the expression of His immaculate holiness.
2. Is defamed by human sin.
3. Is misunderstood by those who witness the sufferings of His people.
4. Will vindicate to the universe its inviolable justice and righteousness.
Eze_36:20. “They did profanely sin against those precepts of My law which heathens did know, venerate, and observe better than the Jews. Their heathen neighbours said, with taunt and cutting reprimand—‘These are the people of the Lord.’ These captive slaves, that are most forlorn of men, will have it that their God is the Lord, the mighty and the good God, the true and faithful One that gave them the land out of which they are driven. If He be good as they boast, how comes it to pass that His people are in such ill state? Was He weak and could not keep them in their own land, or doth He falsify His word? You miserable Jews, say what this meaneth. But by their impure life they opened the mouths of the heathens to blaspheme and call the holiness of God into question. When they saw His people so unholy they concluded—‘As is the people so is their God;’ and this, as it was a great offence and scandal to the heathen, so it was a great dishonour to God.”—Pool.
—“With the sinner goes also his curse, his other shadow.—Thus this chapter teaches us how the first petition of the Lord’s prayer should be understood. The name of the Lord is hallowed as well by the prosperity of the elect, which may obtain even under the cross, as by their purification from sin.—A bad life ought not to put good doctrine in question.”—Lange.
Eze_36:21. “God His own justification in this world.—God sanctifies His name among men by benefits as well as by judgments and punishments.”—Lange.
HOMILETICS
SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY
(Eze_36:22-38.)
I. Is bestowed as an act of unmerited Divine goodness (Eze_36:22-24). Israel had forfeited all claim to the Divine pity; they had broken every clause in their part of the covenant. No injustice would have been done had they been passed by for ever and another nation selected to carry out the work in which they had so signally failed. But the Divine honour must be vindicated. The Lord had chosen Israel, had wedded Himself to them in closest union of both promise and blessing, had lavished upon them the love of His great heart and made them distinguished by miracles of power. Must all this go for nothing? Amid the general defection He did not overlook the fact that a few remained faithful. And yet, not for their sakes, nor for the sake of the people who had so cruelly disappointed and wronged Him, but for His own Name’s sake, He resolves upon the vindication of His honour. That vindication had been partially seen in the punishment, but is to be more fully displayed in the restoration and prosperity of His people. An old lesson, which the world in all ages has been so slow to take in, is to be again enforced—that spiritual good is superior to and the only sound basis of temporal good. Our smallest mercies are undeserved. How unfathomable is the goodness which continually surrounds us with spiritual riches!
II. Begins in a thorough renovation of the moral nature.
1. Sin is removed (Eze_36:25). There is no possibility of the future being better than the present unless the heart is cleansed from sin. Man is powerless to do this (Jer_2:22). It is an act of God. The ceremonial cleansing of the Law was typical of the spiritual cleansing of the Gospel. The Divine cleansing is thorough and complete—“Ye shall be cleansed from all your filthiness and from all your foul gods.”
2. A new nature acquired (Eze_36:26). The old nature was full of idolatries; the new shall be clear of these. The old nature was stubborn, stolid, hard as stone; the new shall be soft, tender, impressionable, receiving the Divine impress as the melted wax receives the impress of the seal. The human shall be suffused, interpenetrated, and transformed by the Divine. It is a spiritual miracle. Man can mould the intellect and modify the disposition, but God alone can change and renew the heart.
3. The renovation evidenced by practical obedience (Eze_36:27). In the spiritual world, as in the physical, every effect must have an adequate cause, and the effect must ever be in harmony with the nature and operative force of the cause. A life of moral obedience is the practical outcome of the influence of moral law acting at the centre of activity. Physical law is inflexible, and must ever produce the same class of phenomena with unvarying regularity. Moral law is not less unalterable, but it operates within the sphere of human freedom and cannot produce the same cast-iron sameness of results as is done in the unchanging operations of physical law: it respects the free, voluntary exercise of the human will. The Spirit of God so operates upon all the powers of the soul as to make obedience to God’s law not only possible, but cheerful, consistent, and acceptable. Enforced, mechanically regulated obedience is unworthy of man and displeasing to God. The reality of a spiritually transformed nature is seen in a constant endeavour to observe the Divine “statutes and judgments and do them.”
III. Is the only condition in which temporal prosperity can be truly appreciated and safely enjoyed (Eze_36:28-30; Eze_36:33-38). With the return of Israel to spiritual allegiance there is promised a return of temporal prosperity, and it is more than hinted in these verses that the outward prosperity should be proportioned to their moral obedience. Had they been more faithful, the promise of national restoration would have been more completely realised than history as yet has shown it to be. Temporal prosperity to the unbelieving is not only delusive, but dangerous. The success achieved by diligence and virtue has become a curse when the loss of rectitude has led to its abuse. The founders of the illustrious family of the Medici rose to affluence and power not only by their commercial genius, but by their philanthropy and virtue, John de Medici being honoured by his countrymen with the title of “the Father of the Poor;” and his son Cosmo has inscribed on his tomb the title of “Father of his country.” But with the decline of virtue in their descendants wealth and prestige vanished. Spiritual prosperity is the precursor of temporal prosperity. We never properly enjoy the good things of this life but as we use them in the fear and love of God, the all-bountiful Giver.
IV. Humbles the soul under a sense of personal unworthiness (Eze_36:31-32). ’Tis ever so. Nothing humbles the soul more than a display of God’s condescending goodness. We are ashamed of the sins committed against beneficence so tender, so constant, so generous. We feel that such mercy is utterly undeserved. The goodness of God melts the heart into penitence, which a misconception of severity has hardened into indifference or reckless bravado (Rom_2:4-5). A genuine repentance is one of the most hopeful symptoms of spiritual prosperity. The glory of Divine grace is often seen to best advantage through the mist of tears.
V. Is secured by earnest and persevering prayer (Eze_36:37). God had promised prosperity, and, apart from Israel’s deservings, had determined to bestow it, but none the less must it be sought by prayer and supplication. Whatever God has promised is a legitimate subject for prayer. Prayer is the language of conscious dependence; but how vast is the scope of the suppliant which is limited only by “the exceeding great and precious promises!” Those blessings are most highly prized, and bring the greatest spiritual enrichment, which are secured by earnest and agonising prayer.
LESSONS.—
1. God has a definite purpose in giving or withholding prosperity.
2. Spiritual prosperity is the highest kind, of prosperity.
3. The highest blessings are not secured without importunate prayer.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Eze_36:22-24. The Divine Impartiality—
1. An essential characteristic of the Divine nature.
2. Exercised in the accurate distribution of punishment and reward.
3. Reveals the enormity of human ingratitude and sin.
4. Vindicates the integrity of the Divine name.
5. Seen in the generous treatment of the underserving.
6. A powerful motive to repentance and obedience.
Eze_36:22. “It is not for any merit which God sees in His people that He has pity on them, for if God weighed their merits there could be nothing in them to recommend them to His favour; but it is in consideration of His own holy name and character as the God of covenanted grace, that so He may vindicate its sanctity before the nations from the reproach brought on it through the sins and the terrible punishment of the covenant people. Let us hence learn that the honour of His own holy name is the first grand end of all God’s dealings of wrath and mercy. Let us fall in with the purpose of God, and make the honour of His name our chief plea in our prayers for mercy and our influencing motive in all our acts.”—Fausset.
—“God’s Motive in Salvation.
1. Regard to His own glory.
2. In saving man for His own honour and glory God exhibits the mercy, holiness, love, and other attributes of the Godhead.
3. The doctrine that God is not moved to save man by any merit or worth in him is a truth of the highest importance to sinners.
4. It is as important for the saint as for the sinner to remember that he is not saved through personal merit, or for his own sake.
5. This doctrine, while it keeps the saint humble, will help to make him holy.
“Here, no ornament to park or garden, stands a dwarfed, stunted, bark-bound tree. How am I to develop that stem into tall and graceful beauty, to clothe with blossoms those naked branches and hang them till they bend with clustered fruit? Change such as that is not to be effected by surface-dressing, or any care bestowed on the upper soil. The remedy must go to the root. You cannot make that tree grow upwards till you break the crust below, pulverise the hard subsoil, and give the roots room and way to strike deeper down; for the deeper the root and the wider-spread the fine filaments of its rootlets, the higher the tree lifts an umbrageous head to heaven and throws out its hundred arms to catch, in dews, raindrops, and sunbeams, the blessings of the sky. The believer offers this analogy between grace and nature, that, as the tree grows best skyward that grows most downward, the lower the saint descends in humility the higher he rises in holiness. The soaring corresponds to the sinking.”—Guthrie’s Gospel in Ezekiel.
Eze_36:23-24. “God Glorified in Redemption.
1. God might have vindicated His honour and sanctified His name in our destruction.
2. God sanctifies His name and glorifies Himself in our redemption.
3. God’s power, wisdom, holiness, justice, and mercy glorified in redemption.
4. In redemption God is glorified in the complete discomfiture of all His and our enemies.
“The effect of the wind is visible, not the element itself. The clouds scud across the sky, the trees swing their arms wildly in the air, aerial waves chase each other across the corn, and the boat, catching the gale in her flowing sheet, goes dancing over the billows. So, although in a sense infinitely higher, the Invisible is visible; and in His works we see One who, seeing all, remains Himself unseen God is lost, not in darkness, but in light; a sun that blinds the eye which is turned on its burning disc. Angels themselves, unable to sustain His glory, cover their faces with their wings and use them, as a man his hand, to screen their eyes from the ineffable effulgence. Unbeliever though he was, the great Laplace, in one of his last and not least memorable utterances, said—‘It is the little that we know; it is the great that remains unknown.’ On the consecrated spot, where the cross of salvation rose and the blood of a Redeemer fell, I find the centre of a spiritual universe. Here, in a completed arch, if I may so speak, locked fast by the key, all the properties of divinity meet; here, concentrated as in a focus, its varied attributes blend and shine.”—Guthrie.
Eze_36:25-28. Heart-Renewal—
1. The work of the Divine Spirit.
2. Accomplished only by being cleansed from sin.
3. A thorough and self-conscious change.
4. Evidenced by an outward and practical obedience to the Divine law.
5. Puts the soul in its true relationship to God.
Eze_36:25. “The mention of clean water to be sprinkled on the people as the means of purification can only be understood symbolically; it does not refer to any mere external rite, or to any specific ordinance of the old covenant, such as the lustration ceremony with water and the ashes of the red heifer, or to the ablutions connected with the consecration of the Levites. It is rather to be viewed in reference to the purifications by water collectively, which were all, in one respect or another, symbolical of the removal of impurity and the establishment of the worshipper in a sound and acceptable condition. This was no more of a merely formal and outward character in Old Testament times than it is now, as we may learn from the whole tenor of this prophecy. It was by their moral pollutions most of all that the people of Israel had profaned God’s name and drawn down His displeasure; and the purification which was to undo the evil and again to sanctify the name of God could be nothing short of a conformity to God’s own righteousness, which throughout all ages is the same.”—Fairbairn.
—Man Justified. “
1. God’s people are not chosen because they are holy.
2. In redemption, the saved are not justified by themselves, but by God.
3. We are not justified through the administration or efficacy of any outward ordinance.
4. We are justified, or cleansed from the guilt of sin, by the blood of Christ. The greatest of all questions, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ is one which admits of a short and plain answer. Capable of a wide expansion, it may yet be brought within a very narrow compass. The river, which there flows between distant wooded banks and yonder spreads itself out into a lake, reflecting on its mirror-face the bright heavens above and the dark hills around, is here—where its foaming waters flash past loud as thunder and quick as lightning, or creep sullenly along at the bottom of the deep, dark gorge—brought within narrow bounds; bounds so narrow that, with nerve enough, by one brave leap from rock to rock I could clear its breadth. Even so all the wide expanse of doctrines to be believed and duties to be done over which we might expatiate in reply to the question, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ is contracted, compressed, comprehended in Paul’s brief address—‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’ As salvation is the one thing needful for man, faith is the one thing needful for salvation.”—Guthrie.
Eze_36:26. Man Converted. “
1. It is a great change—not a mere outward reformation.
2. It is a birth.
3. It is a resurrection. Our little child, watching with curious eye the apparent motion of objects, calls out in ecstasy and bids us see how hedge and house are flying past the carriage. You know it is not these that move; nor the fixed and firm shore, with its trees and fields, and boats at anchor, and harbours and headlands, that is gliding by the cabin-window. That is but an illusion of the eye; the motion is not in them but us.”—Guthrie.
—The Heart of Stone and the Heart of Flesh. “I. The heart of stone.
1. Stone is cold.
2. Hard.
3. Dead. II. The heart of flesh a new heart.
1. By this change the understanding and judgment are enlightened.
2. The temper and disposition are changed and sanctified.
3. In conversion man gets a warm heart, a soft heart, a living heart.
4. By conversion man is ennobled. Near by a mass of rock that had fallen from the overhanging crag, which had some wild-flowers growing in its fissures and on its top the foxglove with its spikes of beautiful but deadly flowers, we once came upon an adder as it lay in ribbon-coil, basking on the sunny ground. At our approach the reptile stirred, uncoiled itself, and raising its head, with eyes like burning coals, it showed its venomous fangs, shook its cloven tongue, hissed, and gave sign of battle. Attacked, it retreated, and making for that grey stone, wormed itself into a hole in its side. Its nest and home were there. And in looking on that shattered rock, fallen from its primeval elevation, with its flowery but fatal charms, the home and nest of the adder, where nothing grew but poisoned beauty and nothing dwelt but a poisoned brood, it seemed to us an emblem of that heart which the verse describes as a stone, which experience proves is a habitation of devils, and which the prophet pronounces to be desperately wicked.”—Guthrie.
—“The heart of stone does not bear bending according to God’s will, whereas the heart of flesh is soft and of such a texture that God can impress into its understanding a living knowledge, into its will a voluntary obedience, and into the inclinations a holy order.”—Starke.
Eze_36:27. The New Life. “I. It is a willing obedience to the law of God. II. It is a progressive obedience. ‘I will cause you to walk in My statutes.’ Other images convey the idea of progress, but this of progress achieved by exertion, progress the triumph of an intelligent mind and the reward of a determined will.
1. In this image God’s people find comfort and encouragement.
2. This image stimulates to exertion. III. This willing and progressive obedience is the sign and seal of salvation. IV. One of the most powerful means to accomplish the duty of the new life is to cultivate the love of Christ.
1. Love is the most powerful of all motives.
2. Love is a motive to duty as pleasant as it is powerful. V. A powerful motive to duty lies in the fact that by our obedience to these statutes the verdict of judgment shall be settled. The last day is God’s Day of settlement with a world that has had long credit. It is the winding-up of this earth’s bankrupt estate and each man’s individual interests. It is the closing of an open account that has been running on ever since the fall. It is the day when the balance is struck and our fate is heaven or hell. Our hands are now sowing seed for that great harvest.”—Guthrie.
—“I will put My Spirit, the great principle of light, life, and love, within you, to actuate the new spirit and to influence the new affections and passions, that the animal spirit may not become brutish, that the mental powers become not foolish. I will put My Spirit within you, so that as the new spirit may influence the new heart, so will My Spirit influence your new spirit, that each may have a proper mover; and then all will be pure, regular, harmonious, when passion is influenced by reason and reason by the Holy Ghost. And the cause shall be evidenced by the effects; for I will cause you to walk in My statutes—not only to believe and reverence My appointments relative to what I command you to perform; but ye shall walk in them, your conduct shall be regulated by them.”—A. Clarke.
—“First the inward and then the outward change is God’s order, while we men always proceed in the reverse order. What good a man does is not his, but God’s work in him.”—Starke.
Eze_36:28. “To the heavenly among men there is no lack even on earth; to him who has what alone is worth having nothing shall be wanting.”—Lange.
Eze_36:29-36. “Spiritual blessings were largely comprised in their temporal ones, as the kernel is enclosed in the shell. Hence Christian holiness and all the blessings of the new covenant are here principally implied. The Jews looked for the bringing-in of a better hope. They had a laver in which they washed; but David says, ‘I will wash my hands in innocency.’ They had the blood of sprinkling, but a better fountain was expected to be opened for sin and for uncleanness. They had circumcision; but the true circumcision was that of the heart. They had the law written on the tables of stone; but the Messiah who says, ‘Thy law is within Me,’ here promises to write it on the heart.”—Sutcliffe.
Eze_36:29-30. The Productiveness of Nature—
1. A Divine gift. “I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field.”
2. Promptly responds to the Divine voice. “I will call for the corn and increase it.”
3. A guarantee against famine. “I will lay no famine upon you—ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen.”
4. Is appreciated only by those who are morally cleansed. “I will save you from all your uncleannesses.”
Eze_36:29. “ ‘I will call for the corn.’ All necessaries for aliment comprised in one, and these brought to them at God’s call, which they will hear (Psa_105:16; Psa_105:40; Heb_2:11-12). Famine is God’s arrow; He shoots it; where it is, He layeth it; but His people shall neither have it their misery nor their reproach any more.”—Pool.
Eze_36:31-36. “Nothing so melts the sinner into repentance as the love and grace of God, where he could have looked only for wrath because of his sins. Let us, if we desire true repentance, receive it as the gift of God at the foot of the cross of Christ, where we see our sin forgiven at the cost of such an awful sacrifice, flowing from the gratuitous love of God. The terrors of the law can frighten, but the grace of God in Christ alone can melt the heart.”—Fausset.
Eze_36:31-32. Conscious Sin—
1. The result of reflection on personal wrongdoing. “Then shall ye remember your evil ways and your doings that were not good.”
2. Humbles the soul in profound self-abasement. “Ye shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations. Be ashamed and confounded for your own ways.”
3. Convinces the soul that all blessings have a Divine source. “Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord God.”
Eze_36:31. “When I have given you My Spirit, renewed your hearts, brought you by miraculous mercy out of captivity in a strange land unto liberty in your own, ye shall call to mind, review and examine all your past life, your ways opposite to God’s, therefore both their own by choice and also evil in their very nature. Your mind shall abhor what you loved and deeply grieve at what you rejoiced in. When swine ye wallowed in mire; when made sheep you shall as much fear and flee from it.”—Pool.
—“There are some things we can hardly forget—our sorrows and our pleasures, as Esau; some things we can hardly remember—our faults and our friends, as Joseph’s butler. Augustine was famous for two of his works—his ‘Retractions,’ which are the confessions of his errors; and his ‘Confessions,’ which are the retractions of his life.”—Trapp.
—“In conversion man regains his memory. Loathing is not a sign of sickness only, but in matters spiritual it is a sign of convalescence. Our life must become sorrow to us, otherwise sorrow will not become life to us.”—Lange.
Eze_36:32. “Grace works shame, and so much the more as it makes the wilderness a paradise, the beggar a king, and the sinner a priest. We boast of nothing in Christ and we boast of all things.”—Lange.
Eze_36:33-36. Moral Reform—
1. The basis of temporal prosperity.
2. Can be accomplished only by Divine power.
3. An evidence to the world of the Divine veracity.
Eze_36:36. “ ‘I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it.’ The Security of the Believer.
1. The text announces a most important truth.
2. This truth imparts comfort to a true Christian. Through his confidence in this truth—
(1) he commits all his earthly cares to God;
(2) he is sustained amid the trials of life;
(3) he cheerfully hopes and patiently waits for heaven.
3. Both nature and providence illustrate the truth of the text. The voice of every storm that, like an angry child, weeps and cries itself to sleep, the voice of every shower that has cleared up into sunshine, the hoarse voice of ocean breaking in impotent rage against its ancient bounds, the voice of the seasons as they have marched to the music of the spheres in unbroken succession over the earth, the scream of the satyr in Babylon’s empty halls, the fierce shout of the Bedouin as he hurls his spear and careers in freedom over his desert sands, the wail and weeping of the wandering Jew over the ruins of Zion—in all these I hear the echo of this voice of God—‘I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.’ ”—Guthrie.
Eze_36:37-38. An Increasing Population—
1. An evidence of national prosperity.
2. A great national responsibility.
3. Should be instructed in the knowledge and worship of God.
4. An imposing spectacle when engaged in the praise and service of God.
Eze_36:37. “Thus saith the Lord God.” The Divine Word—
1. Emphasised by frequent repetition. This the fourteenth time this expression is used in the present chapter.
2. The foundation and guarantee of blessing to man.
3. Should be devoutly pondered.
4. Is infallible alike in promise and threatening.
—“ ‘I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them.’ The Nature, Necessity, and Power of Prayer.
1. Nature herself teaches us to pray.
2. Some difficulties connected with the duty. The decrees of God render prayer unnecessary. From want of faith prayer must be useless.
3. Prayer must be earnest.
4. Prayer is powerful.
5. Prayer is confident. Child of God, pray on. By prayer thy hand can touch the stars, thy arm stretches up to heaven. Nor let thy holy boldness be dashed by the thought that prayer has no power to bend these skies and bring down thy God. When I pull upon the rope which fastens my little skiff to a distant and mighty ship, this feeble arm may not draw its vast bulk to me, but I draw myself to it, to ride in safety under protection of its guns, and in my want enjoy the fulness of its stores. And it equally serves my purpose and supplies my needs that, although prayer were powerless to move God to me, it moves me to God. If He does not descend to earth I ascend to heaven.”—Guthrie.
—“For all these blessings, whether of sanctification or of millennial glory, God will be enquired of in prayer; for the duty and the promise are everywhere connected in the sacred writings. It is remarkable that when St. Paul mentions holiness of heart at large, it is generally with the most fervent supplications for its attainment (Eph_3:14-19; 1Th_5:23). This is still the only way for men to attain purity of heart and the mind of Christ.”—Sutcliffe.
Eze_36:38. “Thus shall men multiply and fill the cities of replanted Judah. And the increase of the numbers of a people is then honourable when they are all dedicated to God as a holy flock, to be presented to Him as living sacrifices. Crowds are a lovely sight in God’s temple.”—Benson.
—“Such promises as those contained in this chapter cannot be taken in an absolute sense; they must be understood to some extent conditionally. They reveal the kind pro-pensions of God towards His people, what He is disposed and ready to do towards them, rather than what He will for certain accomplish at any stage or period of their history. So far the Word contains an absolute element, as God certainly pledges Himself to make provision for securing, in a larger measure than formerly, a proper regeneration of heart and conduct in His people, and also for giving palpable proof of this in their more flourishing and prosperous condition generally. The goodness of God was certainly to manifest itself for these ends; but it would do so to the full extent represented only if they continued in His goodness.”—Fairbairn.
—“There is no period of the Jewish history from that time until now to which this beautiful chapter can be applied. It must belong to the Gospel dispensation; and if the Jews will still refuse, contradict, And blaspheme, let no Christian have any fellowship with them in their opposition to this Almighty Saviour. Let none be indifferent to His salvation, let all plead His promises, and let the messengers of the Churches proclaim to the Christian world a free, a full, and a present salvation.”—A. Clarke.
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.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Eze 36:16-17
Eze 36:16-17
I. This portion of Scripture, extending onwards from the sixteenth verse, presents an epitome or outline of the Gospel. (1) In Eze 36:17 we have man sinning. (2) In Eze 36:18 we have man suffering. (3) In Eze 36:19 man appears an object of mercy, but I had pity. (4) In Eze 36:22 man is an object of free mercy—mercy without merit; 1 do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel. (5) In Eze 36:24 man’s salvation is resolved on. (6) In Eze 36:25 man is justified. (7) In Eze 36:26-27, man is renewed and sanctified. (8) In Eze 36:28 man is restored to the place and privileges which he forfeited by his sins.
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II. Notice the party who is commissioned to deliver God’s message. "Son of man," says the Lord. "Son of man" is so constantly sounded both in the ears of Ezekiel and in ours that it forces on our attention this remarkable fact that God deals with man through the instrumentality of man, and by men communicates His will to men. In this arrangement observe— (1) The kindness of God to man; (2) the honour conferred on man; (3) the wisdom of God.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 1.
Eze 36:17
I. Look at man sinning. "Ye have defiled the land." The text sets sin before us as a defilement, and it is the only thing that in the eye of God does deform and defile us.
II. Look at the nature of the defilement. (1) It is internal. (2) It is universal. (3) It is incurable.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 23.
Leaving the question of original, to speak of actual, sin we remark:—
I. Apart from derived sin, we have personal sins to answer for.
II. The guilt of these actual sins is our own.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 43.
Reference: Eze 36:17.—T. Guthrie, Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 42.
Eze 36:18-19
Assuming that God is love, it may be asked, How does that harmonise with the text? How is it to be reconciled with words where God represents Himself as pouring down His fury like a thunder-shower, and scattering His people in a storm of indignation, as light and worthless chaff blown away upon the wind. How, it may be asked, does this consist with God’s love and mercy? Now, there is no greater mistake than to imagine that God, as a God of justice and a God of mercy, stands in antagonism to Himself. It is not mercy, but injustice, which is irreconcilable with justice. It is cruelty, not justice, that stands opposed to mercy. Like two streams, which unite their waters to form a common river, justice and mercy are combined in the work of redemption. On Calvary, mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace embrace each other. Observe—
I. That God is slow to punish. He does punish; He shall punish; with reverence be it spoken, He must punish. Yet no hand of clock goes so slow as God’s hand of vengeance. Where, when God’s anger has burned hottest, was it ever known that judgment trod on the heels of sin? A period always intervenes, room is given for remonstrance on God’s part and repentance upon ours. The stroke of judgment is indeed like the stroke of lightning, irresistible, fatal; it kills—kills in the twinkling of an eye. But the clouds from which it flashes are slow to gather, and thicken by degrees; and he must be deeply engaged with the pleasures, or engrossed in the business, of the world, whom the flash and peal surprise. Heeded or unheeded, many are the warnings you get from God.
II. Observe how God punished His ancient people. Look at Judah sitting amid the ruins of Jerusalem, her temple without a worshipper and her streets choked with the dead; look at that bound, weeping, bleeding remnant of a nation, toiling on its way to Babylon, and may I not warn you with the Apostle: "If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He spare not thee"?
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 60.
Although the permission of sin is a mystery, the fact of its punishment is no mystery at all; for while every answer to the question, How did God permit sin? leaves us unsatisfied, to my mind nothing is plainer than this, that, whatever was His reason for permitting it to exist, God could not permit it to exist unpunished. In proof of this, I observe—
I. The truth of God requires the punishment of sin. "Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little," God has recorded His irrevocable resolution, not in one but in a hundred passages, and reiterated in a thousand ways the awful sentence: "The soul that sinneth it shall die."
II. The love of God requires that sin should be punished. Divine love is no blind divinity: that love being as wise as tender, sinners may rest assured, that out of mere pity to them, God will neither sacrifice the interests, nor peril the happiness, of His people. Love herself,—bleeding, dying, redeeming love—with her own hand will bar the door of heaven, and from its happy, holy precincts exclude all that could hurt or defile.
III. Unless sin is to be awfully punished, the language of Scripture appears extravagant.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 79.
Eze 36:22
The text divides itself into two branches: first, what does not; secondly, what does; move God to save us. To the first question our answer is—Not anything in us; to the second—His regard to His own holy Name.
I. The doctrine that God is not moved to save man by any merit or excellence of his, is a truth of the highest importance and consequence to sinners. Man must be emptied of self before he can be filled with grace. We must be stripped of our rags, before we can be clothed with righteousness; we must be unclothed, that we may be clothed upon; wounded, that we may be healed; killed, that we may be made alive; buried in disgrace, that we may rise in grace.
II. It is as important for the saint as for the sinner to remember that he is not saved through personal merit or for his own sake. When age has stiffened its bark and fibres, if you bend a branch into a new direction, it is long before it loses the tendency to resume its old position. Even so, when God has laid hands upon us, and grace has given our earthly soul a heavenward bent, how prone it is to start back again! Who, that has endeavoured to keep his heart with diligence, has not felt and mourned over the tendency to be working out a righteousness of his own, to be pleased with himself, and, by taking some satisfaction from his own merits, to undervalue those of Christ?
III. This doctrine, while it keeps the saint humble, will help to make him holy. As the tree grows best skyward that grows most downward, the lower the saint grows in humility. the higher he grows in holiness. Piety and pride are not less opposed to each other than light and darkness.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 116.
Eze 36:22
In entering upon the question, What moved God to save man? let us—
I. Attend to the expression "My Name’s sake." This is a most comprehensive term. It indicates much more that what, in common language, is involved in a name. The Name of God comprehends everything which directly or remotely affects the Divine honour and glory.
II. We are to understand that the motive which moved God to save man, was regard to His own glory. Grace glorifies man, no doubt; but for what purpose? that he may glorify God. It saves man, but saves him that he may sing, not his own praises, but a Saviour’s. It exalts man, but exalts him that, like an exhalation, sun-drawn from the ground and raised to heaven, each of us may form a sparkling drop in the bow which encircles the head that God crowns with glory, and man once crowned with thorns.
III. Observe, that in saving man for His "holy Name’s sake," or for His own honour and glory, God exhibits the mercy, holiness, love, and other attributes of the Godhead. The truth is, that God saves man for much the same reasons as at first He made him. The whole fabric of creation appears to prove that Jehovah delights in the evolution of His powers, in the display of His wisdom, love, and goodness; and just as it is to the delight which God enjoys in the exercise of them that we owe this beautiful creation, so it is to His delight in the exercise of His pity, love, and mercy, that we owe salvation, with all its blessings.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 99.
Eze 36:23
I. The mercy of God is glorified in redemption.
II. In redemption, God is glorified in the complete discomforture of all His and our enemies. (1) He is glorified by Satan’s defeat. (2) He is glorified by the time and manner of it. (3) He is glorified in the instrument of that defeat.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 167.
Eze 36:23-24
Passing over the special application of these words to the Jews and looking at them in their prophetical connection with the scheme of redemption, I remark—
I. That God might have vindicated His honour and sanctified His Name in our destruction. Two methods of glorifying His Name are open to God. He is free to choose either; but by the one or the other way He will exact His full tale of glory from every man. In Egypt, for instance, He was glorified in the high-handed destruction of His enemies; and in the same land, by the high-handed salvation of His people. He might, at the fall, have vindicated His justice by swift and unsparing vengeance—by destroying the whole human family. He did so, in the case of fallen angels. He might have meted out the same measure to fallen men.
II. God sanctifies His Name and glorifies Himself in our redemption. It is easy to destroy—to destroy character, virtue, life, anything. It needs but a devil to ruin the spirit, but it needs a Divinity to redeem it. It needs but a villain to steal virtue, it needs a Divine power to restore the stolen jewel. As man’s glory is more illustrated by curing than by killing, so God’s glory is more pre-eminent in our redemption than it had been in our final and everlasting ruin.
III. The scheme of redemption is eminently illustrative of the attributes of Jehovah. It illustrates (1) His power, (2) His wisdom, (3) His holiness, (4) His justice.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, pp. 137, 151.
Eze 36:24
I. In carrying out the work of redemption, God will call His people out of the world.
II. The power of Divine grace is strikingly displayed in this effectual calling.
III. God will make up the number of His people. "I will gather you out of all countries."
IV. We are assured that God will bring all His people to glory, by the fact that His own honour, as well as their welfare, is concerned in the matter.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 185.
Eze 36:25
I. God’s people are not chosen because they are holy; they are chosen that they may become holy.
II. In redemption, the saved are not justified by themselves, but by God.
III. We are not justified or cleansed from the guilt of sin through the administration or efficacy of any outward ordinance.
IV. We are justified, or cleansed from the guilt of sin by the blood of Christ. "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission."
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, pp. 205, 224.
Reference: Eze 36:25.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxii., No. 1921.
Eze 36:26
I. The old heart is taken away and a new one put in its place. The substitution of one heart for another implies an entire change in the character and current of our affections. Now a change may be simply a reform, or extending farther, it may pass into a revolution. The spiritual change, which we call conversion, is not a mere reform. It is a revolution. It changes the heart, the habits, the eternal destiny of an immortal being. For the old mischievous laws which it repeals, it introduces a new code of statutes; it changes the reigning dynasty, wrenches the sceptre from a usurper’s hand, and banishing him forth of the kingdom, in restoring the throne to God, restores it to its rightful monarch.
II. Consider the view which our text gives of the natural heart. It is a heart of stone. "I will take the stony heart out of your flesh." Notice some of the characteristic properties of a stone. (1) A stone is cold. But what stone so cold as that in man’s breast? Sin has quenched a fire that once burned bright and holy there, and has left nothing now on that chill hearth, but embers and ashes—cold as death. (2) A stone is hard. Fire melts wax, but not stone; water softens clay, but not stone; a hammer bends the stubborn iron, but not stone. Stone resists these influences; and emblem of a heart crushed, but not sanctified by affliction, it may be shattered into fragments or ground to powder, yet its atoms are as hard as ever. (3) A stone is dead. It has no vitality, no feeling, no power of motion. It lies where it is laid; speak to it, it returns no answer; weep to it, it sheds no tears; image of a lost and loved one, it feels not the grief that itself can move. How many sit in the house of God as unmoved! Careless as spectators who have no concern in what takes place before them, they take no interest in anything that was done on Calvary; one would think it is of stones, and yet it is of living men that these words are spoken: "Having eyes, they see not; having ears, they hear not; neither do they understand." T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 268.
Eze 36:26
(with 2Co 5:17, and Rev 21:5)
I. Human hearts unappeasably cry out after change. Something new we all need, and because we need, we crave for it; and what we crave after, we hope for. The old we have tried, and it is not enough. In the future there may be what we need, and so long as there is a future, there is hope; but the past is dead. Now the best lesson which the years can teach us is, perhaps, this one, that the new thing we need is, not a new world, but a new self. No change can count for much to a man save one which changes him.
II. At this point the Gospel meets us. It is the singular pretension of the Christian Gospel that it does make men new. It professes to alter character, not as all other religious and ethical systems in the world have done, by mere influence of reason or of motives, or by a discipline of the flesh; it professes to alter human character by altering human nature. The Gospel is a message from Him who made us, that He is among us re-making us. Out of the fact of the Incarnation springs the hope of our renewal. God now is not outside of mankind, but inside. From the inside He can work and does work, renewingly. A race which includes God need not despair of Divine life; it can be divinely re-created from within itself. "The Head of every man is Christ." He that is in Christ is a new creature. Attach yourself to Him; hang on by Him. He is God in man, renewing man; and He will renew you in this new year.
III. Let us stir ourselves up to compare the life we are this day leading with the life we should lead were we made new by the Holy Ghost. Set the one against the other. Spiritual things are distasteful, and we drag ourselves to religious duty; we ought to rejoice in the Lord and run in His pleasant paths. This world absorbs and conquers us; we ought to rule it and use it for heaven. Internal restlessness and dissatisfaction with ourselves gnaw our hearts, but the saints have peace. "A new heart will I give you." Do we not need it? Shall we not, every one of us, go to this daring much-promising Man, who claims to regenerate his fellows, and say: "Never men needed this renewing more than we do. Give us a new temper and a new spirit; yea, a new self, Lord, like Thyself."
IV. Change the man and you change his world. The new self will make all around it as good as new, though no actual change should pass on it; for, to a very wonderful extent, a man creates his own world.
J. Oswald Dykes, Sermons, p. 249.
I. When God gives a new heart, our affections are engaged in religion. The Gospel is accommodated to our nature; its light is adapted to our darkness; its mercy to our misery; its pardon to our guilt; its comforts to our griefs, and in substituting the love of Christ for the love of sin, in giving us an object to love, it meets our constitution and satisfies the strongest cravings of our nature. It engages our affections, and in taking away an old heart, supplies its place with a new one and a better.
II. Consider the new heart. It mainly consists in a change of the affections as they regard spiritual objects. In obedience to a Divine impulse, their course is not only in a different, but in a contrary, direction; for the grace of God works such a complete change of feeling, that what was once hated you now love, and what was once loved you now loathe; you fly from what you once courted, and pursue what you once shunned.
III. In conversion God gives a new spirit. By this change (1) the understanding and judgment are enlightened; (2) the will is renewed; (3) the temper and disposition are changed and sanctified.
IV. In conversion God gives a heart of flesh. In conversion a man gets (1 a warm heart; (2) a soft heart; (3) a living heart.
V. By conversion man is ennobled.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 287.
References: Eze 36:26.—T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 247; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 62; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv., No. 212; vol. viii., No. 456; vol. xix., No. 1129; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 230; D. B. James, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 125. Eze 36:26, Eze 36:27.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1046; J. Sherman, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 13.
Eze 36:27
In considering the new life which the believer lives in obedience to the law of God, I remark:
I. It is a willing obedience. Many movements take place in the universe independent of any will but that of God. The sap ascends the tree, the planets revolve round the sun, the stars rise and set in the heavens, the tides flow and ebb upon our shores, and nature walks in God’s statutes, keeping His judgments and doing them, moved to obedience by no will but His. So soon, however, as, leaving inaminate matter below, we ascend into those regions where mind or even instinct and matter are united, we discover a beautiful and benevolent law, by virtue of which God at once secures the happiness and provides for the welfare of His creatures. He so orders it that their will is in perfect harmony with their work; their inclinations with their interests; and their instincts with the functions which they are called on to perform. The nature of the redeemed is so accommodated to the state of redemption, their wishes are so fitted to their wants, their hopes to their prospects, their aspirations to their honours, and their will to their works, that they would be less content to return to polluted pleasures than the beautiful butterfly to be stripped of its silken wings, and condemned to pass its days amid the old foul garbage, its former food.
II. This is a progressive obedience. To "walk" is expressive of progress in grace. (1) In this image God’s people find comfort and encouragement. (2) This image stimulates to exertion, as well as comforts under failure.
III. This willing and progressive obedience is the sign and seal of salvation. The descent of the Spirit is still the evidence of sonship; its sign, however, is not a dove perched upon the heads of God’s people, but the dove nestled within their hearts. By His Spirit God creates them "anew in Christ Jesus unto good works;" and by these—by the fruits of a holy life, by the joys of a Holy Ghost, by the advancing stages of a holy progress, His Spirit witnesses with their spirit that they are sons of God. A witness this as certain, and therefore as satisfactory, as the voice of the skies, or the verdict of final judgment.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 329.
Eze 36:27
I. The Holy Spirit is the great agent in conversion and sanctification. Man cannot be saved unless elected, nor elected without the Father; nor saved unless redeemed, nor redeemed without the Son; nor saved unless converted, nor converted without the Spirit. Our necessities are those of the cripple—of that man who, for thirty years, sat uncured by Bethesda’s pool, nor took his anxious eyes off the water as he waited for its first stir and ruffle. Many a time the cripple had seen the sudden spring, and heard the loud plunge, as some neighbour flashed into the water; and as the cured left the scene, many a time had he followed them with envious eyes. Even so, although seated by the fountain, where sins are lost and sinners washed, we need some one, so to speak, to help us in. In the words of Paul we are "without strength," and it is to help us to seek, to believe in, to love—in one word, to embrace the Saviour—that God puts His Spirit within us. For this end He fulfils the promise, "My grace shall be sufficient for thee," and my strength made perfect in weakness.
II. God’s Spirit is not only given to His people, but dwells in them. Speaking of the man that loves Him, our Lord said, "We will come unto him." This promise is one which He fulfils in the daily communications of His word and spirit. Earth has no lovers who meet so often as Jesus and His bride. The lowliest and poorest Christian God honours with daily visits.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 313.
References: Eze 36:30, Eze 36:31.—Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi, p. 291. Eze 36:32.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 233.
Eze 36:36
I. The text announces a most important truth.
II. This truth imparts certain comforts to a true Christian. (1) Through his confidence in this truth the believer commits all his earthly cares to God. (2) Through his confidence in the truth of the text the believer is sustained amid the trials of life. (3) Through his confidence in the truth of the text the believer cheerfully hopes and patiently waits for heaven.
III. Both nature and providence illustrate the truth of my text.
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 410.
Reference: Eze 36:36.—J. Bardsley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 305.
Eze 36:36-37
I. Prayer is founded on knowledge. Before we can speak to God we must know God. "How shall they call," the Apostle asks, "on Him in whom they have not believed?" Even the prayer of the heathen, so far as it is prayer, rests upon knowledge. (1) Let the man who would pray aright begin by studying his Bible. Let him first acquaint himself with God, and then speak to Him. The Word of God tells us in a thousand manners what He is in Himself, and what He is in His doings towards the children of men. He who would ask of God must first know God, and he must carry that knowledge into the asking. He must never ask of God anything which it would contradict the character of God to grant. The prayer which presupposes knowledge must also be a prayer which recognizes and remembers it. (3) In Christ, God is revealed; and upon the knowledge of Christ, therefore, is prayer to God founded. The words with which Christian supplication is always winged and speeded—through Jesus Christ our Lord—are a perpetual memento of that first condition of prayer, that it be founded on the true knowledge of God, and carry that knowledge with it to the mercy-seat of God’s Presence.
II. Prayer founded on knowledge is prompted by desire. The man who asks of God must desire too.
III. Prayer, founded on knowledge and prompted by desire, must be bounded by promise. The promise of which we speak is no single, separate utterance; no number, no multitude, of bare, literal engagements, which must be found somewhere in the bond, and then rehearsed by page and clause, as the justification of the particular demand. The promise of God, like the revelation of God, like the counsel of God, like the character of God, is at once ample to magnificence and simple even to unity. There is no limit to prayer but promise, and no limit to promise but the soul’s good.
C. J. Vaughan, Voices of the Prophets, p. 158.
Eze 36:37
The text summons us to prayer. Constant prayer, unceasing watchfulness are what our interests imperatively demand. These the Christian life requires, and these the crown of redemption rewards.
I. Nature itself teaches us to pray. Like our intuitive belief in the existence of the soul, or in man’s responsibility, there seems to be lodged in every man’s breast, what I may call an instinct to pray, and an intuitive belief in the efficacy of prayer. Prayer must be natural, because it is universal. Man is, as it were, instinctively moved to cast himself into the arms of God, to seek Divine help in times of danger, and in times of sorrow to weep on the bosom of a Father who is in heaven.
II. Notice some difficulties connected with this duty. (1)The decrees of God, say some, render prayer useless. Are not all things, they ask, fixed by these decrees—irrevocably fixed? This objection is not honestly, at least not intelligently, entertained by any man. For, if the objection is good against prayer, it is good against many things besides. If it stops action in the direction of prayer,—it ought to stop the wheels of our daily business. If a good objection against prayer, it is an equally good objection to sowing, ploughing, taking meat or medicine, and a thousand other things. (2) Others, more earnest and honest, reading that "without faith it is impossible to please God," say that from want of faith, their prayers must be useless. Most false reasoning. The Apostle says, "I will that men pray everywhere." "God will have all men to be saved." We take the simple word, nor trouble ourselves about the metaphysics of the question.
III. Prayer must be earnest. Prayers without wishes are like birds without wings; while the eagle soars away to heaven, these never leave the ground. If you would have your prayers accepted, they must be arrows shot from the heart.
IV. Prayer is powerful. Prayer changes impotence into omnipotence; for, commanding the resources of divinity, there is nothing it cannot do, and there is nothing it need want. It has just two limits. The first is that its range is confined to the promises; the second, that God will grant or deny our requests as is best for His glory and our good.
V. Prayer is confident. "Jesus, our High Priest, has entered within the veil, and having reconciled us to God, we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus."
T. Guthrie, The Gospel in Ezekiel, p. 369.
References: Eze 36:37.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No. 138; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 50; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ix., p. 187. Eze 36:37, Eze 36:38.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii., No. 1304; J. Sherman, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 347.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Section 3 (Eze 36:1-38; Eze 37:1-28).
Section 3 (Eze 36:1-38; Eze 37:1-28).
Restoration and reorganization.
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We have now the work of restoration, of reorganization, accomplished first of all in the land once more becoming Israel’s. Jehovah claims it from its would-be possessors, and gives it back to Israel. But, that they may enjoy it, a deeper work must be done in the nation itself, and thus we have the Lord sprinkling clean water upon them to make them clean, and putting within them a new heart and a new spirit. In the third place we have the resurrection of the nation as such, their political resurrection, the embodiment in a fitting manner of the new life; and for this Judah and Ephraim, so long sundered, must come together. God can lose nothing of that which, through grace, is now to be owned as His. There must be no final triumph of the power of evil anywhere. The work of restoration is thus to be completed; but the seal of their new condition and the perfect blessing which is to be theirs forever -the return of the glory of God, which Ezekiel had seen depart, but which henceforth is to be in brighter display in the restored city -remains yet to be given us. It has a place by itself, therefore, as the crown of their blessed condition when the city itself shall be known upon earth as the dwelling-place of God with man, Jehovah Shammah, "The Lord is there."
1. We have, first of all, Jehovah’s word to the land itself. This is in plain connection with the claim which the Edomite enemy had made to possess it. It must be vindicated from this reproach, therefore. The land is really Jehovah’s land, and He certainly has never forfeited it, and will never give it up to those who are His enemies. Israel are to possess it upon the surest ground possible -that of God’s grace. They are to be sojourners with Him, to be His guests, and thus to know all the resources of His hand, as well as the full protection necessitated by this relationship.
Thus Ezekiel is instructed now to prophesy to the mountains of Israel, and say: "Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of Jehovah: thus saith the Lord Jehovah; Because the enemy hath said against you, Aha, and the ancient high places have become ours in possession: therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Because, yea, because they have made you desolate, and have swallowed you up on every side, that ye might be a possession to the remnant of the nations, and ye are taken up on the lips of talkers, and the defamation of the people; therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Jehovah." These mountains have been addressed before, in the sixth chapter, but in far other terms. They were then the seats of an idolatry which dared to lift its head in a special manner in the high places of the land. Desolation had come upon them, therefore; and the enemy had taken it up as a reproach both to them and to Jehovah Himself. But these mountains of Israel, very far from being what we have seen Mount Seir to be (the indication of the folly of Esau’s choice and the barrenness of the portion which had thus become his own), were characteristically verdant and fruitful mountains, the places of pasture for the flock; they also were in testimony to the condition of a people whom Jehovah owned as His: round about whom He stood as the mountains round about Jerusalem. Their foundations must be upon the earth, but their tops were lifted high into the light and glory of heaven. How different from their condition since! -a reproach, in their present barrenness, in the sight of those that look upon them -the types, as so many suppose, of the hopeless forfeiture of all things by the people to whom they belonged! How often Jehovah declared here that He has pledged Himself by His never-to-be-broken word, to their revival!
That word therefore takes in all the land: "Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains and to the hills, to the water-courses and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and the cities that are forsaken, which have become a prey and a derision to the remnant of the nations that are round about; therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the remnant of the nations, and against the whole of Edom who have appointed my land unto themselves for a possession with the joy of all their heart, with spite of soul, to take possession of it for a prey." This is all that the enemy could do. Make it yield its fruit to him, he could not; and already we see this in the long Sabbaths in which the land has rested while Israel has been banished from it. To none of the nations would it yield its strength, and the people who are in present possession are just those who can be readily characterized as mere plunderers, and nothing else. But this suits, in the meanwhile, Jehovah’s purpose. With all this, they are as it were, His watchmen against the intrusion of those who might take it up with more serious intent to make their own out of it. The hordes that sweep over it still, the government under which it remains and under which everything like prosperity is impossible, all this is but the sign that the land is still waiting for her true inhabitants.
The prophet is instructed, therefore, to speak to the mountains and to the hills, to the water-courses and to the valleys, and to declare to them that they shall yet shoot forth their branches and yield their fruit to His people Israel, as a people who are at His hand, ready to come. The people, as we know, are kept as distinct as ever they were, under the same repression meanwhile as their land has been. Jerusalem is to "be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." If we see, as surely we do see now, the people gathering back, and the land sought to by them for a new occupation, we have in all this the proof that God is ready to turn His face towards them and to their land alike. It would then be seen far other than as the eye of the stranger has seen and the scoff of the infidel has declared it, a land that has but devoured its inhabitants. It is to be, as the faithfulness of God is pledged to make it, a land that shall be "the glory of all lands," a land upon which His eye rests continually: "I will multiply men upon you -all the house of Israel, the whole of it; and the cities shall be inhabited, and the waste places shall be built, and I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and be fruitful." Thus has God pledged Himself; and, as in other cases, if He restore it is not merely to the old fruitfulness, to the condition at the beginning, but to one far better than at the beginning. The reproach of the nations shall be entirely removed from it, and His glory shall be more fully seen than ever where men have assumed to see His dishonor.
2. The prophet now turns from the land to the people themselves. The condition of the land was but the reflection of their own condition. If Joshua sees the people flee before their enemies, and in astonishment and dismay falls before God to ask, "And what wilt Thou do for thy great name?" the sufficient and only answer is, "Israel hath sinned." But Israel has resisted the lesson of their scattered condition, and have turned it even into a matter of self-glorying as if it were the sins of others that they were bearing and making atonement for! Thus they have interpreted Isa 53:1-12. God here asserts against them that it is judgment on account of their condition. They have defiled the land with their idolatry, and He scattered them among the nations, and they have been dispersed through the countries. According to their ways and according to their doings He has judged them: nor can they say that it was for their sin before they were carried captive into Babylon, but that since then they have been clear. They were, in fact, permitted to go back into their land, in order that they might, with the lesson of their past before them, receive the One who alone could atone for the iniquities they had committed. But to these sins they have added the crowning sin of rejecting Him who came to them, afore-announced by the prophets, with the signs and wonders with which God sealed the testimony that He gave. Thus they have bought for themselves an Aceldama with the price of His betrayal. Thank God, for this also there can be and will be forgiveness; for grace shall yet manifest itself for them above all their sins! But how vain to plead that that to which the prophet looks on here, was the termination of their scattered condition -a condition which was expressly the judgment for their sins -when we go on to that which follows here! Have they ever been taken from among the nations and gathered out from all the countries and brought to their own land? Have they ever, with a new heart and a new spirit, entered upon the possession of that from which they are no more to be alienated? It is impossible honestly to read a prophecy such as we have here and not to see that the scattering which began at Babylon has never really come to its end for God; but that they are still abiding, as Hosea declared they should abide, "many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim" (Hos 3:4). Their idolatrous ensigns have indeed passed from them; but recover themselves from that in which their sins have involved them, they never can until, as another prophet has declared, "they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for an only son . . . In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness"(Zec 12:10; Zec 13:1). God will fulfil His word, but only in His appointed way, and the cleansing of His people can only come when He sprinkles upon them that "clean water" which, as a type of old, declared the virtue of a sacrifice before completed -not a work of atonement as then newly wrought, but the verity of that which, blessed be God, still abides for them when faith in them shall be able to claim it.
There is a remarkable connection here between the 51st psalm and the prophet’s declaration. This is the answer from God to their prayer, as it is prophetically given us in the psalm referred to. The prayer is: "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow . . Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me" (Psa 51:7; Psa 51:10). Put this in connection with the promise here: "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean . . . and I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you." How plainly the one corresponds to the other, while there is indeed, as one might expect, a greater fulness in the answer than in the prayer! That this 51st psalm is, in fact, the voice of the people when they shall turn to God in the latter days, has been seen by many, and the proof of it has been fully given elsewhere. (See Psa 51:1-19, Notes.) It was David’s voice that utters it, no doubt, but the personal application to himself is plainly not all, and this "Purge me with hyssop" clearly refers to the language in Ezekiel -to that sprinkling which is for cleansing from defilement with the dead, and speaks of a more terrible defilement of the people, and of God’s provision for it in a sacrifice whose virtue, as already said, still abides for them. It is like that other remarkable ordinance for the day of atonement, when the sins of the people are carried away by the scape-goat, which does not make atonement for them, but which is identified with an atonement already made. (See Lev 16:1-34, Notes.) The priest has carried in the blood of the offering for them -the blood of the first goat; but no answer as to it comes forth for them while the priest is himself hidden in the sanctuary into which he is entered. When he comes out again, the scapegoat (identified with the first goat in the work which has been accomplished before, and which is not repeated) carries away the iniquities of the nation to a land cut off. Thus, in fact, Israel will be met by the power and virtue of an atonement made before our Great High Priest passed into heaven. There He remains, and so long as He remains there hidden from them, Israel have practically no atonement for them nationally. Their sins are not put away.
How perfectly this is in keeping with the sprinkling of water in which are the ashes of a sacrifice before offered -the memorial of a before-accomplished work. It is then only that this word is carried out: "From all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you." They abide as yet under the condemnation of their sins, as it is plain that nationally a new heart and a new spirit, which are the accompaniment of this, have never yet become theirs. Had it been so, that which follows immediately here would have taken place, and a fulness of blessing would be theirs, in which their whole condition would bear witness to the reality of what God is yet to do for them. It is not mere reformation; it is no work such as man can perform. If David witnesses that God must create in him a clean heart, so the promise here declares: "I will give you a new heart." It is the new heart that He will give which can alone alter their condition, a new heart which is itself the effect of a new spirit put within them.
The words at once remind us of the Lord’s declaration to Nicodemus, that the Israelite also needed to be born again in order to inherit the kingdom of God. Water and Spirit the Lord puts together in these words: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" "born of the Spirit" implies, therefore, a new spirit in the person so born -a new and divine nature from the Almighty Worker of every true work that has ever been done in man. (See Joh 3:1-36, Notes.)
For this, the heart of stone must be taken out of the flesh, that a heart of flesh -a true feeling and tender heart -may be theirs. To this is added the blessed assurance: "I will put my Spirit within you," and thus, as the glory rests upon Jerusalem itself in the days that we are so shortly to contemplate, there is to be for all His saved among the people a personal assurance of this glorious reality. "I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments and do them." Then follows that for which only now they are fit, and are secure in it: "Ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God."
The increase of the land follows as a necessary consequence. Israel’s portion is in the earth, and therefore nature itself is a witness to the relation in which they stand to God. It has been largely a witness against them, as we know. It is yet to bear testimony of another kind. Christians are taken out of the world, and are strangers and pilgrims in it: their portion is elsewhere. But, alas, with Christians also there can be a reproach of famine, which is the index of how they stand with God. How many have gone down to Egypt, as Abraham did of old, because of a famine in their own things! Our land is indeed "the glory of all lands;" but it is, above all things, a dependent land, and if we are not in communion with God we have less than any others; for the world is a wilderness for us, however much we may dream of plenty in it, while our own portion, though not denied us, surely, can yet be found only by those who dwell in it. The word is still for us, "Dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." It is not so much the knowledge of the evil we have brought upon ourselves that brings repentance, but, in its full character, it is the wonder of the Lord’s grace that does so; as the apostle says, ’ The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance," so it will be when Israel shall have been brought back into their land by the mercy of God, and find His abundant welcome in the light of His glorious presence. They shall indeed remember their evil ways and their doings that were not good, and loathe themselves for their iniquities and abominations.
Meanwhile God is acting for Himself, as He declares here. He is in a measure doing in Israel what we shall know in a still brighter scene and in all its fulness, when God shall show "the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." It is not only for their sakes or for our sakes that God takes up any, but He delights to make Himself known in all that He is -the depths of the riches of His wisdom as well as of His love. Thus He has a sure ground upon which to act, and we have an unchallengeable blessing,which never can be forfeited. If God is going to show "the exceeding riches of His grace," where can we limit that? What wondrous revelations are implied here! It is good, while we are thinking of all the prophet here sets before us, to realize that they are but the figures of the things which belong to us -not indeed in the sense in which so many would make them figures, as depriving Israel of their just title to them, for the apostle of the Gentiles has assured us that these Old Testament promises belong to his "kinsmen according to the flesh:" it seems idle, therefore, to discuss whether these promises do belong to Israel. The earth at that time will be, as it were, a reflection of the heavens that are opened over it. But we shall have to trace this more fully in our prophet when we reach the final chapters. There is no confusion between the earthly and the heavenly spheres of blessing, and there is no excuse for any making confusion. Correspondence there is indeed, and we shall find many a lesson in seeking to trace this.
God has not forgotten man and the earth, and He is not going to drop it out of sight and have done with it. It is the scene of His own Son’s sufferings, and the earth itself has been purchased by Him. It shall therefore be redeemed, not done away. The millennial blessing itself is but a step to the full glory of it. It is its regeneration time, according to the Word elsewhere (Mat 19:28), the time when evil shall be put down and righteousness shall rule, but not yet the time when it will be utterly banished. That there comes between this and the time of full blessing, the passing away of the heavens and earth to be replaced by new heavens and a new earth, has been misapprehended so as to make a great mistake in the way. The earth passes -is to be changed -just as the body passes from the corruptible to the incorruptible, from the state of dishonor which sin has caused, to the state of glory; but the identification of the risen man with the man who toiled and suffered and sinned upon earth is no less complete on this account. We speak of a "new man" when we do not mean another man in the strict sense of the word; so we speak of "a new earth" which will indeed be that, as every one shall realize, yet not another earth, but the earth made new -a realized fulfilment of God’s thoughts with regard to the earth when He created it. We do not go on to that here. Save in a single expression, Old Testament prophecy is limited to the millennium as its outlook, and then that kingdom shall have begun in which, under the rule of Him who is the perfect Revealer of the mind of God, that which is eternal will be perfected. What we have here is, on the one side, the trial of man still, but, on the other, God is finally inviting (by the display of all this beauty and the manifestation of His truth and grace) men to enjoy it. Revelation assures us that even then, as there will be hearts obdurate to it all the way through, so there will be a final outbreak even under those glorious skies. It is the necessary manifestation of what has been kept down by power throughout the millennial reign, in order that judgment may make the clean work which it must finally do that perfect blessing may come in.
And what a witness to man will be that which we find here; and they shall say: "This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited!" There is no room for doubt or question any longer but that Jehovah has done this. There will be no skeptics or atheists in those days; yet, alas, the enmity of man’s heart will not be removed even by that wondrous vision. "The nations that shall be left round about you shall know that I Jehovah build the ruined places, and plant that which was desolate. I Jehovah have spoken it, and will do it."
That which follows immediately is not necessarily a condition that God will "yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them;" but, rather, the assurance that they will. It does not involve, as some seem to imagine, that the actual unbelief of the nation at the present time has set aside such promises as these which have been given them. The Lord goes on imme diately with His assurances, which certainly do not rest upon any foundation less broad than that upon which He has set them. God is acting for the glory of His name, and who shall disappoint Him? "I will increase them with men," He says, "like a flock, as the holy flock; as the flock of Jerusalem at her appointed times; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men, and they shall know that I am Jehovah."
3. We have still to see this restoration of Israel stamped as a resurrection; God bringing them out of a condition in which even to themselves all hope is lost. They are but as the dry bones of the slain, of which, if the question be raised, "Can these bones live?" the answer can only be in God’s hands. The new life of the nation is truly a resurrection. The stamp which God is putting upon all things here is to be put distinctly upon this people yet. It will not be by their own efforts or achievements -as they are thinking and planning now -that they will become all that the prophets have declared that they shall become. Nothing but the quickening breath of God can accomplish it for them, and for this they have yet to be brought down into the dust, even after all that they have suffered for these centuries, in order that they may learn their needed lesson of abasement and may learn the grace to which, as they shall finally own, they owe everything.
(1) We have two parts in this chapter: First, new life in the Spirit is given to the nation which thus becomes miraculously reorganized; while, in the second part we have what must be in order for this, the healing of the long breach between Judah and Ephraim, so that the nation as a whole shall re-attain its unity and under the true David, from whom, alas, they have alike gone astray. "The hand of Jehovah was upon me, and Jehovah carried me out in the Spirit, and set me down in the midst of a valley, and it was full of bones; and He caused me to pass by them round about, and behold, there were very many on the face of the valley, and behold, they were very dry." There is no mingling here of the dead and the living as the prophet sees them. They are altogether those from whom not merely life is departed, but who are the mere dry and scattered relics of the dead. The prophet is challenged by the question: "Son of man, can these bones live?" To man of course this is impossible. The passage from death to life has never been achieved, save by the power of God alone; and this, spite of all their present thoughts, is the condition out of which God at last revives them. It is not the actual condition of the nation at present in which, as we know, there are yet those who live -live spiritually. "Blindness in part is happened unto Israel." It is true that these are, in the mind of God, no more part of the people according to the flesh; they have lost their Jewish hopes, to find in the loving mercy of God far better ones. When the Lord shall have removed His present people to Himself, the Church, this state of things will be ended. The nation will be then, in their rejection of Christ, utterly dead. The prophet answers: "O Lord Jehovah, Thou knowest," and then he is bidden to give Jehovah’s word to the dry bones themselves. The nation is to be thus new born by the word of God, and from the dead. Every step here is a true creative work of God: "Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live; and I will put sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live." And then comes once more the refrain, -for this alone is what can make it truly life: "Ye shall know that I am Jehovah."
So the prophet prophesies and sees the miracle wrought -the wondrous miracle of resurrection. He sees the bones come together and the flesh cover them, and the form given, while yet there is no breath’ from on high. But then he is told to prophesy to the winds, the type, as we know, in the Lord’s words, of the Spirit; and from the four winds, the breath comes into these slain, and now they live. These that, but a moment since, were mere inanimate and scattered wrecks of departed life, are now at once an exceeding great army, the hosts of the Lord.
The prophet is not left in doubt about the vision. The bones are the whole of the house of Israel, and in a condition in which they are made to realize at last that, as to themselves, there is no hope any longer. They are not only dead, as the prophet has seen them, but in their graves, buried and gone. But this is the stamp which God puts upon everything in nature. The evening dies into the night before the morning springs out of it. The earth itself will have to find its dissolution before it comes to that new earth in which dwelleth righteousness. Ezekiel’s wheel is going round; it is ordained to abase all the glory of man in order that man may come at last to true glory. In resurrection alone can everything be stable, as that which manifests the power of evil already met and conquered, and no foe to meet again. God has done it all Himself; He has taken upon Himself the whole burden of it! How strange a work He has wrought in order that He might lift creation into the glory that yet shall be, every Christian knows. And Israel shall know who it is that has done this, that He is indeed Jehovah, when He has opened their graves and caused them to come up out of their graves and put His Spirit in them that they may live. The blessing still keeps to the old sphere of promise for them; as an earthly people the earth is their destiny. "I will bless you," says the Lord, "in your own land." Then shall prophecy find its full witness and have the eternal seal upon it: "Ye shall know that I Jehovah have spoken it, and have done it, saith Jehovah."
(2) One thing remains which must not be omitted. The ancient and unnatural strife between Judah and Ephraim must and will surely pass away if all this is to be; and the complete assurance of it is given "The word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, And thou, son of man, take thee one stick and write upon it: For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions. Then take another stick, and write upon it: For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions; and join them one to another into one stick, and they shall become one in thy hand."
The people are Jews, for us now; that is, they are all of Judah; and the question has even been asked whether such coming together did not find its accomplishment long ago, when the people returned out of captivity in Babylon. Thus we are told with regard to the prophetess Anna, in our Lord’s day, that she was of the tribe of Asher; and it is thought that other intimations are given that the ten tribes, so often spoken of as "the lost tribes," have become merged long since into this one Jewish race. But this will not do for the prophecy here, and assuredly it will not do for God. It is distinctly in their own land, and under the King whom God will raise up to them, when God shall be once more manifestly their God, His sanctuary set in the midst of them forever, that this prophecy shall find its accomplishment. There is a universal gathering: "Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the nations whither they are gone and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel; and one King shall be king to them all, and they shall be no more two nations; neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all." That the time of all this is future should need no argument, nor should it need one that the promise to which God has appended no condition here (but which He affirms He will Himself fulfil) can never be set aside by any unfaithfulness of the people of whom He speaks, a people whose unfaithfulness has been all contemplated (and realized) from the beginning. Faithless as they may be, the time will come, as God has announced it, when they shall no more defile themselves with their idols nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions, but He will save them out of their dwelling places wherein they have sinned, and they shall be His people and He will be their God.
The former shepherd-king comes again before us here, David, "the Beloved." This keeper of sheep has celebrated in his psalms, as we well know, Jehovah Himself in this character, and realized wondrous things from it: "Jehovah is my Shepherd; I shall not want." This is God’s thought of rule, as Christ, the true Shepherd, fully manifests it so that even if He take the rod of iron, as e will do in the time near to come, it will be to "tend" or shepherd the nations with it. Here is one with whom rule is ministry, and subjection to Him is subjection to eternal love itself. Thus when God at last shall be able to show all that is in His heart, in the times contemplated here, how shall it in fact be shown? When they shall dwell in the land as their unalienable inheritance, they and their children and their children’s children forever; and David, "the Beloved," himself the servant of Jehovah, shall be their prince forever. The One who claims obedience shall be the One who has milked in obedience, and that at all cost to Himself, and in devotedness to all the interests of His people.
Thus the "covenant of peace" shall be made with them -"He has made peace by the blood of His cross." Thus it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and "I will bless them," says the Lord, "and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore." This last remains for full expansion by the mouth of Ezekiel himself, but divine love lingers upon it: "My tabernacle also shall be over them" -those covering wings which once they refused, but of which they shall yet know the blessedness -"and I will be their God, and they shall be my people; and the nations shall know that I am Jehovah that sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore."
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v25 Eze 36:25 - Eze 36:38.
Ezekiel
THE HOLY NATION
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Eze 36:25 - Eze 36:38.
This great prophecy had but a partial fulfilment, though a real one, in the restored Israel. The land was given back, the nation was multiplied, fertility again blessed the smiling fields and vineyards, and, best of all, the people were cleansed ‘from all their idols’ by the furnace of affliction. Nothing is more remarkable than the transformation effected by the captivity, in regard to the idolatrous propensities of the people. Whereas before it they were always hankering after the gods of the nations, they came back from Babylon the resolute champions of monotheism, and never thereafter showed the smallest inclination for what had before been so irresistible.
But the fulness of Ezekiel’s prophecy is not realised until Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant is brought to pass. Nor does the state of the militant church on earth exhaust it. Future glories gleam through the words. They have a ‘springing accomplishment’ in the Israel of the restoration, a fuller in the New Testament church, and their ultimate realisation in the New Jerusalem, which shall yet descend to be the bride, the Lamb’s wife. The principles involved in the prophecy belong to the region of purely spiritual religion, and are worth pondering, apart from any question of the place and manner of fulfilment.
First comes the great truth that the foundation, so far as concerns the history of a soul or of a community, of all other good is divine forgiveness {Eze 36:25}. Ezekiel, the priest, casts the promise into ceremonial form, and points to the sprinklings of the polluted under the law, or to the ritual of consecration to the priesthood. That cleansing is the removal of already contracted defilement, especially of the guilt of idolatry. It is clearly distinguished from the operation on the inward nature which follows; that is to say, it is the promise of forgiveness, or of justification, not of sanctification.
From what deep fountains in the divine nature that ‘clean water’ was to flow, Ezekiel does not know; but we have learned that a more precious fluid than water is needed, and have to think of Him ‘who came not by water only, but by water and blood,’ in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of our sins. But the central idea of this first promise is that it must be God’s hand which sprinkles from an evil conscience. Forgiveness is a divine prerogative. He only can, and He will, cleanse from all filthiness. His pardon is universal. The most ingrained sins cannot be too black to melt away from the soul. The dye-stuffs of sin are very strong, but there is one solvent which they cannot resist. There are no ‘fast colours’ which God’s ‘clean water’ cannot move. This cleansing of pardon underlies all the rest of the blessings. It is ever the first thing needful when a soul returns to God.
Then follows an equally exclusively divine act, the impartation of a new nature, which shall secure future obedience {Eze 36:26 - Eze 36:27}. Who can thrust his hand into the depths of man’s being, and withdraw one life-principle and enshrine another, while yet the individuality of the man remains untouched? God only. How profound the consciousness of universal obstinacy and insensibility which regards human nature, apart from such renewal, as possessing but a ‘heart of stone’! There are no sentimental illusions about the grim facts of humanity here. Superficial views of sin and rose-tinted fancies about human nature will not admit the truth of the Scripture doctrine of sinfulness, alienation from God. They diagnose the disease superficially, and therefore do not know how to cure it. The Bible can venture to give full weight to the gravity of the sickness, because it knows the remedy. No surgery but God’s can perform that operation of extracting the stony heart and inserting a heart of flesh. No system which cannot do that can do what men want. The gospel alone deals thoroughly with man’s ills.
And how does it effect that great miracle? ‘I will put My Spirit within you.’ The new life-principle is the effluence of the Spirit of God. The promise does not merely offer the influence of a divine spirit, working on men as from without, or coming down upon them as an afflatus, but the actual planting of God’s Spirit in the deep places of theirs. We fail to apprehend the most characteristic blessing of the gospel if we do not give full prominence to that great gift of an indwelling Spirit, the life of our lives. Cleansing is much, but is incomplete without a new life-principle which shall keep us clean; and that can only be God’s Spirit, enshrined and operative within us; for only thus shall we ‘walk in His statutes, and keep His judgments.’ When the Lawgiver dwells in our hearts, the law will be our delight; and keeping it will be the natural outcome and expression of our life, which is His life.
Then follows the picture of the blessed effects of obedience {Eze 36:28 - Eze 36:30}. These are cast into the form appropriate to the immediate purpose of the prophecy, and received fulfilment in the actual restoration to the land, which fulfilment, however, was imperfect, inasmuch as the obedience and renewal of the people’s hearts were incomplete. These can only be complete under the gospel, and, in the fullest sense, only in another order than the present. When men fully keep God’s judgments, they shall dwell permanently in a good land. Israel’s hold on its country was its obedience, not its prowess. Our real hold on even earthly good is the choosing of God for our supreme good. In the measure in which we can say ‘Thy law is within my heart,’ all things are ours; and we may possess all things while having nothing in the vulgar world’s sense of having. Similarly that obedience, which is the fruit of the new life of God’s Spirit in our spirits, is the condition of close mutual possession in the blessed reciprocity of trust and faithfulness, love bestowing and love receiving, by which the quiet heart knows that God is its, and it is God’s. If stains and interruptions still sometimes break the perfectness of obedience and continuity of reciprocal ownership, there will be a further cleansing for such sins. ‘If we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin’ {Eze 36:29}.
The lovely picture of the blessed dwellers in their good land is closed by the promise of abundant harvests from corn and fruit-tree; that is, all that nourishes or delights. The deepest truth taught thereby is that he who lives in God has no unsatisfied desires, but finds in Him all that can sustain, strengthen, and minister to growth, and all that can give gladness and delight. If we make God our heritage, we dwell secure in a good land; and ‘the dust of that land is gold,’ and its harvests ever plenteous.
Very profoundly and beautifully does Ezekiel put as the last trait in his picture, and as the upshot of all this cornucopia of blessings, the penitent remembrance of past evils. Undeserved mercies steal into the heart like the breath of the south wind, and melt the ice. The more we advance in holiness and consequent blessed communion with God, the more clearly shall we see the evil of our past. Forgiven sin looks far blacker because it is forgiven. When we are not afraid of sin’s consequences, we see more plainly its sinfulness. When we have tasted God’s sweetness, we think with more shame of our ingratitude and folly. If God forgets, the more reason for us to remember our transgressions. The man who ‘has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins’ is in danger of finding out that he is not purged from them. There is no gnawing of conscience, nor any fearful looking for of judgment in such remembrance, but a wholesome humility passing into thankful wonder that such sin is pardoned, and such a sinner made God’s friend.
The deep foundation of all the blessedness is finally laid bare {Eze 36:32} as being God’s undeserved mercy. ‘For Mine holy name’ {Eze 36:22} is God’s reason. He is His own motive, and He wills that the world should know His name,-that is, His manifested character,-and understand how loving and long-suffering He is. So He wills, not because such knowledge adds to His glory, but because it satisfies His love, since it will make the men who know His name blessed. The truth that God’s motive is His own name’s sake may be so put as to be hideous and repellent; but it really proclaims that He is love, and that His motive is His poor creatures’ blessing.
To this great outline of the blessings of the restored nations are appended two subsidiary prophecies, marked by the recurring ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ The former of these {Eze 36:33 - Eze 36:36} deals principally with the new beauty that was to clothe the land. The day in which the inhabitants were cleansed from their sins was to be the day in which the land was to be raised from its ruin. Cities are to be rebuilt, the ground that had lain fallow and tangled with briers and thorns is to be tilled, and to bloom like Eden, a restored paradise. How far the fulfilment has halted behind the promise, the melancholy condition of Palestine to-day may remind us. Whether the literal fulfilment is to be anticipated or no seems less important than to note that the experience of forgiveness {and of the consequent blessings described above} is the precursor of this fair picture. Therefore, the Church’s condition of growth and prosperity is its realisation in the persons of its individual members, of pardon, the renewal of the inner man by the indwelling Spirit, faithful obedience, communion with God, and lowly remembrance of past sins. Where churches are marked by such characteristics, they will grow. If they are not, all their ‘evangelistic efforts’ will be as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.
The second appended prophecy {Eze 36:37 - Eze 36:38} is that of increase of population. The picture of the flocks of sheep for sacrifice, which thronged Jerusalem at the feasts, is given as a likeness of the swarms of inhabitants in the ‘waste cities.’ The point of comparison is chiefly the number. One knows how closely a flock huddles and seems to fill the road in endless procession. But the destination as well as the number comes into view. All these patient creatures, crowding the ways, are meant for sacrifices. So the inhabitants of the land then shall all yield themselves to God, living sacrifices. The first words of our text point to the priesthood of all believers; the last words point to the sacrifice of themselves which they have to offer.
‘For this moreover will I be inquired of by the house of Israel.’ The blessings promised do not depend on our merits, as we have heard, but yet they will not be given without our co-operation in prayer. God promises, and that promise is not a reason for our not asking the gifts from Him, but for our asking. Faith keeps within the lines of God’s promise, and prayers which do not foot themselves on a promise are the offspring of presumption, not of faith. God ‘lets Himself be inquired of’ for that which is in accordance with His will; and, accordant with His will though it be, He will not ‘do it for them,’ unless His flock ask of Him the accomplishment of His own word.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v1 A beautiful order is discernible in this and the…
A beautiful order is discernible in this and the succeeding prophecies:
(1) Restoration of the land Eze 36:1-15.
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(2) of the people Eze 36:16 to Eze 37:28.
(3) judgment on Israel’s enemies. Eze 38:1 to Eze 39:24. Afterward follows that which concerns the worship of Jehovah that He may dwell amongst His people.
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 Eze 36:1-38. With this chapter the great prophetic utterances…
Eze 36:1-38. With this chapter the great prophetic utterances of Ezekiel begin concerning the future restoration and blessing of Israel. From here on to the end of the book, all is still unfulfilled, nor can it be fulfilled until the Lord Jesus Christ comes again and is enthroned as King. The first seven verses (Eze 36:1-7)announce once more the future judgment of Israel’s enemies. Then comes the promised return to the land Eze 36:8-15. The mountains of Israel, barren so long, shall be inhabited again. Israel’s past sins and chastisement are reviewed in Eze 36:16-20, and then comes that great message of restoration and blessing through grace in that day when their once rejected King returns and they bow before Him. The characteristic words in Eze 36:23-28 are the words “I will do.” It is the word of sovereign grace. Eighteen times Jehovah says what He will do. They are the “I wills” of Israel’s hope and coming glory.
He will gather them from among the nations and all countries and bring them back to their own land. Only a superficial expositor can speak of a fulfillment when they returned from Babylon. But even if this were so, though it is not, the verses which follow have never been fulfilled in the past. The cleansing of the nation is next promised: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean.” It refers us to the water mixed with the ashes of the red heifer, which was sprinkled with a hyssop on the unclean, typifying the precious blood of Christ in its cleansing power Heb 9:13-28; Heb 10:22. Thus, when the people of Israel believe on Him and look upon Him whom they pierced Zec 12:10, they will be cleansed. “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” Zec 13:1. Then follows the promise of the new birth of Israel. “A new heart will I also give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.” The stony heart is to be taken away and they will receive a heart of flesh. Our Lord had this passage in mind when He talked with Nicodemus about the new birth. Nicodemus, the teacher in Israel, was ignorant of the fact that this new birth for Israel is necessary in order to be in that coming kingdom and to receive its blessings. Therefore the Lord said to him, “If I have told you earthly things (about Israel and the new birth as the way into the kingdom) and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” (the heavenly blessings which follow His sacrificial death).
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, 16 The Mountains of Israel Comforted
The Mountains of Israel Comforted
v. 1. Also, thou son of man, prophesy unto the mountains of Israel, here representing the entire country, as Mount Seir stood for Idumea in the foregoing section, and say, Ye mountains of Israel, formerly the places of idol worship and as such made prominent in this connection, hear the word of the Lord:
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v. 2. Thus saith the Lord God, Because the enemy hath said against you, Edom, as the representative of all God’s foes, Aha! even the ancient high places are ours in possession, believing that they would surely be masters of the land if they held the places of worship,
v. 3. therefore prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Because they have made you desolate, all the enemies round about having combined to make the Land of Promise a desert waste, and swallowed you up on every side, literally, "panted after you," like a beast trying to reach its prey, snorting and snapping in its eagerness, that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, those remaining after their own countries had felt the devastating might of the conquerors, and ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, to be bandied about in blasphemous jest and slander, and are an infamy of the people, objects of calumny and derision,
v. 4. therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God, who is ever the Defender of His people, Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers, or ravines, and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes, the ruins scattered throughout the country, and to the cities that are forsaken, as a result of the Chaldean conquest, which became a prey and derision to the residue of the heathen that are round about, the inanimate objects throughout the country being representative, with great emphasis, of the former inhabitants and of those who would dwell there in the future;
v. 5. therefore thus saith the Lord God, Surely in the fire of My jealousy, burning with a jealous anger, have I spoken against the residue of the heathen and against all Idumea, which was particularly prominent in its covetous jealousy of Israel, 35:10-15, which have appointed My land into their possession, calmly claiming it for themselves, with the joy of all their heart, with vindictive gladness, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey, emptying it of all its wealth and thereby making it a prey, or tossing it away like a morsel left for the beasts of the desert.
v. 6. Prophesy therefore concerning the land of Israel and say unto the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers, or ravines, and to the valleys, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I have spoken in My jealousy and In My fury, in the fierce anger caused by His jealousy, because ye have borne the shame of the heathen, that which the heathen poured out upon Israel,
v. 7. therefore thus saith the Lord God, I have lifted up Mine hand, in token of the solemn oath which He was swearing, Surely the heathen that are about you, they shall bear their shame, a perpetual load of disgrace, forever under the curse of Jehovah.
v. 8. But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, like a fruitful tree bringing forth leaves and bearing food in abundance, and yield your fruit to My people of Israel, Isa 56:1; for they are at hand to come, that is, this maturing of fruit might be expected very soon.
v. 9. For, behold, I am for you, the Lord still addressing the mountains of Israel, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown, the return of the inhabitants thus being indicated,
v. 10. and I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it, that is, the entire spiritual people of the Lord, for the spiritual significance of the entire passage is obvious; and the cities shall be inhabited, after being forsaken for so many years, and the wastes shall be builded, the ruins once more being cleared away and houses erected in their stead,
v. 11. and I will multiply upon you man and beast, the cultivated land thus being strongly populated, and they shall increase and bring fruit, both of them multiplying under the blessing of the Lord; and I will settle you after your old estates, not only in ancient times, but according to the ancient promises, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings, and ye shall know that I am the Lord. Although the description is entirely on the physical plane and the picture is that of Israel’s glory, yet the context requires its application to the spiritual blessings of the Messianic period.
v. 12. Yea, I will cause men to walk upon you, on the mountains of Israel, even My people Israel, the elect nation of the Lord in the fullest and highest sense of the term; and they shall possess thee, and thou shalt be their inheritance, whose blessings they should enjoy, and thou shalt no more henceforth bereave them of men, namely, on account of the fact that famine, pestilence, and war would be brought on by the apostasy of the inhabitants of the land.
v. 13. Thus saith the Lord God, Because they say unto you, Thou, land, devourest up men and hast bereaved thy nations, literally, "A devourer of men art thou and hast made thy people childless," the land being personified as an unnatural mother and charged with the sins committed in it, with their consequences,
v. 14. therefore thou shalt devour men no more, neither bereave thy nations any more, saith the Lord God, the explanation in this case being contained in the Hebrew term, which means to cause to stumble and fall.
v. 15. Neither will I cause men to hear in thee the shame of the heathen any more, namely, the scorn which other nations heaped upon the Lord’s people, neither shalt thou bear the reproach of the people any more, all the reasons for mockery on the part of the enemies being removed, neither shalt thou cause thy nations, the people inhabiting the land, to fall any more, saith the Lord God. This change is represented as having been brought about entirely by the Lord, and it is impossible to confine its consequences to the children of Israel according to the flesh, for the returned exiles continued under the rule of the heathen and were obliged to bear their scorn and mockery. The fulfillment of this prophecy is therefore properly to he found only in the establishment of the Messianic kingdom.
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, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 24, 26, 29, 32, 35, 37 General Information:
General Information:
Yahweh tells Ezekiel to speak a prophecy. Ezekiel is to speak to the mountains of Israel, but the message is for all of the people of Israel.
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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. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 2:1. AT: "mortal person" or "human"
prophesy to the mountains of Israel
God wants Ezekiel to speak to the mountains as if they were people. The message is for the people of Israel. (See: Personification)
Aha
This is an expression of joy. It can be translated as "I am very happy" or "This is great."
The ancient high places
"The very old mountains." This refers to the high mountains of Israel.
have become our possession
"now belong to us"
Because of your desolation
The abstract noun "desolation" can be stated as "desolate." AT: "Because you, mountains of Israel, have become desolate" (See: Abstract Nouns)
because of the attacks that came on you from all sides
"because you were attacked from every direction" or "because your enemies attacked you from every direction"
you have been the subject of slanderous lips and tongues, and of people's stories
Here, "lips" and "tongues" represent people speaking. AT: "people are saying bad things about you, and the nations are telling bad stories about you" (See: Synecdoche)
translationWords
Son of Man
prophet
Israel
word of God
Lord Yahweh
adversary
high place
possess
desolate
nation
slander
tongue
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, 2, 6, 8, 12, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 29, 35 36:1-15 The destruction of Edom (ch 35) would prepare…
36:1-15 The destruction of Edom (ch 35) would prepare the way for the restoration of the mountains of Israel, reversing the devastation threatened in ch 6.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.