PART V. THE IDEAL THEOCRACY.

The Book of Ezekiel

By

The Rev. John Skinner, M.A.

Professor of Old Testament Exegesis, Presbyterian College, London

London

Hodder And Stoughton

1895

CONTENTS

Preface.

Part I. The Preparation And Call Of The Prophet.

Chapter I. Decline And Fall Of The Jewish State.

Chapter II. Jeremiah And Ezekiel.

Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory Of God. Chapter i.

Chapter IV. Ezekiel’s Prophetic Commission. Chapters ii., iii.

Part II. Prophecies Relating Mainly To The Destruction Of Jerusalem.

Chapter V. The End Foretold. Chapters iv.‐vii.

Chapter VI. Your House Is Left Unto You Desolate. Chapters viii.‐xi.

Chapter VII. The End Of The Monarchy. Chapters xii. 1‐15, xvii., xix.

Chapter VIII. Prophecy And Its Abuses. Chapters xii. 21‐xiv. 11.

Chapter IX. Jerusalem—An Ideal History. Chapter xvi.

Chapter X. The Religion Of The Individual. Chapter xviii.

Chapter XI. The Sword Unsheathed. Chapter xxi.

Chapter XII. Jehovah’s Controversy With Israel. Chapter xx.

Chapter XIII. Ohola And Oholibah. Chapter xxiii.

Chapter XIV. Final Oracles Against Jerusalem. Chapters xxii., xxiv.

Part III. Prophecies Against Foreign Nations.

Chapter XV. Ammon, Moab, Edom, And Philistia. Chapter xxv.

Chapter XVI. Tyre. Chapters xxvi., xxix. 17‐21.

Chapter XVII. Tyre (Continued): Sidon. Chapters xxvii., xxviii.

Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters xxix.‐xxxii.

Part IV. The Formation Of The New Israel.

Chapter XIX. The Prophet A Watchman. Chapter xxxiii.

Chapter XX. The Messianic Kingdom. Chapter xxxiv.

Chapter XXI. Jehovah’s Land. Chapters xxxv., xxxvi.

Chapter XXII. Life From The Dead. Chapter xxxvii.

Chapter XXIII. The Conversion Of Israel.

Chapter XXIV. Jehovah’s Final Victory. Chapters xxxviii., xxxix.

Part V. The Ideal Theocracy.

Chapter XXV. The Import Of The Vision.

Chapter XXVI. The Sanctuary. Chapters xl.‐xliii.

Chapter XXVII. The Priesthood. Chapter xliv.

Chapter XXVIII. Prince And People. Chapters xliv.‐xlvi. _passim_.

Chapter XXIX. The Ritual. Chapters xlv., xlvi.

Chapter XXX. Renewal And Allotment Of The Land. Chapters xlvii.,

xlviii.

Footnotes

[Cover Art]

[Transcriber’s Note: The above cover image was produced by the submitter

at Distributed Proofreaders, and is being placed into the public domain.]

PREFACE.

In this volume I have endeavoured to present the substance of Ezekiel’s

prophecies in a form intelligible to students of the English Bible. I have

tried to make the exposition a fairly adequate guide to the sense of the

text, and to supply such information as seemed necessary to elucidate the

historical importance of the prophet’s teaching. Where I have departed

from the received text I have usually indicated in a note the nature of

the change introduced. Whilst I have sought to exercise an independent

judgment on all the questions touched upon, the book has no pretensions to

rank as a contribution to Old Testament scholarship.

The works on Ezekiel to which I am chiefly indebted are: Ewald’s

_Propheten des Alten Bundes_ (vol. ii.); Smend’s _Der Prophet Ezechiel

erklärt_ (_Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch zum A. T._); Cornill’s _Das

Buch des Proph. Ezechiel_; and, above all, Dr. A. B. Davidson’s commentary

in the _Cambridge Bible for Schools_, my obligations to which are almost

continuous. In a less degree I have been helped by the commentaries of

Hävernick and Orelli, by Valeton’s _Viertal Voorlezingen_ (iii.), and by

Gautier’s _La Mission du Prophète Ezechiel_. Amongst works of a more

general character special acknowledgment is due to _The Old Testament in

the Jewish Church_ and _The Religion of the Semites_ by the late Dr.

Robertson Smith.

I wish also to express my gratitude to two friends—the Rev. A. Alexander,

Dundee, and the Rev. G. Steven, Edinburgh—who have read most of the work

in manuscript or in proof, and made many valuable suggestions.

PART I. THE PREPARATION AND CALL OF THE PROPHET.

Chapter I. Decline And Fall Of The Jewish State.

Ezekiel is a prophet of the Exile. He was one of the priests who went into

captivity with King Jehoiachin in the year 597, and the whole of his

prophetic career falls after that event. Of his previous life and

circumstances we have no direct information, beyond the facts that he was

a priest and that his father’s name was Buzi. One or two inferences,

however, may be regarded as reasonably certain. We know that that first

deportation of Judæans to Babylon was confined to the nobility, the men of

war, and the craftsmen (2 Kings xxiv. 14‐16); and since Ezekiel was

neither a soldier nor an artisan, his place in the train of captives must

have been due to his social position. He must have belonged to the upper

ranks of the priesthood, who formed part of the aristocracy of Jerusalem.

He was thus a member of the house of Zadok; and his familiarity with the

details of the Temple ritual makes it probable that he had actually

officiated as a priest in the national sanctuary. Moreover, a careful

study of the book gives the impression that he was no longer a young man

at the time when he received his call to the prophetic office. He appears

as one whose views of life are already matured, who has outlived the

buoyancy and enthusiasm of youth, and learned to estimate the moral

possibilities of life with the sobriety that comes through experience.

This impression is confirmed by the fact that he was married and had a

house of his own from the commencement of his work, and probably at the

time of his captivity. But the most important fact of all is that Ezekiel

had lived through a period of unprecedented public calamity, and one

fraught with the most momentous consequences for the future of religion.

Moving in the highest circles of society, in the centre of the national

life, he must have been fully cognisant of the grave events in which no

thoughtful observer could fail to recognise the tokens of the approaching

dissolution of the Hebrew state. Amongst the influences that prepared him

for his prophetic mission, a leading place must therefore be assigned to

the teaching of history; and we cannot commence our study of his

prophecies better than by a brief survey of the course of events that led

up to the turning‐point of his own career, and at the same time helped to

form his conception of God’s providential dealings with His people Israel.

At the time of the prophet’s birth the kingdom of Judah was still a

nominal dependency of the great Assyrian empire. From about the middle of

the seventh century, however, the power of Nineveh had been on the wane.

Her energies had been exhausted in the suppression of a determined revolt

in Babylonia. Media and Egypt had recovered their independence, and there

were many signs that a new crisis in the affairs of nations was at hand.

The first historic event which has left discernible traces in the writings

of Ezekiel is an irruption of Scythian barbarians, which took place in the

reign of Josiah (_c._ 626). Strangely enough, the historical books of the

Old Testament contain no record of this remarkable invasion, although its

effects on the political situation of Judah were important and far‐

reaching. According to Herodotus, Assyria was already hard pressed by the

Medes, when suddenly the Scythians burst through the passes of the

Caucasus, defeated the Medes, and committed extensive ravages throughout

Western Asia for a period of twenty‐eight years. They are said to have

contemplated the invasion of Egypt, and to have actually reached the

Philistine territory, when by some means they were induced to withdraw.(1)

Judah therefore was in imminent danger, and the terror inspired by these

destructive hordes is reflected in the prophecies of Zephaniah and

Jeremiah, who saw in the northern invaders the heralds of the great day of

Jehovah. The force of the storm, however, was probably spent before it

reached Palestine, and it seems to have swept past along the coast,

leaving the mountain land of Israel untouched. Although Ezekiel was not

old enough to have remembered the panic caused by these movements, the

report of them would be one of the earliest memories of his childhood, and

it made a lasting impression on his mind. One of his later prophecies,

that against Gog, is coloured by such reminiscences, the last judgment on

the heathen being represented under forms suggested by a Scythian invasion

(chs. xxxviii., xxxix.). We may note also that in ch. xxxii. the names of

Meshech and Tubal occur in the list of conquering nations who have already

gone down to the under‐world. These northern peoples formed the kernel of

the army of Gog, and the only occasion on which they can be supposed to

have played the part of great conquerors in the past is in connection with

the Scythian devastations, in which they probably had a share.

The withdrawal of the Scythians from the neighbourhood of Palestine was

followed by the great reformation which made the eighteenth year of Josiah

an epoch in the history of Israel. The conscience of the nation had been

quickened by its escape from so great a peril, and the time was favourable

for carrying out the changes which were necessary in order to bring the

religious practice of the country into conformity with the requirements of

the Law. The outstanding feature of the movement was the discovery of the

book of Deuteronomy in the Temple, and the ratification of a solemn league

and covenant, by which the king, princes, and people pledged themselves to

carry out its demands. This took place in the year 621, somewhere near the

time of Ezekiel’s birth.(2) The prophet’s youth was therefore spent in the

wake of the reformation; and although the first hopes cherished by its

promoters may have died away before he was able to appreciate its

tendencies, we may be sure that he received from it impulses which

continued with him to the end of his life. We may perhaps allow ourselves

to conjecture that his father belonged to that section of the priesthood

which, under Hilkiah its head, co‐operated with the king in the task of

reform, and desired to see a pure worship established in the Temple. If

so, we can readily understand how the reforming spirit passed into the

very fibre of Ezekiel’s mind. To how great an extent his thinking was

influenced by the ideas of Deuteronomy appears from almost every page of

his prophecies.

There was yet another way in which the Scythian invasion influenced the

prospects of the Hebrew kingdom. Although the Scythians appear to have

rendered an immediate service to Assyria by saving Nineveh from the first

attack of the Medes, there is little doubt that their ravages throughout

the northern and western parts of the empire prepared the way for its

ultimate collapse, and weakened its hold on the outlying provinces.

Accordingly we find that Josiah, in pursuance of his scheme of

reformation, exercised a freedom of action beyond the boundaries of his

own land which would not have been tolerated if Assyria had retained her

old vigour. Patriotic visions of an independent Hebrew monarchy seem to

have combined with new‐born zeal for a pure national religion to make the

latter part of Josiah’s reign the short “Indian summer” of Israel’s

national existence.

The period of partial independence was brought to an end about 607 by the

fall of Nineveh before the united forces of the Medes and the Babylonians.

In itself this event was of less consequence to the history of Judah than

might be supposed. The Assyrian empire vanished from the earth with a

completeness which is one of the surprises of history; but its place was

taken by the new Babylonian empire, which inherited its policy, its

administration, and the best part of its provinces. The seat of empire was

transferred from Nineveh to Babylon; but any other change which was felt

at Jerusalem was due solely to the exceptional vigour and ability of its

first monarch, Nebuchadnezzar.

The real turning‐point in the destinies of Israel came a year or two

earlier with the defeat and death of Josiah at Megiddo. About the year

608, while the fate of Nineveh still hung in the balance, Pharaoh Necho

prepared an expedition to the Euphrates, with the object of securing

himself in the possession of Syria. It was assuredly no feeling of loyalty

to his Assyrian suzerain which prompted Josiah to throw himself across

Necho’s path. He acted as an independent monarch, and his motives were no

doubt the loftiest that ever urged a king to a dangerous, not to say

foolhardy, enterprise. The zeal with which the crusade against idolatry

and false worship had been prosecuted seems to have begotten a confidence

on the part of the king’s advisers that the hand of Jehovah was with them,

and that His help might be reckoned on in any undertaking entered upon in

His name. One would like to know what the prophet Jeremiah said about the

venture; but probably the defence of Jehovah’s land seemed so obvious a

duty of the Davidic king that he was not even consulted. It was the

determination to maintain the inviolability of the land which was

Jehovah’s sanctuary that encouraged Josiah in defiance of every prudential

consideration to endeavour by force to intercept the passage of the

Egyptian army. The disaster that followed gave the death‐blow to this

illusion and the shallow optimism which sprang from it. There was an end

of idealism in politics; and the ruling class in Jerusalem fell back on

the old policy of vacillation between Egypt and her eastern rival which

had always been the snare of Jewish statesmanship. And with Josiah’s

political ideal the faith on which it was based also gave way. It seemed

that the experiment of exclusive reliance on Jehovah as the guardian of

the nation’s interests had been tried and had failed, and so the death of

the last good king of Judah was a signal for a great outburst of idolatry,

in which every divine power was invoked and every form of worship

sedulously practised in order to sustain the courage of men who were

resolved to fight to the death for their national existence.

By the time of Josiah’s death Ezekiel was able to take an intelligent

interest in public affairs. He lived through the troubled period that

ensued in the full consciousness of its disastrous import for the fortunes

of his people, and occasional references to it are to be found in his

writings. He remembers and commiserates the sad fate of Jehoahaz, the king

of the people’s choice, who was dethroned and imprisoned by Pharaoh Necho

during the short interval of Egyptian supremacy. The next king, Jehoiakim,

received the throne as a vassal of Egypt, on the condition of paying a

heavy annual tribute. After the battle of Carchemish, in which Necho was

defeated by Nebuchadnezzar and driven out of Syria, Jehoiakim transferred

his allegiance to the Babylonian monarch; but after three years’ service

he revolted, encouraged no doubt by the usual promises of support from

Egypt. The incursions of marauding bands of Chaldæans, Syrians, Moabites,

and Ammonites, instigated doubtless from Babylon, kept him in play until

Nebuchadnezzar was free to devote his attention to the western part of his

empire. Before that time arrived, however, Jehoiakim had died, and was

followed by his son Jehoiachin. This prince was hardly seated on the

throne, when a Babylonian army, with Nebuchadnezzar at its head, appeared

before the gates of Jerusalem. The siege ended in a capitulation, and the

king, the queen‐mother, the army and nobility, a section of the priests

and the prophets, and all the skilled artisans were transported to

Babylonia (597).

With this event the history of Ezekiel may be said to begin. But in order

to understand the conditions under which his ministry was exercised, we

must try to realise the situation created by this first removal of Judæan

captives. From this time to the final capture of Jerusalem, a period of

eleven years, the national life was broken into two streams, which ran in

parallel channels, one in Judah and the other in Babylon. The object of

the captivity was of course to deprive the nation of its natural leaders,

its head and its hands, and leave it incapable of organised resistance to

the Chaldæans. In this respect Nebuchadnezzar simply adopted the

traditional policy of the later Assyrian kings, only he applied it with

much less rigour than they were accustomed to display. Instead of making

nearly a clean sweep of the conquered population, and filling the gap by

colonists from a distant part of his empire, as had been done in the case

of Samaria, he contented himself with removing the more dangerous elements

of the state, and making a native prince responsible for the government of

the country. The result showed how greatly he had underrated the fierce

and fanatical determination which was already a part of the Jewish

character. Nothing in the whole story is more wonderful than the rapidity

with which the enfeebled remnant in Jerusalem recovered their military

efficiency, and prepared a more resolute defence than the unbroken nation

had been able to offer.

The exiles, on the other hand, succeeded in preserving most of their

national peculiarities under the very eyes of their conquerors. Of their

temporal condition very little is known beyond the fact that they found

themselves in tolerably easy circumstances, with the opportunity to

acquire property and amass wealth. The advice which Jeremiah sent them

from Jerusalem, that they should identify themselves with the interests of

Babylon, and live settled and orderly lives in peaceful industry and

domestic happiness (Jer. xxix. 5‐7), shows that they were not treated as

prisoners or as slaves. They appear to have been distributed in villages

in the fertile territory of Babylon, and to have formed themselves into

separate communities under the elders, who were the natural authorities in

a simple Semitic society. The colony in which Ezekiel lived was located in

Tel Abib, near the _Nahr_ (river or canal) Kebar, but neither the river

nor the settlement can now be identified. The Kebar, if not the name of an

arm of the Euphrates itself, was probably one of the numerous irrigating

canals which intersected in all parts the great alluvial plain of the

Euphrates and Tigris.(3) In this settlement the prophet had his own house,

where the people were free to visit him, and social life in all

probability differed little from that in a small provincial town in

Palestine. That, to be sure, was a great change for the quondam

aristocrats of Jerusalem, but it was not a change to which they could not

readily adapt themselves.

Of much greater importance, however, is the state of mind which prevailed

amongst these exiles. And here again the remarkable thing is their intense

preoccupation with matters national and Israelitic. A lively intercourse

with the mother country was kept up, and the exiles were perfectly

informed of all that was going on in Jerusalem. There were, no doubt,

personal and selfish reasons for their keen interest in the doings of

their countrymen at home. The antipathy which existed between the two

branches of the Jewish people was extreme. The exiles had left their

children behind them (Ezek. xxiv. 21, 25) to suffer under the reproach of

their fathers’ misfortunes. They appear also to have been compelled to

sell their estates hurriedly on the eve of their departure, and such

transactions, necessarily turning to the advantage of the purchasers, left

a deep grudge in the breasts of the sellers. Those who remained in the

land exulted in the calamity which had brought so much profit to

themselves, and thought themselves perfectly secure in so doing because

they regarded their brethren as men driven out for their sins from

Jehovah’s heritage. The exiles on their part affected the utmost contempt

for the pretensions of the upstart plebeians who were carrying things with

a high hand in Jerusalem. Like the French _Émigrés_ in the time of the

Revolution, they no doubt felt that their country was being ruined for

want of proper guidance and experienced statesmanship. Nor was it

altogether patrician prejudice that gave them this feeling of their own

superiority. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel regard the exiles as the better

part of the nation, and the nucleus of the Messianic community of the

future. For the present, indeed, there does not seem to have been much to

choose, in point of religious belief and practice, between the two

sections of the people. In both places the majority were steeped in

idolatrous and superstitious notions; some appear even to have entertained

the purpose of assimilating themselves to the heathen around, and only a

small minority were steadfast in their allegiance to the national

religion. Yet the exiles could not, any more than the remnant in Judah,

abandon the hope that Jehovah would save His sanctuary from desecration.

The Temple was “the excellency of their strength, the desire of their

eyes, and that which their soul pitied” (Ezek. xxiv. 21). False prophets

appeared in Babylon to prophesy smooth things, and assure the exiles of a

speedy restoration to their place in the people of God. It was not till

Jerusalem was laid in ruins, and the Jewish state had disappeared from the

earth, that the Israelites were in a mood to understand the meaning of

God’s judgment, or to learn the lessons which the prophecy of nearly two

centuries had vainly striven to inculcate.

We have now reached the point at which the Book of Ezekiel opens, and what

remains to be told of the history of the time will be given in connection

with the prophecies on which it is fitted to throw light. But before

proceeding to consider his entrance on the prophetic office, it will be

useful to dwell for a little on what was probably the most fruitful

influence of Ezekiel’s youth, the personal influence of his contemporary

and predecessor Jeremiah. This will form the subject of the next chapter.

Chapter II. Jeremiah And Ezekiel.

Each of the communities described in the last chapter was the theatre of

the activity of a great prophet. When Ezekiel began to prophesy at Tel

Abib, Jeremiah was approaching the end of his great and tragic career. For

five‐and‐thirty years he had been known as a prophet, and during the

latter part of that time had been the most prominent figure in Jerusalem.

For the next five years their ministries were contemporaneous, and it is

somewhat remarkable that they ignore each other in their writings so

completely as they do. We would give a good deal to have some reference by

Ezekiel to Jeremiah or by Jeremiah to Ezekiel, but we find none. Scripture

does not often favour us with those cross‐lights which prove so

instructive in the hands of a modern historian. While Jeremiah knows of

the rise of false prophets in Babylonia, and Ezekiel denounces those he

had left behind in Jerusalem, neither of these great men betrays the

slightest consciousness of the existence of the other. This silence is

specially noticeable on Ezekiel’s part, because his frequent descriptions

of the state of society in Jerusalem give him abundant opportunity to

express his sympathy with the position of Jeremiah. When we read in the

twenty‐second chapter that there was not found a man to make up the fence

and stand in the breach before God, we might be tempted to conclude that

he really was not aware of Jeremiah’s noble stand for righteousness in the

corrupt and doomed city. And yet the points of contact between the two

prophets are so numerous and so obvious that they cannot fairly be

explained by the common operation of the Spirit of God on the minds of

both. There is nothing in the nature of prophecy to forbid the view that

one prophet learned from another, and built on the foundation which his

predecessors had laid; and when we find a parallelism so close as that

between Jeremiah and Ezekiel we are driven to the conclusion that the

influence was unusually direct, and that the whole thinking of the younger

writer had been moulded by the teaching and example of the older.

In what way this influence was communicated is a question on which some

difference of opinion may exist. Some writers, such as Kuenen, think that

the indebtedness of Ezekiel to Jeremiah was mainly literary. That is to

say, they hold that it must be accounted for by prolonged study on

Ezekiel’s part of the written prophecies of him who was his teacher.

Kuenen surmises that this happened after the destruction of Jerusalem,

when some friends of Jeremiah arrived in Babylon, bringing with them the

completed volume of his prophecies. Before Ezekiel proceeded to write his

own prophecies, his mind is supposed to have been so saturated with the

ideas and language of Jeremiah that every part of his book bears the

impress and betrays the influence of his predecessor. In this fact, of

course, Kuenen finds an argument for the view that Ezekiel’s prophecies

were written at a comparatively late period of his life. It is difficult

to speak with confidence on some of the points raised by this hypothesis.

That the influence of Jeremiah can be traced in all parts of the book of

Ezekiel is undoubtedly true; but it is not so clear that it can be

assigned equally to all periods of Jeremiah’s activity. Many of the

prophecies of Jeremiah cannot be referred to a definite date; and we do

not know what means Ezekiel had of obtaining copies of those which belong

to the period after the two prophets were separated. We know, however,

that a great part of the book of Jeremiah was in writing several years

before Ezekiel was carried away to Babylon; and we may safely assume that

amongst the treasures which he took with him into exile was the roll

written by Baruch to the dictation of Jeremiah in the fourth year of

Jehoiakim (Jer. xxxvi.). Even later oracles may have reached Ezekiel

either before or during his prophetic career through the active

correspondence maintained between the exiles and Jerusalem. It is

possible, therefore, that even the literary dependence of Ezekiel on

Jeremiah may belong to a much earlier time than the final issue of the

book of Ezekiel; and if it should be found that ideas in the earlier part

of the book suggest acquaintance with a later utterance of Jeremiah, the

fact need not surprise us. It is certainly no sufficient reason for

concluding that the whole substance of Ezekiel’s prophecy had been recast

under the influence of a late perusal of the work of Jeremiah.

But, setting aside verbal coincidences and other phenomena which suggest

literary dependence, there remains an affinity of a much deeper kind

between the teaching of the two prophets, which can only be explained, if

it is to be explained at all, by the personal influence of the older upon

the younger. And it is these more fundamental resemblances which are of

most interest for our present purpose, because they may enable us to

understand something of the settled convictions with which Ezekiel entered

on the prophet’s calling. Moreover, a comparison of the two prophets will

bring out more clearly than anything else certain aspects of the character

of Ezekiel which it is important to bear in mind. Both are men of strongly

marked individuality, and no conception of the age in which they lived can

safely be formed from the writings of either, taken alone.

It has been already remarked that Jeremiah was the most conspicuous public

character of his day. If it be the case that he threw his spell over the

youthful mind of Ezekiel, the fact is the most striking tribute to his

influence that could be conceived. No two men could differ more widely in

natural temperament and character. Jeremiah is the prophet of a dying

nation, and the agony of Judah’s prolonged death‐struggle is reproduced

with tenfold intensity in the inward conflict which rends the heart of the

prophet. Inexorable in his prediction of the coming doom, he confesses

that this is because he is over‐mastered by the Divine power which urges

him into a path from which his nature recoiled. He deplores the isolation

which is forced upon him, the alienation of friends and kinsmen, and the

constant strife of which he is the reluctant cause. He feels as if he

could gladly shake off the burden of prophetic responsibility and become a

man amongst common men. His human sympathies go forth towards his unhappy

country, and his heart bleeds for the misery which he sees hanging over

the misguided people, for whom he is forbidden even to pray. The tragic

conflict of his life reaches its height in those expostulations with

Jehovah which are amongst the most remarkable passages of the Old

Testament. They express the shrinking of a sensitive nature from the

inward necessity in which he was compelled to recognise the higher truth;

and the wrestling of an earnest spirit for the assurance of his personal

standing with God, when all the outward institutions of religion were

being dissolved.

To such mental conflicts Ezekiel was a stranger, or if he ever passed

through them the traces of them have almost vanished from his written

words. He can hardly be said to be more severe than Jeremiah; but his

severity seems more a part of himself, and more in keeping with the bent

of his disposition. He is wholly on the side of the divine sovereignty;

there is no reaction of the human sympathies against the imperative

dictates of the prophetic inspiration; he is one in whom every thought

seems brought into captivity to the word of Jehovah. It is possible that

the completeness with which Ezekiel surrendered himself to the judicial

aspect of his message may be partly due to the fact that he had been

familiar with its leading conceptions from the teaching of Jeremiah; but

it must also be due to a certain austerity natural to him. Less emotional

than Jeremiah, his mind was more readily taken possession of by the

convictions that formed the substance of his prophetic message. He was

evidently a man of profoundly ethical habits of thought, stern and

uncompromising in his judgments, both on himself and other men, and gifted

with a strong sense of human responsibility. As his captivity cut him off

from living contact with the national life, and enabled him to survey his

country’s condition with something of the dispassionate scrutiny of a

spectator, so his natural disposition enabled him to realise in his own

person that breach with the past which was essential to the purification

of religion. He had the qualities which marked him out for the prophet of

the new order that was to be, as clearly as Jeremiah had those which

fitted him to be the prophet of a nation’s dissolution. In social

standing, also, and professional training, the men were far removed from

each other. Both were priests, but Ezekiel belonged to the house of Zadok,

who officiated in the central sanctuary, while Jeremiah’s family may have

been attached to one of the provincial sanctuaries.(4) The interests of

the two classes of priests came into sharp collision as a consequence of

Josiah’s reformation. The law provided that the rural priesthood should be

admitted to the service of the Temple on equal terms with their brethren

of the sons of Zadok; but we are expressly informed that the Temple

priests successfully resisted this encroachment on their peculiar

privileges. It has been adduced by several expositors as a proof of

Ezekiel’s freedom from caste prejudice, that he was willing to learn from

a man who was socially his inferior, and who belonged to an order which he

himself was to declare unworthy of full priestly rights in the restored

theocracy. But it must be said that there was little in Jeremiah’s public

work to call attention to the fact that he was by birth a priest. In the

profound spiritual sense of the Epistle to the Hebrews we may indeed say

that he was at heart a priest, “having compassion on the ignorant and them

that are out of the way, forasmuch as he himself was compassed with

infirmity.” But this quality of spiritual sympathy sprang from his calling

as a prophet rather than from his priestly training. One of the contrasts

between him and Ezekiel lies just in the respective estimates of the worth

of ritual which underlie their teaching. Jeremiah is distinguished even

among the prophets by his indifference to the outward institutions and

symbols of religion which it is the priest’s function to conserve. He

stands in the succession of Amos and Isaiah as an upholder of the purely

ethical character of the service of God. Ritual forms no essential element

of Jehovah’s covenant with Israel, and it is doubtful if his prophecies of

the future contain any reference to a priestly class or priestly

ordinances.(5) In the present he repudiates the actual popular worship as

offensive to Jehovah, and, except in so far as he may have given his

support to Josiah’s reforms, he does not concern himself to put anything

better in its place. To Ezekiel, on the contrary, a pure worship is a

primary condition of Israel’s enjoyment of the fellowship of Jehovah. All

through his teaching we detect his deep sense of the religious value of

priestly ceremonies, and in the concluding vision that underlying thought

comes out clearly as a fundamental principle of the new religious

constitution. Here again we can see how each prophet was providentially

fitted for the special work assigned him to do. To Jeremiah it was given,

amidst the wreck of all the material embodiments in which faith had

clothed itself in the past, to realise the essential truth of religion as

personal communion with God, and so to rise to the conception of a purely

spiritual religion, in which the will of God should be written in the

heart of every believer. To Ezekiel was committed the different, but not

less necessary, task of organising the religion of the immediate future,

and providing the forms which were to enshrine the truths of revelation

until the coming of Christ. And that task could not, humanly speaking,

have been performed but by one whose training and inclination taught him

to appreciate the value of those rules of ceremonial sanctity which were

the tradition of the Hebrew priesthood.

Very closely connected with this is the attitude of the two prophets to

what we may call the legal aspect of religion. Jeremiah seems to have

become convinced at a very early date of the insufficiency and shallowness

of the revival of religion which was expressed in the establishment of the

national covenant in the reign of Josiah. He seems also to have discerned

some of the evils which are inseparable from a religion of the letter, in

which the claims of God are presented in the form of external laws and

ordinances. And these convictions led him to the conception of a far

higher manifestation of God’s redeeming grace to be realised in the

future, in the form of a new covenant, based on God’s forgiving love, and

operative through a personal knowledge of God, and the law written on the

heart and mind of each member of the covenant people. That is to say, the

living principle of religion must be implanted in the heart of each true

Israelite, and his obedience must be what we call evangelical obedience,

springing from the free impulse of a nature renewed by the knowledge of

God. Ezekiel is also impressed by the failure of the Deuteronomic covenant

and the need of a new heart before Israel is able to comply with the high

requirements of the holy law of God. But he does not appear to have been

led to connect the failure of the past with the inherent imperfection of a

legal dispensation as such. Although his teaching is full of evangelical

truths, amongst which the doctrine of regeneration holds a conspicuous

place, we yet observe that with him a man’s righteousness before God

consists in acts of obedience to the objective precepts of the divine law.

This of course does not mean that Ezekiel was concerned only about the

outward act and indifferent to the spirit in which the law was observed.

But it does mean that the end of God’s dealings with His people was to

bring them into a condition for fulfilling His law, and that the great aim

of the new Israel was the faithful observance of the law which expressed

the conditions on which they could remain in communion with God.

Accordingly Ezekiel’s final ideal is on a lower plane, and therefore more

immediately practicable, than that of Jeremiah. Instead of a purely

spiritual anticipation expressing the essential nature of the perfect

relation between God and man, Ezekiel presents us with a definite, clearly

conceived vision of a new theocracy—a state which is to be the outward

embodiment of Jehovah’s will and in which life is minutely regulated by

His law.

If in spite of such wide differences of temperament, of education, and of

religious experience, we find nevertheless a substantial agreement in the

teaching of the two prophets, we must certainly recognise in this a

striking evidence of the stability of that conception of God and His

providence which was in the main a product of Hebrew prophecy. It is not

necessary here to enumerate all the points of coincidence between Jeremiah

and Ezekiel; but it will be of advantage to indicate a few salient

features which they have in common. Of these one of the most important is

their conception of the prophetic office. It can hardly be doubted that on

this subject Ezekiel had learned much both from observation of Jeremiah’s

career and from the study of his writings. He knew something of what it

meant to be a prophet to Israel before he himself received the prophet’s

commission; and after he had received it his experience ran closely

parallel with that of his master. The idea of the prophet as a man

standing alone for God amidst a hostile world, surrounded on every side by

threats and opposition, was impressed on each of them from the outset of

his ministry. To be a true prophet one must know how to confront men with

an inflexibility equal to theirs, sustained only by a divine power which

assures him of ultimate victory. He is cut off, not only from the currents

of opinion which play around him, but from all share in common joys and

sorrows, living a solitary life in sympathy with a God justly alienated

from His people. This attitude of antagonism to the people, as Jeremiah

well knew, had been the common fate of all true prophets. What is

characteristic of him and Ezekiel is that they both enter on their work in

the full consciousness of the stern and hopeless nature of their task.

Isaiah knew from the day he became a prophet that the effect of his

teaching would be to harden the people in unbelief; but he says nothing of

personal enmity and persecution to be faced from the outset. But now the

crisis of the people’s fate has arrived, and the relations between the

prophet and his age become more and more strained as the great controversy

approaches its decision.

Another point of agreement which may be here mentioned is the estimate of

Israel’s sin. Ezekiel goes further than Jeremiah in the way of

condemnation, regarding the whole history of Israel as an unbroken record

of apostasy and rebellion, while Jeremiah at least looks back to the

desert wandering as a time when the ideal relation between Israel and

Jehovah was maintained. But on the whole, and especially with respect to

the present state of the nation, their judgment is substantially one. The

source of all the religious and moral disorders of the nation is

infidelity to Jehovah, which is manifested in the worship of false gods

and reliance on the help of foreign nations. Specially noteworthy is the

frequent recurrence in Jeremiah and Ezekiel of the figure of “whoredom,”

an idea introduced into prophecy by Hosea to describe these two sins. The

extension of the figure to the false worship of Jehovah by images and

other idolatrous emblems can also be traced to Hosea; and in Ezekiel it is

sometimes difficult to say which species of idolatry he has in view,

whether it be the actual worship of other gods or the unlawful worship of

the true God. His position is that an unspiritual worship implies an

unspiritual deity, and that such service as was performed at the ordinary

sanctuaries could by no possibility be regarded as rendered to the true

God who spoke through the prophets. From this fountain‐head of a corrupted

religious sense proceed all those immoral practices which both prophets

stigmatise as “abominations” and as a defilement of the land of Jehovah.

Of these the most startling is the prevalent sacrifice of children to

which they both bear witness, although, as we shall afterwards see, with a

characteristic difference in their point of view.

The whole picture, indeed, which Jeremiah and Ezekiel present of

contemporary society is appalling in the extreme. Making all allowance for

the practical motive of the prophetic invective, which always aims at

conviction of sin, we cannot doubt that the state of things was

sufficiently serious to mark Judah as ripe for judgment. The very

foundations of society were sapped by the spread of licence and high‐

handed violence through all classes of the community. The restraints of

religion had been loosened by the feeling that Jehovah had forsaken the

land, and nobles, priests, and prophets plunged into a career of

wickedness and oppression which made salvation of the existing nation

impossible. The guilt of Jerusalem is symbolised to both prophets in the

innocent blood which stains her skirts and cries to heaven for vengeance.

The tendencies which are uppermost are the evil legacy of the days of

Manasseh, when, in the judgment of Jeremiah and the historian of the books

of Kings,(6) the nation sinned beyond hope of mercy. In painting his lurid

pictures of social degeneracy Ezekiel is no doubt drawing on his own

memory and information; nevertheless the forms in which his indictment is

cast show that even in this matter he has learned to look on things with

the eyes of his great teacher.

It is scarcely necessary to add that both prophets anticipate a speedy

downfall of the state and its restoration in a more glorious form after a

short interval, fixed by Jeremiah at seventy years and by Ezekiel at forty

years. The restoration is regarded as final, and as embracing both

branches of the Hebrew nation, the kingdom of the ten tribes as well as

the house of Judah. The Messianic hope in Ezekiel appears in a form

similar to that in which it is presented by Jeremiah; in neither prophet

is the figure of the ideal King so prominent as in the prophecies of

Isaiah. The similarity between the two is all the more noteworthy as an

evidence of dependence, because Ezekiel’s final outlook is towards a state

of things in which the Prince has a somewhat subordinate position assigned

to Him. Both prophets, again following Hosea, regard the spiritual renewal

of the people as the effect of chastisement in exile. Those parts of the

nation which go first into banishment are the first to be brought under

the salutary influences of God’s providential discipline; and hence we

find that Jeremiah adopts a more hopeful tone in speaking of Samaria and

the captives of 597 than in his utterances to those who remained in the

land. This conviction was shared by Ezekiel, in spite of his daily contact

with abominations from which his whole nature revolted. It has been

supposed that Ezekiel lived long enough to see that no such spiritual

transformation was to be wrought by the mere fact of captivity, and that,

despairing of a general and spontaneous conversion, he put his hand to the

work of practical reform as if he would secure by legislation the results

which he had once expected as fruits of repentance. If the prophet had

ever expected that punishment of itself would work a change in the

religious condition of his countrymen, there might have been room for such

a disenchantment as is here assumed. But there is no evidence that he ever

looked for anything else than a regeneration of the people in captivity by

the supernatural working of the divine Spirit; and that the final vision

is meant to help out the divine plan by human policy is a suggestion

negatived by the whole scope of the book. It may be true that his

practical activity in the present was directed to preparing individual men

for the coming salvation; but that was no more than any spiritual teacher

must have done in a time recognised as a period of transition. The vision

of the restored theocracy presupposes a national resurrection and a

national repentance. And on the face of it it is such that man can take no

step towards its accomplishment until God has prepared the way by creating

the conditions of a perfect religious community, both the moral conditions

in the mind of the people and the outward conditions in the miraculous

transformation of the land in which they are to dwell.

Most of the points here touched upon will have to be more fully treated in

the course of our exposition, and other affinities between the two great

prophets will have to be noticed as we proceed. Enough has perhaps been

said to show that Ezekiel’s thinking has been profoundly influenced by

Jeremiah, that the influence extends not only to the form but also to the

substance of his teaching, and can therefore only be explained by early

impressions received by the younger prophet in the days before the word of

the Lord had come to him.

Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory Of God. Chapter i.

It might be hazardous to attempt, from the general considerations advanced

in the last two chapters, to form a conception of Ezekiel’s state of mind

during the first few years of his captivity. If, as we have found reason

to believe, he had already come under the influence of Jeremiah, he must

have been in some measure prepared for the blow which had descended on

him. Torn from the duties of the office which he loved, and driven in upon

himself, Ezekiel must no doubt have meditated deeply on the sin and the

prospects of his people. From the first he must have stood aloof from his

fellow‐exiles, who, led by their false prophets, began to dream of the

fall of Babylon and a speedy return to their own land. He knew that the

calamity which had befallen them was but the first instalment of a

sweeping judgment before which the old Israel must utterly perish. Those

who remained in Jerusalem were reserved for a worse fate than those who

had been carried away; but so long as the latter remained impenitent there

was no hope even for them of an alleviation of the bitterness of their

lot. Such thoughts, working in a mind naturally severe in its judgments,

may have already produced that attitude of alienation from the whole life

of his companions in misfortune which dominates the first period of his

prophetic career. But these convictions did not make Ezekiel a prophet. He

had as yet no independent message from God, no sure perception of the

issue of events, or the path which Israel must follow in order to reach

the blessedness of the future. It was not till the fifth year of his

captivity(7) that the inward change took place which brought him into

Jehovah’s counsel, and disclosed to him the outlines of all his future

work, and endowed him with the courage to stand forth amongst his people

as the spokesman of Jehovah.

Like other great prophets whose personal experience is recorded, Ezekiel

became conscious of his prophetic vocation through a vision of God. The

form in which Jehovah first appeared to him is described with great

minuteness of detail in the first chapter of his book. It would seem that

in some hour of solitary meditation by the river Kebar his attention was

attracted to a storm‐cloud forming in the north and advancing toward him

across the plain. The cloud may have been an actual phenomenon, the

natural basis of the theophany which follows. Falling into a state of

ecstasy, the prophet sees the cloud grow luminous with an unearthly

splendour. From the midst of it there shines a brightness which he

compares to the lustre of electron.(8) Looking more closely, he discerns

four living creatures, of strange composite form,—human in general

appearance, but winged; and each having four heads combining the highest

types of animal life—man, lion, ox, and eagle. These are afterwards

identified with the cherubim of the Temple symbolism (ch. x. 20); but some

features of the conception may have been suggested by the composite animal

figures of Babylonian art, with which the prophet must have been already

familiar. The interior space is occupied by a hearth of glowing coals,

from which lightning‐flashes constantly dart to and fro between the

cherubim. Beside each cherub is a wheel, formed apparently of two wheels

intersecting each other at right angles. The appearance of the wheels is

like “chrysolite,” and their rims are filled with eyes, denoting the

intelligence by which their motions are directed. The wheels and the

cherubim together embody the spontaneous energy by which the throne of God

is transported whither He wills; although there is no mechanical

connection between them, they are represented as animated by a common

spirit, directing all their motions in perfect harmony. Over the heads and

out‐stretched wings of the cherubim is a rigid pavement or “firmament,”

like crystal; and above this a sapphire stone(9) supporting the throne of

Jehovah. The divine Being is seen in the likeness of a man; and around

Him, as if to temper the fierceness of the light in which He dwells, is a

radiance like that of the rainbow. It will be noticed that while Ezekiel’s

imagination dwells on what we must consider the accessories of the

vision—the fire, the cherubim, the wheels—he hardly dares to lift his eyes

to the person of Jehovah Himself. The full meaning of what he is passing

through only dawns on him when he realises that he is in the presence of

the Almighty. Then he falls on his face overpowered by the sense of his

own insignificance.

There is no reason to doubt that what is thus described represents an

actual experience on the part of the prophet. It is not to be regarded

merely as a conscious clothing of spiritual truths in symbolic imagery.

The _description_ of a vision is of course a conscious exercise of

literary faculty; and in all such cases it must be difficult to

distinguish what a prophet actually saw and heard in the moment of

inspiration from the details which he was compelled to add in order to

convey an intelligible picture to the minds of his readers. It is probable

that in the case of Ezekiel the element of free invention has a larger

range than in the less elaborate descriptions which other prophets give of

their visions. But this does not detract from the force of the prophet’s

own assertion that what he relates was based on a real and definite

experience when in a state of prophetic ecstasy. This is expressed by the

words “the hand of Jehovah was upon him” (ver. 3)—a phrase which is

invariably used throughout the book to denote the prophet’s peculiar

mental condition when the communication of divine truth was accompanied by

experiences of a visionary order. Moreover, the account given of the state

in which this vision left him shows that his natural consciousness had

been overpowered by the pressure of super‐sensible realities on his

spirit. He tells us that he went “in bitterness, in the heat of his

spirit, the hand of the Lord being heavy upon him; and came to the exiles

at Tel‐abib, ... and sat there seven days stupefied in their midst” (ch.

iii. 14, 15).

Now whatever be the ultimate nature of the prophetic vision, its

significance for us would appear to lie in the untrammelled working of the

prophet’s imagination under the influence of spiritual perceptions which

are too profound to be expressed as abstract ideas. The prophet’s

consciousness is not suspended, for he remembers his vision and reflects

on its meaning afterwards; but his intercourse with the outer world

through the senses is interrupted, so that his mind moves freely amongst

images stored in his memory, and new combinations are formed which embody

a truth not previously apprehended. The _tableau_ of the vision is

therefore always capable to some extent of a psychological explanation.

The elements of which it is composed must have been already present in the

mind of the prophet, and in so far as these can be traced to their sources

we are enabled to understand their symbolic import in the novel

combination in which they appear. But the real significance of the vision

lies in the immediate impression left on the mind of the prophet by the

divine realities which govern his life, and this is especially true of the

vision of God Himself which accompanies the call to the prophetic office.

Although no vision can express the whole of a prophet’s conception of God,

yet it represents to the imagination certain fundamental aspects of the

divine nature and of God’s relation to the world and to men; and through

all his subsequent career the prophet will be influenced by the form in

which he once beheld the great Being whose words come to him from time to

time. To his later reflection the vision becomes a symbol of certain

truths about God, although in the first instance the symbol was created

for him by a mysterious operation of the divine Spirit in a process over

which he had no control. In one respect Ezekiel’s inaugural vision seems

to possess a greater importance for his theology than is the case with any

other prophet. With the other prophets the vision is a momentary

experience, of which the spiritual meaning passes into the thinking of the

prophet, but which does not recur again in the visionary form. With

Ezekiel, on the other hand, the vision becomes a fixed and permanent

symbol of Jehovah, appearing again and again in precisely the same form as

often as the reality of God’s presence is impressed on his mind.

The essential question, then, with regard to Ezekiel’s vision is, What

revelation of God or what ideas respecting God did it serve to impress on

the mind of the prophet? It may help us to answer that question if we

begin by considering certain affinities which it presents to the great

vision which opened the ministry of Isaiah. It must be admitted that

Ezekiel’s experience is much less intelligible as well as less impressive

than Isaiah’s. In Isaiah’s delineation we recognise the presence of

qualities which belong to genius of the highest order. The perfect balance

of form and idea, the reticence which suggests without exhausting the

significance of what is seen, the fine artistic sense which makes every

touch in the picture contribute to the rendering of the emotion which

fills the prophet’s soul, combine to make the sixth chapter of Isaiah one

of the most sublime passages in literature. No sympathetic reader can fail

to catch the impression which the passage is intended to convey of the

awful majesty of the God of Israel, and the effect produced on a frail and

sinful mortal ushered into that holy Presence. We are made to feel how

inevitably such a vision gives birth to the prophetic impulse, and how

both vision and impulse inform the mind of the seer with the clear and

definite purpose which rules all his subsequent work.

The point in which Ezekiel’s vision differs most strikingly from Isaiah’s

is the almost entire suppression of his subjectivity. This is so complete

that it becomes difficult to apprehend the meaning of the vision in

relation to his thought and activity. Spiritual realities are so overlaid

with symbolism that the narrative almost fails to reflect the mental state

in which he was consecrated for the work of his life. Isaiah’s vision is a

drama, Ezekiel’s is a spectacle; in the one religious truth is expressed

in a series of significant actions and words, in the other it is embodied

in forms and splendours that appeal only to the eye. One fact may be noted

in illustration of the diversity between the two representations. The

scenery of Isaiah’s vision is interpreted and spiritualised by the medium

of language. The seraphs’ hymn of adoration strikes the note which is the

central thought of the vision, and the exclamation which breaks from the

prophet’s lips reveals the impact of that great truth on a human spirit.

The whole scene is thus lifted out of the region of mere symbolism into

that of pure religious ideas. Ezekiel’s, on the other hand, is like a song

without words. His cherubim are speechless. While the rustling of their

wings and the thunder of the revolving wheels break on his ear like the

sound of mighty waters, no articulate voice bears home to the mind the

inner meaning of what he beholds. Probably he himself felt no need of it.

The pictorial character of his thinking appears in many features of his

work; and it is not surprising to find that the import of the revelation

is expressed mainly in visual images.

Now these differences are in their own place very instructive, because

they show how intimately the vision is related to the individuality of him

who receives it, and how even in the most exalted moments of inspiration

the mind displays the same tendencies which characterise its ordinary

operations. Yet Ezekiel’s vision represents a spiritual experience not

less real than Isaiah’s. His mental endowments are of a different order,

of a lower order if you will, than those of Isaiah; but the essential fact

that he too saw the glory of God and in that vision obtained the insight

of the true prophet is not to be explained away by analysis of his

literary talent or of the sources from which his images are derived. It is

allowable to write worse Greek than Plato; and it is no disqualification

for a Hebrew prophet to lack the grandeur of imagination and the mastery

of style which are the notes of Isaiah’s genius.

In spite of their obvious dissimilarities the two visions have enough in

common to show that Ezekiel’s thoughts concerning God had been largely

influenced by the study of Isaiah. Truths that had perhaps long been

latent in his mind now emerge into clear consciousness, clothed in forms

which bear the impress of the mind in which they were first conceived. The

fundamental idea is the same in each vision: the absolute and universal

sovereignty of God. “Mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts.”

Jehovah appears in human form, seated on a throne and attended by

ministering creatures which serve to show forth some part of His glory. In

the one case they are seraphim, in the other cherubim; and the functions

imposed on them by the structure of the vision are very diverse in the two

cases. But the points in which they agree are more significant than those

in which they differ. They are the agents through whom Jehovah exercises

His sovereign authority, beings full of life and intelligence and moving

in swift response to His will. Although free from earthly imperfection

they cover themselves with their wings before His majesty, in token of the

reverence which is due from the creature in presence of the Creator. For

the rest they are symbolic figures embodying in themselves certain

attributes of the Deity, or certain aspects of His kingship. Nor can

Ezekiel any more than Isaiah think of Jehovah as the King apart from the

emblems associated with the worship of His earthly sanctuary. The cherubim

themselves are borrowed from the imagery of the Temple, although their

forms are different from those which stood in the Holy of holies. So again

the altar, which was naturally suggested to Isaiah by the scene of his

vision being laid in the Temple, appears in Ezekiel’s vision in the form

of the hearth of glowing coals which is under the divine throne. It is

true that the fire symbolises destructive might rather than purifying

energy (see ch. x. 2), but it can hardly be doubted that the origin of the

symbol is the altar‐hearth of the sanctuary and of Isaiah’s vision. It is

as if the essence of the Temple and its worship were transferred to the

sphere of heavenly realities where Jehovah’s glory is fully manifested.

All this, therefore, is nothing more than the embodiment of the

fundamental truth of the Old Testament religion—that Jehovah is the

almighty King of heaven and earth, that He executes His sovereign purposes

with irresistible power, and that it is the highest privilege of men on

earth to render to Him the homage and adoration which the sight of His

glory draws forth from heavenly beings.

The idea of Jehovah’s kingship, however, is presented in the Old Testament

under two aspects. On the one hand, it denotes the moral sovereignty of

God over the people whom He had chosen as His own and to whom His will was

continuously revealed as the guide of their national and social life. On

the other hand, it denotes God’s absolute dominion over the forces of

nature and the events of history, in virtue of which all things are the

unconscious instruments of His purposes. These two truths can never be

separated, although the emphasis is laid sometimes on the one and

sometimes on the other. Thus in Isaiah’s vision the emphasis lies perhaps

more on the doctrine of Jehovah’s kingship over Israel. It is true that He

is at the same time represented as One whose glory is the “fulness of the

whole earth,” and who therefore manifests His power and presence in every

part of His world‐wide dominions. But the fact that Jehovah’s palace is

the idealised Temple of Jerusalem suggests at once, what all the teaching

of the prophet confirms, that the nation of Israel is the special sphere

within which His kingly authority is to obtain practical recognition.

While no man had a firmer grasp of the truth that God wields all natural

forces and overrules the actions of men in carrying out His providential

designs, yet the leading ideas of His ministry are those which spring from

the thought of Jehovah’s presence in the midst of His people and the

obligation that lies on Israel to recognise His sovereignty. He is, to use

Isaiah’s own expression, the “Holy One of Israel.”

This aspect of the divine kingship is undoubtedly represented in the

vision of Ezekiel. We have remarked that the imagery of the vision is to

some extent moulded on the idea of the sanctuary as the seat of Jehovah’s

government, and we shall find later on that the final resting‐place of

this emblem of His presence is a restored sanctuary in the land of Canaan.

But the circumstances under which Ezekiel was called to be a prophet

required that prominence should be given to the complementary truth that

the kingship of Jehovah was independent of His special relation to Israel.

For the present the tie between Jehovah and His land was dissolved. Israel

had disowned her divine King, and was left to suffer the consequences of

her disloyalty. Hence it is that the vision appears, not from the

direction of Jerusalem, but “out of the north,” in token that God has

departed from His Temple and abandoned it to its enemies. In this way the

vision granted to the exiled prophet on the plain of Babylonia embodied a

truth opposed to the religious prejudices of his time, but reassuring to

himself—that the fall of Israel leaves the essential sovereignty of

Jehovah untouched; that He still lives and reigns, although His people are

trodden underfoot by worshippers of other gods. But more than this, we can

see that on the whole the tendency of Ezekiel’s vision, as distinguished

from that of Isaiah, is to emphasise the universality of Jehovah’s

relations to the world of nature and of mankind. His throne rests here on

a sapphire stone, the symbol of heavenly purity, to signify that His true

dwelling‐place is above the firmament, in the heavens, which are equally

near to every region of the earth. Moreover, it is mounted on a chariot,

by which it is moved from place to place with a velocity which suggests

ubiquity, and the chariot is borne by “living creatures” whose forms unite

all that is symbolical of power and dignity in the living world. Further,

the shape of the chariot, which is foursquare, and the disposition of the

wheels and cherubim, which is such that there is no before or behind, but

the same front presented to each of the four quarters of the globe,

indicate that all parts of the universe are alike accessible to the

presence of God. Finally, the wheels and the cherubim are covered with

eyes, to denote that all things are open to the view of Him who sits on

the throne. The attributes of God here symbolised are those which express

His relations to created existence as a whole—omnipresence, omnipotence,

omniscience. These ideas are obviously incapable of adequate

representation by any sensuous image—they can only be suggested to the

mind; and it is just the effort to suggest such transcendental attributes

that imparts to the vision the character of obscurity which attaches to so

many of its details.

Another point of comparison between Isaiah and Ezekiel is suggested by the

name which the latter constantly uses for the appearance which he sees, or

rather perhaps for that part of it which represents the personal

appearance of God. He calls it the “glory of Jehovah,” or “glory of the

God of Israel.” The word for glory (_kābôd_) is used in a variety of

senses in the Old Testament. Etymologically it comes from a root

expressing the idea of heaviness. When used, as here, concretely, it

signifies that which is the outward manifestation of power or worth or

dignity. In human affairs it may be used of a man’s wealth, or the pomp

and circumstance of military array, or the splendour and pageantry of a

royal court, those things which oppress the minds of common men with a

sense of magnificence. In like manner, when applied to God, it denotes

some reflection in the outer world of His majesty, something that at once

reveals and conceals His essential Godhead. Now we remember that the

second line of the seraphs’ hymn conveyed to Isaiah’s mind this thought,

that “that which fills the whole earth is His glory.” What is this

“filling of the whole earth” in which the prophet sees the effulgence of

the divine glory? Is his feeling akin to Wordsworth’s

“sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man”?

At least the words must surely mean that all through nature Isaiah

recognised that which declares the glory of God, and therefore in some

sense reveals Him. Although they do not teach a doctrine of the divine

immanence, they contain all that is religiously valuable in that doctrine.

In Ezekiel, however, we find nothing that looks in this direction. It is

characteristic of his thoughts about God that the very word “glory” which

Isaiah uses of something diffused through the earth is here employed to

express the concentration of all divine qualities in a single image of

dazzling splendour, but belonging to heaven rather than to earth. Glory is

here equivalent to brightness, as in the ancient conception of the bright

cloud which led the people through the desert and that which filled the

Temple with overpowering light when Jehovah took possession of it (2

Chron. vii. 1‐3). In a striking passage of his last vision Ezekiel

describes how this scene will be repeated when Jehovah returns to take up

His abode amongst His people and the earth will be lighted up with His

glory (ch. xliii. 2). But meanwhile it may seem to us that earth is left

poorer by the loss of that aspect of nature in which Isaiah discovered a

revelation of the divine.

Ezekiel is conscious that what he has seen is after all but an imperfect

semblance of the essential glory of God on which no mortal eye can gaze.

All that he describes is expressly said to be an “appearance” and a

“likeness.” When he comes to speak of the divine form in which the whole

revelation culminates he can say no more than that it is the “appearance

of the likeness of the glory of Jehovah.” The prophet appears to realise

his inability to penetrate behind the appearance to the reality which it

shadows forth. The clearest vision of God which the mind of man can

receive is an after‐look like that which was vouchsafed to Moses when the

divine presence had passed by (Exod. xxxiii. 23). So it was with Ezekiel.

The true revelation that came to him was not in what he saw with his eyes

in the moment of his initiation, but in the intuitive knowledge of God

which from that hour he possessed, and which enabled him to interpret more

fully than he could have done at the time the significance of his first

memorable meeting with the God of Israel. What he retained in his waking

hours was first of all a vivid sense of the reality of God’s being, and

then a mental picture suggesting those attributes which lay at the

foundation of his prophetic ministry.

It is easy to see how this vision dominates all Ezekiel’s thinking about

the divine nature. The God whom he saw was in the form of a man, and so

the God of his conscience is a moral person to whom he fearlessly ascribes

the parts and even the passions of humanity. He speaks through the prophet

in the language of royal authority, as a king who will brook no rival in

the affections of his people. As King of Israel He asserts His

determination to reign over them with a mighty hand, and by mingled

goodness and severity to break their stubborn heart and bend them to His

purpose. There are perhaps other and more subtle affinities between the

symbol of the vision and the prophet’s inner consciousness of God. Just as

the vision gathers up all in nature that suggests divinity into one

resplendent image, so it is also with the moral action of God as conceived

by Ezekiel. His government of the world is self‐centred; all the ends

which He pursues in His providence lie within Himself. His dealings with

the nations, and with Israel in particular, are dictated by regard for His

own glory, or, as Ezekiel expresses it, by pity for His great name. “Not

for your sake do I act, O house of Israel, but for My holy name, which ye

have profaned among the heathen whither ye went” (ch. xxxvi. 22). The

relations into which He enters with men are all subordinate to the supreme

purpose of “sanctifying” Himself in the eyes of the world or manifesting

Himself as He truly is. It is no doubt possible to exaggerate this feature

of Ezekiel’s theology in a way that would be unjust to the prophet. After

all, Jehovah’s desire to be known as He is implies a regard for His

creatures which includes the ultimate intention to bless them. It is but

an extreme expression in the form necessary for that time of the truth to

which all the prophets bear witness, that the knowledge of God is the

indispensable condition of true blessedness to men. Still, the difference

is marked between the “not for your sake” of Ezekiel and the “human bands,

the cords of love” of which Hosea speaks, the yearning and compassionate

affection that binds Jehovah to His erring people.

In another respect the symbolism of the vision may be taken as an emblem

of the Hebrew conception of the universe. The Bible has no scientific

theory of God’s relation to the world; but it is full of the practical

conviction that all nature responds to His behests, that all occurrences

are indications of His mind, the whole realm of nature and history being

governed by one Will which works for moral ends. That conviction is as

deeply rooted in the thinking of Ezekiel as in that of any other prophet,

and, consciously or unconsciously, it is reflected in the structure of the

_merkābā_, or heavenly chariot, which has no mechanical connection between

its different parts, and yet is animated by one spirit and moves

altogether at the impulse of Jehovah’s will.

It will be seen that the general tendency of Ezekiel’s conception of God

is what might be described in modern language as “transcendental.” In

this, however, the prophet does not stand alone, and the difference

between him and earlier prophets is not so great as is sometimes

represented. Indeed, the contrast between transcendent and immanent is

hardly applicable in the Old Testament religion. If by transcendence it is

meant that God is a being distinct from the world, not losing Himself in

the life of nature, but ruling over it and controlling it as His

instrument, then all the inspired writers of the Old Testament are

transcendentalists. But this does not mean that God is separated from the

human spirit by a dead, mechanical universe which owes nothing to its

Creator but its initial impulse and its governing laws. The idea that a

world could come between man and God is one that would never have occurred

to a prophet. Just because God is above the world He can reveal Himself

directly to the spirit of man, speaking to His servants face to face as a

man speaketh to his friend.

But frequently in the prophets the thought is expressed that Jehovah is

“far off” or “comes from far” in the crises of His people’s history. “Am I

a God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God afar off?” is Jeremiah’s

question to the false prophets of his day; and the answer is, “Do not I

fill heaven and earth? saith Jehovah.” On this subject we may quote the

suggestive remarks of a recent commentator on Isaiah: “The local deities,

the gods of the tribal religions, are near; Jehovah is far, but at the

same time everywhere present. The remoteness of Jehovah in space

represented to the prophets better than our transcendental abstractions

Jehovah’s absolute ascendency. This ‘far off’ is spoken with enthusiasm.

Everywhere and nowhere, Jehovah comes when His hour is come.”(10) That is

the idea of Ezekiel’s vision. God comes to him “from far,” but He comes

very near. Our difficulty may be to realise the nearness of God.

Scientific discovery has so enlarged our view of the material universe

that we feel the need of every consideration that can bring home to us a

sense of the divine condescension and interest in man’s earthly history

and his spiritual welfare. But the difficulty which beset the ordinary

Israelite even so late as the Exile was as nearly as possible the opposite

of ours. His temptation was to think of God as only a God “at hand,” a

local deity, whose range of influence was limited to a particular spot,

and whose power was measured by the fortunes of His own people. Above all

things he needed to learn that God was “afar off,” filling heaven and

earth, that His power was exerted everywhere, and that there was no place

where either a man could hide himself from God or God was hidden from man.

When we bear in mind these circumstances we can see how needful was the

revelation of the divine omnipresence as a step towards the perfect

knowledge of God which comes to us through Jesus Christ.

Chapter IV. Ezekiel’s Prophetic Commission. Chapters ii., iii.

The call of a prophet and the vision of God which sometimes accompanied it

are the two sides of one complex experience. The man who has truly seen

God necessarily has a message to men. Not only are his spiritual

perceptions quickened and all the powers of his being stirred to the

highest activity, but there is laid on his conscience the burden of a

sacred duty and a lifelong vocation to the service of God and man. The

true prophet therefore is one who can say with Paul, “I was not

disobedient to the heavenly vision,” for that cannot be a real vision of

God which does not demand obedience. And of the two elements the call is

the one that is indispensable to the idea of a prophet. We can conceive a

prophet without an ecstatic vision, but not without a consciousness of

being chosen by God for a special work or a sense of moral responsibility

for the faithful declaration of His truth. Whether, as with Isaiah and

Ezekiel, the call springs out of the vision of God, or whether, as with

Jeremiah, the call comes first and is supplemented by experiences of a

visionary kind, the essential fact in the prophet’s initiation always is

the conviction that from a certain period in his life the word of Jehovah

came to him, and along with it the feeling of personal obligation to God

for the discharge of a mission entrusted to him. While the vision merely

serves to impress on the imagination by means of symbols a certain

conception of God’s being, and may be dispensed with when symbols are no

longer the necessary vehicle of spiritual truth, the call, as conveying a

sense of one’s true place in the kingdom of God, can never be wanting to

any man who has a prophetic work to do for God amongst his fellow‐men.

It has been already hinted that in the case of Ezekiel the connection

between the call and the vision is less obvious than in that of Isaiah.

The character of the narrative undergoes a change at the beginning of ch.

ii. The first part is moulded, as we have seen, very largely on the

inaugural vision of Isaiah; the second betrays with equal clearness the

influence of Jeremiah. The appearance of a break between the first chapter

and the second is partly due to the prophet’s laborious manner of

describing what he had passed through. It is altogether unfair to

represent him as having first curiously inspected the mechanism of the

_merkābā_, and then bethought himself that it was a fitting thing to fall

on his face before it. The experience of an ecstasy is one thing, the

relating of it is another. In much less time than it takes us to master

the details of the picture, Ezekiel had seen and been overpowered by the

glory of Jehovah, and had become aware of the purpose for which it had

been revealed to him. He knew that God had come to him in order to send

him as a prophet to his fellow‐exiles. And just as the description of the

vision draws out in detail those features which were significant of God’s

nature and attributes, so in what follows he becomes conscious step by

step of certain aspects of the work to which he is called. In the form of

a series of addresses of the Almighty there are presented to his mind the

outlines of his prophetic career—its conditions, its hardships, its

encouragements, and above all its binding and peremptory obligation. Some

of the facts now set before him, such as the spiritual condition of his

audience, had long been familiar to his thoughts—others were new; but now

they all take their proper place in the scheme of his life; he is made to

know their bearing on his work, and what attitude he is to adopt in face

of them. All this takes place in the prophetic trance; but the ideas

remain with him as the sustaining principles of his subsequent work.

1. Of the truths thus presented to the mind of Ezekiel the first, and the

one that directly arises out of the impression which the vision made on

him, is his personal insignificance. As he lies prostrate before the glory

of Jehovah he hears for the first time the name which ever afterwards

signalises his relation to the God who speaks through him. It hardly needs

to be said that the term “son of man” in the book of Ezekiel is no title

of honour or of distinction. It is precisely the opposite of this. It

denotes the absence of distinction in the person of the prophet. It

signifies no more than “member of the human race”; its sense might almost

be conveyed if we were to render it by the word “mortal.” It expresses the

infinite contrast between the heavenly and the earthly, between the

glorious Being who speaks from the throne and the frail creature who needs

to be supernaturally strengthened before he can stand upright in the

attitude of service (ch. ii. 1). He felt that there was no reason in

himself for the choice which God made of him to be a prophet. He is

conscious only of the attributes which he has in common with the race—of

human weakness and insignificance; all that distinguishes him from other

men belongs to his office, and is conferred on him by God in the act of

his consecration. There is no trace of the generous impulse that prompted

Isaiah to offer himself as a servant of the great King as soon as he

realised that there was work to be done. He is equally a stranger to the

shrinking of Jeremiah’s sensitive spirit from the responsibilities of the

prophet’s charge. To Ezekiel the divine Presence is so overpowering, the

command is so definite and exacting, that no room is left for the play of

personal feeling; the hand of the Lord is heavy on him, and he can do

nothing but stand still and hear.

2. The next thought that occupies the attention of the prophet is the

spiritual condition of those to whom he is sent. It is to be noted that

his mission presents itself to him from the outset in two aspects. In the

first place, he is a prophet to the whole house of Israel, including the

lost kingdom of the ten tribes, as well as the two sections of the kingdom

of Judah, those now in exile and those still remaining in their own land.

This is his ideal audience; the sweep of his prophecy is to embrace the

destinies of the nation as a whole, although but a small part be within

the reach of his spoken words. But in literal fact he is to be the prophet

of the exiles (ch. iii. 11); that is the sphere in which he has to make

proof of his ministry. These two audiences are for the most part not

distinguished in the mind of Ezekiel; he sees the ideal in the real,

regarding the little colony in which he lives as an epitome of the

national life. But in both aspects of his work the outlook is equally

dispiriting. If he looks forward to an active career amongst his fellow‐

captives, he is given to know that “thorns and thistles” are with him and

that his dwelling is among scorpions (ch. ii. 6). Petty persecution and

rancorous opposition are the inevitable lot of a prophet there. And if he

extends his thoughts to the idealised nation he has to think of a people

whose character is revealed in a long history of rebellion and apostasy:

they are “the rebels who have rebelled against Me, they and their fathers

to this very day” (ch. ii. 3). The greatest difficulty he will have to

contend with is the impenetrability of the minds of his hearers to the

truths of his message. The barrier of a strange language suggests an

illustration of the impossibility of communicating spiritual ideas to such

men as he is sent to. But it is a far more hopeless barrier that separates

him from his people. “Not to a people of deep speech and heavy tongue art

thou sent; and not to many peoples whose language thou canst not

understand: if I had sent thee to _them_, _they_ would hear thee. But the

house of Israel will refuse to hear thee; for they refuse to hear Me: for

the whole house of Israel are hard of forehead and stout of heart” (ch.

iii. 5‐7). The meaning is that the incapacity of the people is not

intellectual, but moral and spiritual. They can understand the prophet’s

words, but they will not hear them because they dislike the truth which he

utters and have rebelled against the God who sent him. The hardening of

the national conscience which Isaiah foresaw as the inevitable result of

his own ministry is already accomplished, and Ezekiel traces it to its

source in a defect of the will, an aversion to the truths which express

the character of Jehovah.

This fixed judgment on his contemporaries with which Ezekiel enters on his

work is condensed into one of those stereotyped expressions which abound

in his writings: “house of disobedience”(11)—a phrase which is afterwards

amplified in more than one elaborate review of the nation’s past. It no

doubt sums up the result of much previous meditation on the state of

Israel and the possibility of a national reformation. If any hope had

hitherto lingered in Ezekiel’s mind that the exiles might now respond to a

true word from Jehovah, it disappears in the clear insight which he

obtains into the state of their hearts. He sees that the time has not yet

come to win the people back to God by assurances of His compassion and the

nearness of His salvation. The breach between Jehovah and Israel has not

begun to be healed, and the prophet who stands on the side of God must

look for no sympathy from men. In the very act of his consecration his

mind is thus set in the attitude of uncompromising severity towards the

obdurate house of Israel: “Behold, I make thy face hard like their faces,

and thy forehead hard like theirs, like adamant harder than flint. Thou

shalt not fear them nor be dismayed at their countenance, for a

disobedient house are they” (ch. iii. 8, 9).

3. The significance of the transaction in which he takes part is still

further impressed on the mind of the prophet by a symbolic act in which he

is made to signify his acceptance of the commission entrusted to him (chs.

ii. 8‐iii. 3). He sees a hand extended to him holding the roll of a book,

and when the roll is spread out before him it is found to be written on

both sides with “lamentations and mourning and woe.” In obedience to the

divine command he opens his mouth and eats the scroll, and finds to his

surprise that in spite of its contents its taste is “like honey for

sweetness.”

The meaning of this strange symbol appears to include two things. In the

first place it denotes the removal of the inward hindrance of which every

man must be conscious when he receives the call to be a prophet. Something

similar occurs in the inaugural vision of Isaiah and Jeremiah. The

impediment of which Isaiah was conscious was the uncleanness of his lips;

and this being removed by the touch of the hot coal from the altar, he is

filled with a new feeling of freedom and eagerness to engage in the

service of God. In the case of Jeremiah the hindrance was a sense of his

own weakness and unfitness for the arduous duties which were imposed on

him; and this again was taken away by the consecrating touch of Jehovah’s

hand on his lips. The part of Ezekiel’s experience with which we are

dealing is obviously parallel to these, although it is not possible to say

what feeling of incapacity was uppermost in his mind. Perhaps it was the

dread lest in him there should lurk something of that rebellious spirit

which was the characteristic of the race to which he belonged. He who had

been led to form so hard a judgment of his people could not but look with

a jealous eye on his own heart, and could not forget that he shared the

same sinful nature which made their rebellion possible. Accordingly the

book is presented to him in the first instance as a test of his obedience.

“But _thou_, son of man, hear what I say to thee; Be not disobedient like

the disobedient house: open thy mouth, and eat what I give thee” (ch. ii.

8). When the book proves sweet to his taste, he has the assurance that he

has been endowed with such sympathy with the thoughts of God that things

which to the natural mind are unwelcome become the source of a spiritual

satisfaction. Jeremiah had expressed the same strange delight in his work

in a striking passage which was doubtless familiar to Ezekiel: “When Thy

words were found I did eat them; and Thy word was to me the joy and

rejoicing of my heart: for I was called by Thy name, O Jehovah God of

hosts” (Jer. xv. 16). We have a still higher illustration of the same fact

in the life of our Lord, to whom it was meat and drink to do the will of

His Father, and who experienced a joy in the doing of it which was

peculiarly His own. It is the reward of the true service of God that

amidst all the hardships and discouragements which have to be endured the

heart is sustained by an inward joy springing from the consciousness of

working in fellowship with God.

But in the second place the eating of the book undoubtedly signifies the

bestowal on the prophet of the gift of inspiration—that is, the power to

speak the words of Jehovah. “Son of man, eat this roll, and go speak to

the children of Israel.... Go, get thee to the house of Israel, and speak

with My words to them” (ch. iii. 1, 4). Now the call of a prophet does not

mean that his mind is charged with a certain body of doctrine, which he is

to deliver from time to time as circumstances require. All that can safely

be said about the prophetic inspiration is that it implies the faculty of

distinguishing the truth of God from the thoughts that naturally arise in

the prophet’s own mind. Nor is there anything in Ezekiel’s experience

which necessarily goes beyond this conception; although the incident of

the book has been interpreted in ways that burden him with a very crude

and mechanical theory of inspiration. Some critics have believed that the

book which he swallowed is the book he was afterwards to write, as if he

had reproduced in instalments what was delivered to him at this time.

Others, without going so far as this, find it at least significant that

one who was to be pre‐eminently a literary prophet should conceive of the

word of the Lord as communicated to him in the form of a book. When one

writer speaks of “eigenthümliche Empfindungen im Schlunde”(12) as the

basis of the figure, he seems to come perilously near to resolving

inspiration into a nervous disease. All these representations go beyond a

fair construction of the prophet’s meaning. The act is purely symbolic.

The book has nothing to do with the subject‐matter of his prophecy, nor

does the eating of it mean anything more than the self‐surrender of the

prophet to his vocation as a vehicle of the word of Jehovah. The idea that

the word of God becomes a living power in the inner being of the prophet

is also expressed by Jeremiah when he speaks of it as a “burning fire shut

up in his bones” (Jer. xx. 9); and Ezekiel’s conception is similar.

Although he speaks as if he had once for all assimilated the word of God,

although he was conscious of a new power working within him, there is no

proof that he thought of the word of the Lord as dwelling in him otherwise

than as a spiritual impulse to utter the truth revealed to him from time

to time. That is the inspiration which all the prophets possess: “Jehovah

God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” (Amos iii. 8).

4. It was not to be expected that a prophet so practical in his aims as

Ezekiel should be left altogether without some indication of the end to be

accomplished by his work. The ordinary incentives to an arduous public

career have indeed been denied to him. He knows that his mission contains

no promise of a striking or an immediate success, that he will be

misjudged and opposed by nearly all who hear him, and that he will have to

pursue his course without appreciation or sympathy. It has been impressed

on him that to declare God’s message is an end in itself, a duty to be

discharged with no regard to its issues, “whether men hear or whether they

forbear.” Like Paul he recognises that “necessity is laid upon him” to

preach the word of God. But there is one word which reveals to him the way

in which his ministry is to be made effective in the working out of

Jehovah’s purpose with Israel. “Whether they hear or whether they forbear,

they shall know that a prophet hath been among them” (ii. 5). The

reference is mainly to the destruction of the nation which Ezekiel well

knew must form the chief burden of any true prophetic message delivered at

that time. He will be approved as a prophet, and recognised as what he is,

when his words are verified by the event. Does it seem a poor reward for

years of incessant contention with prejudice and unbelief? It was at all

events the only reward that was possible, but it was also to be the

beginning of better days. For these words have a wider significance than

their bearing on the prophet’s personal position.

It has been truly said that the preservation of the true religion after

the downfall of the nation depended on the fact that the event had been

clearly foretold. Two religions and two conceptions of God were then

struggling for the mastery in Israel. One was the religion of the

prophets, who set the moral holiness of Jehovah above every other

consideration, and affirmed that His righteousness must be vindicated even

at the cost of His people’s destruction. The other was the popular

religion which clung to the belief that Jehovah could not for any reason

abandon His people without ceasing to be God. This conflict of principles

reached its climax in the time of Ezekiel, and it also found its solution.

The destruction of Jerusalem cleared the issues. It was then seen that the

teaching of the prophets afforded the only possible explanation of the

course of events. The Jehovah of the opposite religion was proved to be a

figment of the popular imagination; and there was no alternative between

accepting the prophetic interpretation of history and resigning all faith

in the destiny of Israel. Hence the recognition of Ezekiel, the last of

the old order of prophets, who had carried their threatenings on to the

eve of their accomplishment, was really a great crisis of religion. It

meant the triumph of the only conception of God on which the hope of a

better future could be built. Although the people might still be far from

the state of heart in which Jehovah could remove His chastening hand, the

first condition of national repentance was given as soon as it was

perceived that there had been prophets among them who had declared the

purpose of Jehovah. The foundation was also laid for a more fruitful

development of Ezekiel’s activity. The word of the Lord had been in his

hands a power “to pluck up and to break down and to destroy” the old

Israel that would not know Jehovah; henceforward it was destined to “build

and plant” a new Israel inspired by a new ideal of holiness and a whole‐

hearted repugnance to every form of idolatry.

5. These then are the chief elements which enter into the remarkable

experience that made Ezekiel a prophet. Further disclosures of the nature

of his office were, however, necessary before he could translate his

vocation into a conscious plan of work. The departure of the theophany

appears to have left him in a state of mental prostration.(13) In

“bitterness and heat of spirit” he resumes his place amongst his fellow‐

captives at Tel‐abib, and sits among them like a man bewildered for seven

days. At the end of that time the effects of the ecstasy seem to pass

away, and more light breaks on him with regard to his mission. He realises

that it is to be largely a mission to individuals. He is appointed as a

watchman to the house of Israel, to warn the wicked from his way; and as

such he is held accountable for the fate of any soul that might miss the

way of life through failure of duty on his part.

It has been supposed that this passage (ch. iii. 16‐21) describes the

character of a short period of public activity, in which Ezekiel

endeavoured to act the part of a “reprover” (ver. 26) among the exiles.

This is considered to have been his first attempt to act on his

commission, and to have been continued until the prophet was convinced of

its hopelessness and in obedience to the divine command shut himself up in

his own house. But this view does not seem to be sufficiently borne out by

the terms of the narrative. The words rather represent a point of view

from which his whole ministry is surveyed, or an aspect of it which

possessed peculiar importance from the circumstances in which he was

placed. The idea of his position as a watchman responsible for individuals

may have been present to the prophet’s mind from the time of his call; but

the practical development of that idea was not possible until the

destruction of Jerusalem had prepared men’s minds to give heed to his

admonitions. Accordingly the second period of Ezekiel’s work opens with a

fuller statement of the principles indicated in this section (ch.

xxxiii.). We shall therefore defer the consideration of these principles

till we reach the stage of the prophet’s ministry at which their practical

significance emerges.

6. The last six verses of the third chapter may be regarded either as

closing the account of Ezekiel’s consecration or as the introduction to

the first part of his ministry, that which preceded the fall of Jerusalem.

They contain the description of a second trance, which appears to have

happened seven days after the first. The prophet seemed to himself to be

carried out in spirit to a certain plain near his residence in Tel‐abib.

There the glory of Jehovah appears to him precisely as he had seen it in

his former vision by the river Kebar. He then receives the command to shut

himself up within his house. He is to be like a man bound with ropes,

unable to move about among his fellow‐exiles. Moreover, the free use of

speech is to be interdicted; his tongue will be made to cleave to his

palate, so that he is as one “dumb.” But as often as he receives a message

from Jehovah his mouth will be opened that he may declare it to the

rebellious house of Israel.

Now if we compare ver. 26 with xxiv. 27 and xxxiii. 22, we find that this

state of intermittent dumbness continued till the day when the siege of

Jerusalem began, and was not finally removed till tidings were brought of

the capture of the city. The verses before us therefore throw light on the

prophet’s demeanour during the first half of his ministry. What they

signify is his almost entire withdrawal from public life. Instead of being

like his great predecessors, a man living full in the public view, and

thrusting himself on men’s notice when they least desired him, he is to

lead an isolated and a solitary life, a sign to the people rather than a

living voice.(14) From the sequel we gather that he excited sufficient

interest to induce the elders and others to visit him in his house to

inquire of Jehovah. We must also suppose that from time to time he emerged

from his retirement with a message for the whole community. It cannot,

indeed, be assumed that the chs. iv.‐xxiv. contain an exact reproduction

of the addresses delivered on these occasions. Few of them profess to have

been uttered in public, and for the most part they give the impression of

having been intended for patient study on the written page rather than for

immediate oratorical effect. There is no reason to doubt that in the main

they embody the results of Ezekiel’s prophetic experiences during the

period to which they are referred, although it may be impossible to

determine how far they were actually spoken at the time, and how far they

are merely written for the instruction of a wider audience.

The strong figures used here to describe this state of seclusion appear to

reflect the prophet’s consciousness of the restraints providentially

imposed on the exercise of his office. These restraints, however, were

moral, and not, as has sometimes been maintained, physical. The chief

element was the pronounced hostility and incredulity of the people. This,

combined with the sense of doom hanging over the nation, seems to have

weighed on the spirit of Ezekiel, and in the ecstatic state the incubus

lying upon him and paralysing his activity presents itself to his

imagination as if he were bound with ropes and afflicted with dumbness.

The representation finds a partial parallel in a later passage in the

prophet’s history. From ch. xxix. 21 (which is the latest prophecy in the

whole book) we learn that the apparent non‐fulfilment of his predictions

against Tyre had caused a similar hindrance to his public work, depriving

him of the boldness of speech characteristic of a prophet. And the opening

of the mouth given to him on that occasion by the vindication of his words

is clearly analogous to the removal of his silence by the news that

Jerusalem had fallen.(15)

PART II. PROPHECIES RELATING MAINLY TO THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

Chapter V. The End Foretold. Chapters iv.‐vii.

With the fourth chapter we enter on the exposition of the first great

division of Ezekiel’s prophecies. The chs. iv.‐xxiv. cover a period of

about four and a half years, extending from the time of the prophet’s call

to the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem. During this time Ezekiel’s

thoughts revolved round one great theme—the approaching judgment on the

city and the nation. Through contemplation of this fact there was

disclosed to him the outline of a comprehensive theory of divine

providence, in which the destruction of Israel was seen to be the

necessary consequence of her past history and a necessary preliminary to

her future restoration. The prophecies may be classified roughly under

three heads. In the first class are those which exhibit the judgment

itself in ways fitted to impress the prophet and his hearers with a

conviction of its certainty; a second class is intended to demolish the

illusions and false ideals which possessed the minds of the Israelites and

made the announcement of disaster incredible; and a third and very

important class expounds the moral principles which were illustrated by

the judgment, and which show it to be a divine necessity. In the passage

which forms the subject of the present lecture the bare fact and certainty

of the judgment are set forth in word and symbol and with a minimum of

commentary, although even here the conception which Ezekiel had formed of

the moral situation is clearly discernible.

I

The certainty of the national judgment seems to have been first impressed

on Ezekiel’s mind in the form of a singular series of symbolic acts which

he conceived himself to be commanded to perform. The peculiarity of these

signs is that they represent simultaneously two distinct aspects of the

nation’s fate—on the one hand the horrors of the siege of Jerusalem, and

on the other hand the state of exile which was to follow.(16)

That the destruction of Jerusalem should occupy the first place in the

prophet’s picture of national calamity requires no explanation. Jerusalem

was the heart and brain of the nation, the centre of its life and its

religion, and in the eyes of the prophets the fountain‐head of its sin.

The strength of her natural situation, the patriotic and religious

associations which had gathered round her, and the smallness of her

subject province gave to Jerusalem a unique position among the mother‐

cities of antiquity. And Ezekiel’s hearers knew what he meant when he

employed the picture of a beleaguered city to set forth the judgment that

was to overtake them. That crowning horror of ancient warfare, the siege

of a fortified town, meant in this case something more appalling to the

imagination than the ravages of pestilence and famine and sword. The fate

of Jerusalem represented the disappearance of everything that had

constituted the glory and excellence of Israel’s national existence. That

the light of Israel should be extinguished amidst the anguish and

bloodshed which must accompany an unsuccessful defence of the capital was

the most terrible element in Ezekiel’s message, and here he sets it in the

forefront of his prophecy.

The manner in which the prophet seeks to impress this fact on his

countrymen illustrates a peculiar vein of realism which runs through all

his thinking (ch. iv. 1‐3). Being at a distance from Jerusalem, he seems

to feel the need of some visible emblem of the doomed city before he can

adequately represent the import of his prediction. He is commanded to take

a brick and portray upon it a walled city, surrounded by the towers,

mounds, and battering‐rams which marked the usual operations of a

besieging army. Then he is to erect a plate of iron between him and the

city, and from behind this, with menacing gestures, he is as it were to

press on the siege. The meaning of the symbols is obvious. As the engines

of destruction appear on Ezekiel’s diagram, at the bidding of Jehovah, so

in due time the Chaldæan army will be seen from the walls of Jerusalem,

led by the same unseen Power which now controls the acts of the prophet.

In the last act Ezekiel exhibits the attitude of Jehovah Himself, cut off

from His people by the iron wall of an inexorable purpose which no prayer

could penetrate.

Thus far the prophet’s actions, however strange they may appear to us,

have been simple and intelligible. But at this point a second sign is as

it were superimposed on the first, in order to symbolise an entirely

different set of facts—the hardship and duration of the Exile (vv. 4‐8).

While still engaged in prosecuting the siege of the city, the prophet is

supposed to become at the same time the representative of the guilty

people and the victim of the divine judgment. He is to “bear their

iniquity”—that is, the punishment due to their sin. This is represented by

his lying bound on his left side for a number of days equal to the years

of Ephraim’s banishment, and then on his right side for a time

proportionate to the captivity of Judah. Now the time of Judah’s exile is

fixed at forty years, dating of course from the fall of the city. The

captivity of North Israel exceeds that of Judah by the interval between

the destruction of Samaria (722) and the fall of Jerusalem, a period which

actually measured about a hundred and thirty‐five years. In the Hebrew

text, however, the length of Israel’s captivity is given as three hundred

and ninety years—that is, it must have lasted for three hundred and fifty

years before that of Judah begins. This is obviously quite irreconcilable

with the facts of history, and also with the prophet’s intention. He

cannot mean that the banishment of the northern tribes was to be

protracted for two centuries after that of Judah had come to an end, for

he uniformly speaks of the restoration of the two branches of the nation

as simultaneous. The text of the Greek translation helps us past this

difficulty. The Hebrew manuscript from which that version was made had the

reading a “hundred and ninety” instead of “three hundred and ninety” in

ver. 5. This alone yields a satisfactory sense, and the reading of the

Septuagint is now generally accepted as representing what Ezekiel actually

wrote. There is still a slight discrepancy between the hundred and thirty‐

five years of the actual history and the hundred and fifty years expressed

by the symbol; but we must remember that Ezekiel is using round numbers

throughout, and moreover he has not as yet fixed the precise date of the

capture of Jerusalem when the last forty years are to commence.(17)

In the third symbol (vv. 9‐17) the two aspects of the judgment are again

presented in the closest possible combination. The prophet’s food and

drink during the days when he is imagined to be lying on his side

represents on the one hand, by its being small in quantity and carefully

weighed and measured, the rigours of famine in Jerusalem during the

siege—“Behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they

shall eat bread by weight, and with anxiety; and drink water by measure,

and with horror” (ver. 16); on the other hand, by its mixed ingredients

and by the fuel used in its preparation, it typifies the unclean religious

condition of the people when in exile—“Even so shall the children of

Israel eat their food unclean among the heathen” (ver. 13). The meaning of

this threat is best explained by a passage in the book of Hosea. Speaking

of the Exile, Hosea says: “They shall not remain in the land of Jehovah;

but the children of Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and shall eat unclean

food in Assyria. They shall pour out no wine to Jehovah, nor shall they

lay out their sacrifices for Him: like the food of mourners shall their

food be; all that eat thereof shall be defiled: for their bread shall only

satisfy their hunger; it shall not come into the house of Jehovah” (Hos.

ix. 3, 4). The idea is that all food which has not been consecrated by

being presented to Jehovah in the sanctuary is necessarily unclean, and

those who eat of it contract ceremonial defilement. In the very act of

satisfying his natural appetite a man forfeits his religious standing.

This was the peculiar hardship of the state of exile, that a man must

become unclean, he must eat unconsecrated food unless he renounced his

religion and served the gods of the land in which he dwelt. Between the

time of Hosea and Ezekiel these ideas may have been somewhat modified by

the introduction of the Deuteronomic law, which expressly permits secular

slaughter at a distance from the sanctuary. But this did not lessen the

importance of a legal sanctuary for the common life of an Israelite. The

whole of a man’s flocks and herds, the whole produce of his fields, had to

be sanctified by the presentation of firstlings and firstfruits at the

Temple before he could enjoy the reward of his industry with the sense of

standing in Jehovah’s favour. Hence the destruction of the sanctuary or

the permanent exclusion of the worshippers from it reduced the whole life

of the people to a condition of uncleanness which was felt to be as great

a calamity as was a papal interdict in the Middle Ages. This is the fact

which is expressed in the part of Ezekiel’s symbolism now before us. What

it meant for his fellow‐exiles was that the religious disability under

which they laboured was to be continued for a generation. The whole life

of Israel was to become unclean until its inward state was made worthy of

the religious privileges now to be withdrawn. At the same time no one

could have felt the penalty more severely than Ezekiel himself, in whom

habits of ceremonial purity had become a second nature. The repugnance

which he feels at the loathsome manner in which he was at first directed

to prepare his food, and the profession of his own practice in exile, as

well as the concession made to his scrupulous sense of propriety (vv.

14‐16), are all characteristic of one whose priestly training had made a

defect of ceremonial cleanness almost equivalent to a moral delinquency.

The last of the symbols (ch. v. 1‐4) represents the fate of the population

of Jerusalem when the city is taken. The shaving of the prophet’s head and

beard is a figure for the depopulation of the city and country. By a

further series of acts, whose meaning is obvious, he shows how a third of

the inhabitants shall die of famine and pestilence during the siege, a

third shall be slain by the enemy when the city is captured, while the

remaining third shall be dispersed among the nations. Even these shall be

pursued by the sword of vengeance until but a few numbered individuals

survive, and of them again a part passes through the fire. The passage

reminds us of the last verse of the sixth chapter of Isaiah, which was

perhaps in Ezekiel’s mind when he wrote: “And if a tenth still remain in

it [the land], it shall again pass through the fire: as a terebinth or an

oak whose stump is left at their felling: a holy seed shall be the stock

thereof” (Isa. vi. 13). At least the conception of a succession of sifting

judgments, leaving only a remnant to inherit the promise of the future, is

common to both prophets, and the symbol in Ezekiel is noteworthy as the

first expression of his steadfast conviction that further punishments were

in store for the exiles after the destruction of Jerusalem.

It is clear that these signs could never have been enacted, either in view

of the people or in solitude, as they are here described. It may be

doubted whether the whole description is not purely ideal, representing a

process which passed through the prophet’s mind, or was suggested to him

in the visionary state but never actually performed. That will always

remain a tenable view. An imaginary symbolic act is as legitimate a

literary device as an imaginary conversation. It is absurd to mix up the

question of the prophet’s truthfulness with the question whether he did or

did not actually do what he conceives himself as doing. The attempt to

explain his action by catalepsy would take us but a little way, even if

the arguments adduced in favour of it were stronger than they are. Since

even a cataleptic patient could not have tied himself down on his side or

prepared and eaten his food in that posture, it is necessary in any case

to admit that there must be a considerable, though indeterminate, element

of literary imagination in the account given of the symbols. It is not

impossible that some symbolic representation of the siege of Jerusalem may

have actually been the first act in Ezekiel’s ministry. In the

interpretation of the vision which immediately follows we shall find that

no notice is taken of the features which refer to exile, but only of those

which announce the siege of Jerusalem. It may therefore be the case that

Ezekiel did some such action as is here described, pointing to the fall of

Jerusalem, but that the whole was taken up afterwards in his imagination

and made into an ideal representation of the two great facts which formed

the burden of his earlier prophecy.

II

It is a relief to turn from this somewhat fantastic, though for its own

purpose effective, exhibition of prophetic ideas to the impassioned

oracles in which the doom of the city and the nation is pronounced. The

first of these (ch. v. 5‐17) is introduced here as the explanation of the

signs that have been described, in so far as they bear on the fate of

Jerusalem; but it has a unity of its own, and is a characteristic specimen

of Ezekiel’s oratorical style. It consists of two parts: the first (vv.

5‐10) deals chiefly with the reasons for the judgment on Jerusalem, and

the second (vv. 11‐17) with the nature of the judgment itself. The chief

thought of the passage is the unexampled severity of the punishment which

is in store for Israel, as represented by the fate of the capital. A

calamity so unprecedented demands an explanation as unique as itself.

Ezekiel finds the ground of it in the signal honour conferred on Jerusalem

in her being set in the midst of the nations, in the possession of a

religion which expressed the will of the one God, and in the fact that she

had proved herself unworthy of her distinction and privileges and tried to

live as the nations around. “This is Jerusalem which I have set in the

midst of the nations, with the lands round about her. But she rebelled

against My judgments wickedly(18) more than the nations, and My statutes

more than [other] lands round about her: for they rejected My judgments,

and in My statutes they did not walk.... Therefore thus saith the Lord

Jehovah: Behold, even I am against you; and I will execute in thy midst

judgments before the nations, and will do in thy case what I have not done

[heretofore], and what I shall not do the like of any more, according to

all thy abominations” (vv. 5‐9). The central position of Jerusalem is

evidently no figure of speech in the mouth of Ezekiel. It means that she

is so situated as to fulfil her destiny in the view of all the nations of

the world, who can read in her wonderful history the character of the God

who is above all gods. Nor can the prophet be fairly accused of

provincialism in thus speaking of Jerusalem’s unrivalled physical and

moral advantages. The mountain ridge on which she stood lay almost across

the great highways of communication between the East and the West, between

the hoary seats of civilisation and the lands whither the course of empire

took its way. Ezekiel knew that Tyre was the centre of the old world’s

commerce,(19) but he also knew that Jerusalem occupied a central situation

in the civilised world, and in that fact he rightly saw a providential

mark of the grandeur and universality of her religious mission. Her

calamities, too, were probably such as no other city experienced. The

terrible prediction of ver. 10, “Fathers shall eat sons in the midst of

thee, and sons shall eat fathers,” seems to have been literally fulfilled.

“The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were

their meat in the destruction of the daughter of My people” (Lam. iv. 10).

It is likely enough that the annals of Assyrian conquest cover many a tale

of woe which in point of mere physical suffering paralleled the atrocities

of the siege of Jerusalem. But no other nation had a conscience so

sensitive as Israel, or lost so much by its political annihilation. The

humanising influences of a pure religion had made Israel susceptible of a

kind of anguish which ruder communities were spared.

The sin of Jerusalem is represented after Ezekiel’s manner as on the one

hand transgression of the divine commandments, and on the other defilement

of the Temple through false worship. These are ideas which we shall

frequently meet in the course of the book, and they need not detain us

here. The prophet proceeds (vv. 11‐17) to describe in detail the

relentless punishment which the divine vengeance is to inflict on the

inhabitants and the city. The jealousy, the wrath, the indignation of

Jehovah, which are represented as “satisfied” by the complete destruction

of the people, belong to the limitations of the conception of God which

Ezekiel had. It was impossible at that time to interpret such an event as

the fall of Jerusalem in a religious sense otherwise than as a vehement

outburst of Jehovah’s anger, expressing the reaction of His holy nature

against the sin of idolatry. There is indeed a great distance between the

attitude of Ezekiel towards the hapless city and the yearning pity of

Christ’s lament over the sinful Jerusalem of His time. Yet the first was a

step towards the second. Ezekiel realised intensely that part of God’s

character which it was needful to enforce in order to beget in his

countrymen the deep horror at the sin of idolatry which characterised the

later Judaism. The best commentary on the latter part of this chapter is

found in those parts of the book of Lamentations which speak of the state

of the city and the survivors after its overthrow. There we see how

quickly the stern judgment produced a more chastened and beautiful type of

piety than had ever been prevalent before. Those pathetic utterances, in

which patriotism and religion are so finely blended, are like the timid

and tentative advances of a child’s heart towards a parent who has ceased

to punish but has not begun to caress. This and much else that is true and

ennobling in the later religion of Israel is rooted in the terrifying

sense of the divine anger against sin so powerfully represented in the

preaching of Ezekiel.

III

The next two chapters may be regarded as pendants to the theme which is

dealt with in this opening section of the book of Ezekiel. In the fourth

and fifth chapters the prophet had mainly the city in his eye as the focus

of the nation’s life; in the sixth he turns his eye to the land which had

shared the sin, and must suffer the punishment, of the capital. It is, in

its first part (vv. 2‐10), an apostrophe to the mountain land of Israel,

which seems to stand out before the exile’s mind with its mountains and

hills, its ravines and valleys, in contrast to the monotonous plain of

Babylonia which stretched around him. But these mountains were familiar to

the prophet as the seats of the rural idolatry in Israel. The word

_bāmah_, which means properly “the height,” had come to be used as the

name of an idolatrous sanctuary. These sanctuaries were probably

Canaanitish in origin; and although by Israel they had been consecrated to

the worship of Jehovah, yet He was worshipped there in ways which the

prophets pronounced hateful to Him. They had been destroyed by Josiah, but

must have been restored to their former use during the revival of

heathenism which followed his death. It is a lurid picture which rises

before the prophet’s imagination as he contemplates the judgment of this

provincial idolatry: the altars laid waste, the “sun‐pillars”(20) broken,

and the idols surrounded by the corpses of men who had fled to their

shrines for protection and perished at their feet. This demonstration of

the helplessness of the rustic divinities to save their sanctuaries and

their worshippers will be the means of breaking the rebellious heart and

the whorish eyes that had led Israel so far astray from her true Lord, and

will produce in exile the self‐loathing which Ezekiel always regards as

the beginning of penitence.

But the prophet’s passion rises to a higher pitch, and he hears the

command “Clap thy hands, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Aha for the

abominations of the house of Israel!” These are gestures and exclamations,

not of indignation, but of contempt and triumphant scorn. The same feeling

and even the same gestures are ascribed to Jehovah Himself in another

passage of highly charged emotion (ch. xxi. 17). And it is only fair to

remember that it is the anticipation of the victory of Jehovah’s cause

that fills the mind of the prophet at such moments and seems to deaden the

sense of human sympathy within him. At the same time the victory of

Jehovah was the victory of prophecy, and in so far Smend may be right in

regarding the words as throwing light on the intensity of the antagonism

in which prophecy and the popular religion then stood. The devastation of

the land is to be effected by the same instruments as were at work in the

destruction of the city: first the sword of the Chaldæans, then famine and

pestilence among those who escape, until the whole of Israel’s ancient

territory lies desolate from the southern steppes to Riblah in the

north.(21)

Ch. vii. is one of those singled out by Ewald as preserving most

faithfully the spirit and language of Ezekiel’s earlier utterances. Both

in thought and expression it exhibits a freedom and animation seldom

attained in Ezekiel’s writings, and it is evident that it must have been

composed under keen emotion. It is comparatively free from those

stereotyped phrases which are elsewhere so common, and the style falls at

times into the rhythm which is characteristic of Hebrew poetry. Ezekiel

hardly perhaps attains to perfect mastery of poetic form, and even here we

may be sensible of a lack of power to blend a series of impressions and

images into an artistic unity. The vehemence of his feeling hurries him

from one conception to another, without giving full expression to any, or

indicating clearly the connection that leads from one to the other. This

circumstance, and the corrupt condition of the text together, make the

chapter in some parts unintelligible, and as a whole one of the most

difficult in the book. In its present position it forms a fitting

conclusion to the opening section of the book. All the elements of the

judgment which have just been foretold are gathered up in one outburst of

emotion, producing a song of triumph in which the prophet seems to stand

in the uproar of the final catastrophe and exult amid the crash and wreck

of the old order which is passing away.

The passage is divided into five stanzas, which may originally have been

approximately equal in length, although the first is now nearly twice as

long as any of the others.(22)

i. Vv. 2‐9.—The first verse strikes the keynote of the whole poem; it is

the inevitableness and the finality of the approaching dissolution. A

striking phrase of Amos(23) is first taken up and expanded in accordance

with the anticipations with which the previous chapters have now

familiarised us: “An end is come, the end is come on the four skirts of

the land.” The poet already hears the tumult and confusion of the battle;

the vintage songs of the Judæan peasant are silenced, and with the din and

fury of war the day of the Lord draws near.

ii. Vv. 10‐13.—The prophet’s thoughts here revert to the present, and he

notes the eager interest with which men both in Judah and Babylon are

pursuing the ordinary business of life and the vain dreams of political

greatness. “The diadem flourishes, the sceptre blossoms, arrogance shoots

up.” These expressions must refer to the efforts of the new rulers of

Jerusalem to restore the fortunes of the nation and the glories of the old

kingdom which had been so greatly tarnished by the recent captivity.

Things are going bravely, they think; they are surprised at their own

success; they hope that the day of small things will grow into the day of

things greater than those which are past. The following verse is

untranslatable; probably the original words, if we could recover them,

would contain some pointed and scornful antithesis to these futile and

vain‐glorious anticipations. The allusion to “buyers and sellers” (ver.

12) may possibly be quite general, referring only to the absorbing

interest which men continue to take in their possessions, heedless of the

impending judgment.(24) But the facts that the advantage is assumed to be

on the side of the buyer and that the seller expects to return to his

heritage make it probable that the prophet is thinking of the forced sales

by the expatriated nobles of their estates in Palestine, and to their

deeply cherished resolve to right themselves when the time of their exile

is over. All such ambitions, says the prophet, are vain—“the seller shall

not return to what he sold, and a man shall not by wrong preserve his

living.” In any case Ezekiel evinces here, as elsewhere, a certain

sympathy with the exiled aristocracy, in opposition to the pretensions of

the new men who had succeeded to their honours.

iii. Vv. 14‐18.—The next scene that rises before the prophet’s vision is

the collapse of Judah’s military preparations in the hour of danger. Their

army exists but on paper. There is much blowing of trumpets and much

organising, but no men to go forth to battle. A blight rests on all their

efforts; their hands are paralysed and their hearts unnerved by the sense

that “wrath rests on all their pomp.” Sword, famine, and pestilence, the

ministers of Jehovah’s vengeance, shall devour the inhabitants of the city

and the country, until but a few survivors on the tops of the mountains

remain to mourn over the universal desolation.

iv. Vv. 19‐22.—At present the inhabitants of Jerusalem are proud of the

ill‐gotten and ill‐used wealth stored up within her, and doubtless the

exiles cast covetous eyes on the luxury which may still have prevailed

amongst the upper classes in the capital. But of what avail will all this

treasure be in the evil day now so near at hand? It will but add mockery

to their sufferings to be surrounded by gold and silver which can do

nothing to allay the pangs of hunger. It will be cast in the streets as

refuse, for it cannot save them in the day of Jehovah’s anger. Nay, more,

it will become the prize of the most ruthless of the heathen (the

Chaldæans); and when in the eagerness of their lust for gold they ransack

the Temple treasury and so desecrate the Holy Place, Jehovah will avert

His face and suffer them to work their will. The curse of Jehovah rests on

the silver and gold of Jerusalem, which has been used for the making of

idolatrous images, and now is made to them an unclean thing.

v. Vv. 23‐27.—The closing strophe contains a powerful description of the

dismay and despair that will seize all classes in the state as the day of

wrath draws near. Calamity after calamity comes, rumour follows hard on

rumour, and the heads of the nation are distracted and cease to exercise

the functions of leadership. The recognised guides of the people—the

prophets, the priests, and the wise men—have no word of counsel or

direction to offer; the prophet’s vision, the priest’s traditional lore,

and the wise man’s sagacity are alike at fault. So the king and the

grandees are filled with stupefaction; and the common people, deprived of

their natural leaders, sit down in helpless dejection. Thus shall

Jerusalem be recompensed according to her doings. “The land is full of

bloodshed, and the city of violence”; and in the correspondence between

desert and retribution men shall be made to acknowledge the operation of

the divine righteousness. “They shall know that I am Jehovah.”

IV

It may be useful at this point to note certain theological principles

which already begin to appear in this earliest of Ezekiel’s prophecies.

Reflection on the nature and purpose of the divine dealings we have seen

to be a characteristic of his work; and even those passages which we have

considered, although chiefly devoted to an enforcement of the fact of

judgment, present some features of the conception of Israel’s history

which had been formed in his mind.

1. We observe in the first place that the prophet lays great stress on the

world‐wide significance of the events which are to befall Israel. This

thought is not as yet developed, but it is clearly present. The relation

between Jehovah and Israel is so peculiar that He is known to the nations

in the first instance only as Israel’s God, and thus His being and

character have to be learned from His dealings with His own people. And

since Jehovah is the only true God and must be worshipped as such

everywhere, the history of Israel has an interest for the world such as

that of no other nation has. She was placed in the centre of the nations

in order that the knowledge of God might radiate from her through all the

world; and now that she has proved unfaithful to her mission, Jehovah must

manifest His power and His character by an unexampled work of judgment.

Even the destruction of Israel is a demonstration to the universal

conscience of mankind of what true divinity is.

2. But the judgment has of course a purpose and a meaning for Israel

herself, and both purposes are summed up in the recurring formula “Ye

[they] shall know that I am Jehovah,” or “that I, Jehovah, have spoken.”

These two phrases express precisely the same idea, although from slightly

different starting‐points. It is assumed that Jehovah’s personality is to

be identified by His word spoken through the prophets. He is known to men

through the revelation of Himself in the prophets’ utterances. “Ye shall

know that I, Jehovah, have spoken” means therefore, Ye shall know that it

is I, the God of Israel and the Ruler of the universe, who speak these

things. In other words, the harmony between prophecy and providence

guarantees the source of the prophet’s message. The shorter phrase “Ye

shall know that I am Jehovah” may mean Ye shall know that I who now speak

am truly Jehovah, the God of Israel. The prejudices of the people would

have led them to deny that the power which dictated Ezekiel’s prophecy

could be their God; but this denial, together with the false idea of

Jehovah on which it rests, shall be destroyed for ever when the prophet’s

words come true.

There is of course no doubt that Ezekiel conceived Jehovah as endowed with

the plenitude of deity, or that in his view the name expressed all that we

mean by the word God. Nevertheless, historically the name Jehovah is a

proper name, denoting the God who is the God of Israel. Renan has ventured

on the assertion that a deity with a proper name is necessarily a false

god. The statement perhaps measures the difference between the God of

revealed religion and the god who is an abstraction, an expression of the

order of the universe, who exists only in the mind of the man who names

him. The God of revelation is a living person, with a character and will

of His own, capable of being known by man. It is the distinction of

revelation that it dares to regard God as an individual with an inner life

and nature of His own, independent of the conception men may form of Him.

Applied to such a Being, a personal name may be as true and significant as

the name which expresses the character and individuality of a man. Only

thus can we understand the historical process by which the God who was

first manifested as the deity of a particular nation preserves His

personal identity with the God who in Christ is at last revealed as the

God of the spirits of all flesh. The knowledge of Jehovah of which Ezekiel

speaks is therefore at once a knowledge of the character of the God whom

Israel professed to serve, and a knowledge of that which constitutes true

and essential divinity.(25)

3. The prophet, in ch. vi. 8‐10, proceeds one step further in delineating

the effect of the judgment on the minds of the survivors. The fascination

of idolatry for the Israelites is conceived as produced by that radical

perversion of the religious sense which the prophets call “whoredom”—a

sensuous delight in the blessings of nature, and an indifference to the

moral element which can alone preserve either religion or human love from

corruption. The spell shall at last be broken in the new knowledge of

Jehovah which is produced by calamity; and the heart of the people,

purified from its delusions, shall turn to Him who has smitten them, as

the only true God. “When your fugitives from the sword are among the

nations, when they are scattered through the lands, then shall your

fugitives remember Me amongst the nations whither they have been carried

captive, when I break their heart that goes awhoring from Me, and their

whorish eyes which went after their idols.” When the idolatrous propensity

is thus eradicated, the conscience of Israel will turn inwards on itself,

and in the light of its new knowledge of God will for the first time read

its own history aright. The beginnings of a new spiritual life will be

made in the bitter self‐condemnation which is one side of the national

repentance. “They shall loathe themselves for all the evil that they have

committed in all their abominations.”

Chapter VI. Your House Is Left Unto You Desolate. Chapters viii.‐xi.

One of the most instructive phases of religious belief among the

Israelites of the seventh century was the superstitious regard in which

the Temple at Jerusalem was held. Its prestige as the metropolitan

sanctuary had no doubt steadily increased from the time when it was built.

But it was in the crisis of the Assyrian invasion that the popular

sentiment in favour of its peculiar sanctity was transmuted into a

fanatical faith in its inherent inviolability. It is well known that

during the whole course of this invasion the prophet Isaiah had

consistently taught that the enemy should never set foot within the

precincts of the Holy City—that, on the contrary, the attempt to seize it

would prove to be the signal for his annihilation. The striking fulfilment

of this prediction in the sudden destruction of Sennacherib’s army had an

immense effect on the religion of the time. It restored the faith in

Jehovah’s omnipotence which was already giving way, and it granted a new

lease of life to the very errors which it ought to have extinguished. For

here, as in so many other cases, what was a spiritual faith in one

generation became a superstition in the next. Indifferent to the divine

truths which gave meaning to Isaiah’s prophecy, the people changed his

sublime faith in the living God working in history into a crass confidence

in the material symbol which had been the means of expressing it to their

minds. Henceforth it became a fundamental tenet of the current creed that

the Temple and the city which guarded it could never fall into the hands

of an enemy; and any teaching which assailed that belief was felt to

undermine confidence in the national deity. In the time of Jeremiah and

Ezekiel this superstition existed in unabated vigour, and formed one of

the greatest hindrances to the acceptance of their teaching. “The Temple

of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these!”

was the cry of the benighted worshippers as they thronged to its courts to

seek the favour of Jehovah (Jer. vii. 4). The same state of feeling must

have prevailed among Ezekiel’s fellow‐exiles. To the prophet himself,

attached as he was to the worship of the Temple, it may have been a

thought almost too hard to bear that Jehovah should abandon the only place

of His legitimate worship. Amongst the rest of the captives the faith in

its infallibility was one of the illusions which must be overthrown before

their minds could perceive the true drift of his teaching. In his first

prophecy the fact had just been touched on, but merely as an incident in

the fall of Jerusalem. About a year later, however, he received a new

revelation, in which he learned that the destruction of the Temple was no

mere incidental consequence of the capture of the city, but a main object

of the calamity. The time was come when judgment must begin at the house

of God.

The weird vision in which this truth was conveyed to the prophet is said

to have occurred during a visit of the elders to Ezekiel in his own house.

In their presence he fell into a trance, in which the events now to be

considered passed before him; and after the trance was removed he

recounted the substance of the vision to the exiles. This statement has

been somewhat needlessly called in question, on the ground that after so

protracted an ecstasy the prophet would not be likely to find his visitors

still in their places. But this matter‐of‐fact criticism overreaches

itself. We have no means of determining how long it would take for this

series of events to be realised. If we may trust anything to the analogy

of dreams—and of all conditions to which ordinary men are subject the

dream is surely the closest analogy to the prophetic ecstasy—the whole may

have passed in an incredibly short space of time. If the statement were

untrue, it is difficult to see what Ezekiel would have gained by making

it. If the whole vision were a fiction, this must of course be fictitious

too; but even so it seems a very superfluous piece of invention.

We prefer, therefore, to regard the vision as real, and the assigned

situation as historical; and the fact that it is recorded suggests that

there must be some connection between the object of the visit and the

burden of the revelation which was then communicated. It is not difficult

to imagine points of contact between them. Ewald has conjectured that the

occasion of the visit may have been some recent tidings from Jerusalem

which had opened the eyes of the “elders” to the real relation that

existed between them and their brethren at home. If they had ever

cherished any illusions on the point, they had certainly been disabused of

them before Ezekiel had this vision. They were aware, whether the

information was recent or not, that they were absolutely disowned by the

new authorities in Jerusalem, and that it was impossible that they should

ever come back peaceably to their old place in the state. This created a

problem which they could not solve, and the fact that Ezekiel had

announced the fall of Jerusalem may have formed a bond of sympathy between

him and his brethren in exile which drew them to him in their perplexity.

Some such hypothesis gives at all events a fuller significance to the

closing part of the vision, where the attitude of the men in Jerusalem is

described, and where the exiles are taught that the hope of Israel’s

future lies with them. It is the first time that Ezekiel has distinguished

between the fates in store for the two sections of the people, and it

would almost appear as if the promotion of the exiles to the first place

in the true Israel was a new revelation to him. Twice during this vision

he is moved to intercede for the “remnant of Israel,” as if the only hope

of a new people of God lay in sparing at least some of those who were left

in the land. But the burden of the message that now comes to him is that

in the spiritual sense the true remnant of Israel is not in Judæa, but

among the exiles in Babylon. It was there that the new Israel was to be

formed, and the land was to be the heritage, not of those who clung to it

and exulted in the misfortunes of their banished brethren, but of those

who under the discipline of exile were first prepared to use the land as

Jehovah’s holiness demanded.

The vision is interesting, in the first place, on account of the glimpse

it affords of the state of mind prevailing in influential circles in

Jerusalem at this time. There is no reason whatever to doubt that here in

the form of a vision we have reliable information regarding the actual

state of matters when Ezekiel wrote. It has been supposed by some critics

that the description of the idolatries in the Temple does not refer to

contemporary practices, but to abuses that had been rife in the days of

Manasseh and had been put a stop to by Josiah’s reformation. But the

vision loses half its meaning if it is taken as merely an idealised

representation of all the sins that had polluted the Temple in the course

of its history. The names of those who are seen must be names of living

men known to Ezekiel and his contemporaries, and the sentiments put in

their mouth, especially in the latter part of the vision, are suitable

only to the age in which he lived. It is very probable that the

description in its general features would _also_ apply to the days of

Manasseh; but the revival of idolatry which followed the death of Josiah

would naturally take the form of a restoration of the illegal cults which

had flourished unchecked under his grandfather. Ezekiel’s own experience

before his captivity, and the steady intercourse which had been maintained

since, would supply him with the material which in the ecstatic condition

is wrought up into this powerful picture.

The thing that surprises us most is the prevailing conviction amongst the

ruling classes that “Jehovah had forsaken the land.” These men seem to

have partly emancipated themselves, as politicians in Israel were apt to

do, from the restraints and narrowness of the popular religion. To them it

was a conceivable thing that Jehovah should abandon His people. And yet

life was worth living and fighting for apart from Jehovah. It was of

course a merely selfish life, not inspired by national ideals, but simply

a clinging to place and power. The wish was father to the thought; men who

so readily yielded to the belief in Jehovah’s absence were very willing to

be persuaded of its truth. The religion of Jehovah had always imposed a

check on social and civic wrong, and men whose power rested on violence

and oppression could not but rejoice to be rid of it. So they seem to have

acquiesced readily enough in the conclusion to which so many circumstances

seemed to point, that Jehovah had ceased to interest Himself either for

good or evil in them and their affairs. Still, the wide acceptance of a

belief like this, so repugnant to all the religious ideas of the ancient

world, seems to require for its explanation some fact of contemporary

history. It has been thought that it arose from the disappearance of the

ark of Jehovah from the Temple. It seems from the third chapter of

Jeremiah that the ark was no longer in existence in Josiah’s reign, and

that the want of it was felt as a grave religious loss. It is not

improbable that this circumstance, in connection with the disasters which

had marked the last days of the kingdom, led in many minds to the fear and

in some to the hope that along with His most venerable symbol Jehovah

Himself had vanished from their midst.

It should be noticed that the feeling described was only one of several

currents that ran in the divided society of Jerusalem. It is quite a

different point of view that is presented in the taunt quoted in ch. xi.

15, that the exiles were far from Jehovah, and had therefore lost their

right to their possessions. But the religious despair is not only the most

startling fact that we have to look at; it is also the one that is made

most prominent in the vision. And the divine answer to it given through

Ezekiel is that the conviction is true; Jehovah _has_ forsaken the land.

But in the first place the cause of His departure is found in those very

practices for which it was made the excuse; and in the second, although He

has ceased to dwell in the midst of His people, He has lost neither the

power nor the will to punish their iniquities. To impress these truths

first on his fellow‐exiles and then on the whole nation is the chief

object of the chapter before us.

Now we find that the general sense of God‐forsakenness expressed itself

principally in two directions. On the one hand it led to the

multiplication of false objects of worship to supply the place of Him who

was regarded as the proper tutelary Divinity of Israel; on the other hand

it produced a reckless, devil‐may‐care spirit of resistance against any

odds, such as was natural to men who had only material interests to fight

for, and nothing to trust in but their own right hand. Syncretism in

religion and fatalism in politics—these were the twin symptoms of the

decay of faith among the upper classes in Jerusalem. But these belong to

two different parts of the vision which we must now distinguish.

I

The first part deals with the departure of Jehovah as caused by religious

offences perpetrated in the Temple, and with the return of Jehovah to

destroy the city on account of these offences. The prophet is transported

in “visions of God” to Jerusalem, and placed in the outer court near the

northern gate, outside of which was the site where the “image of Jealousy”

had stood in the time of Manasseh. Near him stands the appearance which he

had learned to recognise as the glory of Jehovah, signifying that Jehovah

has, for a purpose not yet disclosed, revisited His Temple. But first

Ezekiel must be made to see the state of things which exists in this

Temple which had once been the seat of God’s presence. Looking through the

gate to the north, he discovers that the image of Jealousy(26) has been

restored to its old place. This is the first and apparently the least

heinous of the abominations that defiled the sanctuary.

The second scene is the only one of the four which represents a secret

cult. Partly perhaps for that reason it strikes our minds as the most

repulsive of all; but that was obviously not Ezekiel’s estimate of it.

There are greater abominations to follow. It is difficult to understand

the particulars of Ezekiel’s description, especially in the Hebrew text

(the LXX. is simpler); but it seems impossible to escape the impression

that there was something obscene in a worship where idolatry appears as

ashamed of itself. The essential fact, however, is that the very highest

and most influential men in the land were addicted to a form of

heathenism, whose objects of worship were pictures of “horrid creeping

things, and cattle, and all the gods of the house of Israel.” The name of

one of these men, the leader in this superstition, is given, and is

significant of the state of life in Jerusalem shortly before its fall.

Jaazaniah was the son of Shaphan, who is probably identical with the

chancellor of Josiah’s reign whose sympathy with the prophetic teaching

was evinced by his zeal in the cause of reform. We read of other members

of the family who were faithful to the national religion, such as his son

Ahikam, also a zealous reformer, and his grandson Gedaliah, Jeremiah’s

friend and patron, and the governor appointed over Judah by Nebuchadnezzar

after the taking of the city. The family was thus divided both in religion

and politics. While one branch was devoted to the worship of Jehovah and

favoured submission to the king of Babylon, Jaazaniah belonged to the

opposite party and was the ringleader in a peculiarly obnoxious form of

idolatry.(27)

The third “abomination” is a form of idolatry widely diffused over Western

Asia—the annual mourning for Tammuz. Tammuz was originally a Babylonian

deity (Dumuzi), but his worship is specially identified with Phœnicia,

whence under the name Adonis it was introduced into Greece. The mourning

celebrates the death of the god, which is an emblem of the decay of the

earth’s productive powers, whether due to the scorching heat of the sun or

to the cold of winter. It seems to have been a comparatively harmless rite

of nature‐religion, and its popularity among the women of Jerusalem at

this time may be due to the prevailing mood of despondency which found

vent in the sympathetic contemplation of that aspect of nature which most

suggests decay and death.

The last and greatest of the abominations practised in and near the Temple

is the worship of the sun. The peculiar enormity of this species of

idolatry can hardly lie in the object of adoration; it is to be sought

rather in the place where it was practised, and in the rank of those who

took part in it, who were probably priests. Standing between the porch and

the altar, with their backs to the Temple, these men unconsciously

expressed the deliberate rejection of Jehovah which was involved in their

idolatry. The worship of the heavenly bodies was probably imported into

Israel from Assyria and Babylon, and its prevalence in the later years of

the monarchy was due to political rather than religious influences. The

gods of these imperial nations were esteemed more potent than those of the

states which succumbed to their power, and hence men who were losing

confidence in their national deity naturally sought to imitate the

religions of the most powerful peoples known to them.(28)

In the arrangement of the four specimens of the religious practices which

prevailed in Jerusalem, Ezekiel seems to proceed from the most familiar

and explicable to the more outlandish defections from the purity of the

national faith. At the same time his description shows how different

classes of society were implicated in the sin of idolatry—the elders, the

women, and the priests. During all this time the glory of Jehovah has

stood in the court, and there is something very impressive in the picture

of these infatuated men and women preoccupied with their unholy devotions

and all unconscious of the presence of Him whom they deemed to have

forsaken the land. To the open eye of the prophet the meaning of the

vision must be already clear, but the sentence comes from the mouth of

Jehovah Himself: “Hast thou seen, Son of man? Is it too small a thing for

the house of Judah to practise the abominations which they have here

practised, that they must also fill the land with violence, and [so]

provoke Me again to anger? So will I act towards them in anger: My eye

shall not pity, nor will I spare” (ch. viii. 17, 18).

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

The last words introduce the account of the punishment of Jerusalem, which

is given of course in the symbolic form suggested by the scenery of the

vision. Jehovah has meanwhile risen from His throne near the cherubim, and

stands on the threshold of the Temple. There He summons to His side the

destroyers who are to execute His purpose—six angels, each with a weapon

of destruction in his hand. A seventh of higher rank clothed in linen

appears with the implements of a scribe in his girdle. These stand “beside

the brazen altar,” and await the commands of Jehovah. The first act of the

judgment is a massacre of the inhabitants of the city, without distinction

of age or rank or sex. But, in accordance with his strict view of the

divine righteousness, Ezekiel is led to conceive of this last judgment as

discriminating carefully between the righteous and the wicked. All those

who have inwardly separated themselves from the guilt of the city by

hearty detestation of the iniquities perpetrated in its midst are

distinguished by a mark on their foreheads before the work of slaughter

begins. What became of this faithful remnant it does not belong to the

vision to declare. Beginning with the twenty men before the porch, the

destroying angels follow the man with the inkhorn through the streets of

the city, and slay all on whom he has not set his mark. When the

messengers have gone out on their dread errand, Ezekiel, realising the

full horror of a scene which he dare not describe, falls prostrate before

Jehovah, deprecating the outbreak of indignation which threatened to

extinguish “the remnant of Israel.” He is reassured by the declaration

that the guilt of Judah and Israel demands no less a punishment than this,

because the notion that Jehovah had forsaken the land had opened the

floodgates of iniquity, and filled the land with bloodshed and the city

with oppression. Then the man in the linen robes returns and announces,

“It is done as Thou hast commanded.”

The second act of the judgment is the destruction of Jerusalem by fire.

This is symbolised by the scattering over the city of burning coals taken

from the altar‐hearth under the throne of God. The man with the linen

garments is directed to step between the wheels and take out fire for this

purpose. The description of the execution of this order is again carried

no further than what actually takes place before the prophet’s eyes: the

man took the fire and went out. In the place where we might have expected

to have an account of the destruction of the city, we have a second

description of the appearance and motions of the _merkaba_, the purpose of

which it is difficult to divine. Although it deviates slightly from the

account in ch. i., the differences appear to have no significance, and

indeed it is expressly said to be the same phenomenon. The whole passage

is certainly superfluous, and might be omitted but for the difficulty of

imagining any motive that would have tempted a scribe to insert it. We

must keep in mind the possibility that this part of the book had been

committed to writing before the final redaction of Ezekiel’s prophecies,

and the description in vv. 8‐17 may have served a purpose there which is

superseded by the fuller narrative which we now possess in ch. i.

In this way Ezekiel penetrates more deeply into the inner meaning of the

judgment on city and people whose external form he had announced in his

earlier prophecy. It must be admitted that Jehovah’s strange work bears to

our minds a more appalling aspect when thus presented in symbols than the

actual calamity would bear when effected through the agency of second

causes. Whether it had the same effect on the mind of a Hebrew, who hardly

believed in second causes, is another question. In any case it gives no

ground for the charge made against Ezekiel of dwelling with a malignant

satisfaction on the most repulsive features of a terrible picture. He is

indeed capable of a rigorous logic in exhibiting the incidence of the law

of retribution which was to him the necessary expression of the divine

righteousness. That it included the death of every sinner and the

overthrow of a city that had become a scene of violence and cruelty was to

him a self‐evident truth, and more than this the vision does not teach. On

the contrary, it contains traits which tend to moderate the inevitable

harshness of the truth conveyed. With great reticence it allows the

execution of the judgment to take place behind the scenes, giving only

those details which were necessary to suggest its nature. Whilst it is

being carried out the attention of the reader is engaged in the presence

of Jehovah, or his mind is occupied with the principles which made the

punishment a moral necessity. The prophet’s expostulations with Jehovah

show that he was not insensible to the miseries of his people, although he

saw them to be inevitable. Further, this vision shows as clearly as any

passage in his writings the injustice of the view which represents him as

more concerned for petty details of ceremonial than for the great moral

interests of a nation. If any feeling expressed in the vision is to be

regarded as Ezekiel’s own, then indignation against outrages on human life

and liberty must be allowed to weigh more with him than offences against

ritual purity. And, finally, it is clearly one object of the vision to

show that in the destruction of Jerusalem no individual shall be involved

who is not also implicated in the guilt which calls down wrath upon her.

II

The second part of the vision (ch. xi.) is but loosely connected with the

first. Here Jerusalem still exists, and men are alive who must certainly

have perished in the “visitation of the city” if the writer had still kept

himself within the limits of his previous conception. But in truth the two

have little in common, except the Temple, which is the scene of both, and

the cherubim, whose movements mark the transition from the one to the

other. The glory of Jehovah is already departing from the house when it is

stayed at the entrance of the east gate to give the prophet his special

message to the exiles.

Here we are introduced to the more political aspect of the situation in

Jerusalem. The twenty‐five men who are gathered in the east gate of the

Temple are clearly the leading statesmen in the city; and two of them,

whose names are given, are expressly designated as “princes of the

people.” They are apparently met in conclave to deliberate on public

matters, and a word from Jehovah lays open to the prophet the nature of

their projects. “These are the men that plan ruin, and hold evil counsel

in this city.” The evil counsel is undoubtedly the project of rebellion

against the king of Babylon which must have been hatched at this time and

which broke out into open revolt about three years later. The counsel was

evil because directly opposed to that which Jeremiah was giving at the

time in the name of Jehovah. But Ezekiel also throws invaluable light on

the mood of the men who were urging the king along the path which led to

ruin. “Are not the houses recently built?”(29) they say, congratulating

themselves on their success in repairing the damage done to the city in

the time of Jehoiachin. The image of the pot and the flesh is generally

taken to express the feeling of easy security in the fortifications of

Jerusalem with which these light‐hearted politicians embarked on a contest

with Nebuchadnezzar. But their mood must be a gloomier one than that if

there is any appropriateness in the language they use. To stew in their

own juice, and over a fire of their own kindling, could hardly seem a

desirable policy to sane men, however strong the pot might be. These

councillors are well aware of the dangers they incur, and of the misery

which their purpose must necessarily bring on the people. But they are

determined to hazard everything and endure everything on the chance that

the city may prove strong enough to baffle the resources of the king of

Babylon. Once the fire is kindled, it will certainly be better to be in

the pot than in the fire; and so long as Jerusalem holds out they will

remain behind her walls. The answer which is put into the prophet’s mouth

is that the issue will not be such as they hope for. The only “flesh” that

will be left in the city will be the dead bodies of those who have been

slain within her walls by the very men who hope that their lives will be

given them for a prey. They themselves shall be dragged forth to meet

their fate far away from Jerusalem on the “borders of Israel.” It is not

unlikely that these conspirators kept their word. Although the king and

all the men of war fled from the city as soon as a breach was made, we

read of certain high officials who allowed themselves to be taken in the

city (Jer. lii. 7). Ezekiel’s prophecy was in their case literally

fulfilled; for these men and many others were brought to the king of

Babylon at Riblah, “and he smote them and put them to death at Riblah in

the land of Hamath.”

While Ezekiel was uttering this prophecy one of the councillors, named

Pelatiah, suddenly fell down dead. Whether a man of this name had suddenly

died in Jerusalem under circumstances that had deeply impressed the

prophet’s mind, or whether the death belongs to the vision, it is

impossible for us to tell. To Ezekiel the occurrence seemed an earnest of

the complete destruction of the remnant of Israel by the wrath of God,

and, as before, he fell on his face to intercede for them. It is then that

he receives the message which seems to form the divine answer to the

perplexities which haunted the minds of the exiles in Babylon.

In their attitude towards the exiles the new leaders in Jerusalem took up

a position as highly privileged religious persons, quite at variance with

the scepticism which governed their conduct at home. When they were

following the bent of their natural inclinations by practising idolatry

and perpetrating judicial murders in the city, their cry was, “Jehovah

hath forsaken the land; Jehovah seeth it not.” When they were eager to

justify their claim to the places and possessions left vacant by their

banished countrymen, they said, “They are far from Jehovah: to us the land

is given in possession.” They were probably equally sincere and equally

insincere in both professions. They had simply learned the art which comes

easily to men of the world of using religion as a cloak for greed, and

throwing it off when greed could be best gratified without it. The idea

which lay under their religious attitude was that the exiles had gone into

captivity because their sins had incurred Jehovah’s anger, and that now

His wrath was exhausted and the blessing of His favour would rest on those

who had been left in the land. There was sufficient plausibility in the

taunt to make it peculiarly galling to the mind of the exiles, who had

hoped to exercise some influence over the government in Jerusalem, and to

find their places kept for them when they should be permitted to return.

It may well have been the resentment produced by tidings of this hostility

towards them in Jerusalem that brought their elders to the house of

Ezekiel to see if he had not some message from Jehovah to reassure them.

In the mind of Ezekiel, however, the problem took another form. To him a

return to the old Jerusalem had no meaning; neither buyer nor seller

should have cause to congratulate himself on his position. The possession

of the land of Israel belonged to those in whom Jehovah’s ideal of the new

Israel was realised, and the only question of religious importance was,

Where is the germ of this new Israel to be found? Amongst those who

survive the judgment in the old land, or amongst those who have

experienced it in the form of banishment? On this point the prophet

receives an explicit revelation in answer to his intercession for “the

remnant of Israel.” “Son of man, thy brethren, thy brethren, thy fellow‐

captives, and the whole house of Israel of whom the inhabitants of

Jerusalem have said, They are far from Jehovah: to us it is given—the land

for an inheritance!... Because I have removed them far among the nations,

and have scattered them among the lands, and have been to them but little

of a sanctuary in the lands where they have gone, therefore say, Thus

saith Jehovah, so will I gather you from the peoples, and bring you from

the lands where ye have been scattered, and will give you the land of

Israel.” The difficult expression “I have been but little of a sanctuary”

refers to the curtailment of religious privileges and means of access to

Jehovah which was a necessary consequence of exile. It implies, however,

that Israel in banishment had learned in some measure to preserve that

separation from other peoples and that peculiar relation to Jehovah which

constituted its national holiness. Religion perhaps perishes sooner from

the overgrowth of ritual than from its deficiency. It is an historical

fact that the very meagreness of the religion which could be practised in

exile was the means of strengthening the more spiritual and permanent

elements which constitute the essence of religion. The observances which

could be maintained apart from the Temple acquired an importance which

they never afterwards lost; and although some of these, such as

circumcision, the Passover, the abstinence from forbidden food, were

purely ceremonial, others, such as prayer, reading of the Scriptures, and

the common worship of the synagogue, represent the purest and most

indispensable forms in which communion with God can find expression. That

Jehovah Himself became even in small measure what the word “sanctuary”

denotes indicates an enrichment of the religious consciousness of which

perhaps Ezekiel himself did not perceive the full import.

The great lesson which Ezekiel’s message seeks to impress on his hearers

is that the tenure of the land of Israel depends on religious conditions.

The land is Jehovah’s, and He bestows it on those who are prepared to use

it as His holiness demands. A pure land inhabited by a pure people is the

ideal that underlies all Ezekiel’s visions of the future. It is evident

that in such a conception of the relation between God and His people

ceremonial conditions must occupy a conspicuous place. The sanctity of the

land is necessarily of a ceremonial order, and so the sanctity of the

people must consist partly in a scrupulous regard for ceremonial

requirements. But after all the condition of the land with respect to

purity or uncleanness only reflects the character of the nation whose home

it is. The things that defile a land are such things as idols and other

emblems of heathenism, innocent blood unavenged, and unnatural crimes of

various kinds. These things derive their whole significance from the state

of mind and heart which they embody; they are the plain and palpable

emblems of human sin. It is conceivable that to some minds the outward

emblems may have seemed the true seat of evil, and their removal an end in

itself apart from the direction of the will by which it was brought about.

But it would be a mistake to charge Ezekiel with any such obliquity of

moral vision. Although he conceives sin as a defilement that leaves its

mark on the material world, he clearly teaches that its essence lies in

the opposition of the human will to the will of God. The ceremonial purity

required of every Israelite is only the expression of certain aspects of

Jehovah’s holy nature, the bearing of which on man’s spiritual life may

have been obscure to the prophet, and is still more obscure to us. And the

truly valuable element in compliance with such rules was the obedience to

Jehovah’s expressed will which flowed from a nature in sympathy with His.

Hence in this chapter, while the first thing that the restored exiles have

to do is to cleanse the land of its abominations, this act will be the

expression of a nature radically changed, doing the will of God from the

heart. As the emblems of idolatry that defile the land were the outcome of

an irresistible national tendency to evil, so the new and sensitive

spirit, taking on the impress of Jehovah’s holiness through the law, shall

lead to the purification of the land from those things that had provoked

the eyes of His glory. “They shall come thither, and remove thence all its

detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them another

heart, and put a new spirit within them. I will take away the stony heart

from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh: that they may walk in My

statutes, and keep My judgments, and do them: and so shall they be My

people, and I will be their God” (ch. xi. 18‐20).

Thus in the mind of the prophet Jerusalem and its Temple are already

virtually destroyed. He seemed to linger in the Temple court until he saw

the chariot of Jehovah withdrawn from the city as a token that the glory

had departed from Israel. Then the ecstasy passed away, and he found

himself in the presence of the men to whom the hope of the future had been

offered, but who were as yet unworthy to receive it.

Chapter VII. The End Of The Monarchy. Chapters xii. 1‐15, xvii., xix.

In spite of the interest excited by Ezekiel’s prophetic appearances, the

exiles still received his prediction of the fall of Jerusalem with the

most stolid incredulity. It proved to be an impossible task to disabuse

their minds of the prepossessions which made such an event absolutely

incredible. True to their character as a disobedient house, they had “eyes

to see, and saw not; and ears to hear, but heard not” (ch. xii. 2). They

were intensely interested in the strange signs he performed, and listened

with pleasure to his fervid oratory; but the inner meaning of it all never

sank into their minds. Ezekiel was well aware that the cause of this

obtuseness lay in the false ideals which nourished an overweening

confidence in the destiny of their nation. And these ideals were the more

difficult to destroy because they each contained an element of truth, so

interwoven with the falsehood that to the mind of the people the true and

the false stood and fell together. If the great vision of chs. viii.‐xi.

had accomplished its purpose, it would doubtless have taken away the main

support of these delusive imaginations. But the belief in the

indestructibility of the Temple was only one of a number of roots through

which the vain confidence of the nation was fed; and so long as any of

these remained the people’s sense of security was likely to remain. These

spurious ideals, therefore, Ezekiel sets himself with characteristic

thoroughness to demolish one after another.

This appears to be in the main the purpose of the third subdivision of his

prophecies on which we now enter. It extends from ch. xii. to ch. xix.;

and in so far as it can be taken to represent a phase of his actual spoken

ministry, it must be assigned to the fifth year before the capture of

Jerusalem (August 591‐August 590 B.C.). But since the passage is an

exposition of ideas more than a narrative of experiences we may expect to

find that chronological consistency has been even less observed than in

the earlier part of the book. Each idea is presented in the completeness

which it finally possessed in the prophet’s mind, and his allusions may

anticipate a state of things which had not actually arisen till a somewhat

later date. Beginning with a description and interpretation of two

symbolic actions intended to impress more vividly on the people the

certainty of the impending catastrophe, the prophet proceeds in a series

of set discourses to expose the hollowness of the illusions which his

fellow‐exiles cherished, such as disbelief in prophecies of evil, faith in

the destiny of Israel, veneration for the Davidic kingdom, and reliance on

the solidarity of the nation in sin and in judgment. These are the

principal topics which the course of exposition will bring before us, and

in dealing with them it will be convenient to depart from the order in

which they stand in the book and adopt an arrangement according to

subject. By so doing we run the risk of missing the order of the ideas as

it presented itself to the prophet’s mind, and of ignoring the remarkable

skill with which the transition from one theme to another is frequently

effected. But if we have rightly understood the scope of the passage as a

whole, this will not prevent us from grasping the substance of his

teaching or its bearing on the final message which he had to deliver. In

the present chapter we shall accordingly group together three passages

which deal with the fate of the monarchy, and especially of Zedekiah, the

last king of Judah.

That reverence for the royal house would form an obstacle to the

acceptance of such teaching as Ezekiel’s was to be expected from all we

know of the popular feeling on this subject. The fact that the few royal

assassinations which stain the annals of Judah were sooner or later

avenged by the people shows that the monarchy was regarded as a pillar of

the state, and that great importance was attached to the possession of a

dynasty which perpetuated the glories of David’s reign. And there is one

verse in the book of Lamentations which expresses the anguish which the

fall of the kingdom caused to godly men in Israel, although its

representative was so unworthy of his office as Zedekiah: “The breath of

our nostrils, the anointed of Jehovah, was taken in their pits, of whom we

said, Under his shadow shall we live among the nations” (Lam. iv. 20). So

long therefore as a descendant of David sat on the throne of Jerusalem it

would seem the duty of every patriotic Israelite to remain true to him.

The continuance of the monarchy would seem to guarantee the existence of

the state; the prestige of Zedekiah’s position as the anointed of Jehovah,

and the heir of David’s covenant, would warrant the hope that even yet

Jehovah would intervene to save an institution of His own creating.

Indeed, we can see from Ezekiel’s own pages that the historic monarchy in

Israel was to him an object of the highest veneration and regard. He

speaks of its dignity in terms whose very exaggeration shows how largely

the fact bulked in his imagination. He compares it to the noblest of the

wild beasts of the earth and the most lordly tree of the forest. But his

contention is that this monarchy no longer exists. Except in one doubtful

passage, he never applies the title king (_melek_) to Zedekiah. The

kingdom came to an end with the deportation of Jehoiachin, the last king

who ascended the throne in legitimate succession. The present holder of

the office is in no sense king by divine right; he is a creature and

vassal of Nebuchadnezzar, and has no rights against his suzerain.(30) His

very name had been changed by the caprice of his master. As a religious

symbol, therefore, the royal power is defunct; the glory has departed from

it as surely as from the Temple. The makeshift administration organised

under Zedekiah had a peaceful if inglorious future before it, if it were

content to recognise facts and adapt itself to its humble position. But if

it should attempt to raise its head and assert itself as an independent

kingdom, it would only seal its own doom. And for men in Chaldæa to

transfer to this shadow of kingly dignity the allegiance due to the heir

of David’s house was a waste of devotion as little demanded by patriotism

as by prudence.

I

The first of the passages in which the fate of the monarchy is foretold

requires little to be said by way of explanation. It is a symbolic action

of the kind with which we are now familiar, exhibiting the certainty of

the fate in store both for the people and the king. The prophet again

becomes a “sign” or portent to the people—this time in a character which

every one of his audience understood from recent experience. He is seen by

daylight collecting “articles of captivity”—_i.e._, such necessary

articles as a person going into exile would try to take with him—and

bringing them out to the door of his house. Then at dusk he breaks through

the wall with his goods on his shoulder; and, with face muffled, he

removes “to another place.” In this sign we have again two different facts

indicated by a series of not entirely congruous actions. The mere act of

carrying out his most necessary furniture and removing from one place to

another suggests quite unambiguously the captivity that awaits the

inhabitants of Jerusalem. But the accessories of the action, such as

breaking through the wall, the muffling of the face, and the doing of all

this by night, point to quite a different event—viz., Zedekiah’s attempt

to break through the Chaldæan lines by night, his capture, his blindness,

and his imprisonment in Babylon. The most remarkable thing in the sign is

the circumstantial manner in which the details of the king’s flight and

capture are anticipated so long before the event. Zedekiah, as we read in

the second book of Kings, as soon as a breach was made in the walls by the

Chaldæans, broke out with a small party of horsemen, and succeeded in

reaching the plain of Jordan. There he was overtaken and caught, and sent

before Nebuchadnezzar’s presence at Riblah. The Babylonian king punished

his perfidy with a cruelty common enough amongst the Assyrian kings: he

caused his eyes to be put out, and sent him thus to end his days in prison

at Babylon. All this is so clearly hinted at in the signs that the whole

representation is often set aside as a prophecy after the event. That is

hardly probable, because the sign does not bear the marks of having been

originally conceived with the view of exhibiting the details of Zedekiah’s

punishment. But since we know that the book was written after the event,

it is a perfectly fair question whether in the interpretation of the

symbols Ezekiel may not have read into it a fuller meaning than was

present to his own mind at the time. Thus the covering of his head does

not necessarily suggest anything more than the king’s attempt to disguise

his person.(31) Possibly this was all that Ezekiel originally meant by it.

When the event took place he perceived a further meaning in it as an

allusion to the blindness inflicted on the king, and introduced this into

the explanation given of the symbol. The point of it lies in the

degradation of the king through his being reduced to such an ignominious

method of securing his personal safety. “The prince that is among them

shall bear upon his shoulder in the darkness, and shall go forth: they

shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby: he shall cover his face,

that he may not be seen by any eye, and he himself shall not see the

earth” (ch. xii. 12).

II

In ch. xvii. the fate of the monarchy is dealt with at greater length

under the form of an allegory. The kingdom of Judah is represented as a

cedar in Lebanon—a comparison which shows how exalted were Ezekiel’s

conceptions of the dignity of the old regime which had now passed away.

But the leading shoot of the tree has been cropped off by a great, broad‐

winged, speckled eagle, the king of Babylon, and carried away to a “land

of traffic, a city of merchants.”(32) The insignificance of Zedekiah’s

government is indicated by a harsh contrast which almost breaks the

consistency of the figure. In place of the cedar which he has spoiled the

eagle plants a low vine trailing on the ground, such as may be seen in

Palestine at the present day. His intention was that “its branches should

extend towards him and its roots be under him”—_i.e._, that the new

principality should derive all its strength from Babylon and yield all its

produce to the power which nourished it. For a time all went well. The

vine answered the expectations of its owner, and prospered under the

favourable conditions which he had provided for it. But another great

eagle appeared on the scene, the king of Egypt, and the ungrateful vine

began to send out its roots and turn its branches in his direction. The

meaning is obvious: Zedekiah had sent presents to Egypt and sought its

help, and by so doing had violated the conditions of his tenure of royal

power. Such a policy could not prosper. “The bed where it was planted” was

in possession of Nebuchadnezzar, and he could not tolerate there a state,

however feeble, which employed the resources with which he had endowed it

to further the interests of his rival, Hophra, the king of Egypt. Its

destruction shall come from the quarter whence it derived its origin:

“when the east wind smites it, it shall wither in the furrow where it

grew.”

Throughout this passage Ezekiel shows that he possessed in full measure

that penetration and detachment from local prejudices which all the

prophets exhibit when dealing with political affairs. The interpretation

of the riddle contains a statement of Nebuchadnezzar’s policy in his

dealings with Judah, whose impartial accuracy could not be improved on by

the most disinterested historian. The carrying away of the Judæan king and

aristocracy was a heavy blow to religious susceptibilities which Ezekiel

fully shared, and its severity was not mitigated by the arrogant

assumptions by which it was explained in Jerusalem. Yet here he shows

himself capable of contemplating it as a measure of Babylonian

statesmanship and of doing absolute justice to the motives by which it was

dictated. Nebuchadnezzar’s purpose was to establish a petty state unable

to raise itself to independence, and one on whose fidelity to his empire

he could rely. Ezekiel lays great stress on the solemn formalities by

which the great king had bound his vassal to his allegiance: “He took of

the royal seed, and made a covenant with him, and brought him under a

curse; and the strong ones of the land he took away: that it might be a

lowly kingdom, not able to lift itself up, to keep his covenant that it

might stand” (vv. 13, 14). In all this Nebuchadnezzar is conceived as

acting within his rights; and here lay the difference between the clear

vision of the prophet and the infatuated policy of his contemporaries. The

politicians of Jerusalem were incapable of thus discerning the signs of

the times. They fell back on the time‐honoured plan of checkmating Babylon

by means of an Egyptian alliance—a policy which had been disastrous when

attempted against the ruthless tyrants of Assyria, and which was doubly

imbecile when it brought down on them the wrath of a monarch who showed

every desire to deal fairly with his subject provinces.

The period of intrigue with Egypt had already begun when this prophecy was

written. We have no means of knowing how long the negotiations went on

before the overt act of rebellion; and hence we cannot say with certainty

that the appearance of the chapter in this part of the book is an

anachronism. It is possible that Ezekiel may have known of a secret

mission which was not discovered by the spies of the Babylonian court; and

there is no difficulty in supposing that such a step may have been taken

as early as two and a half years before the outbreak of hostilities. At

whatever time it took place, Ezekiel saw that it sealed the doom of the

nation. He knew that Nebuchadnezzar could not overlook such flagrant

perfidy as Zedekiah and his councillors had been guilty of; he knew also

that Egypt could render no effectual help to Jerusalem in her death‐

struggle. “Not with a strong army and a great host will Pharaoh act for

him in the war, when mounds are thrown up, and the towers are built, to

cut off many lives” (ver. 17). The writer of the Lamentations again shows

us how sadly the prophet’s anticipation was verified: “As for us, our eyes

as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a

nation that could not save us” (Lam. iv. 17).

But Ezekiel will not allow it to be supposed that the fate of Jerusalem is

merely the result of a mistaken forecast of political probabilities. Such

a mistake had been made by Zedekiah’s advisers when they trusted to Egypt

to deliver them from Babylon, and ordinary prudence might have warned them

against it. But that was the most excusable part of their folly. The thing

that branded their policy as infamous and put them absolutely in the wrong

before God and man alike was their violation of the solemn oath by which

they had bound themselves to serve the king of Babylon. The prophet seizes

on this act of perjury as the determining fact of the situation, and

charges it home on the king as the cause of the ruin that is to overtake

him: “Thus saith Jehovah, As I live, surely _My_ oath which he hath

despised, and _My_ covenant which he has broken, I will return on his

head; and I will spread My net over him, and in My snare shall he be

taken, ... and ye shall know that I Jehovah have spoken it” (vv. 19‐21).

In the last three verses of the chapter the prophet returns to the

allegory with which he commenced, and completes his oracle with a

beautiful picture of the ideal monarchy of the future. The ideas on which

the picture is framed are few and simple; but they are those which

distinguish the Messianic hope as cherished by the prophets from the crude

form which it assumed in the popular imagination. In contrast to

Zedekiah’s kingdom, which was a human institution without ideal

significance, that of the Messianic age will be a fresh creation of

Jehovah’s power. A tender shoot shall be planted in the mountain land of

Israel, where it shall flourish and increase until it overshadow the whole

earth. Further, this shoot is taken from the “top of the cedar”—that is,

the section of the royal house which had been carried away to

Babylon—indicating that the hope of the future lay not with the king _de

facto_ Zedekiah, but with Jehoiachin and those who shared his banishment.

The passage leaves no doubt that Ezekiel conceived the Israel of the

future as a state with a monarch at its head, although it may be doubtful

whether the shoot refers to a personal Messiah or to the aristocracy, who,

along with the king, formed the governing body in an Eastern kingdom. This

question, however, can be better considered when we have to deal with

Ezekiel’s Messianic conceptions in their fully developed form in ch.

xxxiv.

III

Of the last four kings of Judah there were two whose melancholy fate seems

to have excited a profound feeling of pity amongst their countrymen.

Jehoahaz or Shallum, according to the Chronicler the youngest of Josiah’s

sons, appears to have been even during his father’s lifetime a popular

favourite. It was he who after the fatal day of Megiddo was raised to the

throne by the “people of the land” at the age of twenty‐three years. He is

said by the historian of the books of Kings to have done “that which was

evil in the sight of the Lord”; but he had hardly time to display his

qualities as a ruler, when he was deposed and carried to Egypt by Pharaoh

Necho, having worn the crown for only three months (608 B.C.). The deep

attachment felt for him seems to have given rise to an expectation that he

would be restored to his kingdom, a delusion against which the prophet

Jeremiah found it necessary to protest (Jer. xxii. 10‐12). He was

succeeded by his elder brother, Eliakim,(33) the headstrong and selfish

tyrant, whose character stands revealed in some passages of the books of

Jeremiah and Habakkuk. His reign of nine years gave little occasion to his

subjects to cherish a grateful memory of his administration. He died in

the crisis of the conflict he had provoked with the king of Babylon,

leaving his youthful son Jehoiachin to expiate the folly of his rebellion.

Jehoiachin is the second idol of the populace to whom we have referred. He

was only eighteen years old when he was called to the throne, and within

three months he was doomed to exile in Babylon. In his room Nebuchadnezzar

appointed a third son of Josiah—Mattaniah—whose name he changed to

Zedekiah. He was apparently a man of weak and vacillating character; but

he fell ultimately into the hands of the Egyptian and anti‐prophetic

party, and so was the means of involving his country in the hopeless

struggle in which it perished.

The fact that two of their native princes were languishing, perhaps

simultaneously, in foreign confinement, one in Egypt and the other in

Babylon, was fitted to evoke in Judah a sympathy with the misfortunes of

royalty something like the feeling embalmed in the Jacobite songs of

Scotland. It seems to be an echo of this sentiment that we find in the

first part of the lament with which Ezekiel closes his references to the

fall of the monarchy (ch. xix.). Many critics have indeed found it

impossible to suppose that Ezekiel should in any sense have yielded to

sympathy with the fate of two princes who are both branded in the

historical books as idolaters, and whose calamities on Ezekiel’s own view

of individual retribution proved them to be sinners against Jehovah. Yet

it is certainly unnatural to read the dirge in any other sense than as an

expression of genuine pity for the woes that the nation suffered in the

fate of her two exiled kings. If Jeremiah, in pronouncing the doom of

Shallum or Jehoahaz, could say, “Weep ye sore for him that goeth away; for

he shall not return any more, nor see his native country,” there is no

reason why Ezekiel should not have given lyrical expression to the

universal feeling of sadness which the blighted career of these two youths

naturally produced. The whole passage is highly poetical, and represents a

side of Ezekiel’s nature which we have not hitherto been led to study. But

it is too much to expect of even the most logical of prophets that he

should experience no personal emotion but what fitted into his system, or

that his poetic gift should be chained to the wheels of his theological

convictions. The dirge expresses no moral judgment on the character or

deserts of the two kings to which it refers: it has but one theme—the

sorrow and disappointment of the “mother” who nurtured and lost them, that

is, the nation of Israel personified according to a usual Hebrew figure of

speech. All attempts to go beyond this and to find in the poem an

allegorical portrait of Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin are irrelevant. The mother

is a lioness, the princes are young lions and behave as stalwart young

lions do, but whether their exploits are praiseworthy or the reverse is a

question that was not present to the writer’s mind.

The chapter is entitled “A Dirge on the Princes of Israel,” and embraces

not only the fate of Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin, but also of Zedekiah, with

whom the old monarchy expired. Strictly speaking, however, the name

_qînah_, or dirge, is applicable only to the first part of the chapter

(vv. 2‐9), where the rhythm characteristic of the Hebrew elegy is clearly

traceable.(34) With a few slight changes of the text(35) the passage may

be translated thus:—

i. _Jehoahaz._

How was thy mother a lioness!—

Among the lions,

In the midst of young lions she couched—

She reared her cubs;

And she brought up one of her cubs—

A young lion he became,

And he learned to catch the prey—

He ate men.

And nations raised a cry against him—

In their pit he was caught;

And they brought him with hooks—

To the land of Egypt (vv. 2‐4).

ii. _Jehoiachin._

And when she saw that she was disappointed(36)—

Her hope was lost.

She took another of her cubs—

A young lion she made him;

And he walked in the midst of lions—

A young lion he became;

And he learned to catch prey—

He ate men.

And he lurked in his lair—

The forests he ravaged;

Till the land was laid waste and its fulness—

With the noise of his roar.

The nations arrayed themselves against him—

From the countries around;

And spread over him their net—

In their pit he was caught.

And they brought him with hooks—

To the king of Babylon;

And he put him in a cage, ...

That his voice might no more be heard—

On the mountains of Israel (vv. 5‐9).

The poetry here is simple and sincere. The mournful cadence of the elegiac

measure, which is maintained throughout, is adapted to the tone of

melancholy which pervades the passage and culminates in the last beautiful

line. The dirge is a form of composition often employed in songs of

triumph over the calamities of enemies; but there is no reason to doubt

that here it is true to its original purpose, and expresses genuine sorrow

for the accumulated misfortunes of the royal house of Israel.

The closing part of the “dirge” dealing with Zedekiah is of a somewhat

different character. The theme is similar, but the figure is abruptly

changed, and the elegiac rhythm is abandoned. The nation, the mother of

the monarchy, is here compared to a luxuriant vine planted beside great

waters; and the royal house is likened to a branch towering above the rest

and bearing rods which were kingly sceptres. But she has been plucked up

by the roots, withered, scorched by the fire, and finally planted in an

arid region where she cannot thrive. The application of the metaphor to

the ruin of the nation is very obvious. Israel, once a prosperous nation,

richly endowed with all the conditions of a vigorous national life, and

glorying in her race of native kings, is now humbled to the dust.

Misfortune after misfortune has destroyed her power and blighted her

prospects, till at last she has been removed from her own land to a place

where national life cannot be maintained. But the point of the passage

lies in the closing words: fire went out from one of her twigs and

consumed her branches, so that she has no longer a proud rod to be a

ruler’s sceptre (ver. 14). The monarchy, once the glory and strength of

Israel, has in its last degenerate representative involved the nation in

ruin.

Such is Ezekiel’s final answer to those of his hearers who clung to the

old Davidic kingdom as their hope in the crisis of the people’s fate.

Chapter VIII. Prophecy And Its Abuses. Chapters xii. 21‐xiv. 11.

There is perhaps nothing more perplexing to the student of Old Testament

history than the complicated phenomena which may be classed under the

general name of “prophecy.” In Israel, as in every ancient state, there

was a body of men who sought to influence public opinion by

prognostications of the future. As a rule the repute of all kinds of

divination declined with the advance of civilisation and general

intelligence, so that in the more enlightened communities matters of

importance came to be decided on broad grounds of reason and political

expediency. The peculiarity in the case of Israel was that the very

highest direction in politics, as well as religion and morals, was given

in a form capable of being confounded with superstitious practices which

flourished alongside of it. The true prophets were not merely profound

moral thinkers, who announced a certain issue as the probable result of a

certain line of conduct. In many cases their predictions are absolute, and

their political programme is an appeal to the nation to accept the

situation which they foresee, as the basis of its public action. For this

reason prophecy was readily brought into competition with practices with

which it had really nothing in common. The ordinary individual who cared

little for principles and only wished to know what was likely to happen

might readily think that one way of arriving at knowledge of the future

was as good as another, and when the spiritual prophet’s anticipations

displeased him he was apt to try his luck with the sorcerer. It is not

improbable that in the last days of the monarchy spurious prophecy of

various kinds gained an additional vitality from its rivalry with the

great spiritual teachers who in the name of Jehovah foretold the ruin of

the state.

This is not the place for an exhaustive account of the varied developments

in Israel of what may be broadly termed prophetic manifestations. For the

understanding of the section of Ezekiel now before us it will be enough to

distinguish three classes of phenomena. At the lowest end of the scale

there was a rank growth of pure magic or sorcery, the ruling idea of which

is the attempt to control or forecast the future by occult arts which are

believed to influence the supernatural powers which govern human destiny.

In the second place we have prophecy in a stricter sense—that is, the

supposed revelation of the will of the deity in dreams or “visions” or

half‐articulate words uttered in a state of frenzy. Last of all there is

the true prophet, who, though subject to extraordinary mental experiences,

yet had always a clear and conscious grasp of moral principles, and

possessed an incommunicable certainty that what he spoke was not his own

word but the word of Jehovah.

It is obvious that a people subjected to such influences as these was

exposed to temptations both intellectual and moral from which modern life

is exempt. One thing is certain—the existence of prophecy did not tend to

simplify the problems of national life or individual conduct. We are apt

to think of the great prophets as men so signally marked out by God as His

witnesses that it must have been impossible for any one with a shred of

sincerity to question their authority. In reality it was quite otherwise.

It was no more an easy thing then than now to distinguish between truth

and error, between the voice of God and the speculations of men. Then, as

now, divine truth had no available credentials at the moment of its

utterance except its self‐evidencing power on hearts that were sincere in

their desire to know it. The fact that truth came in the guise of prophecy

only stimulated the growth of counterfeit prophecy, so that only those who

were “of the truth” could discern the spirits, whether they were of God.

The passage which forms the subject of this chapter is one of the most

important passages of the Old Testament in its treatment of the errors and

abuses incident to a dispensation of prophecy. It consists of three parts:

the first deals with difficulties occasioned by the apparent failure of

prophecy (ch. xii. 21‐28); the second with the character and doom of the

false prophets (ch. xiii.); and the third with the state of mind which

made a right use of prophecy impossible (ch. xiv. 1‐11).

I

It is one of Ezekiel’s peculiarities that he pays close attention to the

proverbial sayings which indicated the drift of the national mind. Such

sayings were like straws, showing how the stream flowed, and had a special

significance for Ezekiel, inasmuch as he was not in the stream himself,

but only observed its motions from a distance. Here he quotes a current

proverb, giving expression to a sense of the futility of all prophetic

warnings: “The days are drawn out, and every vision faileth” (ch. xii.

22). It is difficult to say what the feeling is that lies behind it,

whether it is one of disappointment or of relief. If, as seems probable,

ver. 27 is the application of the general principle to the particular case

of Ezekiel, the proverb need not indicate absolute disbelief in the truth

of prophecy. “The vision which he sees is for many days, and remote times

does he prophesy”—that is to say, The prophet’s words are no doubt

perfectly true, and come from God; but no man can ever tell when they are

to be fulfilled: all experience shows that they relate to a remote future

which we are not likely to see. For men whose concern was to find

direction in the present emergency, that was no doubt equivalent to a

renunciation of the guidance of prophecy.

There are several things which may have tended to give currency to this

view and make it plausible. First of all, of course, the fact that many of

the “visions” that were published had nothing in them; they were false in

their origin, and were bound to fail. Accordingly one thing necessary to

rescue prophecy from the discredit into which it had fallen was the

removal of those who uttered false predictions in the name of Jehovah:

“There shall no more be any false vision or flattering divination in the

midst of the house of Israel” (ver. 24). But besides the prevalence of

false prophecy there were features of true prophecy which partly explained

the common misgiving as to its trustworthiness. Even in true prophecy

there is an element of idealism, the future being depicted in forms

derived from the prophet’s circumstances, and represented as the immediate

continuation of the events of his own time. In support of the proverb it

might have been equally apt to instance the Messianic oracles of Isaiah,

or the confident predictions of Hananiah, the opponent of Jeremiah.

Further, there is a contingent element in prophecy: the fulfilment of a

threat or promise is conditional on the moral effect of the prophecy

itself on the people. These things were perfectly understood by thoughtful

men in Israel. The principle of contingency is clearly expounded in the

eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah, and it was acted on by the princes who on

a memorable occasion saved him from the doom of a false prophet (Jer.

xxvi.). Those who used prophecy to determine their practical attitude

towards Jehovah’s purposes found it to be an unerring guide to right

thinking and action. But those who only took a curious interest in

questions of external fulfilment found much to disconcert them; and it is

hardly surprising that many of them became utterly sceptical of its divine

origin. It must have been to this turn of mind that the proverb with which

Ezekiel is dealing owed its origin.

It is not on these lines, however, that Ezekiel vindicates the truth of

the prophetic word, but on lines adapted to the needs of his own

generation. After all, prophecy is not wholly contingent. The bent of the

popular character is one of the elements which it takes into account, and

it foresees an issue which is not dependent on anything that Israel might

do. The prophets rise to a point of view from which the destruction of the

sinful people and the establishment of a perfect kingdom of God are seen

to be facts unalterably decreed by Jehovah. And the point of Ezekiel’s

answer to his contemporaries seems to be that a final demonstration of the

truth of prophecy was at hand. As the fulfilment drew near, prophecy would

increase in distinctness and precision, so that when the catastrophe came

it would be impossible for any man to deny the inspiration of those who

had announced it: “Thus saith Jehovah, I will suppress this proverb, and

it shall no more circulate in Israel; but say unto them, The days are

near, and the content [literally _word_ or _matter_] of every vision”

(ver. 23). After the extinction of every form of lying prophecy, Jehovah’s

words shall still be heard, and the proclamation of them shall be

immediately followed by their accomplishment: “For I Jehovah will speak My

words; I will speak and perform, it shall not be deferred any more: in

your days, O house of rebellion, I will speak a word and perform it, saith

Jehovah” (ver. 25). The immediate reference is to the destruction of

Jerusalem which the prophet saw to be one of those events which were

unconditionally decreed, and an event which must bulk more and more

largely in the vision of the true prophet until it was accomplished.

II

The thirteenth chapter deals with what was undoubtedly the greatest

obstacle to the influence of prophecy—viz., the existence of a division in

the ranks of the prophets themselves. That division had been of long

standing. The earliest indication of it is the story of the contest

between Micaiah and four hundred prophets of Jehovah, in presence of Ahab

and Jehoshaphat (1 Kings xxii. 5‐28). All the canonical prophets show in

their writings that they had to contend against the mass of the prophetic

order—men who claimed an authority equal to theirs, but used it for

diametrically opposite interests. It is not, however, till we come to

Jeremiah and Ezekiel that we find a formal apologetic of true prophecy

against false. The problem was serious: where two sets of prophets

systematically and fundamentally contradicted each other, both might be

false, but both could not be true. The prophet who was convinced of the

truth of his own visions must be prepared to account for the rise of false

visions, and to lay down some criterion by which men might discriminate

between the one and the other. Jeremiah’s treatment of the question is of

the two perhaps the more profound and interesting. It is thus summarised

by Professor Davidson: “In his encounters with the prophets of his day

Jeremiah opposes them in three spheres—that of policy, that of morals, and

that of personal experience. In policy the genuine prophets had some fixed

principles, all arising out of the idea that the kingdom of the Lord was

not a kingdom of this world. Hence they opposed military preparation,

riding on horses, and building of fenced cities, and counselled trust in

Jehovah.... The false prophets, on the other hand, desired their country

to be a military power among the powers around, they advocated alliance

with the eastern empires and with Egypt, and relied on their national

strength. Again, the true prophets had a stringent personal and state

morality. In their view the true cause of the destruction of the state was

its immoralities. But the false prophets had no such deep moral

convictions, and seeing nothing unwonted or alarming in the condition of

things prophesied of ‘peace.’ They were not necessarily irreligious men;

but their religion had no truer insight into the nature of the God of

Israel than that of the common people.... And finally Jeremiah expresses

his conviction that the prophets whom he opposed did not stand in the same

relation to the Lord as he did: they had not his experiences of the word

of the Lord, into whose counsel they had not been admitted; and they were

without that fellowship of mind with the mind of Jehovah which was the

true source of prophecy. Hence he satirises their pretended supernatural

‘dreams,’ and charges them from conscious want of any true prophetic word

with stealing words from one another.”(37)

The passages in Jeremiah on which this statement is mainly founded may

have been known to Ezekiel, who in this matter, as in so many others,

follows the lines laid down by the elder prophet.

The first thing, then, that deserves attention in Ezekiel’s judgment on

false prophecy is his assertion of its purely subjective or human origin.

In the opening sentence he pronounces a woe upon the prophets “who

prophesy _from their own mind_ without having seen”(38) (ver. 3). The

words put in italics sum up Ezekiel’s theory of the genesis of false

prophecy. The visions these men see and the oracles they utter simply

reproduce the thoughts, the emotions, the aspirations, natural to their

own minds. That the ideas came to them in a peculiar form, which was

mistaken for the direct action of Jehovah, Ezekiel does not deny. He

admits that the men were sincere in their professions, for he describes

them as “waiting for the fulfilment of the word” (ver. 6). But in this

belief they were the victims of a delusion. Whatever there might be in

their prophetic experiences that resembled those of a true prophet, there

was nothing in their oracles that did not belong to the sphere of worldly

interests and human speculation.

If we ask how Ezekiel knew this, the only possible answer is that he knew

it because he was sure of the source of his own inspiration. He possessed

an inward experience which certified to him the genuineness of the

communications which came to him, and he necessarily inferred that those

who held different beliefs about God must lack that experience. Thus far

his criticism of false prophecy is purely subjective. The true prophet

knew that he had that within him which authenticated his inspiration, but

the false prophet could not know that he wanted it. The difficulty is not

peculiar to prophecy, but arises in connection with religious belief as a

whole. It is an interesting question whether the assent to a truth is

accompanied by a feeling of certitude differing in quality from the

confidence which a man may have in giving his assent to a delusion. But it

is not possible to elevate this internal criterion to an objective test of

truth. A man who is awake may be quite sure he is not dreaming, but a man

in a dream may readily enough fancy himself awake.

But there were other and more obvious tests which could be applied to the

professional prophets, and which at least showed them to be men of a

different spirit from the few who were “full of power by the spirit of the

Lord, and of judgment, and of might, to declare to Israel his sin” (Mic.

iii. 8). In two graphic figures Ezekiel sums up the character and policy

of these parasites who disgraced the order to which they belonged. In the

first place he compares them to jackals burrowing in ruins and undermining

the fabric which it was their professed function to uphold (vv. 4, 5). The

existence of such a class of men is at once a symptom of advanced social

degeneration and a cause of greater ruin to follow. A true prophet

fearlessly speaking the words of God is a defence to the state; he is like

a man who stands in the breach or builds a wall to ward off the danger

which he foresees. Such were all genuine prophets whose names were held in

honour in Israel—men of moral courage, never hesitating to incur personal

risk for the welfare of the nation they loved. If Israel now was like a

heap of ruins, the fault lay with the selfish crowd of hireling prophets

who had cared more to find a hole in which they could shelter themselves

than to build up a stable and righteous polity.

The prophet’s simile calls to mind the type of churchman represented by

Bishop Blougram in Browning’s powerful satire. He is one who is content if

the corporation to which he belongs can provide him with a comfortable and

dignified position in which he can spend good days; he is triumphant if,

in addition to this, he can defy any one to prove him more of a fool or a

hypocrite than an average man of the world. Such utter abnegation of

intellectual sincerity may not be common in any Church; but the temptation

which leads to it is one to which ecclesiastics are exposed in every age

and every communion. The tendency to shirk difficult problems, to shut

one’s eyes to grave evils, to acquiesce in things as they are, and

calculate that the ruin will last one’s own time, is what Ezekiel calls

playing the jackal; and it hardly needs a prophet to tell us that there

could not be a more fatal symptom of the decay of religion than the

prevalence of such a spirit in its official representatives.

The second image is equally suggestive. It exhibits the false prophets as

following where they pretended to lead, as aiding and abetting the men

into whose hands the reins of government had fallen. The people build a

wall and the prophets cover it with plaster (ver. 10)—that is to say, when

any project or scheme of policy is being promoted they stand by glozing it

over with fine words, flattering its promoters, and uttering profuse

assurances of its success. The uselessness of the whole activity of these

prophets could not be more vividly described. The white‐washing of the

wall may hide its defects, but will not prevent its destruction; and when

the wall of Jerusalem’s shaky prosperity tumbles down, those who did so

little to build and so much to deceive shall be overwhelmed with

confusion. “Behold, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said to them,

Where is the plaster which ye plastered?” (ver. 12).

This will be the beginning of the judgment on false prophets in Israel.

The overthrow of their vaticinations, the collapse of the hopes they

fostered, and the demolition of the edifice in which they found a refuge

shall leave them no more a name or a place in the people of God. “I will

stretch out My hand against the prophets that see vanity and divine

falsely: in the council of My people they shall not be, and in the

register of the house of Israel they shall not be written, and into the

land of Israel they shall not come” (ver. 9).

There was, however, a still more degraded type of prophecy, practised

chiefly by women, which must have been exceedingly prevalent in Ezekiel’s

time. The prophets spoken of in the first sixteen verses were public

functionaries who exerted their evil influence in the arena of politics.

The prophetesses spoken of in the latter part of the chapter are private

fortune‐tellers who practised on the credulity of individuals who

consulted them. Their art was evidently magical in the strict sense, a

trafficking with the dark powers which were supposed to enter into

alliance with men irrespective of moral considerations. Then, as now, such

courses were followed for gain, and doubtless proved a lucrative means of

livelihood. The “fillets” and “veils” mentioned in ver. 18 are either a

professional garb worn by the women, or else implements of divination

whose precise significance cannot now be ascertained. To the imagination

of the prophet they appear as the snares and weapons with which these

wretched creatures “hunted souls”; and the extent of the evil which he

attacks is indicated by his speaking of the whole people as being

entangled in their meshes. Ezekiel naturally bestows special attention on

a class of practitioners whose whole influence tended to efface moral

landmarks and to deal out to men weal or woe without regard to character.

“They slew souls that should not die, and saved alive souls that should

not live; they made sad the heart of the righteous, and strengthened the

hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way and be

saved alive” (ver. 22). That is to say, while Ezekiel and all true

prophets were exhorting men to live resolutely in the light of clear

ethical conceptions of providence, the votaries of occult superstitions

seduced the ignorant into making private compacts with the powers of

darkness in order to secure their personal safety. If the prevalence of

sorcery and witchcraft was at all times dangerous to the religion and

public order of the state, it was doubly so at a time when, as Ezekiel

perceived, everything depended on maintaining the strict rectitude of God

in His dealings with individual men.

III

Having thus disposed of the external manifestations of false prophecy,

Ezekiel proceeds in the fourteenth chapter to deal with the state of mind

amongst the people at large which rendered such a condition of things

possible. The general import of the passage is clear, although the precise

connection of ideas is somewhat difficult to explain. The following

observations may suffice to bring out all that is essential to the

understanding of the section.

The oracle was occasioned by a particular incident, undoubtedly

historical—namely, a visit, such as was perhaps now common, from the

elders to inquire of the Lord through Ezekiel. As they sit before him it

is revealed to the prophet that the minds of these men are preoccupied

with idolatry, and therefore it is not fitting that any answer should be

given to them by a prophet of Jehovah. Apparently no answer _was_ given by

Ezekiel to the particular question they had asked, whatever it may have

been. Generalising from the incident, however, he is led to enunciate a

principle regulating the intercourse between Jehovah and Israel through

the medium of a prophet: “Whatever man of the house of Israel sets his

thoughts upon his idols, and puts his guilty stumbling‐block before him,

and comes to the prophet, I Jehovah will make Myself intelligible to

him;(39) that I may take the house of Israel in their own heart, because

they are all estranged from Me by their idols” (vv. 4, 5). It seems clear

that one part of the threat here uttered is that the very withholding of

the answer will unmask the hypocrisy of men who pretend to be worshippers

of Jehovah, but in heart are unfaithful to Him and servants of false gods.

The moral principle involved in the prophet’s dictum is clear and of

lasting value. It is that for a false heart there can be no fellowship

with Jehovah, and therefore no true and sure knowledge of His will. The

prophet occupies the point of view of Jehovah, and when consulted by an

idolater he finds it impossible to enter into the point of view from which

the question is put, and therefore cannot answer it.(40) Ezekiel assumes

for the most part that the prophet consulted is a true prophet of Jehovah

like himself, who will give no answer to such questions as he has before

him. He must, however, allow for the possibility that men of this stamp

may receive answers in the name of Jehovah from those reputed to be His

true prophets. In that case, says Ezekiel, the prophet is “deceived” by

God; he is allowed to give a response which is not a true response at all,

but only confirms the people in their delusions and unbelief. But this

deception does not take place until the prophet has incurred the guilt of

deceiving himself in the first instance. It is his fault that he has not

perceived the bent of his questioners’ minds, that he has accommodated

himself to their ways of thought, has consented to occupy their standpoint

in order to be able to say something coinciding with the drift of their

wishes. Prophet and inquirers are involved in a common guilt and share a

common fate, both being sentenced to exclusion from the commonwealth of

Israel.

The purification of the institution of prophecy necessarily appeared to

Ezekiel as an indispensable feature in the restoration of the theocracy.

The ideal of Israel’s relation to Jehovah is “that they may be My people,

and that I may be their God” (ver. 11). That implies that Jehovah shall be

the source of infallible guidance in all things needful for the religious

life of the individual and the guidance of the state. But it was

impossible for Jehovah to be to Israel all that a God should be, so long

as the regular channels of communication between Him and the nation were

choked by false conceptions in the minds of the people and false men in

the position of prophets. Hence the constitution of a new Israel demands

such special judgments on false prophecy and the false use of true

prophecy as have been denounced in these chapters. When these judgments

have been executed, the ideal will have become possible which is described

in the words of another prophet: “Thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and

thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye

in it” (Isa. xxx. 20, 21).

Chapter IX. Jerusalem—An Ideal History. Chapter xvi.

In order to understand the place which the sixteenth chapter occupies in

this section(41) of the book, we must remember that a chief source of the

antagonism between Ezekiel and his hearers was the proud national

consciousness which sustained the courage of the people through all their

humiliations. There were, perhaps, few nations of antiquity in which the

flame of patriotic feeling burned more brightly than in Israel. No people

with a past such as theirs could be indifferent to the many elements of

greatness embalmed in their history. The beauty and fertility of their

land, the martial exploits and signal deliverances of the nation, the

great kings and heroes she had reared, her prophets and lawgivers—these

and many other stirring memories were witnesses to Jehovah’s peculiar love

for Israel and His power to exalt and bless His people. To cherish a deep

sense of the unique privileges which Jehovah had conferred on her in

giving her a distinct place among the nations of the earth was thus a

religious duty often insisted on in the Old Testament. But in order that

this sense might work for good it was necessary that it should take the

form of grateful recognition of Jehovah as the source of the nation’s

greatness, and be accompanied by a true knowledge of His character. When

allied with false conceptions of Jehovah’s nature, or entirely divorced

from religion, patriotism degenerated into racial prejudice and became a

serious moral and political danger. That this had actually taken place is

a common complaint of the prophets. They feel that national vanity is a

great obstacle to the acceptance of their message, and pour forth bitter

and scornful words intended to humble the pride of Israel to the dust. No

prophet addresses himself to the task so remorselessly as Ezekiel. The

utter worthlessness of Israel, both absolutely in the eyes of Jehovah and

relatively in comparison with other nations, is asserted by him with a

boldness and emphasis which at first startle us. From a different point of

view prophecy and its results might have been regarded as fruits of the

national life, under the divine education vouchsafed to that people. But

that is not Ezekiel’s standpoint. He seizes on the fact that prophecy was

in opposition to the natural genius of the people, and was not to be

regarded as in any sense an expression of it. Accepting the final attitude

of Israel toward the word of Jehovah as the genuine outcome of her natural

proclivities, he reads her past as an unbroken record of ingratitude and

infidelity. All that was good in Israel was Jehovah’s gift, freely

bestowed and justly withdrawn; all that was Israel’s own was her weakness

and her sin. It was reserved for a later prophet to reconcile the

condemnation of Israel’s actual history with the recognition of the divine

power working there and moulding a spiritual kernel of the nation into a

true “servant of the Lord” (Isa. xl. ff.).

In chs. xv. and xvi., therefore, the prophet exposes the hollowness of

Israel’s confidence in her national destiny. The first of these appears to

be directed against the vain hopes cherished in Jerusalem at the time. It

is not necessary to dwell on it at length. The image is simple and its

application to Jerusalem obvious. Earlier prophets had compared Israel to

a vine, partly to set forth the exceptional privileges she enjoyed, but

chiefly to emphasise the degeneration she had undergone, as shown by the

bad moral fruits which she had borne (cf. Isa. v. 1 ff.; Jer. ii. 21; Hos.

x. 1). The popular imagination had laid hold of the thought that Israel

was the vine of God’s planting, ignoring the question of the fruit. But

Ezekiel reminds his hearers that apart from its fruit the vine is the most

worthless of trees. Even at the best its wood can be employed for no

useful purpose; it is fit only for fuel. Such was the people of Israel,

considered simply as a state among other states, without regard to its

religious vocation. Even in its pristine vigour, when the national

energies were fresh and unimpaired, it was but a weak nation, incapable of

attaining the dignity of a great power. But now the strength of the nation

has been worn away by a long succession of disasters, until only a shadow

of her former glory remains. Israel is no longer like a green and living

vine, but like a branch burned at both ends and charred in the middle, and

therefore doubly unfit for any worthy function in the affairs of the

world. By the help of this illustration men may read in the present state

of the nation the irrevocable sentence of rejection which Jehovah has

passed on His people.

We now turn to the striking allegory of ch. xvi., where the same subject

is treated with far greater penetration and depth of feeling. There is no

passage in the book of Ezekiel at once so powerful and so full of

religious significance as the picture of Jerusalem, the foundling child,

the unfaithful spouse, and the abandoned prostitute, which is here

presented. The general conception is one that might have been presented in

a form as beautiful as it is spiritually true. But the features which

offend our sense of propriety are perhaps introduced with a stern purpose.

It is the deliberate intention of Ezekiel to present Jerusalem’s

wickedness in the most repulsive light, in order that if possible he might

startle men into abhorrence of their national sin. In his own mind the

feelings of moral indignation and physical disgust were very close

together, and here he seems to work on the minds of his readers, so that

the feeling excited by the image may call forth the feeling appropriate to

the reality.

The allegory is a highly idealised history of the city of Jerusalem from

its origin to its destruction, and then onward to its future restoration.

It falls naturally into four divisions:—

i. Vv. 1‐14.—The first emergence of Jerusalem into civic life is compared

to a new‐born female infant, exposed to perish, after a cruel custom which

is known to have prevailed among some Semitic tribes. None of the offices

customary on the birth of a child were performed in her case, whether

those necessary to preserve life or those which had a merely ceremonial

significance. Unblessed and unpitied she lay in the open field, weltering

in blood, exciting only repugnance in all who passed by, until Jehovah

Himself passed by, and pronounced over her the decree that she should

live. Thus saved from death, she grew up and reached maturity, but still

“naked and bare,” destitute of wealth and the refinements of civilisation.

These were bestowed on her when a second time Jehovah passed by and spread

His skirt over her, and claimed her for His own. Not till then had she

been treated as a human being, with the possibilities of honourable life

before her. But now she becomes the bride of her protector, and is

provided for as a high‐born maiden might be, with all the ornaments and

luxuries befitting her new rank. Lifted from the lowest depth of

degradation, she is now transcendently beautiful, and has “attained to

royal estate.” The fame of her loveliness went abroad among the nations:

“for it was perfect through My glory, which I put upon thee, saith

Jehovah” (ver. 14).

It will be seen that the points of contact with actual history are here

extremely few as well as vague. It is indeed doubtful whether the subject

of the allegory be the city of Jerusalem conceived as one through all its

changes of population, or the Hebrew nation of which Jerusalem ultimately

became the capital. The latter interpretation is certainly favoured by ch.

xxiii., where both Jerusalem and Samaria are represented as having spent

their youth in Egypt. That parallel may not be decisive as to the meaning

of ch. xvi.; and the statement “thy father was the Amorite and thy mother

an Hittite” may be thought to support the other alternative. Amorite and

Hittite are general names for the pre‐Israelite population of Canaan, and

it is a well‐known fact that Jerusalem was originally a Canaanitish city.

It is not necessary to suppose that the prophet has any information about

the early fortunes of Jerusalem when he describes the stages of the

process by which she was raised to royal magnificence. The chief question

is whether these details can be fairly applied to the history of the

nation before it had Jerusalem as its metropolis. It is usually held that

the first “passing by” of Jehovah refers to the preservation of the people

in the patriarchal period, and the second to the events of the Exodus and

the Sinaitic covenant. Against this it may be urged that Ezekiel would

hardly have presented the patriarchal period in a hateful light, although

he does go further in discrediting antiquity than any other prophet.

Besides, the description of Jerusalem’s betrothal to Jehovah contains

points which are more naturally understood of the glories of the age of

David and Solomon than of the events of Sinai, which were not accompanied

by an access of material prosperity such as is suggested. It may be

necessary to leave the matter in the vagueness with which the prophet has

surrounded it, and accept as the teaching of the allegory the simple truth

that Jerusalem in herself was nothing, but had been preserved in existence

by Jehovah’s will, and owed all her splendour to her association with His

cause and His kingdom.

ii. Vv. 15‐34.—The dainties and rich attire enjoyed by the highly favoured

bride become a snare to her. These represent blessings of a material order

bestowed by Jehovah on Jerusalem. Throughout the chapter nothing is said

of the imparting of spiritual privileges, or of a moral change wrought in

the heart of Jerusalem. The gifts of Jehovah are conferred on one

incapable of responding to the care and affection that had been lavished

on her. The inborn taint of her nature, the hereditary immorality of her

heathen ancestors, breaks out in a career of licentiousness in which all

the advantages of her proud position are prostituted to the vilest ends.

“As is the mother, so is her daughter” (ver. 44); and Jerusalem betrayed

her true origin by the readiness with which she took to evil courses as

soon as she had the opportunity. The “whoredom” in which the prophet sums

up his indictment against his people is chiefly the sin of idolatry. The

figure may have been suggested by the fact that actual lewdness of the

most flagrant kind was a conspicuous element in the form of idolatry to

which Israel first succumbed—the worship of the Canaanite Baals. But in

the hands of the prophets it has a deeper and more spiritual import than

this. It signified the violation of all the sacred moral obligations which

are enshrined in human marriage, or, in other words, the abandonment of an

ethical religion for one in which the powers of nature were regarded as

the highest revelation of the divine. To the mind of the prophet it made

no difference whether the object of worship was called by the name of

Jehovah or of Baal: the character of the worship determined the quality of

the religion; and in the one case, as in the other, it was idolatry, or

“whoredom.”

Two stages in the idolatry of Israel appear to be distinguished in this

part of the chapter. The first is the naïve, half‐conscious heathenism

which crept in insensibly through contact with Phœnician and Canaanite

neighbours (vv. 15‐25). The tokens of Jerusalem’s implication in this sin

were everywhere. The “high places” with their tents and clothed images

(ver. 17), and the offerings set forth before these objects of adoration,

were undoubtedly of Canaanitish origin, and their preservation to the fall

of the kingdom was a standing witness to the source to which Israel owed

her earliest and dearest “abominations.” We learn that this phase of

idolatry culminated in the atrocious rite of human sacrifice (vv. 20, 21).

The immolation of children to Baal or Molech was a common practice amongst

the nations surrounding Israel, and when introduced there seems to have

been regarded as part of the worship of Jehovah.(42) What Ezekiel here

asserts is that the practice came through Israel’s illicit commerce with

the gods of Canaan, and there is no question that this is historically

true. The allegory exhibits the sin in its unnatural heinousness. The

idealised city is the mother of her citizens, the children are Jehovah’s

children and her own, yet she has taken them and offered them up to the

false lovers she so madly pursued. Such was her feverish passion for

idolatry that the dearest and most sacred ties of nature were ruthlessly

severed at the bidding of a perverted religious sense.

The second form of idolatry in Israel was of a more deliberate and politic

kind (vv. 23‐34). It consisted in the introduction of the deities and

religious practices of the great world‐powers—Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldæa.

The attraction of these foreign rites did not lie in the fascination of a

sensuous type of religion, but rather in the impression of power produced

by the gods of the conquering peoples. The foreign gods came in mostly in

consequence of a political alliance with the nations whose patrons they

were; in other cases a god was worshipped simply because he had shown

himself able to do great things for his servants. Jerusalem as Ezekiel

knew it was full of monuments of this comparatively recent type of

idolatry. In every street and at the head of every way there were

erections (here called “arches” or “heights”) which, from the connection

in which they are mentioned, must have been shrines devoted to the strange

gods from abroad. It is characteristic of the political idolatry here

referred to that its monuments were found in the capital, while the more

ancient and rustic worship was typified by the “high places” throughout

the provinces. It is probable that the description applies mainly to the

later period of the monarchy, when Israel, and especially Judah, began to

lean for support on one or other of the great empires on either side of

her. At the same time it must be remembered that Ezekiel elsewhere teaches

distinctly that the influence of Egyptian religion had been continuous

from the days of the Exodus (ch. xxiii.). There may, however, have been a

revival of Egyptian influence, due to the political exigencies which arose

in the eighth century.

Thus Jerusalem has “played the harlot”; nay, she has done worse—“she has

been as a wife that committeth adultery, who though under her husband

taketh strangers.”(43) And the result has been simply the impoverishment

of the land. The heavy exactions levied on the country by Egypt and

Assyria were the hire she had paid to her lovers to come to her. If false

religion had resulted in an increase of wealth or material prosperity,

there might have been some excuse for the eagerness with which she plunged

into it. But certainly Israel’s history bore the lesson that false

religion means waste and ruin. Strangers had devoured her strength from

her youth, yet she never would heed the voice of her prophets when they

sought to guide her into the ways of peace. Her infatuation was unnatural;

it goes almost beyond the bounds of the allegory to exhibit it: “The

contrary is in thee from other women, in that thou committest whoredoms,

and none goeth awhoring after thee: and in that thou givest hire, and no

hire is given to thee, therefore thou art contrary” (ver. 34).

iii. Vv. 35‐58.—Having thus made Jerusalem to “know her abominations”

(ver. 2), the prophet proceeds to announce the doom which must inevitably

follow such a career of wickedness. The figures under which the judgment

is set forth appear to be taken from the punishment meted out to

profligate women in ancient Israel. The public exposure of the adulteress

and her death by stoning in the presence of “many women” supply images

terribly appropriate of the fate in store for Jerusalem.(44) Her

punishment is to be a warning to all surrounding nations, and an

exhibition of the jealous wrath of Jehovah against her infidelity. These

nations, some of them hereditary enemies, others old allies, are

represented as assembled to witness and to execute the judgment of the

city. The remorseless realism of the prophet spares no detail which could

enhance the horror of the situation. Abandoned to the ruthless violence of

her former lovers, Jerusalem is stripped of her royal attire, the emblems

of her idolatry are destroyed, and so, left naked to her enemies, she

suffers the ignominious death of a city that has been false to her

religion. The root of her sin had been the forgetfulness of what she owed

to the goodness of Jehovah, and the essence of her punishment lies in the

withdrawal of the gifts He had lavished upon her and the protection which

amid all her apostasies she had never ceased to expect.

At this point (ver. 44 ff.) the allegory takes a new turn through the

introduction of the sister cities of Samaria and Sodom. Samaria, although

as a city much younger than Jerusalem, is considered the elder sister

because she had once been the centre of a greater political power than

Jerusalem, and Sodom, which was probably older than either, is treated as

the youngest because of her relative insignificance. The order, however,

is of no importance. The point of the comparison is that all three had

manifested in different degrees the same hereditary tendency to immorality

(ver. 45). All three were of heathen origin—their mother a Hittite and

their father an Amorite—a description which it is even more difficult to

understand in the case of Samaria than in that of Jerusalem. But Ezekiel

is not concerned about history. What is prominent in his mind is the

family likeness observed in their characters, which gave point to the

proverb “Like mother, like daughter” when applied to Jerusalem. The

prophet affirms that the wickedness of Jerusalem had so far exceeded that

of Samaria and Sodom that she had “justified” her sisters—_i.e._, she had

made their moral condition appear pardonable by comparison with hers. He

knows that he is saying a bold thing in ranking the iniquity of Jerusalem

as greater than that of Sodom, and so he explains his judgment on Sodom by

an analysis of the cause of her notorious corruptness. The name of Sodom

lived in tradition as that of the foulest city of the old world, a _ne

plus ultra_ of wickedness. Yet Ezekiel dares to raise the question, What

_was_ the sin of Sodom? “This was the sin of Sodom thy sister, pride,

superabundance of food, and careless ease was the lot of her and her

daughters, but they did not succour the poor and needy. But they became

proud, and committed abominations before Me: therefore I took them away as

thou hast seen” (vv. 49, 50). The meaning seems to be that the corruptions

of Sodom were the natural outcome of the evil principle in the Canaanitish

nature, favoured by easy circumstances and unchecked by the saving

influences of a pure religion. Ezekiel’s judgment is like an anticipation

of the more solemn sentence uttered by One who knew what was in man when

He said, “If the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in

Sodom and Gomorrha, they would have remained until this day.”

It is remarkable to observe how some of the profoundest ideas in this

chapter attach themselves to the strange conception of these two vanished

cities as still capable of being restored to their place in the world. In

the ideal future of the prophet’s vision Sodom and Samaria shall rise from

their ruins through the same power which restores Jerusalem to her ancient

glory. The promise of a renewed existence to Sodom and Samaria is perhaps

connected with the fact that they lay within the sacred territory of which

Jerusalem is the centre. Hence Sodom and Samaria are no longer sisters,

but daughters of Jerusalem, receiving through her the blessings of the

true religion. And it is her relation to these her sisters that opens the

eyes of Jerusalem to the true nature of her own relation to Jehovah.

Formerly she had been proud and self‐sufficient, and counted her

exceptional prerogatives the natural reward of some excellence to which

she could lay claim. The name of Sodom, the disgraced sister of the

family, was not heard in her mouth in the days of her pride, when her

wickedness had not been disclosed as it is now (ver. 57). But when she

realises that her conduct has justified and comforted her sister, and when

she has to take guilty Sodom to her heart as a daughter, she will

understand that she owes all her greatness to the same sovereign grace of

Jehovah which is manifested in the restoration of the most abandoned

community known to history. And out of this new consciousness of grace

will spring the chastened and penitent temper of mind which makes possible

the continuance of the bond which unites her to Jehovah.

iv. Vv. 59‐63.—The way is thus prepared for the final promise of

forgiveness with which the chapter closes. The reconciliation between

Jehovah and Jerusalem will be effected by an act of recollection on both

sides: “_I_ will remember My covenant with thee.... _Thou_ shalt remember

thy ways” (vv. 60, 61). The mind of Jehovah and the mind of Jerusalem both

go back on the past; but while Jehovah thinks only of the purpose of love

which he had entertained towards Jerusalem in the days of her youth and

the indissoluble bond between them, Jerusalem retains the memory of her

own sinful history, and finds in the remembrance the source of abiding

contrition and shame. It does not fall within the scope of the prophet’s

purpose to set forth in this place the blessed consequences which flow

from this renewal of loving intercourse between Israel and her God. He has

accomplished his object when he has shown how the electing love of Jehovah

reaches its end in spite of human sin and rebellion, and how through the

crushing power of divine grace the failures and transgressions of the past

are made to issue in a relation of perfect harmony between Jehovah and His

people. The permanence of that relation is expressed by an idea borrowed

from Jeremiah—the idea of an everlasting covenant, which cannot be broken

because based on the forgiveness of sin and a renewal of heart. The

prophet knows that when once the power of evil has been broken by a full

disclosure of redeeming love it cannot resume its old ascendency in human

life. So he leaves us on the threshold of the new dispensation with the

picture of Jerusalem humbled and bearing her shame, yet in the abjectness

of her self‐accusation realising the end towards which the love of Jehovah

had guided her from the beginning: “I will establish My covenant with

thee; and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah: that thou mayest remember,

and be ashamed, and not open thy mouth any more for very shame, when I

expiate for thee all that thou hast done, saith the Lord Jehovah” (vv. 62,

63).

Throughout this chapter we see that the prophet moves in the region of

national religious ideas which are distinctive of the Old Testament. Of

the influences that formed his conceptions that of Hosea is perhaps most

discernible. The fundamental thoughts embodied in the allegory are the

same as those by which the older prophet learned to interpret the nature

of God and the sin of Israel through the bitter experiences of his family

life. These thoughts are developed by Ezekiel with a fertility of

imagination and a grasp of theological principles which were adapted to

the more complex situation with which he had to deal. But the conception

of Israel as the unfaithful wife of Jehovah, of the false gods and the

world‐powers as her lovers, of her conversion through affliction, and her

final restoration by a new betrothal which is eternal, are all expressed

in the first three chapters of Hosea. And the freedom with which Ezekiel

handles and expands these conceptions shows how thoroughly he was at home

in that national view of religion which he did much to break through. In

the next lecture we shall have occasion to examine his treatment of the

problem of the individual’s relation to God, and we cannot fail to be

struck by the contrast. The analysis of individual religion may seem

meagre by the side of this most profound and suggestive chapter. This

arises from the fact that the full meaning of religion could not then be

expressed as an experience of the individual soul. The subject of religion

being the nation of Israel, the human side of it could only be unfolded in

terms of what we should call the national consciousness. The time was not

yet come when the great truths which the prophets and psalmists saw

embodied in the history of their people could be translated in terms of

individual fellowship with God. Yet the God who spake to the fathers by

the prophets is the same who has spoken to us in His Son; and when from

the standpoint of a higher revelation we turn back to the Old Testament,

it is to find in the form of a nation’s history the very same truths which

we realise as matters of personal experience.

From this point of view the chapter we have considered is one of the most

evangelical passages in the writings of Ezekiel. The prophet’s conception

of sin, for example, is singularly profound and true. He has been charged

with a somewhat superficial conception of sin, as if he saw nothing more

in it than the transgression of a law arbitrarily imposed by divine

authority. There are aspects of Ezekiel’s teaching which give some

plausibility to that charge, especially those which deal with the duties

of the individual. But we see that to Ezekiel the real nature of sin could

not possibly be manifested except as a factor in the national life. Now in

this allegory it is obvious that he sees something far deeper in it than

the mere transgression of positive commandments. Behind all the outward

offences of which Israel had been guilty there plainly lies the spiritual

fact of national selfishness, unfaithfulness to Jehovah, insensibility to

His love, and ingratitude for His benefits. Moreover, the prophet, like

Jeremiah before him, has a strong sense of sin as a tendency in human

life, a power which is ineradicable save by the mingled severity and

goodness of God. Through the whole history of Israel it is one evil

disposition which he sees asserting itself, breaking out now in one form

and then in another, but continually gaining strength, until at last the

spirit of repentance is created by the experience of God’s forgiveness. It

is not the case, therefore, that Ezekiel failed to comprehend the nature

of sin, or that in this respect he falls below the most spiritual of the

prophets who had gone before him.

In order that this tendency to sin may be destroyed, Ezekiel sees that the

consciousness of guilt must take its place. In the same way the apostle

Paul teaches that “every mouth must be stopped, and all the world become

guilty before God.” Whether the subject be a nation or an individual, the

dominion of sin is not broken till the sinner has taken home to himself

the full responsibility for his acts and felt himself to be “without

excuse.” But the most striking thing in Ezekiel’s representation of the

process of conversion is the thought that this saving sense of sin is

produced less by judgment than by free and undeserved forgiveness.

Punishment he conceives to be necessary, being demanded alike by the

righteousness of God and the good of the sinful people. But the heart of

Jerusalem is not changed till she finds herself restored to her former

relation to God, with all the sin of her past blotted out and a new life

before her. It is through the grace of forgiveness that she is overwhelmed

with shame and sorrow for sin, and learns the humility which is the germ

of a new hope towards God. Here the prophet strikes one of the deepest

notes of evangelical doctrine. All experience confirms the lesson that

true repentance is not produced by the terrors of the law, but by the view

of God’s love in Christ going forth to meet the sinner and bring him back

to the Father’s heart and home.

Another question of great interest and difficulty is the attitude towards

the heathen world assumed by Ezekiel. The prophecy of the restoration of

Sodom is certainly one of the most remarkable things in the book. It is

true that Ezekiel as a rule concerns himself very little with the

religious state of the outlying world under the Messianic dispensation.

Where he speaks of foreign nations it is only to announce the

manifestation of Jehovah’s glory in the judgments He executes upon them.

The effect of these judgments is that “they shall know that I am Jehovah”;

but how much is included in the expression as applied to the heathen it is

impossible to say. This, however, may be due to the peculiar limitation of

view which leads him to concentrate his attention on the Holy Land in his

visions of the perfect kingdom of God. We can hardly suppose that he

conceived all the rest of the world as a blank or filled with a seething

mass of humanity outside the government of the true God. It is rather to

be supposed that Canaan itself appeared to his mind as an epitome of the

world such as it must be when the latter‐day glory was ushered in. And in

Canaan he finds room for Sodom, but Sodom turned to the knowledge of the

true God and sharing in the blessings bestowed on Jerusalem. It is surely

allowable to see in this the symptom of a more hopeful view of the future

of the world at large than we should gather from the rest of the prophecy.

If Ezekiel could think of Sodom as raised from the dead and sharing the

glories of the people of God, the idea of the conversion of heathen

nations could not have been altogether foreign to his mind. It is at all

events significant that when he meditates most profoundly on the nature of

sin and God’s method of dealing with it, he is led to the thought of a

divine mercy which embraces in its sweep those communities which had

reached the lowest depths of moral corruption.

Chapter X. The Religion Of The Individual. Chapter xviii.

In the sixteenth chapter, as we have seen, Ezekiel has asserted in the

most unqualified terms the validity of the principle of national

retribution. The nation is dealt with as a moral unity, and the

catastrophe which closes its history is the punishment for the accumulated

guilt incurred by the past generations. In the eighteenth chapter he

teaches still more explicitly the freedom and the independent

responsibility of each individual before God. No attempt is made to

reconcile the two principles as methods of the divine government; from the

prophet’s standpoint they do not require to be reconciled. They belong to

different dispensations. So long as the Jewish state existed the principle

of solidarity remained in force. Men suffered for the sins of their

ancestors; individuals shared the punishment incurred by the nation as a

whole. But as soon as the nation is dead, when the bonds that unite men in

the organism of national life are dissolved, then the idea of individual

responsibility comes into immediate operation. Each Israelite stands

isolated before Jehovah, the burden of hereditary guilt falls away from

him, and he is free to determine his own relation to God. He need not fear

that the iniquity of his fathers will be reckoned against him; he is held

accountable only for his own sins, and these can be forgiven on the

condition of his own repentance.

The doctrine of this chapter is generally regarded as Ezekiel’s most

characteristic contribution to theology. It might be nearer the truth to

say that he is dealing with one of the great religious problems of the age

in which he lived. The difficulty was perceived by Jeremiah, and treated

in a manner which shows that his thoughts were being led in the same

direction as those of Ezekiel (Jer. xxxi. 29, 30). If in any respect the

teaching of Ezekiel makes an advance on that of Jeremiah, it is in his

application of the new truth to the duty of the present: and even here the

difference is more apparent than real. Jeremiah postpones the introduction

of personal religion to the future, regarding it as an ideal to be

realised in the Messianic age. His own life and that of his contemporaries

was bound up with the old dispensation which was passing away, and he knew

that he was destined to share the fate of his people. Ezekiel, on the

other hand, lives already under the powers of the world to come. The one

hindrance to the perfect manifestation of Jehovah’s righteousness has been

removed by the destruction of Jerusalem, and henceforward it will be made

apparent in the correspondence between the desert and the fate of each

individual. The new Israel must be organised on the basis of personal

religion, and the time has already come when the task of preparing the

religious community of the future must be earnestly taken up. Hence the

doctrine of individual responsibility has a peculiar and practical

importance in the mission of Ezekiel. The call to repentance, which is the

keynote of his ministry, is addressed to individual men, and in order that

it may take effect their minds must be disabused of all fatalistic

preconceptions which would induce paralysis of the moral faculties. It was

necessary to affirm in all their breadth and fulness the two fundamental

truths of personal religion—the absolute righteousness of God’s dealings

with individual men, and His readiness to welcome and pardon the penitent.

The eighteenth chapter falls accordingly into two divisions. In the first

the prophet sets the individual’s immediate relation to God against the

idea that guilt is transmitted from father to children (vv. 2‐20). In the

second he tries to dispel the notion that a man’s fate is so determined by

his own past life as to make a change of moral condition impossible (vv.

21‐32).

I

It is noteworthy that both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in dealing with the

question of retribution, start from a popular proverb which had gained

currency in the later years of the kingdom of Judah: “The fathers have

eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” In whatever

spirit this saying may have been first coined, there is no doubt that it

had come to be used as a witticism at the expense of Providence. It

indicates that influences were at work besides the word of prophecy which

tended to undermine men’s faith in the current conception of the divine

government. The doctrine of transmitted guilt was accepted as a fact of

experience, but it no longer satisfied the deeper moral instincts of men.

In early Israel it was otherwise. There the idea that the son should bear

the iniquity of the father was received without challenge and applied

without misgiving in judicial procedure. The whole family of Achan

perished for the sin of their father; the sons of Saul expiated their

father’s crime long after he was dead. These are indeed but isolated

facts, yet they are sufficient to prove the ascendency of the antique

conception of the tribe or family as a unity whose individual members are

involved in the guilt of the head. With the spread of purer ethical ideas

among the people there came a deeper sense of the value of the individual

life, and at a later time the principle of vicarious punishment was

banished from the administration of human justice (cf. 2 Kings xiv. 6 with

Deut. xxiv. 16). Within that sphere the principle was firmly established

that each man shall be put to death for his own sin. But the motives which

made this change intelligible and necessary in purely human relations

could not be brought to bear immediately on the question of divine

retribution. The righteousness of God was thought to act on different

lines from the righteousness of man. The experience of the last generation

of the state seemed to furnish fresh evidence of the operation of a law of

providence by which men were made to inherit the iniquity of their

fathers. The literature of the period is filled with the conviction that

it was the sins of Manasseh that had sealed the doom of the nation. These

sins had never been adequately punished, and subsequent events showed that

they were not forgiven. The reforming zeal of Josiah had postponed for a

time the final visitation of Jehovah’s anger; but no reformation and no

repentance could avail to roll back the flood of judgment that had been

set in motion by the crimes of the reign of Manasseh. “Notwithstanding

Jehovah turned not from the fierceness of His great wrath, wherewith His

anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that

Manasseh had provoked Him withal” (2 Kings xxiii. 26).

The proverb about the sour grapes shows the effect of this interpretation

of providence on a large section of the people. It means no doubt that

there is an irrational element in God’s method of dealing with men,

something not in harmony with natural laws. In the natural sphere if a man

eats sour grapes his own teeth are blunted or set on edge; the

consequences are immediate, and they are transitory. But in the moral

sphere a man may eat sour grapes all his life and suffer no evil

consequences whatever; the consequences, however, appear in his children

who have committed no such indiscretion. There is nothing there which

answers to the ordinary sense of justice. Yet the proverb appears to be

less an arraignment of the divine righteousness than a mode of self‐

exculpation on the part of the people. It expresses the fatalism and

despair which settled down on the minds of that generation when they

realised the full extent of the calamity that had overtaken them: “If our

transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how then

should we live?” (ch. xxxiii. 10). So the exiles reasoned in Babylon,

where they were in no mood for quoting facetious proverbs about the ways

of Providence; but they accurately expressed the sense of the adage that

had been current in Jerusalem before its fall. The sins for which they

suffered were not their own, and the judgment that lay on them was no

summons to repentance, for it was caused by sins of which they were not

guilty and for which they could not in any real sense repent.

Ezekiel attacks this popular theory of retribution at what must have been

regarded as its strongest point—the relation between the father and son.

“Why should the son _not_ bear the iniquity of his father?” the people

asked in astonishment (ver. 19). “It is good traditional theology, and it

has been confirmed by our own experience.” Now Ezekiel would probably not

have admitted that in any circumstances a son suffers because his father

has sinned. With that notion he appears to have absolutely broken. He did

not deny that the Exile was the punishment for all the sins of the past as

well as for those of the present; but that was because the nation was

treated as a moral unity, and not because of any law of heredity which

bound up the fate of the child with that of the father. It was essential

to his purpose to show that the principle of social guilt or collective

retribution came to an end with the fall of the state; whereas in the form

in which the people held to it, it could never come to an end so long as

there are parents to sin and children to suffer. But the important point

in the prophet’s teaching is that whether in one form or in another the

principle of solidarity is now superseded. God will no longer deal with

men in the mass, but as individuals; and facts which gave plausibility and

a relative justification to cynical views of God’s providence shall no

more occur. There will be no more occasion to use that objectionable

proverb in Israel. On the contrary, it will be manifest in the case of

each separate individual that God’s righteousness is discriminating, and

that each man’s destiny corresponds with his own character. And the new

principle is embodied in words which may be called the charter of the

individual soul—words whose significance is fully revealed only in

Christianity: “All souls are Mine.... The soul that sinneth, it shall

die.”

What is here asserted is of course not a distinction between the soul or

spiritual part of man’s being and another part of his being which is

subject to physical necessity, but one between the individual and his

moral environment. The former distinction is real, and it may be necessary

for us in our day to insist on it, but it was certainly not thought of by

Ezekiel or perhaps by any other Old Testament writer. The word “soul”

denotes simply the principle of individual life. “All persons are Mine”

expresses the whole meaning which Ezekiel meant to convey. Consequently

the death threatened to the sinner is not what we call spiritual death,

but death in the literal sense—the death of the individual. The truth

taught is the independence and freedom of the individual, or his moral

personality. And that truth involves two things. First, each individual

belongs to God, stands in immediate personal relation to Him. In the old

economy the individual belonged to the nation or the family, and was

related to God only as a member of a larger whole. Now he has to deal with

God directly—possesses independent personal worth in the eye of God.

Secondly, as a result of this, each man is responsible for his own acts,

and for these alone. So long as his religious relations are determined by

circumstances outside of his own life his personality is incomplete. The

ideal relation to God must be one in which the destiny of every man

depends on his own free actions. These are the fundamental postulates of

personal religion as formulated by Ezekiel.

The first part of the chapter is nothing more than an illustration of the

second of these truths in a sufficient number of instances to show both

sides of its operation. There is first the case of a man perfectly

righteous, who as a matter of course lives by his righteousness, the state

of his father not being taken into account. Then this good man is supposed

to bear a son who is in all respects the opposite of his father, who

answers none of the tests of a righteous man; he must die for his own

sins, and his father’s righteousness avails him nothing. Lastly, if the

son of this wicked man takes warning by his father’s fate and leads a good

life, he lives just as the first man did because of his own righteousness,

and suffers no diminution of his reward because his father was a sinner.

In all this argument there is a tacit appeal to the conscience of the

hearers, as if the case only required to be put clearly before them to

command their assent. This is what shall be, the prophet says; and it is

what ought to be. It is contrary to the idea of perfect justice to

conceive of Jehovah as acting otherwise than as here represented. To cling

to the idea of collective retribution as a permanent truth of religion, as

the exiles were disposed to do, destroys belief in the divine

righteousness by making it different from the righteousness which

expresses itself in the moral judgments of men.

Before we pass from this part of the chapter we may take note of some

characteristics of the moral ideal by which Ezekiel tests the conduct of

the individual man. It is given in the form of a catalogue of virtues, the

presence or absence of which determines a man’s fitness or unfitness to

enter the future kingdom of God. Most of these virtues are defined

negatively; the code specifies sins to be avoided rather than duties to be

performed or graces to be cultivated. Nevertheless they are such as to

cover a large section of human life, and the arrangement of them embodies

distinctions of permanent ethical significance. They may be classed under

the three heads of piety, chastity, and beneficence. Under the first head,

that of directly religious duties, two offences are mentioned which are

closely connected with each other, although to our minds they may seem to

involve different degrees of guilt (ver. 6). One is the acknowledgment of

other gods than Jehovah, and the other is participation in ceremonies

which denoted fellowship with idols.(45) To us who “know that an idol is

nothing in the world” the mere act of eating with the blood has no

religious significance. But in Ezekiel’s time it was impossible to divest

it of heathen associations, and the man who performed it stood convicted

of a sin against Jehovah. Similarly the idea of sexual purity is

illustrated by two outstanding and prevalent offences (ver. 6). The third

head, which includes by far the greater number of particulars, deals with

the duties which we regard as moral in a stricter sense. They are

embodiments of the love which “worketh no ill to his neighbour,” and is

therefore “the fulfilling of the law.” It is manifest that the list is not

meant to be an exhaustive enumeration of all the virtues that a good man

must practise, or all the vices he must shun. The prophet has before his

mind two broad classes of men—those who feared God, and those who did not;

and what he does is to lay down outward marks which were practically

sufficient to discriminate between the one class and the other.

The supreme moral category is Righteousness, and this includes the two

ideas of right character and a right relation to God. The distinction

between an active righteousness manifested in the life and a

“righteousness which is by faith” is not explicitly drawn in the Old

Testament. Hence the passage contains no teaching on the question whether

a man’s relation to God is determined by his good works, or whether good

works are the fruit and outcome of a right relation to God. The essence of

morality, according to the Old Testament, is loyalty to God, expressed by

obedience to His will; and from that point of view it is self‐evident that

the man who is loyal to Jehovah stands accepted in His sight. In other

connections Ezekiel makes it abundantly clear that the state of grace does

not depend on any merit which man can have towards God.

The fact that Ezekiel defines righteousness in terms of outward conduct

has led to his being accused of the error of legalism in his moral

conceptions. He has been charged with resolving righteousness into “a sum

of separate _tzedāqôth_,” or virtues. But this view strains his language

unduly, and seems moreover to be negatived by the presuppositions of his

argument. As a man must either live or die at the day of judgment, so he

must at any moment be either righteous or wicked. The problematic case of

a man who should conscientiously observe some of these requirements and

deliberately violate others would have been dismissed by Ezekiel as an

idle speculation: “Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in

one point, he is guilty of all” (James ii. 10). The very fact that former

good deeds are not remembered to a man in the day when he turns from his

righteousness shows that the state of righteousness is something different

from an average struck from the statistics of his moral career. The bent

of the character towards or away from goodness is no doubt spoken of as

subject to sudden fluctuations, but for the time being each man is

conceived as dominated by the one tendency or the other; and it is the

bent of the whole nature towards the good that constitutes the

righteousness by which a man shall live. It is at all events a mistake to

suppose that the prophet is concerned only about the external act and

indifferent to the state of heart from which it proceeds. It is true that

he does not attempt to penetrate beneath the surface of the outward life.

He does not analyse motives. But this is because he assumes that if a man

keeps God’s law he does it from a sincere desire to please God and with a

sense of the rightness of the law to which he subjects his life. When we

recognise this the charge of externalism amounts to very little. We can

never get behind the principle that “he that doeth righteousness is

righteous” (1 John iii. 7), and that principle covers all that Ezekiel

really teaches. Compared with the more spiritual teaching of the New

Testament his moral ideal is no doubt defective in many directions, but

his insistence on action as a test of character is hardly one of them. We

must remember that the New Testament itself contains as many warnings

against a false spirituality as it does against the opposite error of

reliance on good works.

II

The second great truth of personal religion is the moral freedom of the

individual to determine his own destiny in the day of judgment. This is

illustrated in the latter part of the chapter by the two opposite cases of

a wicked man turning from his wickedness (vv. 21, 22) and a righteous man

turning from his righteousness (ver. 24). And the teaching of the passage

is that the effect of such a change of mind, as regards a man’s relation

to God, is absolute. The good life subsequent to conversion is not weighed

against the sins of past years; it is the index of a new state of heart in

which the guilt of former transgressions is entirely blotted out: “All his

transgressions that he hath committed shall not be remembered in regard to

him; in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.” But in like

manner the act of apostasy effaces the remembrance of good deeds done in

an earlier period of the man’s life. The standing of each soul before God,

its righteousness or its wickedness, is thus wholly determined by its

final choice of good or evil, and is revealed by the conduct which follows

that great moral decision. There can be no doubt that Ezekiel regards

these two possibilities as equally real, falling away from righteousness

being as much a fact of experience as repentance. In the light of the New

Testament we should perhaps interpret both cases somewhat differently. In

genuine conversion we must recognise the imparting of a new spiritual

principle which is ineradicable, containing the pledge of perseverance in

the state of grace to the end. In the case of final apostasy we are

compelled to judge that the righteousness which is renounced was only

apparent, that it was no true indication of the man’s character or of his

condition in the sight of God. But these are not the questions with which

the prophet is directly dealing. The essential truth which he inculcates

is the emancipation of the individual, through repentance, from his own

past. In virtue of his immediate personal relation to God each man has the

power to accept the offer of salvation, to break away from his sinful life

and escape the doom which hangs over the impenitent. To this one point the

whole argument of the chapter tends. It is a demonstration of the

possibility and efficacy of individual repentance, culminating in the

declaration which lies at the very foundation of evangelical religion,

that God has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but will have all

men to repent and live (ver. 32).

It is not easy for us to conceive the effect of this revelation on the

minds of people so utterly unprepared for it as the generation in which

Ezekiel lived. Accustomed as they were to think of their individual fate

as bound up in that of their nation, they could not at once adjust

themselves to a doctrine which had never previously been enunciated with

such incisive clearness. And it is not surprising that one effect of

Ezekiel’s teaching was to create fresh doubts of the rectitude of the

divine government. “The way of the Lord is not equal,” it was said (vv.

25, 29). So long as it was admitted that men suffered for the sins of

their ancestors or that God dealt with them in the mass, there was at

least an appearance of consistency in the methods of Providence. The

justice of God might not be visible in the life of the individual, but it

could be roughly traced in the history of the nation as a whole. But when

that principle was discarded, then the question of the divine

righteousness was raised in the case of each separate Israelite, and there

immediately appeared all those perplexities about the lot of the

individual which so sorely exercised the faith of Old Testament believers.

Experience did not show that correspondence between a man’s attitude

towards God and his earthly fortunes which the doctrine of individual

freedom seemed to imply; and even in Ezekiel’s time it must have been

evident that the calamities which overtook the state fell indiscriminately

on the righteous and the wicked. The prophet’s purpose, however, is a

practical one, and he does not attempt to offer a theoretical solution of

the difficulties which thus arose. There were several considerations in

his mind which turned aside the edge of the people’s complaint against the

righteousness of Jehovah. One was the imminence of the final judgment, in

which the absolute rectitude of the divine procedure would be clearly

manifested. Another seems to be the irresolute and unstable attitude of

the people themselves towards the great moral issues which were set before

them. While they professed to be more righteous than their fathers, they

showed no settled purpose of amendment in their lives. A man might be

apparently righteous to‐day and a sinner to‐morrow; the “inequality” of

which they complained was in their own ways, and not in the way of the

Lord (vv. 25, 29). But the most important element in the case was the

prophet’s conception of the character of God as one who, though strictly

just, yet desired that men should live. The Lord is longsuffering, not

willing that any should perish; and He postpones the day of decision that

His goodness may lead men to repentance. “Have I any pleasure in the death

of the wicked? saith the Lord: and not that he should turn from his ways,

and live?” (ver. 23). And all these considerations lead up to the urgent

call to repentance with which the chapter closes.

The importance of the questions dealt with in this eighteenth chapter is

shown clearly enough by the hold which they have over the minds of men in

the present day. The very same difficulties which Ezekiel had to encounter

in his time confront us still in a somewhat altered form, and are often

keenly felt as obstacles to faith in God. The scientific doctrine of

heredity, for example, seems to be but a more precise modern rendering of

the old proverb about the eating of sour grapes. The biological

controversy over the possibility of the transmission of acquired

characteristics scarcely touches the moral problem. In whatever way that

controversy may be ultimately settled, it is certain that in all cases a

man’s life is affected both for good and evil by influences which descend

upon him from his ancestry. Similarly within the sphere of the individual

life the law of habit seems to exclude the possibility of complete

emancipation from the penalty due to past transgressions. Hardly anything,

in short, is better established by experience than that the consequences

of past actions persist through all changes of spiritual condition, and,

further, that children do suffer from the consequences of their parents’

sin.

Do not these facts, it may be asked, amount practically to a vindication

of the theory of retribution against which the prophet’s argument is

directed? How can we reconcile them with the great principles enunciated

in this chapter? Dictates of morality, fundamental truths of religion,

these may be; but can we say in the face of experience that they are true?

It must be admitted that a complete answer to these questions is not given

in the chapter before us, nor perhaps anywhere in the Old Testament. So

long as God dealt with men mainly by temporal rewards and punishments, it

was impossible to realise fully the separateness of the soul in its

spiritual relations to God; the fate of the individual is necessarily

merged in that of the community, and Ezekiel’s doctrine remains a prophecy

of better things to be revealed. This indeed is the light in which he

himself teaches us to regard it; although he applies it in all its

strictness to the men of his own generation, it is nevertheless

essentially a feature of the ideal kingdom of God, and is to be exhibited

in the judgment by which that kingdom is introduced. The great value of

his teaching therefore lies in his having formulated with unrivalled

clearness principles which are eternally true of the spiritual life,

although the perfect manifestation of these principles in the experience

of believers was reserved for the final revelation of salvation in Christ.

The solution of the contradiction referred to lies in the separation

between the natural and the penal consequences of sin. There is a sphere

within which natural laws have their course, modified, it may be, but not

wholly suspended by the law of the spirit of life in Christ. The physical

effects of vicious indulgence are not turned aside by repentance, and a

man may carry the scars of sin upon him to the grave. But there is also a

sphere into which natural law does not enter. In his immediate personal

relation to God a believer is raised above the evil consequences which

flow from his past life, so that they have no power to separate him from

the love of God. And within that sphere his moral freedom and independence

are as much matter of experience as is his subjection to law in another

sphere. He knows that all things work together for his good, and that

tribulation itself is a means of bringing him nearer to God. Amongst those

tribulations which work out his salvation there may be the evil conditions

imposed on him by the sin of others, or even the natural consequences of

his own former transgressions. But tribulations no longer bear the aspect

of penalty, and are no longer a token of the wrath of God. They are

transformed into chastisements by which the Father of spirits makes His

children perfect in holiness. The hardest cross to bear will always be

that which is the result of one’s own sin; but He who has borne the guilt

of it can strengthen us to bear even this and follow Him.(46)

Chapter XI. The Sword Unsheathed. Chapter xxi.

The date at the beginning of ch. xx. introduces the fourth and last

section of the prophecies delivered before the destruction of Jerusalem.

It also divides the first period of Ezekiel’s ministry into two equal

parts. The time is the month of August, 590 B.C., two years after his

prophetic inauguration and two years before the investment of Jerusalem.

It follows that if the book of Ezekiel presents anything like a faithful

picture of his actual work, by far his most productive year was that which

had just closed. It embraces the long and varied series of discourses from

ch. viii. to ch. xix.; whereas five chapters are all that remain as a

record of his activity during the next two years. This result is not so

improbable as at first sight it might appear. From the character of

Ezekiel’s prophecy, which consists largely of homiletic amplifications of

one great theme, it is quite intelligible that the main lines of his

teaching should have taken shape in his mind at an early period of his

ministry. The discourses in the earlier part of the book may have been

expanded in the act of committing them to writing; but there is no reason

to doubt that the ideas they contain were present to the prophet’s mind

and were actually delivered by him within the period to which they are

assigned. We may therefore suppose that Ezekiel’s public exhortations

became less frequent during the two years that preceded the siege, just as

we know that for two years after that event they were altogether

discontinued.

In this last division of the prophecies relating to the destruction of

Jerusalem we can easily distinguish two different classes of oracles. On

the one hand we have two chapters dealing with contemporary incidents—the

march of Nebuchadnezzar’s army against Jerusalem (ch. xxi.), and the

commencement of the siege of the city (ch. xxiv.). In spite of the

confident opinion of some critics that these prophecies could not have

been composed till after the fall of Jerusalem, they seem to me to bear

the marks of having been written under the immediate influence of the

events they describe. It is difficult otherwise to account for the

excitement under which the prophet labours, especially in ch. xxi., which

stands by the side of ch. vii. as the most agitated utterance in the whole

book. On the other hand we have three discourses of the nature of formal

indictments—one directed against the exiles (ch. xx.), one against

Jerusalem (ch. xxii.), and one against the whole nation of Israel (ch.

xxiii.). It is impossible in these chapters to discover any advance in

thought upon similar passages that have already been before us. Two of

them (chs. xx. and xxiii.) are historical retrospects after the manner of

ch. xvi., and there is no obvious reason why they should be placed in a

different section of the book. The key to the unity of the section must

therefore be sought in the two historical prophecies and in the situation

created by the events they describe.(47) It will therefore help to clear

the ground if we commence with the oracle which throws most light on the

historical background of this group of prophecies—the oracle of Jehovah’s

sword against Jerusalem in ch. xxi.(48)

The long‐projected rebellion has at length broken out. Zedekiah has

renounced his allegiance to the king of Babylon, and the army of the

Chaldæans is on its way to suppress the insurrection. The precise date of

these events is not known. For some reason the conspiracy of the

Palestinian states had hung fire; many years had been allowed to slip away

since the time when their envoys had met in Jerusalem to concert measures

of united resistance (Jer. xxvii.). This procrastination was, as usual, a

sure presage of disaster. In the interval the league had dissolved. Some

of its members had made terms with Nebuchadnezzar; and it would appear

that only Tyre, Judah, and Ammon ventured on open defiance of his power.

The hope was cherished in Jerusalem, and probably also among the Jews in

Babylon, that the first assault of the Chaldæans would be directed against

the Ammonites, and that time would thus be gained to complete the defences

of Jerusalem. To dispel this illusion is one obvious purpose of the

prophecy before us. The movements of Nebuchadnezzar’s army are directed by

a wisdom higher than his own; he is the unconscious instrument by which

Jehovah is executing His own purpose. The real object of his expedition is

not to punish a few refractory tribes for an act of disloyalty, but to

vindicate the righteousness of Jehovah in the destruction of the city

which had profaned His holiness. No human calculations will be allowed

even for a moment to turn aside the blow which is aimed directly at

Jerusalem’s sins, or to obscure the lesson taught by its sure and unerring

aim.

We can imagine the restless suspense and anxiety with which the final

struggle for the national cause was watched by the exiles in Babylon. In

imagination they would follow the long march of the Chaldæan hosts by the

Euphrates and their descent by the valleys of the Orontes and Leontes upon

the city. Eagerly would they wait for some tidings of a reverse which

would revive their drooping hope of a speedy collapse of the great world‐

empire and a restoration of Israel to its ancient freedom. And when at

length they heard that Jerusalem was enclosed in the iron grip of these

victorious legions, from which no human deliverance was possible, their

mood would harden into one in which fanatical hope and sullen despair

contended for the mastery. Into an atmosphere charged with such excitement

Ezekiel hurls the series of predictions comprised in chs. xxi. and xxiv.

With far other feelings than his fellows, but with as keen an interest as

theirs, he follows the development of what he knows to be the last act in

the long controversy between Jehovah and Israel. It is his duty to repeat

once more the irrevocable decree—the divine _delenda est_ against the

guilty Jerusalem. But he does so in this instance in language whose

vehemence betrays the agitation of his mind, and perhaps also the

restlessness of the society in which he lived. The twenty‐first chapter is

a series of rhapsodies, the product of a state bordering on ecstasy, where

different aspects of the impending judgment are set forth by the help of

vivid images which pass in quick succession through the prophet’s mind.

I

The first vision which the prophet sees of the approaching catastrophe

(vv. 1‐4) is that of a forest conflagration, an occurrence which must have

been as frequent in Palestine as a prairie fire in America. He sees a fire

break out in the “forest of the south,” and rage with such fierceness that

“every green tree and every dry tree” is burned up; the faces of all who

are near it are scorched, and all men are convinced that so terrible a

calamity must be the work of Jehovah Himself. This we may suppose to have

been the form in which the truth first laid hold of Ezekiel’s imagination;

but he appears to have hesitated to proclaim his message in this form. His

figurative manner of speech had become notorious among the exiles (ver.

5), and he was conscious that a “parable” so vague and general as this

would be dismissed as an ingenious riddle which might mean anything or

nothing. What follows (vv. 7‐10) gives the key to the original vision.

Although it is in form an independent oracle, it is closely parallel to

the preceding and elucidates each feature in detail. The “forest of the

south” is explained to mean the land of Israel; and the mention of the

sword of Jehovah instead of the fire intimates less obscurely that the

instrument of the threatened calamity is the Babylonian army. It is

interesting to observe that Ezekiel expressly admits that there were

righteous men even in the doomed Israel. Contrary to his conception of the

normal methods of the divine righteousness, he conceives of _this_

judgment as one which involves righteous and wicked in a common ruin. Not

that God is less than righteous in this crowning act of vengeance, but His

justice is not brought to bear on the fate of individuals. He is dealing

with the nation as a whole, and in the exterminating judgment of the

nation good men will no more be spared than the green tree of the forest

escapes the fate of the dry. It was the fact that righteous men perished

in the fall of Jerusalem; and Ezekiel does not shut his eyes to it, firmly

as he believed that the time was come when God would reward every man

according to his own character. The indiscriminateness of the judgment in

its bearing on different classes of persons is obviously a feature which

Ezekiel here seeks to emphasise.

But the idea of the sword of Jehovah drawn from its scabbard, to return no

more till it has accomplished its mission, is the one that has fixed

itself most deeply in the prophet’s imagination, and forms the connecting

link between this vision and the other amplifications of the same theme

which follow.

II

Passing over the symbolic action of vv. 11‐13, representing the horror and

astonishment with which the dire tidings of Jerusalem’s fall will be

received, we come to the point where the prophet breaks into the wild

strain of dithyrambic poetry, which has been called the “Song of the

Sword” (vv. 14‐22). The following translation, although necessarily

imperfect and in some places uncertain, may convey some idea both of the

structure and the rugged vigour of the original. It will be seen that

there is a clear division into four stanzas:(49)—

(i) Vv. 14‐16.

A sword, a sword! It is sharpened and burnished withal.

For a work of slaughter is it sharpened!

To gleam like lightning burnished!

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

And ’twas given to be smoothed for the grip of the hand,

—Sharpened is it, and furbished—

To put in the hand of the slayer.

(ii) Vv. 17, 18.

Cry and howl, son of man!

For it has come among my people;

Come among all the princes of Israel!

Victims of the sword are they, they and my people;

Therefore smite upon thy thigh!

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

It shall not be, saith Jehovah the Lord.

(iii) Vv. 19, 20.

But, thou son of man, prophesy, and smite hand on hand;

Let the sword be doubled and tripled (?).

A sword of the slain is it, the great sword of the slain whirling around

them,—

That hearts may fail, and many be the fallen in all their gates.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

It is made like lightning, furbished for slaughter!

(iv) Vv. 21, 22.

Gather thee together! Smite to the right, to the left,

Whithersoever thine edge is appointed!

And I also will smite hand on hand,

And appease My wrath:

I Jehovah have spoken it.

In spite of its obscurity, its abrupt transitions, and its strange

blending of the divine with the human personality, the ode exhibits a

definite poetic form and a real progress of thought from the beginning to

the close. Throughout the passage we observe that the prophet’s gaze is

fascinated by the glittering sword which symbolised the instrument of

Jehovah’s vengeance. In the opening stanza (i) he describes the

_preparation_ of the sword; he notes the keenness of its edge and its

glittering sheen with an awful presentiment that an implement so

elaborately fashioned is destined for some terrible day of slaughter. Then

(ii) he announces the _purpose_ for which the sword is prepared, and

breaks into loud lamentation as he realises that its doomed victims are

his own people and the princes of Israel. In the next stanza (iii) he sees

the sword _in action_; wielded by an invisible hand, it flashes hither and

thither, circling round its hapless victims as if two or three swords were

at work instead of one. All hearts are paralysed with fear, but the sword

does not cease its ravages until it has filled the ground with slain. Then

at length the sword is _at rest_ (iv), having accomplished its work. The

divine Speaker calls on it in a closing apostrophe “to gather itself

together” as if for a final sweep to right and left, indicating the

thoroughness with which the judgment has been executed. In the last verse

the vision of the sword fades away, and the poem closes with an

announcement, in the usual prophetic manner, of Jehovah’s fixed purpose to

“assuage” His wrath against Israel by the crowning act of retribution.

III

If any doubt still remained as to what the sword of Jehovah meant, it is

removed in the next section (vv. 23‐32), where the prophet indicates the

way by which the sword is to come on the kingdom of Judah. The Chaldæan

monarch is represented as pausing on his march, perhaps at Riblah or some

place to the north of Palestine, and deliberating whether he shall advance

first against Judah or the Ammonites. He stands at the parting of the

ways—on the left hand is the road to Rabbath‐ammon, on the right that to

Jerusalem. In his perplexity he invokes supernatural guidance, resorting

to various expedients then in use for ascertaining the will of the gods

and the path of good fortune. He “rattles the arrows” (two of them in some

kind of vessel, one for Jerusalem and the other for Riblah); he consults

the teraphim and inspects the entrails of a sacrificial victim. This

consulting of the omens was no doubt an invariable preliminary to every

campaign, and was resorted to whenever an important military decision had

to be made. It might seem a matter of indifference to a powerful monarch

like Nebuchadnezzar which of two petty opponents he determined to crush

first. But the kings of Babylon were religious men in their way, and never

doubted that success depended on their following the indications that were

given by the higher powers. In this case Nebuchadnezzar gets a true

answer, but not from the deities whose aid he had invoked. In his right

hand he finds the arrow marked “Jerusalem.” The die is cast, his

resolution is taken, but it is Jehovah’s sentence sealing the fate of

Jerusalem that has been uttered.

Such is the situation which Ezekiel in Babylon is directed to represent

through a piece of obvious symbolism. A road diverging into two is drawn

on the ground, and at the meeting‐point a sign‐post is erected indicating

that the one leads to Ammon and the other to Judah. It is of course not

necessary to suppose that the incident so graphically described actually

occurred. The divination scene may only be imaginary, although it is

certainly a true reflection of Babylonian ideas and customs. The truth

conveyed is that the Babylonian army is moving under the immediate

guidance of Jehovah, and that not only the political projects of the king,

but his secret thoughts and even his superstitious reliance on signs and

omens, are all overruled for the furtherance of the one purpose for which

Jehovah has raised him up.

Meanwhile Ezekiel is well aware that in Jerusalem a very different

interpretation is put on the course of events. When the news of the great

king’s decision reaches the men at the head of affairs they are not

dismayed. They view the decision as the result of “false divination”; they

laugh to scorn the superstitious rites which have determined the course of

the campaign,—not that they suppose the king will not act on his omens,

but they do not believe they are an augury of success. They had hoped for

a short breathing space while Nebuchadnezzar was engaged on the east of

the Jordan, but they will not shrink from the conflict whether it be to‐

day or to‐morrow. Addressing himself to this state of mind, Ezekiel once

more(50) reminds those who hear him that these men are fighting against

the moral laws of the universe. The existing kingdom of Judah occupies a

false position before God and in the eyes of just men. It has no religious

foundation; for the hope of the Messiah does not lie with that wearer of a

dishonoured crown, the king Zedekiah, but with the legitimate heir of

David now in exile. The state has no right to be except as part of the

Chaldæan empire, and this right it has forfeited by renouncing its

allegiance to its earthly superior. These men forget that in this quarrel

the just cause is that of Nebuchadnezzar, whose enterprise only seems to

“call to mind their iniquity” (ver. 28)—_i.e._, their political crime. In

provoking this conflict, therefore, they have put themselves in the wrong;

they shall be caught in the toils of their own villainy.

The heaviest censure is reserved for Zedekiah, the “wicked one, the prince

of Israel, whose day is coming in the time of final retribution.” This

part of the prophecy has a close resemblance to the latter part of ch.

xvii. The prophet’s sympathies are still with the exiled king, or at least

with that branch of the royal family which he represents. And the sentence

of rejection on Zedekiah is again accompanied by a promise of the

restoration of the kingdom in the person of the Messiah. The crown which

has been dishonoured by the last king of Judah shall be taken from his

head; that which is low shall be exalted (the exiled branch of the Davidic

house), and that which is high shall be abased (the reigning king); the

whole existing order of things shall be overturned “until _He_ comes who

has the right.”(51)

IV

The last oracle is directed against the children of Ammon. By

Nebuchadnezzar’s decision to subdue Jerusalem first the Ammonites had

gained a short respite. They even exulted in the humiliation of their

former ally, and had apparently drawn the sword in order to seize part of

the land of Judah. Misled by false diviners, they had dared to seek their

own advantage in the calamities which Jehovah had brought on His own

people. The prophet threatens the complete annihilation of Ammon, even in

its own land, and the blotting out of its remembrance among the nations.

That is the substance of the prophecy; but its form presents several

points of difficulty. It begins with what appears to be an echo of the

“Song of the Sword” in the earlier part of the chapter:—

A sword! a sword!

It is drawn for slaughter; it is furbished to shine like lightning (ver.

33).

But as we proceed we find that it is the sword of the Ammonites that is

meant, and they are ordered to return it to its sheath. If this be so, the

tone of the passage must be ironical. It is in mockery that the prophet

uses such magnificent language of the puny pretensions of Ammon to take a

share in the work for which Jehovah has fashioned the mighty weapon of the

Chaldæan army. There are other reminiscences of the earlier part of the

chapter, such as the “lying divination” of ver. 34, and the “time of final

retribution” in the same verse. The allusion to the “reproach” of Ammon

and its aggressive attitude seems to point to the time after the

destruction of Jerusalem and the withdrawal of the army of Nebuchadnezzar.

Whether the Ammonites had previously made their submission or not we

cannot tell; but the fortieth and forty‐first chapters of Jeremiah show

that Ammon was still a hotbed of conspiracy against the Babylonian

interest in the days after the fall of Jerusalem. These appearances make

it probable that this part of the chapter is an appendix, added at a later

time, and dealing with a situation which was developed after the

destruction of the city. Its insertion in its present place is easily

accounted for by the circumstance that the fate of Ammon had been linked

with that of Jerusalem in the previous part of the chapter. The vindictive

little nationality had used its respite to gratify its hereditary hatred

of Israel, and now the judgment, suspended for a time, shall return with

redoubled fury and sweep it from the earth.

Looking back over this series of prophecies, there seems reason to believe

that, with the exception of the last, they are really contemporaneous with

the events they deal with. It is true that they do not illuminate the

historical situation to the same degree as those in which Isaiah depicts

the advance of another invader and the development of another crisis in

the people’s history. This is due partly to the bent of Ezekiel’s genius,

but partly also to the very peculiar circumstances in which he was placed.

The events which form the theme of his prophecy were transacted on a

distant stage; neither he nor his immediate hearers were actors in the

drama. He addresses himself to an audience wrought to the highest pitch of

excitement, but swayed by hopes and rumours and vague surmises as to the

probable issue of events. It was inevitable in these circumstances that

his prophecy, even in those passages which deal with contemporary facts,

should present but a pale reflection of the actual situation. In the case

before us the one historical event which stands out clearly is the

departure of Nebuchadnezzar with his army to Jerusalem. But what we read

is genuine prophecy; not the artifice of a man using prophetic speech as a

literary form, but the utterance of one who discerns the finger of God in

the present, and interprets His purpose beforehand to the men of his day.

Chapter XII. Jehovah’s Controversy With Israel. Chapter xx.

By far the hardest trial of Ezekiel’s faith must have been the conduct of

his fellow‐exiles. It was amongst them that he looked for the great

spiritual change which must precede the establishment of the kingdom of

God; and he had already addressed to them words of consolation based on

the knowledge that the hope of the future was theirs (ch. xi. 18). Yet the

time passed on without bringing any indications that the promise was about

to be fulfilled. There were no symptoms of national repentance; there was

nothing even to show that the lessons of the Exile as interpreted by the

prophet were beginning to be laid to heart. For these men, among whom he

lived, were still inveterately addicted to idolatry. Strange as it must

seem to us, the very men who cherished a fanatical faith in Jehovah’s

power to save His people were assiduously practising the worship of other

gods. It is too readily assumed by some writers that the idolatry of the

exiles was of the ambiguous kind which had prevailed so long in the land

of Israel, that it was the worship of Jehovah under the form of images—a

breach of the second commandment, but not of the first. The people who

carried Jeremiah down to Egypt were as eager as Ezekiel’s companions to

hear a word from Jehovah; yet they were devoted to the worship of the

“Queen of Heaven,” and dated all their misfortunes from the time when

their women had ceased to pay court to her. There is no reason to believe

that the Jews in Babylon were less catholic in their superstitions than

those of Judæa; and indeed the whole drift of Ezekiel’s expostulations

goes to show that he has the worship of false gods in view. The ancient

belief that the worship of Jehovah was specially associated with the land

of Canaan is not likely to have been without influence on the minds of

those who felt the fascination of idolatry, and must have strengthened the

tendency to seek the aid of foreign gods in a foreign land.

The twentieth chapter deals with this matter of idolatry; and the fact

that this important discourse was called forth by a visit from the elders

of Israel shows how heavily the subject weighed on the prophet’s mind.

Whatever the purpose of the deputation may have been (and of that we have

no information), it was certainly not to consult Ezekiel about the

propriety of worshipping false gods. It is only because this great

question dominates all his thoughts concerning them and their destiny that

he connects the warning against idolatry with a casual inquiry addressed

to him by the elders. The circumstances are so similar to those of ch.

xiv. that Ewald was led to conjecture that both oracles originated in one

and the same incident, and were separated from each other in writing

because of the difference of their subjects. Ch. xiv. on that view

justifies the refusal of an answer from a consideration of the true

function of prophecy, while ch. xx. expands the admonition of the sixth

verse of ch. xiv. into an elaborate review of the religious history of

Israel. But there is really no good reason for identifying the two

incidents. In neither passage does the prophet think it worth while to

record the object of the inquiry addressed to him, and therefore

conjecture is useless.

But the very fact that a definite date is given for this visit leads us to

consider whether it had not some peculiar significance to lodge it so

firmly in Ezekiel’s mind. Now the most suggestive hint which the chapter

affords is the idea put into the lips of the exiles in ver. 32: “And as

for the thought which arises in your mind, it shall not be, in that ye are

thinking, We will become like the heathen, like the families of the lands,

in worshipping wood and stone.” These words contain the key to the whole

discourse. It is difficult, no doubt, to decide how much exactly is

implied in them. They may mean no more than the determination to keep up

the external conformity to heathen customs which already existed in

matters of worship—as, for example, in the use of images. But the form of

expression used, “that which is coming up in your mind,” almost suggests

that the prophet was face to face with an incipient tendency among the

exiles, a deliberate resolve to apostatise and assimilate themselves for

all religious purposes to the surrounding heathen. It is by no means

improbable that, amidst the many conflicting tendencies that distracted

the exiled community, this idea of a complete abandonment of the national

religion should have crystallised into a settled purpose in the event of

their last hope being disappointed. If this was the situation with which

Ezekiel had to deal, we should be able to understand how his denunciation

takes the precise form which it assumes in this chapter.

For what is, in the main, the purport of the chapter? Briefly stated the

argument is as follows. The religion of Jehovah had never been the true

expression of the national genius of Israel. Not now for the first time

has the purpose of Israel come into conflict with the immutable purpose of

Jehovah; but from the very beginning the history had been one long

struggle between the natural inclinations of the people and the destiny

which was forced on it by the will of God. The love of idols had been the

distinguishing feature of the national character from the beginning; and

if it had been suffered to prevail, Israel would never have been known as

Jehovah’s people. Why had it not been suffered to prevail? Because of

Jehovah’s regard for the honour of His name; because in the eyes of the

heathen His glory was identified with the fortunes of this particular

people, to whom He had once revealed Himself. And as it has been in the

past, so it will be in the future. The time has come for the age‐long

controversy to be brought to an issue, and it cannot be doubtful what the

issue will be. “That which comes up in their mind”—this new resolve to

live like the heathen—cannot turn aside the purpose of Jehovah to make of

Israel a people for His own glory. Whatever further judgments may be

necessary for that end, the land of Israel shall yet be the seat of a pure

and acceptable worship of the true God, and the people shall recognise

with shame and contrition that the goal of all its history has been

accomplished in spite of its perversity by the “irresistible grace” of its

divine King.

I

THE LESSON OF HISTORY (vv. 5‐29).—It is a magnificent conception of

national election which the prophet here unfolds. It takes the form of a

parallel between two desert scenes, one at the beginning and the other at

the close of Israel’s history. The first part of the chapter deals with

the religious significance of the transactions in the wilderness of Sinai

and the events in Egypt which were introductory to them. It starts from

Jehovah’s free choice of the people while they were still living as

idolaters in Egypt. Jehovah there revealed Himself to them as their God,

and entered into a covenant(52) with them; and the covenant included on

the one hand the promise of the land of Canaan, and on the other hand a

requirement that the people should separate themselves from all forms of

idolatry whether native or Egyptian. “In the day that I chose Israel, ...

and made Myself known to them in the land of Egypt, ... saying, I am

Jehovah your God; in that day I lifted up My hand to them, to bring them

out of the land of Egypt, into a land which I had sought out for them. And

I said to them, Cast away each man the abomination of his eyes, and defile

not yourselves with the block‐gods of Egypt. I am Jehovah your God” (vv.

5‐7). The point which Ezekiel specially emphasises is that this vocation

to be the people of the true God was thrust on Israel without its consent,

and that the revelation of Jehovah’s purpose evoked no response in the

heart of the people. By persistence in idolatry they had virtually

renounced the kingship of Jehovah and forfeited their right to the

fulfilment of the promise He had given them. And only from regard to His

name, that it might not be profaned in the sight of the nations, before

whose eyes He had made Himself known to them, did He turn from the purpose

He had formed to destroy them in the land of Egypt.

In several respects this account of the occurrences in Egypt goes beyond

what we learn from any other source. The historical books contain no

reference to the prevalence of specifically Egyptian forms of idolatry

among the Hebrews, nor do they mention any threat to exterminate the

people for their rebellion. It is not to be supposed, however, that

Ezekiel possessed other records of the period before the Exodus than those

preserved in the Pentateuch. The fundamental conceptions are those

attested by the history, that God first revealed Himself to Israel by the

name Jehovah through Moses, and that the revelation was accompanied by a

promise of deliverance from Egypt. That the people in spite of this

revelation continued to worship idols is an inference from the whole of

their subsequent history. And the conflict in the mind of Jehovah between

anger against the people’s sin and jealousy for His own name is not a

matter of history at all, but is an inspired interpretation of the history

in the light of the divine holiness, which embraces both these elements.

In the wilderness Israel entered on the second and decisive stage of its

probation which falls into two acts, and whose determining factor was the

legislation. To the generation of the Exodus Jehovah made known the way of

life in a code of law which on its own intrinsic merits ought to have

commended itself to their moral sense. The statutes and judgments that

were then given were such that “if a man do them he shall live by them”

(ver. 11). This thought of the essential goodness of the law as originally

given reveals Ezekiel’s view of God’s relation to men. It derives its

significance no doubt from the contrast with legislation of an opposite

character afterwards mentioned. Yet even that contrast expresses a

conviction in the prophet’s mind that morality is not constituted by

arbitrary enactments on the part of God, but that there are eternal

conditions of ethical fellowship between God and man, and that the law

first offered for Israel’s acceptance was the embodiment of those ethical

relations which flow from the nature of Jehovah. It is probable that

Ezekiel has in view the moral precepts of the Decalogue. If so, it is

instructive to notice that the Sabbath law is separately mentioned, not as

one of the laws by which a man lives, but as a sign of the covenant

between Jehovah and Israel. The divine purpose was again defeated by the

idolatrous proclivities of the people: “They despised My judgments, and

they did not walk in My statutes, and they profaned My Sabbaths, _because_

their heart went after their idols” (ver. 16).

To the second generation in the wilderness the offer of the covenant was

renewed, with the same result (vv. 18‐24). It should be observed that in

both cases the disobedience of the people is answered by two distinct

utterances of Jehovah’s wrath. The first is a threat of immediate

extermination, which is expressed as a momentary purpose of Jehovah, no

sooner formed than withdrawn for the sake of His honour (vv. 14, 21). The

other is a judgment of a more limited character, uttered in the form of an

oath, and in the first case at least actually carried out. For the threat

of exclusion from the Promised Land (ver. 15) was enforced so far as the

first generation was concerned. Now the parallelism between the two

sections leads us to expect that the similar threat of dispersion in ver.

23 is meant to be understood of a judgment actually inflicted. We may

conclude, therefore, that ver. 23 refers to the Babylonian exile and the

dispersion among the nations, which hung like a doom over the nation

during its whole history in Canaan, and is represented as a direct

consequence of their transgressions in the wilderness. There seems reason

to believe that the particular allusion is to the twenty‐eighth chapter of

Deuteronomy, where the threat of a dispersion among the nations concludes

the long list of curses which will follow disobedience to the law (Deut.

xxviii. 64‐68). It is true that in that chapter the threat is only

conditional; but in the time of Ezekiel it had already been fulfilled, and

it is in accordance with his whole conception of the history to read the

final issue back into the early period when the national character was

determined.

But in addition to this, as if effectually to “conclude them under sin,”

Jehovah met the hardness of their hearts by imposing on them laws of an

opposite character to those first given, and laws which accorded only too

well with their baser inclinations: “And I also gave them statutes that

were not good, and judgments by which they should not live; and I rendered

them unclean in their offerings, by making over all that opened the womb,

that I might horrify them” (vv. 25, 26).

This division of the wilderness legislation into two kinds, one good and

life‐giving and the other not good, presents difficulties both moral and

critical which cannot perhaps be altogether removed. The general direction

in which the solution must be sought is indeed tolerably clear. The

reference is to the law which required the consecration of the firstborn

of all animals to Jehovah. This was interpreted in the most rigorous sense

as dedication in sacrifice; and then the principle was extended to the

case of human beings. The divine purpose in appearing to sanction this

atrocious practice was to “horrify” the people—that is to say, the

punishment of their idolatry consisted in the shock to their natural

instincts and affections caused by the worst development of the idolatrous

spirit to which they were delivered. We are not to infer from this that

human sacrifice was an element of the original Hebrew religion, and that

it was actually based on legislative enactment. The truth appears to be

that the sacrifice of children was originally a feature of Canaanitish

worship, particularly of the god Melek or Molech, and was only introduced

into the religion of Israel in the evil days which preceded the fall of

the state.(53) The idea took hold of men’s minds that this terrible rite

alone revealed the full potency of the sacrificial act; and when the

ordinary means of propitiation seemed to fail, it was resorted to as the

last desperate expedient for appeasing an offended deity. All that

Ezekiel’s words warrant us in assuming is that when once the practice was

established it was defended by an appeal to the ancient law of the

firstborn, the principle of which was held to cover the case of human

sacrifices. These laws, relating to the consecration of firstborn animals,

are therefore the statutes referred to by Ezekiel; and their defect lies

in their being open to such an immoral misinterpretation. This view is in

accordance with the probabilities of the case. When we consider the

tendency of the Old Testament writers to refer all actual events

immediately to the will of God, we can partly understand the form in which

Ezekiel expresses the facts; and this is perhaps all that can be said on

the moral aspect of the difficulty. It is but an application of the

principle that sin is punished by moral obliquity, and precepts which are

accommodated to the hardness of men’s hearts are by that same hardness

perverted to fatal issues. It cannot even be said that there is a radical

divergence of view between Ezekiel and Jeremiah on this subject. For when

the older prophet, speaking of child‐sacrifice, says that Jehovah

“commanded it not, neither came it into His mind” (ch. vii. 31 and ch.

xix. 5), he must have in view men who justified the custom by an appeal to

ancient legislation. And although Jeremiah indignantly repudiates the

suggestion that such horrors were contemplated by the law of Jehovah, he

hardly in this goes beyond Ezekiel, who declares that the ordinance in

question does not represent the true mind of Jehovah, but belongs to a

part of the law which was intended to punish sin by delusion.(54)

In consequence of these transactions in the desert Israel entered the land

of Canaan under the threat of eventual exile and under the curse of a

polluted worship. The subsequent history has little significance from the

point of view occupied throughout this discourse; and accordingly Ezekiel

disposes of it in three verses (27‐29). The entrance on the Promised Land,

he says, furnished the opportunity for a new manifestation of disloyalty

to Jehovah. He refers to the multiplication of heathen or semi‐heathen

sanctuaries throughout the land. Wherever they saw a high hill or a leafy

tree, they made it a place of sacrifice, and there they practised the

impure rites which were the outcome of their false conception of the

Deity. To the mind of Ezekiel the unity of Jehovah and the unity of the

sanctuary were inseparable ideas: the offence here alluded to is therefore

of the same kind as the abominations practised in Egypt and the desert; it

is a violation of the holiness of Jehovah. The prophet condenses his scorn

for the whole system of religion which led to a multiplication of

sanctuaries into a play on the etymology of the word _bāmah_ (high

places), the point of which, however, is obscure.(55)

II

THE APPLICATION (vv. 30‐44).—Having thus described the origin of idolatry

in Israel, and having shown that the destiny of the nation had been

determined neither by its deserts nor by its inclinations, but by

Jehovah’s consistent regard for the honour of His name, the prophet

proceeds to bring the lesson of the history to bear on his contemporaries.

The Captivity has as yet produced no change in their spiritual condition;

in Babylon they still defile themselves with the same abominations as

their ancestors, even to the crowning atrocity of child‐sacrifice. Their

idolatry is if anything more conscious than before, for it takes the shape

of a deliberate intention to be as other nations, worshipping wood and

stone. It is necessary therefore that once for all Jehovah should assert

His sovereignty over Israel, and bend their stubborn will to the

accomplishment of His purpose. “As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, surely

with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, and wrath poured out,

will I be king over you” (ver. 33). But how was this to be done? A heavier

chastisement than that which had been inflicted on the exiles could hardly

be conceived, yet it had effected nothing for the regeneration of Israel.

Surely the time is come when the divine method must be changed, when those

who have hardened themselves against the severity of God must be won by

His goodness? Such, however, is not the thought expressed in Ezekiel’s

delineation of the future. It is possible that the description which

follows (vv. 34‐38) may only be meant as an ideal picture of spiritual

processes to be effected by ordinary providential agencies. But certain it

is that what Ezekiel is chiefly convinced of is the necessity for further

acts of judgment—judgment which shall be decisive, because discriminating,

and issuing in the annihilation of all who cling to the evil traditions of

the past. This idea, indeed, of further chastisement in store for the

exiles is a fixed element of Ezekiel’s prophecy. It appears in his

earliest public utterance (ch. v.), although it is perhaps only in this

chapter that we perceive its full significance.

The scene of God’s final dealings with Israel’s sin is to be the “desert

of the nations.” That great barren plateau which stretches between the

Jordan and the Euphrates valley, round which lay the nations chiefly

concerned in Israel’s history, occupies a place in the restoration

analogous to that of the wilderness of Sinai (here called the “wilderness

of Egypt”) at the time of the Exodus. Into that vast solitude Jehovah will

gather His people from the lands of their exile, and there He will once

more judge them face to face. This judgment will be conducted on the

principle laid down in ch. xviii. Each individual shall be dealt with

according to his own character as a righteous man or a wicked. They shall

be made to “pass under the rod,” like sheep when they are counted by the

shepherd.(56) The rebels and transgressors shall perish in the wilderness;

for “out of the land of their sojournings will I bring them, and into the

land of Israel they shall not come” (ver. 38). Those that emerge from the

trial are the righteous remnant, who are to be brought into the land by

number:(57) these constitute the new Israel, for whom is reserved the

glory of the latter days.

The idea that the spiritual transformation of Israel was to be effected

_during a second sojourn in the wilderness_, although a very striking one,

occurs only here in the book of Ezekiel, and it can hardly be considered

as one of the cardinal ideas of his eschatology. It is in all probability

derived from the prophecies of Hosea, although it is modified in

accordance with the very different estimate of the nation’s history

represented by Ezekiel. It is instructive to compare the teaching of these

two prophets on this point. To Hosea the idea of a return to the desert

presents itself naturally as an element of the process by which Israel is

to be brought back to its allegiance to Jehovah. The return to the desert

restores the conditions under which the nation had first known and

followed Jehovah. He looks back to the sojourn in the wilderness of Sinai

as the time of uninterrupted communion between Jehovah and Israel—a time

of youthful innocence, when the sinful tendencies which may have been

latent in the nation had not developed into actual infidelity. The decay

of religion and morality dates from the possession of the land of Canaan,

and is traced to the corrupting influence of Canaanitish idolatry and

civilisation. It was at Baal‐peor that they first succumbed to the

attractions of a false religion and became contaminated with the spirit of

heathenism. Then the rich produce of the land came to be regarded as the

gift of the deities who were worshipped at the local sanctuaries, and this

worship with its sensuous accompaniments was the means of estranging the

people more and more from the knowledge of Jehovah. Hence the first step

towards a renewal of the relation between God and Israel is the withdrawal

of the gifts of nature, the suppression of religious ordinances and

political institutions; and this is represented as effected by a return to

the primitive life of the desert. Then in her desolation and affliction

the heart of Israel shall respond once more to the love of Jehovah, who

has never ceased to yearn after His unfaithful people. “I will allure her,

and bring her into the wilderness, and speak to her heart: ... and she

shall make answer there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day

when she came up out of the land of Egypt” (Hos. ii. 14, 15). Here there

may be a doubt whether the wilderness is to be taken literally or as a

figure for exile, but in either case the image naturally arises out of

Hosea’s profoundly simple conception of religion.

To Ezekiel, on the other hand, the “wilderness” is a synonym for

contention and judgment. It is the scene where the meanness and perversity

of man stand out in unrelieved contrast with the majesty and purity of

God. He recognises no glad springtime of promise and hope in the history

of Israel, no “kindness of her youth” or “love of her espousals” when she

went after Jehovah in the land that was not sown (Jer. ii. 2). The

difference between Hosea’s conception and Ezekiel’s is that in the view of

the exilic prophet there never has been any true response on the part of

Israel to the call of God. Hence a return to the desert can only mean a

repetition of the judgments that had marked the first sojourn of the

people in the wilderness of Sinai, and the carrying of them to the point

of a final decision between the claims of Jehovah and the stubbornness of

His people.

If it be asked which of these representations of the past is the true one,

the only answer possible is that from the standpoint from which the

prophets viewed history both are true. Israel did follow Jehovah through

the wilderness, and took possession of the land of Canaan animated by an

ardent faith in His power. It is equally true that the religious condition

of the people had its dark side, and that they were far from understanding

the nature of the God whose name they bore. And a prophet might emphasise

the one truth or the other according to the idea of God which it was given

him to teach. Hosea, reading the religious symptoms of his own time, sees

in it a contrast to the happier period when life was simple and religion

comparatively pure, and finds in the desert sojourn an image of the

purifying process by which the national life must be renewed. Ezekiel had

to do with a more difficult problem. He saw that there was a power of evil

which could not be eradicated merely by banishment from the land of

Israel—a hard bed‐rock of unbelief and superstition in the national

character which had never yielded to the influence of revelation; and he

dwells on all the manifestations of this which he read in the past. His

hope for the future of the cause of God rests no longer on the moral

influence of the divine love on the heart of man, but on the power of

Jehovah to accomplish His purpose in spite of the resistance of human sin.

That was not the whole truth about God’s relation to Israel, but it was

the truth that needed to be impressed on the generation of the Exile.

Of the final issue at all events Ezekiel is not doubtful. He is a man who

is “very sure of God” and sure of nothing else. In man he finds nothing to

inspire him with confidence in the ultimate victory of the true religion

over polytheism and superstition. His own generation has shown itself fit

only to perpetuate the evils of the past—the love of sensuous worship, the

insensibility to the claims and nature of Jehovah, which had marked the

whole history of Israel. He is compelled for the present to abandon them

to their corrupt inclinations,(58) expecting no signs of amendment until

his appeal is enforced by signal acts of judgment.

But all this does not shake his sublime faith in the fulfilment of

Israel’s destiny. Despairing of men, he falls back on what St. Paul calls

the “purpose of God according to election” (Rom. ix. 11). And with an

insight akin to that of the apostle of the Gentiles, he discerns through

all Jehovah’s dealings with Israel a principle and an ideal which must in

the end prevail over the sin of men. The goal to which the history points

stands out clear before the mind of the prophet; and already he sees in

vision the restored Israel—a holy people in a renovated land—rendering

acceptable worship to the one God of heaven and earth. “For in My holy

mountain, in the mountain heights of Israel, saith the Lord Jehovah,

_there_ shall serve Me the whole house of Israel: there will I be gracious

to them, and there will I require your oblations, and the firstfruits of

your offerings, in all your holy things” (ver. 40).

There we have the thought which is expanded in the vision of the purified

theocracy which occupies the closing chapters of the book. And it is

important to notice this indication that the idea of that vision was

present to Ezekiel during the earlier part of his ministry.

Chapter XIII. Ohola And Oholibah. Chapter xxiii.

The allegory of ch. xxiii. adds hardly any new thought to those which have

already been expounded in connection with ch. xvi. and ch. xx. The ideas

which enter into it are all such as we are now familiar with. They are:

the idolatry of Israel, learned in Egypt and persisted in to the end of

her history; her fondness for alliances with the great Oriental empires,

which was the occasion of new developments of idolatry; the corruption of

religion by the introduction of human sacrifice into the service of

Jehovah; and, finally, the destruction of Israel by the hands of the

nations whose friendship she had so eagerly courted. The figure under

which these facts are presented is the same as in ch. xvi., and many of

the details of the earlier prophecy are reproduced here with little

variation. But along with these resemblances we find certain

characteristic features in this chapter which require attention, and

perhaps some explanation.

In its treatment of the history this passage is distinguished from the

other two by the recognition of the separate existence of the northern and

southern kingdoms. In the previous retrospects Israel has either been

treated as a unity (as in ch. xx.), or attention has been wholly

concentrated on the fortunes of Judah, Samaria being regarded as on a

level with a purely heathen city like Sodom (ch. xvi.). Ezekiel may have

felt that he has not yet done justice to the truth that the history of

Israel ran in two parallel lines, and that the full significance of God’s

dealings with the nation can only be understood when the fate of Samaria

is placed alongside of that of Jerusalem. He did not forget that he was

sent as a prophet to the “whole house of Israel,” and indeed all the great

pre‐exilic prophets realised that their message concerned “the whole

family which Jehovah had brought up out of Egypt” (Amos iii. 1). Besides

this the chapter affords in many ways an interesting illustration of the

workings of the prophet’s mind in the effort to realise vividly the nature

of his people’s sin and the meaning of its fate. In this respect it is

perhaps the most finished and comprehensive product of his imagination,

although it may not reveal the depth of religious insight exhibited in the

sixteenth chapter.

The main idea of the allegory is no doubt borrowed from a prophecy of

Jeremiah belonging to the earlier part of his ministry (Jer. iii. 6‐13).

The fall of Samaria was even then a somewhat distant memory, but the use

which Jeremiah makes of it seems to show that the lesson of it had not

altogether ceased to impress the mind of the southern kingdom. In the

third chapter he reproaches Judah the “treacherous” for not having taken

warning from the fate of her sister the “apostate” Israel, who has long

since received the reward of her infidelities. The same lesson is implied

in the representation of Ezekiel (ver. 11); but as is usual with our

prophet, the simple image suggested by Jeremiah is drawn out in an

elaborate allegory, into which as many details are crowded as it will

bear. In place of the epithets by which Jeremiah characterises the moral

condition of Israel and Judah, Ezekiel coins two new and somewhat obscure

names—_Ohola_ for Samaria, and _Oholibah_ for Jerusalem.(59)

These women are children of one mother, and afterwards become wives of one

husband—Jehovah. This need occasion no surprise in an allegorical

representation, although it is contrary to a law which Ezekiel doubtless

knew (Lev. xviii. 18). Nor is it strange, considering the freedom with

which he handles the facts of history, that the division between Israel

and Judah is carried back to the time of the oppression in Egypt. We have

indeed no certainty that this view is not historical. The cleavage between

the north and the south did not originate with the revolt of Jeroboam.

That great schism only brought out elements of antagonism which were

latent in the relations of the tribe of Judah to the northern tribes. Of

this there are many indications in the earlier history, and for what we

know the separation might have existed among the Hebrews in Goshen. Still,

it is not probable that Ezekiel was thinking of any such thing. He is

bound by the limits of his allegory; and there was no other way by which

he could combine the presentation of the two essential elements of his

conception—that Samaria and Jerusalem were branches of the one people of

Jehovah, and that the idolatry which marked their history had been learned

in the youth of the nation in the land of Egypt.

That neither Israel nor Judah ever shook off the spell of their adulterous

connection with Egypt, but returned to it again and again down to the

close of their history, is certainly one point which the prophet means to

impress on the minds of his readers (vv. 8, 19, 27). With this exception

the earlier part of the chapter (to ver. 35) deals exclusively with the

later developments of idolatry from the eighth century and onwards. And

one of the most remarkable things in it is the description of the manner

in which first Israel and then Judah was entangled in political relations

with the Oriental empires. There seems to be a vein of sarcasm in the

sketch of the gallant Assyrian officers who turned the heads of the giddy

and frivolous sisters and seduced them from their allegiance to Jehovah:

“Ohola doted on her lovers, on the Assyrian warriors(60) clad in purple,

governors and satraps, charming youths all of them, horsemen riding on

horses; and she lavished on them her fornications, the _élite_ of the sons

of Asshur all of them, and with all the idols of all on whom she doted she

defiled herself” (vv. 6, 7). The first intimate contact of North Israel

with Assyria was in the reign of Menahem (2 Kings xv. 19), and the

explanation of it given in these words of Ezekiel must be historically

true. It was the magnificent equipment of the Assyrian armies, the

imposing display of military power which their appearance suggested, that

impressed the politicians of Samaria with a sense of the value of their

alliance. The passage therefore throws light on what Ezekiel and the

prophets generally mean by the figure of “whoredom.” What he chiefly

deplores is the introduction of Assyrian idolatry, which was the

inevitable sequel to a political union. But that was a secondary

consideration in the intention of those who were responsible for the

alliance. The real motive of their policy was undoubtedly the desire of

one party in the state to secure the powerful aid of the king of Assyria

against the rival party. None the less it was an act of infidelity and

rebellion against Jehovah.

Still more striking is the account of the first approaches of the southern

kingdom to Babylon. After Samaria had been destroyed by the lovers whom

she had gathered to her side, Jerusalem still kept up the illicit

connection with the Assyrian empire. After Assyria had vanished from the

stage of history, she eagerly sought an opportunity to enter into friendly

relations with the new Babylonian empire. She did not even wait till she

had made their acquaintance, but “when she saw men portrayed on the wall,

pictures of Chaldæans portrayed in vermilion, girt with waist‐cloths on

their loins, with flowing turbans on their heads, all of them champions to

look upon, the likeness of the sons of Babel whose native land is

Chaldæa—then she doted upon them when she saw them with her eyes, and sent

messengers to them to Chaldæa” (vv. 14‐16). The brilliant pictures

referred to are those with which Ezekiel must have been familiar on the

walls of the temples and palaces of Babylon. The representation, however,

cannot be understood literally, since the Jews could have had no

opportunity of even seeing the Babylonian pictures “on the wall” until

they had sent ambassadors there.(61)

The meaning of the prophet is clear. The mere report of the greatness of

Babylon was sufficient to excite the passions of Oholibah, and she began

with blind infatuation to court the advances of the distant strangers who

were to be her ruin. The exact historic reference, however, is uncertain.

It cannot be to the compact between Merodach‐baladan and Hezekiah, since

at that time the initiative seems to have been taken by the rebel prince,

whose sovereignty over Babylon proved to be of short duration. It may

rather be some transaction about the time of the battle of Carchemish

(604) that Ezekiel is thinking of; but we have not as yet sufficient

knowledge of the circumstances to clear up the allusion.

Before the end came the soul of Jerusalem was alienated from her latest

lovers—another touch of fidelity to the historical situation. But it was

now too late. The soul of Jehovah is alienated from Oholibah (vv. 17, 18),

and she is already handed over to the fate which had overtaken her less

guilty sister Ohola. The principal agents of her punishment are the

Babylonians and all the Chaldæans; but under their banner marches a host

of other nations—Pekod and Shoa and Koa,(62) and, somewhat strangely, the

sons of Asshur. In the pomp and circumstance of war which had formerly

fascinated her imagination, they shall come against her, and after their

cruel manner execute upon her the judgment meted out to adulterous women:

“Thou hast walked in the way of thy sister, and I will put her cup into

thy hand. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, The cup of thy sister shalt thou

drink,—deep and wide, and of large content,—filled with drunkenness and

anguish—the cup of horror and desolation, the cup of thy sister Samaria.

And thou shalt drink it and drain it out,(63) ... for I have spoken it,

saith the Lord Jehovah” (vv. 31‐34).

Up to this point the allegory has closely followed the actual history of

the two kingdoms. The remainder of the chapter (vv. 36‐49) forms a pendant

to the principal picture, and works out the central theme from a different

point of view. Here Samaria and Jerusalem are regarded as still existent,

and judgment is pronounced on both as if it were still future. This is

thoroughly in keeping with Ezekiel’s ideal delineations. The limitations

of space and time are alike transcended. The image, once clearly

conceived, fixes itself in the writer’s mind, and must be allowed to

exhaust its meaning before it is finally dismissed. The distinctions of

far and near, of past and present and future, are apt to disappear in the

intensity of his reverie. It is so here. The figures of Ohola and Oholibah

are so real to the prophet that they are summoned once more to the

tribunal to hear the recital of their “abominations” and receive the

sentence which has in fact been already partly executed. Whether he is

thinking at all of the ten tribes then in exile and awaiting further

punishment it would be difficult to say. We see, however, that the picture

is enriched with many features for which there was no room in the more

historic form of the allegory, and perhaps the desire for completeness was

the chief motive for thus amplifying the figure. The description of the

conduct of the two harlots (vv. 40‐44) is exceedingly graphic,(64) and is

no doubt a piece of realism drawn from life. Otherwise the section

contains nothing that calls for elucidation. The ideas are those which we

have already met with in other connections, and even the setting in which

they are placed presents no element of novelty.

Thus with words of judgment, and without a ray of hope to lighten the

darkness of the picture, the prophet closes this last survey of his

people’s history.

Chapter XIV. Final Oracles Against Jerusalem. Chapters xxii., xxiv.

The close of the first period of Ezekiel’s work was marked by two dramatic

incidents, which made the day memorable both in the private life of the

prophet and in the history of the nation. In the first place it coincided

exactly with the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem. The prophet’s

mysterious knowledge of what was happening at a distance was duly

recorded, in order that its subsequent confirmation through the ordinary

channels of intelligence might prove the divine origin of his message (ch.

xxiv. 1, 2). That Ezekiel actually did this we have no reason to doubt.

Then the sudden death of his wife on the evening of the same day, and his

unusual behaviour under the bereavement, caused a sensation among the

exiles which the prophet was instructed to utilise as a means of driving

home the appeal just made to them. These transactions must have had a

profound effect on Ezekiel’s fellow‐captives. They made his personality

the centre of absorbing interest to the Jews in Babylon; and the two years

of silence on his part which ensued were to them years of anxious

foreboding about the result of the siege.

At this juncture the prophet’s thoughts naturally are occupied with the

subject which hitherto formed the principal burden of his prophecy. The

first part of his career accordingly closes, as it had begun, with a

symbol of the fall of Jerusalem. Before this, however, he had drawn out

the solemn indictment against Jerusalem which is given in ch. xxii.,

although the finishing touches were probably added after the destruction

of the city. The substance of that chapter is so closely related to the

symbolic representation in the first part of ch. xxiv. that it will be

convenient to consider it here as an introduction to the concluding

oracles addressed more directly to the exiles of Tel‐abib.

I

The purpose of this arraignment—the most stately of Ezekiel’s orations—is

to exhibit Jerusalem in her true character as a city whose social

condition is incurably corrupt. It begins with an enumeration of the

prevalent sins of the capital (vv. 2‐16); it ends with a denunciation of

the various classes into which society was divided (vv. 23‐31); while the

short intervening passage is a figurative description of the judgment

which is now inevitable (vv. 17‐22).

1. The first part of the chapter, then, is a catalogue of the

“abominations” which called down the vengeance of Heaven upon the city of

Jerusalem. The offences enumerated are nearly the same as those mentioned

in the definitions of personal righteousness and wickedness given in ch.

xviii. It is not necessary to repeat what was there said about the

characteristics of the moral ideal which had been formed in the mind of

Ezekiel. Although he is dealing now with a society, his point of view is

quite different from that represented by purely allegorical passages like

chs. xvi. and xxiii. The city is not idealised and treated as a moral

individual, whose relations to Jehovah have to be set forth in symbolic

and figurative language. It is conceived as an aggregate of individuals

bound together in social relations; and the sins charged against it are

the actual transgressions of the men who are members of the community.

Hence the standard of public morality is precisely the same as that which

is elsewhere applied to the individual in his personal relation to God;

and the sins enumerated are attributed to the city merely because they are

tolerated and encouraged in individuals by laxity of public opinion and

the force of evil example. Jerusalem is a community in which these

different crimes are perpetrated: “Father and mother are despised _in

thee_; the stranger is oppressed _in the midst of thee_; orphan and widow

are wronged _in thee_; slanderous men seeking blood have been _in thee_;

flesh with the blood is eaten _in thee_; lewdness is committed _in the

midst of thee_; the father’s shame is uncovered _in thee_; she that was

unclean in her separation hath been humbled _in thee_.” So the grave and

measured indictment runs on. It is because of these things that Jerusalem

as a whole is “guilty” and “unclean” and has brought near her day of

retribution (ver. 4). Such a conception of corporate guilt undoubtedly

appeals more directly to our ordinary conscience of public morality than

the more poetic representations where Jerusalem is compared to a faithless

and treacherous woman. We have no difficulty in judging of any modern city

in the very same way as Ezekiel here judges Jerusalem; and in this respect

it is interesting to notice the social evils which he regards as marking

out that city as ripe for destruction.

There are three features of the state of things in Jerusalem in which the

prophet recognises the symptoms of an incurable social condition. The

first is the loss of a true conception of God. In ancient Israel this

defect necessarily assumed the form of idolatry. Hence the multiplication

of idols appropriately finds a place among the marks of the “uncleanness”

which made Jerusalem hateful in the eyes of Jehovah (ver. 3). But the root

of idolatry in Israel was the incapacity or the unwillingness of the

people to live up to the lofty conception of the divine nature which was

taught by the prophets. Throughout the ancient world religion was felt to

be the indispensable bond of society, and the gods that were worshipped

reflected more or less fully the ideals that swayed the life of the

community. To Israel the religion of Jehovah represented the highest

social ideal that was then known on earth. It meant righteousness, and

purity, and brotherhood, and compassion for the poor and distressed. When

these virtues decayed she forgot Jehovah (ver. 12)—forgot His character

even if she remembered His name—and the service of false gods was the

natural and obvious expression of the fact. There is therefore a profound

truth in Ezekiel’s mind when he numbers the idols of Jerusalem amongst the

indications of a degenerate society. They were the evidence that she had

lost the sense of God as a holy and righteous spiritual presence in her

midst, and that loss was at once the source and the symptom of widespread

moral declension. It is one of the chief lessons of the Old Testament that

a religion which was neither the product of national genius nor the

embodiment of national aspiration, but was based on supernatural

revelation, proved itself in the history of Israel to be the only possible

safeguard against the tendencies which made for social disintegration.

A second mark of depravity which Ezekiel discovers in the capital is the

perversion of certain moral instincts which are just as essential to the

preservation of society as a true conception of God. For if society rests

at one end on religion, it rests at the other on instinct. The closest and

most fundamental of human relations depend on innate perceptions which may

be easily destroyed, but which when destroyed can scarcely be recovered.

The sanctities of marriage and the family will hardly bear the coarse

scrutiny of utilitarian ethics; yet they are the foundation on which the

whole social fabric is built. And there is no part of Ezekiel’s indictment

of Jerusalem which conveys to our minds a more vivid sense of utter

corruption than where he speaks of the loss of filial piety and revolting

forms of sexual impurity as prevalent sins in the city. Here at least he

carries the conviction of every moralist with him. He instances no offence

of this kind which would not be branded as unnatural by any system of

ethics as heartily as it is by the Old Testament. It is possible, on the

other hand, that he ranks on the same level with these sins ceremonial

impurities appealing to feelings of a different order, to which no

permanent moral value can be attached. When, for example, he instances

eating with the blood(65) as an “abomination,” he appeals to a law which

is no longer binding on us. But even that regulation was not so worthless,

from a moral point of view, at that time as we are apt to suppose. The

abhorrence of eating blood was connected with certain sacrificial ideas

which attributed a mystic significance to the blood as the seat of animal

life. So long as these ideas existed no man could commit this offence

without injuring his moral nature and loosening the divine sanctions of

morality as a whole. It is a false illuminism which seeks to disparage the

moral insight of the prophet on the ground that he did not teach an

abstract system of ethics in which ceremonial precepts were sharply

distinguished from duties which we consider moral.(66)

The third feature of Jerusalem’s guilty condition is lawless violation of

human rights. Neither life nor property was secure. Judicial murders were

frequent in the city, and minor forms of oppression, such as usury,

spoliation of the unprotected, and robbery, were of daily occurrence. The

administration of justice was corrupted by systematic bribery and perjury,

and the lives of innocent men were ruthlessly sacrificed under the forms

of law. This after all is the aspect of things which bulks most largely in

the prophet’s indictment. Jerusalem is addressed as a “city shedding blood

in her midst,” and throughout the accusation the charge of bloodshed is

that which constantly recurs. Misgovernment and party strife, and perhaps

religious persecution, had converted the city into a vast human shambles,

and the blood of the innocent slain cried aloud to heaven for vengeance.

“Of what avail,” asks the prophet, “are the stores of wealth piled up in

the hands of a few against this damning witness of blood? Jehovah smites

His hand [in derision] against her gains that she has made, and against

her blood which is in her midst. How can her heart stand or her hands be

strong in the days when He deals with her?” (vv. 13, 14). Drained of her

best blood, given over to internecine strife, and stricken with the

cowardice of conscious guilt, Jerusalem, already disgraced among the

nations, must fall an easy victim to the Chaldæan invaders, who are the

agents of Jehovah’s judgments.

2. But the most serious aspect of the situation is that which is dealt

with in the peroration of the chapter (vv. 23‐31). Outbursts of vice and

lawlessness such as has been described may occur in any society, but they

are not necessarily fatal to a community so long as it possesses a

conscience which can be roused to effective protest against them. Now the

worst thing about Jerusalem was that she lacked this indispensable

condition of recovery. No voice was raised on the side of righteousness,

no man dared to stem the tide of wickedness that swept through her

streets. Not merely that she harboured within her walls men guilty of

incest and robbery and murder, but that her leading classes were

demoralised, that public spirit had decayed among her citizens, marked her

as incapable of reformation. She was “a land not watered,”(67) “and not

rained upon in a day of indignation” (ver. 24); the springs of her civic

virtue were dried up, and a blight spread through all sections of her

population.(68) Ezekiel’s impeachment of different classes of society

brings out this fact with great force. First of all the ancient

institutions of social order, government, priesthood, and prophecy were in

the hands of men who had lost the spirit of their office and abused their

position for the advancement of private interests. Her princes(69) have

been, instead of humane rulers and examples of noble living, cruel and

rapacious tyrants, enriching themselves at the cost of their subjects

(ver. 25). The priests, whose function was to maintain the outward

ordinances of religion and foster the spirit of reverence, have done their

utmost, by falsification of the _Torah_, to bring religion into contempt

and obliterate the distinction between the holy and the profane (ver. 26).

The nobles had been a pack of ravening wolves, imitating the rapacity of

the court, and hunting down prey which the royal lion would have disdained

to touch (ver. 27). As for the professional prophets—those degenerate

representatives of the old champions of truth and mercy—we have already

seen what they were worth (ch. xiii.). They who should have been foremost

to denounce civil wrong are fit for nothing but to stand by and bolster up

with lying oracles in the name of Jehovah a constitution which sheltered

crimes like these (ver. 28).

From the ruling classes the prophet’s glance turns for a moment to the

“people of the land,” the dim common population, where virtue might have

been expected to find its last retreat. It is characteristic of the age of

Ezekiel that the prophets begin to deal more particularly with the sins of

the masses as distinct from the classes. This was due partly perhaps to a

real increase of ungodliness in the body of the people, but partly also to

a deeper sense of the importance of the individual apart from his position

in the state. These prophets seem to feel that if there had been anywhere

among rich or poor an honest response to the will of Jehovah it would have

been a token that God had not altogether rejected Israel. Jeremiah puts

this view very strongly when in the fifth chapter he says that if one man

could be found in Jerusalem who did justice and sought truth the Lord

would pardon her; and his vain search for that man begins among the poor.

It is this same motive that leads Ezekiel to include the humble citizen in

his survey of the moral condition of Jerusalem. It is little wonder that

under such leaders they had cast off the restraints of humanity, and

oppressed those who were still more defenceless than themselves. But it

showed nevertheless that real religion had no longer a foothold in the

city. It proved that the greed of gain had eaten into the very heart of

the people and destroyed the ties of kindred and mutual sympathy, through

which alone the will of Jehovah could be realised. No matter although they

were obscure householders, without political power or responsibility; if

they had been good men in their private relations, Jerusalem would have

been a better place to live in. Ezekiel indeed does not go so far as to

say that a single good life would have saved the city. He expects of a

good man that he be a man in the full sense—a man who speaks boldly on

behalf of righteousness and resists the prevalent evils with all his

strength: “I sought among them a man to build up a fence, and to stand in

the breach before Me on behalf of the land, that it might not be

destroyed; and I found none. So I poured out My indignation upon them;

with the fire of My wrath I consumed them: I have returned their way upon

their head, saith the Lord Jehovah” (vv. 30, 31).

3. But we should misunderstand Ezekiel’s position if we supposed that his

prediction of the speedy destruction of Jerusalem was merely an inference

from his clear insight into the necessary conditions of social welfare

which were being violated by her rulers and her citizens. That is one part

of his message, but it could not stand alone. The purpose of the

indictment we have considered is simply to explain the moral

reasonableness of Jehovah’s action in the great act of judgment which the

prophet knows to be approaching. It is no doubt a general law of history

that moribund communities are not allowed to die a natural death. Their

usual fate is to perish in the struggle for existence before some other

and sounder nation. But no human sagacity can foresee how that law will be

verified in any particular case. It may seem clear to us now that Israel

must have fallen sooner or later before the advance of the great Eastern

empires, but an ordinary observer could not have foretold with the

confidence and precision which mark the predictions of Ezekiel in what

manner and within what time the end would come. Of that aspect of the

prophet’s mind no explanation can be given save that God revealed His

secret to His servants the prophets.

Now this element of the prophecy seems to be brought out by the image of

Jerusalem’s fate which occupies the middle verses of the chapter (vv.

17‐22). The city is compared to the crucible in which all the refuse of

Israel’s national life is to undergo its final trial by fire. The prophet

sees in imagination the terror‐stricken provincial population swept into

the capital before the approach of the Chaldæans; and he says, “Thus does

Jehovah cast His ore into the furnace—the silver, the brass, the iron, the

lead, and the tin; and He will kindle the fire with His anger, and blow

upon it till He have consumed the impurities of the land.” The image of

the smelting‐pot had been used by Isaiah as an emblem of purifying

judgment, the object of which was the removal of injustice and the

restoration of the state to its former splendour: “I will again bring My

hand upon thee, smelting out thy dross with lye and taking away all thine

alloy; and I will make thy judges to be again as aforetime, and thy

counsellors as at the beginning: thereafter thou shalt be called the city

of righteousness, the faithful city” (Isa. i. 25, 26). Ezekiel, however,

can hardly have contemplated such a happy result of the operation. The

whole house of Israel has become dross, from which no precious metal can

be extracted; and the object of the smelting is only the demonstration of

the utter worthlessness of the people for the ends of God’s kingdom. The

more refractory the material to be dealt with the fiercer must be the fire

that tests it; and the severity of the exterminating judgment is the only

thing symbolised by the metaphor as used by Ezekiel. In this he follows

Jeremiah, who applies the figure in precisely the same sense: “The bellows

snort, the lead is consumed of the fire; in vain he smelts and smelts: but

the wicked are not taken away. Refuse silver shall men call them, for the

Lord hath rejected them” (Jer. vi. 29, 30). In this way the section

supplements the teaching of the rest of the chapter. Jerusalem is full of

dross—that has been proved by the enumeration of her crimes and the

estimate of her social condition. But the fire which consumes the dross

represents a special providential intervention bringing the history of the

state to a summary and decisive conclusion. And the Refiner who

superintends the process is Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, whose

righteous will is executed by the march of conquering hosts, and revealed

to men in His dealings with the people whom He had known of all the

families of the earth.

II

The chapter we have just studied was evidently not composed with a view to

immediate publication. It records the view of Jerusalem’s guilt and

punishment which was borne in upon the mind of the prophet in the solitude

of his chamber, but it was not destined to see the light until the whole

of his teaching could be submitted in its final form to a wider and more

receptive audience. It is equally obvious that the scenes described in ch.

xxiv. were really enacted in the full view of the exiled community. We

have reached the crisis of Ezekiel’s ministry. For the last time until his

warnings of doom shall be fulfilled he emerges from his partial seclusion,

and in symbolism whose vivid force could not have failed to impress the

most listless hearer he announces once more the destruction of the Hebrew

nation. The burden of his message is that that day—the tenth day of the

tenth month of the ninth year—marked the beginning of the end. “On that

very day”—a day to be commemorated for seventy long years by a national

fast (Zech. viii. 19; cf. vii. 5)—Nebuchadnezzar was drawing his lines

round Jerusalem. The bare announcement to men who knew what a Chaldæan

siege meant must have sent a thrill of consternation through their minds.

If this vision of what was happening in a distant land should prove true,

they must have felt that all hope of deliverance was now cut off.

Sceptical as they may have been of the moral principles that lay behind

Ezekiel’s prediction, they could not deny that the issue he foresaw was

only the natural sequel to the fact he so confidently announced.

The image here used of the fate of Jerusalem would recall to the minds of

the exiles the ill‐omened saying which expressed the reckless spirit

prevalent in the city: “This city is the pot, and we are the flesh” (ch.

xi. 3). It was well understood in Babylon that these men were playing a

desperate game, and did not shrink from the horrors of a siege. “Set on

the pot,” then, cries the prophet to his listeners, “set it on, and pour

in water also, and gather the pieces into it, every good joint, leg and

shoulder; fill it with the choicest bones. Take them from the best of the

flock, and then pile up the wood(70) under it; let its pieces be boiled

and its bones cooked within it” (vv. 3‐5). This part of the parable

required no explanation; it simply represents the terrible miseries

endured by the population of Jerusalem during the siege now commencing.

But then by a sudden transition the speaker turns the thoughts of his

hearers to another aspect of the judgment (vv. 6‐8). The city itself is

like a rusty caldron, unfit for any useful purpose until by some means it

has been cleansed from its impurity. It is as if the crimes that had been

perpetrated in Jerusalem had stained her very stones with blood. She had

not even taken steps to conceal the traces of her wickedness; they lie

like blood on the bare rock, an open witness to her guilt. Often Jehovah

had sought to purify her by more measured chastisements, but it has now

been proved that “her much rust will not go from her except by fire”(71)

(ver. 12). Hence the end of the siege will be twofold. First of all the

contents of the caldron will be indiscriminately thrown out—a figure for

the dispersion and captivity of the inhabitants; and then the pot must be

set empty on the glowing coals till its rust is thoroughly burned out—a

symbol of the burning of the city and its subsequent desolation (ver. 11).

The idea that the material world may contract defilement through the sins

of those who live in it is one that is hard for us to realise, but it is

in keeping with the view of sin presented by Ezekiel, and indeed by the

Old Testament generally. There are certain natural emblems of sin, such as

uncleanness or disease or uncovered blood, etc., which had to be largely

used in order to educate men’s moral perceptions. Partly these rest on the

analogy between physical defect and moral evil; but partly, as here, they

result from a strong sense of association between human deeds and their

effects or circumstances. Jerusalem is unclean as a place where wicked

deeds have been done, and even the destruction of the sinners cannot in

the mind of Ezekiel clear her from the unhallowed associations of her

history. She must lie empty and dreary for a generation, swept by the

winds of heaven before devout Israelites can again twine their affections

round the hope of her glorious future.(72)

Even while delivering this message of doom to the people the prophet’s

heart was burdened by the presentiment of a great personal sorrow. He had

received an intimation that his wife was to be taken from him by a sudden

stroke, and along with the intimation a command to refrain from all the

usual signs of mourning. “So I spake to the people” (as recorded in vv.

1‐14) “in the morning, and my wife died in the evening” (ver. 18). Just

one touch of tenderness escapes him in relating this mysterious

occurrence. She was the “delight of his eyes”: that phrase alone reveals

that there was a fountain of tears sealed up within the breast of this

stern preacher. How the course of his life may have been influenced by a

bereavement so strangely coincident with a change in his whole attitude to

his people we cannot even surmise. Nor is it possible to say how far he

merely used the incident to convey a lesson to the exiles, or how far his

private grief was really swallowed up in concern for the calamity of his

country. All we are told is that “in the morning he did as he was

commanded.” He neither uttered loud lamentations, nor disarranged his

raiment, nor covered his head, nor ate the “bread of men,”(73) nor adopted

any of the customary signs of mourning for the dead. When the astonished

neighbours inquire the meaning of his strange demeanour, he assures them

that his conduct _now_ is a sign of what theirs will be when his words

have come true. When the tidings reach them that Jerusalem has actually

fallen, when they realise how many interests dear to them have

perished—the desolation of the sanctuary, the loss of their own sons and

daughters—they will experience a sense of calamity which will

instinctively discard all the conventional and even the natural

expressions of grief. They shall neither mourn nor weep, but sit in dumb

bewilderment, haunted by a dull consciousness of guilt which yet is far

removed from genuine contrition of heart. They shall pine away in their

iniquities. For while their sorrow will be too deep for words, it will not

yet be the godly sorrow that worketh repentance. It will be the sullen

despair and apathy of men disenchanted of the illusions on which their

national life was based, of men left without hope and without God in the

world.

Here the curtain falls on the first act of Ezekiel’s ministry. He appears

to have retired for the space of two years into complete privacy, ceasing

entirely his public appeals to the people, and waiting for the time of his

vindication as a prophet. The sense of restraint under which he has

hitherto exercised the function of a public teacher cannot be removed

until the tidings have reached Babylon that the city has fallen.

Meanwhile, with the delivery of this message, his contest with the

unbelief of his fellow‐captives comes to an end. But when that day arrives

“his mouth shall be open, and he shall be no more dumb.” A new career will

open out before him, in which he can devote all his powers of mind and

heart to the inspiring work of reviving faith in the promises of God, and

so building up a new Israel out of the ruins of the old.

PART III. PROPHECIES AGAINST FOREIGN NATIONS.

Chapter XV. Ammon, Moab, Edom, And Philistia. Chapter xxv.

The next eight chapters (xxv.‐xxxii.) form an intermezzo in the book of

Ezekiel. They are inserted in this place with the obvious intention of

separating the two sharply contrasted situations in which our prophet

found himself before and after the siege of Jerusalem. The subject with

which they deal is indeed an essential part of the prophet’s message to

his time, but it is separate from the central interest of the narrative,

which lies in the conflict between the word of Jehovah in the hands of

Ezekiel and the unbelief of the exiles among whom he lived. The perusal of

this group of chapters is intended to prepare the reader for the

completely altered conditions under which Ezekiel was to resume his public

ministrations. The cycle of prophecies on foreign peoples is thus a sort

of literary analogue of the period of suspense which interrupted the

continuity of Ezekiel’s work in the way we have seen. It marks the

shifting of the scenes behind the curtain before the principal actors

again step on the stage.

It is natural enough to suppose that the prophet’s mind was really

occupied during this time with the fate of Israel’s heathen neighbours;

but that alone does not account for the grouping of the oracles before us

in this particular section of the book. Not only do some of the

chronological notices carry us far past the limit of the time of silence

referred to, but it will be found that nearly all these prophecies assume

that the fall of Jerusalem is already known to the nations addressed. It

is therefore a mistaken view which holds that in these chapters we have

simply the result of Ezekiel’s meditations during his period of enforced

seclusion from public duty. Whatever the nature of his activity at this

time may have been, the principle of arrangement here is not

chronological, but literary; and no better motive for it can be suggested

than the writer’s sense of dramatic propriety in unfolding the

significance of his prophetic life.

In uttering a series of oracles against heathen nations, Ezekiel follows

the example set by some of his greatest predecessors. The book of Amos,

for example, opens with an impressive chapter of judgments on the peoples

lying immediately round the borders of Palestine. The thundercloud of

Jehovah’s anger is represented as moving over the petty states of Syria

before it finally breaks in all its fury over the two kingdoms of Judah

and Israel. Similarly the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah contain continuous

sections dealing with various heathen powers, while the book of Nahum is

wholly occupied with a prediction of the ruin of the Assyrian empire. And

these are but a few of the more striking instances of a phenomenon which

is apt to cause perplexity to close and earnest students of the Old

Testament. We have here to do, therefore, with a standing theme of Hebrew

prophecy; and it may help us better to understand the attitude of Ezekiel

if we consider for a moment some of the principles involved in this

constant preoccupation of the prophets with the affairs of the outer

world.

At the outset it must be understood that prophecies of this kind form part

of Jehovah’s message to Israel. Although they are usually cast in the form

of direct address to foreign peoples, this must not lead us to imagine

that they were intended for actual publication in the countries to which

they refer. A prophet’s real audience always consisted of his own

countrymen, whether his discourse was about themselves or about their

neighbours. And it is easy to see that it was impossible to declare the

purpose of God concerning Israel in words that came home to men’s business

and bosoms, without taking account of the state and the destiny of other

nations. Just as it would not be possible nowadays to forecast the future

of Egypt without alluding to the fate of the Ottoman empire, so it was not

possible then to describe the future of Israel in the concrete manner

characteristic of the prophets without indicating the place reserved for

those peoples with whom it had close intercourse. Besides this, a large

part of the national consciousness of Israel was made up of interests,

friendly or the reverse, in neighbouring states. The Hebrews had a keen

eye for national idiosyncrasies, and the simple international relations of

those days were almost as vivid and personal as of neighbours living in

the same village. To be an Israelite was to be something

characteristically different from a Moabite, and that again from an

Edomite or a Philistine, and every patriotic Israelite had a shrewd sense

of what the difference was. We cannot read the utterances of the prophets

with regard to any of these nationalities without seeing that they often

appeal to perceptions deeply lodged in the popular mind, which could be

utilised to convey the spiritual lessons which the prophets desired to

teach.

It must not be supposed, however, that such prophecies are in any degree

the expression of national vanity or jealousy. What the prophets aim at is

to elevate the thoughts of Israel to the sphere of eternal truths of the

kingdom of God; and it is only in so far as these can be made to touch the

conscience of the nation at this point that they appeal to what we may

call its international sentiments. Now the question we have to ask is,

What spiritual purpose for Israel is served by the announcements of the

destiny of the outlying heathen populations? There are of course special

interests attaching to each particular prophecy which it would be

difficult to classify. But, speaking generally, prophecies of this class

had a moral value for two reasons. In the first place they re‐echo and

confirm the sentence of judgment passed on Israel herself. They do this in

two ways: they illustrate the principle on which Jehovah deals with His

own people, and His character as the righteous judge of men. Israel was to

be destroyed for her national sins, her contempt of Jehovah, and her

breaches of the moral law. But other nations, though more excusable, were

not less guilty than Israel. The same spirit of ungodliness, in different

forms, was manifested by Tyre, by Egypt, by Assyria, and by the petty

states of Syria. Hence, if Jehovah was really the righteous ruler of the

world, He must visit upon these nations their iniquities. Wherever a

“sinful kingdom” was found, whether in Israel or elsewhere, that kingdom

must be removed from its place among the nations. This appears most

clearly in the book of Amos, who, though he enunciates the paradoxical

truth that Israel’s sin must be punished just because it was the only

people that Jehovah had known, nevertheless, as we have seen, thundered

forth similar judgments on other nations for their flagrant violation of

the universal law written in the human heart. In this way therefore the

prophets enforced on their contemporaries the fundamental lesson of their

teaching that the disasters which were coming on them were not the result

of the caprice or impotence of their Deity, but the execution of His moral

purpose, to which all men everywhere are subject. But again, not only was

the principle of the judgment emphasised, but the manner in which it was

to be carried out was more clearly exhibited. In all cases the pre‐exilic

prophets announce that the overthrow of the Hebrew states was to be

effected either by the Assyrians or the Babylonians. These great world‐

powers were in succession the instruments fashioned and used by Jehovah

for the performance of His great work in the earth. Now it was manifest

that if this anticipation was well founded it involved the overthrow of

all the nations in immediate contact with Israel. The policy of the

Mesopotamian monarchs was well understood; and if their wonderful

successes were the revelation of the divine purpose, then Israel would not

be judged alone. Accordingly we find in most instances that the

chastisement of the heathen is either ascribed directly to the invaders or

else to other agencies set in motion by their approach. The people of

Israel or Judah were thus taught to look on their fate as involved in a

great scheme of divine providence, overturning all the existing relations

which gave them a place among the nations of the world and preparing for a

new development of the purpose of Jehovah in the future.

When we turn to that ideal future we find a second and more suggestive

aspect of these prophecies against the heathen. All the prophets teach

that the destiny of Israel is inseparably bound up with the future of

God’s kingdom on earth. The Old Testament never wholly shakes off the idea

that the preservation and ultimate victory of the true religion demands

the continued existence of the one people to whom the revelation of the

true God had been committed. The indestructibility of Israel’s national

life depends on its unique position in relation to the purposes of

Jehovah, and it is for this reason that the prophets look forward with

unwavering confidence to a time when the knowledge of Jehovah shall go

forth from Israel to all the nations of mankind. And this point of view we

must try to enter into if we are to understand the meaning of their

declarations concerning the fate of the surrounding nations. If we ask

whether an independent future is reserved in the new dispensation for the

peoples with whom Israel had dealings in the past, we find that different

and sometimes conflicting answers are given. Thus Isaiah predicts a

restoration of Tyre after the lapse of seventy years, while Ezekiel

announces its complete and final destruction. It is only when we consider

these utterances in the light of the prophets’ general conception of the

kingdom of God that we discern the spiritual truth that gives them an

abiding significance for the instruction of all ages. It was not a matter

of supreme religious importance to know whether Phœnicia or Egypt or

Assyria would retain their old place in the world, and share indirectly in

the blessings of the Messianic age. What men needed to be taught then, and

what we need to remember still, is that each nation holds its position in

subordination to the ends of God’s government, that no power or wisdom or

refinement will save a state from destruction when it ceases to serve the

interests of His kingdom. The foreign peoples that come under the survey

of the prophets are as yet strangers to the true God, and are therefore

destitute of that which could secure them a place in the reconstruction of

political relationships of which Israel is to be the religious centre.

Sometimes they are represented as having by their hostility to Israel or

their pride of heart so encroached on the sovereignty of Jehovah that

their doom is already sealed. At other times they are conceived as

converted to the knowledge of the true God, and as gladly accepting the

place assigned to them in the humanity of the future by consecrating their

wealth and power to the service of His people Israel. In all cases it is

their attitude to Israel and the God of Israel that determines their

destiny: that is the great truth which the prophets design to impress on

their countrymen. So long as the cause of religion was identified with the

fortunes of the people of Israel no higher conception of the redemption of

mankind could be formed than that of a willing subjection of the nations

of the earth to the word of Jehovah which went forth from Jerusalem (cf.

Isa. ii. 2‐4). And whether any particular nation should survive to

participate in the glories of that latter day depends on the view taken of

its present condition and its fitness for incorporation in the universal

empire of Jehovah soon to be established.

We now know that this was not the form in which Jehovah’s purpose of

salvation was destined to be realised in the history of the world. Since

the coming of Christ the people of Israel has lost its distinctive and

central position as the bearer of the hopes and promises of the true

religion. In its place we have a spiritual kingdom of men united by faith

in Jesus Christ, and in the worship of one Father in spirit and in truth—a

kingdom which from its very nature can have no local centre or political

organisation. Hence the conversion of the heathen can no longer be

conceived as national homage paid to the seat of Jehovah’s sovereignty on

Zion; nor is the unfolding of the divine plan of universal salvation bound

up with the extinction of the nationalities which once symbolised the

hostility of the world to the kingdom of God. This fact has an important

bearing on the question of the fulfilment of the foreign prophecies of the

Old Testament. Literal fulfilment is not to be looked for in this case any

more than in the delineations of Israel’s future, which are after all the

predominant element of Messianic prediction. It is true that the nations

passed under review have now vanished from history, and in so far as their

fall was brought about by causes operating in the world in which the

prophets moved, it must be recognised as a partial but real vindication of

the truth of their words. But the details of the prophecies have not been

historically verified. All attempts to trace their accomplishment in

events that took place long afterwards and in circumstances which the

prophets themselves never contemplated only lead us astray from the real

interest which belongs to them. As concrete embodiments of the eternal

principles exhibited in the rise and fall of nations they have an abiding

significance for the Church in all ages; but the actual working out of

these principles in history could not in the nature of things be complete

within the limits of the world known to the inhabitants of Judæa. If we

are to look for their ideal fulfilment, we shall only find it in the

progressive victory of Christianity over all forms of error and

superstition, and in the dedication of all the resources of human

civilisation—its wealth, its commercial enterprise, its political power—to

the advancement of the kingdom of our God and His Christ.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

It was natural from the special circumstances in which he wrote, as well

as from the general character of his teaching, that Ezekiel, in his

oracles against the heathen powers, should present only the dark side of

God’s providence. Except in the case of Egypt, the nations addressed are

threatened with annihilation, and even Egypt is to be reduced to a

condition of utter impotence and humiliation. Very characteristic also is

his representation of the purpose which comes to light in this series of

judgments. It is to be a great demonstration to all the earth of the

absolute sovereignty of Jehovah. “Ye shall know that I am Jehovah” is the

formula that sums up the lesson of each nation’s fall. We observe that the

prophet starts from the situation created by the fall of Jerusalem. That

great calamity bore in the first instance the appearance of a triumph of

heathenism over Jehovah the God of Israel. It was, as the prophet

elsewhere expresses it, a profanation of His holy name in the eyes of the

nations. And in this light it was undoubtedly regarded by the petty

principalities around Palestine, and perhaps also by the more distant and

powerful spectators, such as Tyre and Egypt. From the standpoint of

heathenism the downfall of Israel meant the defeat of its tutelary Deity;

and the neighbouring nations, in exulting over the tidings of Jerusalem’s

fate, had in their minds the idea of the prostrate Jehovah unable to save

His people in their hour of need. It is not necessary to suppose that

Ezekiel attributes to them any consciousness of Jehovah’s claim to be the

only living and true God. It is the paradox of revelation that He who is

the Eternal and Infinite first revealed Himself to the world as the God of

Israel; and all the misconceptions that sprang out of that fact had to be

cleared away by His self‐manifestation in historical acts that appealed to

the world at large. Amongst these acts the judgment of the heathen nations

holds the first place in the mind of Ezekiel. A crisis has been reached at

which it becomes necessary for Jehovah to vindicate His divinity by the

destruction of those who have exalted themselves against Him. The world

must learn once for all that Jehovah is no mere tribal god, but the

omnipotent ruler of the universe. And this is the preparation for the

final disclosure of His power and Godhead in the restoration of Israel to

its own land, which will speedily follow the overthrow of its ancient

foes. This series of prophecies forms thus an appropriate introduction to

the third division of the book, which deals with the formation of the new

people of Jehovah.

It is somewhat remarkable that Ezekiel’s survey of the heathen nations is

restricted to those in the immediate vicinity of the land of Canaan.

Although he had unrivalled opportunities of becoming acquainted with the

remote countries of the East, he confines his attention to the

Mediterranean states which had long played a part in Hebrew history. The

peoples dealt with are seven in number—Ammon, Moab, Edom, the Philistines,

Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt. The order of the enumeration is geographical:

first the inner circle of Israel’s immediate neighbours, from Ammon on the

east round to Sidon in the extreme north; then outside the circle the

preponderating world‐power of Egypt. It is not altogether an accidental

circumstance that five of these nations are named in the twenty‐seventh

chapter of Jeremiah as concerned in the project of rebellion against

Nebuchadnezzar in the early part of Zedekiah’s reign. Egypt and Philistia

are not mentioned there, but we may surmise at least that Egyptian

diplomacy was secretly at work pulling the wires which set the puppets in

motion. This fact, together with the omission of Babylon from the list of

threatened nations, shows that Ezekiel regards the judgment as falling

within the period of Chaldæan supremacy, which he appears to have

estimated at forty years. What is to be the fate of Babylon itself he

nowhere intimates, a conflict between that great world‐power and Jehovah’s

purpose being no part of his system. That Nebuchadnezzar is to be the

agent of the overthrow of Tyre and the humiliation of Egypt is expressly

stated; and although the crushing of the smaller states is ascribed to

other agencies, we can hardly doubt that these were conceived as indirect

consequences of the upheaval caused by the Babylonian invasion.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Ch. xxv., then, consists of four brief prophecies addressed respectively

to Ammon, Moab, Edom, and the Philistines. A few words on the fate

prefigured for each of these countries will suffice for the explanation of

the chapter.

1. AMMON (vv. 2‐7) lay on the edge of the desert, between the upper waters

of the Jabbok and the Arnon, separated from the Jordan by a strip of

Israelitish territory from twenty to thirty miles wide. Its capital,

Rabbah, mentioned here (ver. 5), was situated on a southern tributary of

the Jabbok, and its ruins still bear amongst the Arabs the ancient

national name _Ammân_. Although their country was pastoral (milk is

referred to in ver. 4 as one of its chief products), the Ammonites seem to

have made some progress in civilisation. Jeremiah (ch. xlix. 4) speaks of

them as trusting in their treasures; and in this chapter Ezekiel announces

that they shall be for a spoil to the nations (ver. 7). After the

deportation of the transjordanic tribes by Tiglath‐pileser, Ammon seized

the country that had belonged to the tribe of Gad, its nearest neighbour

on the west. This encroachment is denounced by the prophet Jeremiah in the

opening words of his oracle against Ammon: “Hath Israel no children? or

has he no heir? why doth Milcom [the national deity of the Ammonites]

inherit Gad, why hath his [Milcom’s] folk settled in his [Gad’s] cities”

(Jer. xlix. 1). We have already seen (ch. xxi.) that the Ammonites took

part in the rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, and stood out after the

other members of the league had gone back from their purpose. But this

temporary union with Jerusalem did nothing to abate the old national

animosity, and the disaster of Judah was the signal for an exhibition of

malignant satisfaction on the part of Ammon. “Because thou hast said, Aha,

against My sanctuary when it was profaned, and the land of Israel when it

was laid waste, and the house of Judah when it went into captivity,” etc.

(ver. 3)—for this crowning offence against the majesty of Jehovah, Ezekiel

denounces an exterminating judgment on Ammon. The land shall be given up

to the “children of the East”—_i.e._, the Bedouin Arabs—who shall pitch

their tent encampments in it, eating its fruits and drinking its milk, and

turning the “great city” Rabbah itself into a resting‐place for camels

(vv. 4, 5). It is not quite clear (though it is commonly assumed) that the

children of the East are regarded as the actual conquerors of Ammon. Their

possession of the country may be the consequence rather than the cause of

the destruction of civilisation, the encroachment of the nomads being as

inevitable under these circumstances as the extension of the desert itself

where water fails.

2. MOAB(74) (vv. 8‐11) comes next in order. Its proper territory, since

the settlement of Israel in Canaan, was the elevated tableland south of

the Arnon, along the lower part of the Dead Sea. But the tribe of Reuben,

which bordered it on the north, was never able to hold its ground against

the superior strength of Moab, and hence the latter nation is found in

possession of the lower and more fertile district stretching northwards

from the Arnon, now called the Belka. All the cities, indeed, which are

mentioned in this chapter as belonging to Moab—Beth‐jeshimoth, Baal‐meon,

and Kirjathaim—were situated in this northern and properly Israelite

region. These were the “glory of the land,” which were now to be taken

away from Moab (ver. 9). In Israel Moab appears to have been regarded as

the incarnation of a peculiarly offensive form of national pride,(75) of

which we happen to have a monument in the famous Moabite Stone, which was

erected by Mesha in the ninth century B.C. to commemorate the victories of

Chemosh over Jehovah and Israel. The inscription shows, moreover, that in

the arts of civilised life Moab was at that early time no unworthy rival

of Israel itself. It is for a special manifestation of this haughty and

arrogant spirit in the day of Jerusalem’s calamity that Ezekiel pronounces

Jehovah’s judgment on Moab: “Because Moab hath said, Behold, the house of

Judah is like all the nations” (ver. 8). These words no doubt reflect

accurately the sentiment of Moab towards Israel, and they presuppose a

consciousness on the part of Moab of some unique distinction pertaining to

Israel in spite of all the humiliations it had undergone since the time of

David. And the thought of Moab may have been more widely disseminated

among the nations than we are apt to suppose: “The kings of the earth

believed not, neither all the inhabitants of the world, that the adversary

and the enemy should enter into the gates of Jerusalem” (Lam. iv. 12). The

Moabites at all events breathed a sigh of relief when Israel’s pretensions

to religious ascendency seemed to be confuted, and thereby they sealed

their own doom. They share the fate of the Ammonites, their land being

handed over for a possession to the sons of the East (ver. 10).

Both these nations, Ammon and Moab, were absorbed by the Arabs, as Ezekiel

had foretold; but Ammon at least preserved its separate name and

nationality through many changes of fortune down to the second century

after Christ.

3. EDOM (vv. 12‐14), famous in the Old Testament for its wisdom (Jer.

xlix. 7; Obad. 8), occupied the country to the south of Moab from the Dead

Sea to the head of the Gulf of Akaba. In Old Testament times the centre of

its power was in the region to the east of the Arabah Valley, a position

of great commercial importance, as commanding the caravan route from the

Red Sea port of Elath to Northern Syria. From this district the Edomites

were afterwards driven (about 300 B.C.) by the Arabian tribe of the

Nabatæans, when they took up their abode in the south of Judah. None of

the surrounding nations were so closely akin to Israel as Edom, and with

none were its relations more embittered and hostile. The Edomites had been

subjugated and nearly exterminated by David, had been again subdued by

Amaziah and Uzziah, but finally recovered their independence during the

attack of the Syrians and Ephraimites on Judah in the reign of Ahaz. The

memory of this long struggle produced in Edom a “perpetual enmity,” an

undying hereditary hatred towards the kingdom of Judah. But that which

made the name of Edom to be execrated by the later Jews was its conduct

after the fall of Jerusalem. The prophet Obadiah represents it as sharing

in the spoil of Jerusalem (ver. 10), and as “standing in the crossway to

cut off those that escaped” (ver. 14). Ezekiel also alludes to this in the

thirty‐fifth chapter (ver. 5), and tells us further that in the time of

the captivity the Edomites seized part of the territory of Israel (vv.

10‐12), from which indeed the Jews were never able altogether to dislodge

them. For the guilt they thus incurred by taking advantage of the

humiliation of Jehovah’s people, Ezekiel here threatens them with

extinction; and the execution of the divine vengeance is in their case

entrusted to the children of Israel themselves (vv. 13, 14). They were, in

fact, finally subdued by John Hyrcanus in 126 B.C., and compelled to adopt

the Jewish religion. But long before then they had lost their prestige and

influence, their ancient seats having passed under the dominion of the

Arabs in common with all the neighbouring countries.

4. The PHILISTINES (vv. 15‐17)—the “immigrants” who had settled along the

Mediterranean coast, and who were destined to leave their name to the

whole country—had evidently played a part very similar to the Edomites at

the time of the destruction of Jerusalem; but of this nothing is known

beyond what is here said by Ezekiel. They were at this time a mere

“remnant” (ver. 16), having been exhausted by the Assyrian and Egyptian

wars. Their fate is not precisely indicated in the prophecy. They were in

point of fact gradually extinguished by the revival of Jewish domination

under the Asmonean dynasty.

One other remark may here be made, as showing the discrimination which

Ezekiel brought to bear in estimating the characteristics of each separate

nation. He does not ascribe to the greater powers, Tyre and Sidon and

Egypt, the same petty and vindictive jealousy of Israel which actuated the

diminutive nationalities dealt with in this chapter. These great heathen

states, which played so imposing a part in ancient civilisation, had a

wide outlook over the affairs of the world; and the injuries they

inflicted on Israel were due less to the blind instinct of national hatred

than to the pursuit of far‐reaching schemes of selfish interest and

aggrandisement. If Tyre rejoices over the fall of Jerusalem, it is because

of the removal of an obstacle to the expansion of her commercial

enterprise. When Egypt is described as having been an occasion of sin to

the people of God, what is meant is that she had drawn Israel into the net

of her ambitious foreign policy, and led her away from the path of safety

pointed out by Jehovah’s will through the prophets. Ezekiel pays a tribute

to the grandeur of their position by the care he bestows on the

description of their fate. The smaller nations embodying nothing of

permanent value for the advancement of humanity, he dismisses each with a

short and pregnant oracle announcing its doom. But when he comes to the

fall of Tyre and of Egypt his imagination is evidently impressed; he

lingers over all the details of the picture, he returns to it again and

again, as if he would penetrate the secret of their greatness and

understand the potent fascination which their names exercised throughout

the world. It would be entirely erroneous to suppose that he sympathises

with them in their calamity, but certainly he is conscious of the blank

which will be caused by their disappearance from history; he feels that

something will have vanished from the earth whose loss will be mourned by

the nations far and near. This is most apparent in the prophecy on Tyre,

to which we now proceed.

Chapter XVI. Tyre. Chapters xxvi., xxix. 17‐21.

In the time of Ezekiel Tyre was still at the height of her commercial

prosperity. Although not the oldest of the Phœnician cities, she held a

supremacy among them which dated from the thirteenth century B.C.,(76) and

she had long been regarded as the typical embodiment of the genius of the

remarkable race to which she belonged. The Phœnicians were renowned in

antiquity for a combination of all the qualities on which commercial

greatness depends. Their absorbing devotion to the material interests of

civilisation, their amazing industry and perseverance, their

resourcefulness in assimilating and improving the inventions of other

peoples, the technical skill of their artists and craftsmen, but above all

their adventurous and daring seamanship, conspired to give them a position

in the old world such as has never been quite rivalled by any other nation

of ancient or modern times. In the grey dawn of European history we find

them acting as pioneers of art and culture along the shores of the

Mediterranean, although even then they had been displaced from their

earliest settlements in the Ægean and the coast of Asia Minor by the

rising commerce of Greece. Matthew Arnold has drawn a brilliant

imaginative picture of this collision between the two races, and the

effect it had on the dauntless and enterprising spirit of Phœnicia:—

As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,

Descried at sunrise an emerging prow

Lifting the cool‐hair’d creepers stealthily,

The fringes of a southward‐facing brow

Among the Ægæan isles;

And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,

Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,

Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steep’d in brine—

And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The young light‐hearted masters of the waves—

And snatch’d his rudder and shook out more sail;

And day and night held on indignantly

O’er the blue Midland waters with the gale,

Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,

To where the Atlantic raves

Outside the western straits; and unbent sails

There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,

Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians, come;

And on the beach undid his corded bales.(77)

It is that spirit of masterful and untiring ambition kept up for so many

centuries that throws a halo of romance round the story of Tyre.

In the oldest Greek literature, however, Tyre is not mentioned, the place

which she afterwards held being then occupied by Sidon. But after the

decay of Sidon the rich harvest of her labours fell into the lap of Tyre,

which thenceforth stands out as the foremost city of Phœnicia. She owed

her pre‐eminence partly to the wisdom and energy with which her affairs

were administered, but partly also to the strength of her natural

situation. The city was built both on the mainland and on a row of islets

about half a mile from the shore. This latter portion contained the

principal buildings (temples and palaces), the open place where business

was transacted, and the two harbours. It was no doubt from it that the

city derived its name (צוֹר = Rock); and it always was looked on as the

central part of Tyre. There was something in the appearance of the island

city—the Venice of antiquity, rising from mid‐ocean with her “tiara of

proud towers”—which seemed to mark her out as destined to be mistress of

the sea. It also made a siege of Tyre an arduous and a tedious

undertaking, as many a conqueror found to his cost. Favoured then by these

advantages, Tyre speedily gathered the traffic of Phœnicia into her own

hands, and her wealth and luxury were the wonder of the nations. She was

known as “the crowning city, whose merchants were princes, and her

traffickers the honourable of the earth” (Isa. xxiii. 8). She became the

great commercial emporium of the world. Her colonies were planted all over

the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean, and the one most frequently

mentioned in the Bible, Tarshish, was in Spain, beyond Gibraltar. Her

seamen had ventured beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and undertook distant

Atlantic voyages to the Canary Islands on the south and the coasts of

Britain on the north. The most barbarous and inhospitable regions were

ransacked for the metals and other products needed to supply the

requirements of civilisation, and everywhere she found a market for her

own wares and manufactures. The carrying trade of the Mediterranean was

almost entirely conducted in her ships, while her richly laden caravans

traversed all the great routes that led into the heart of Asia and Africa.

It so happens that the twenty‐seventh chapter of Ezekiel is one of the

best sources of information we possess as to the varied and extensive

commercial relations of Tyre in the sixth century B.C.(78) It will

therefore be better to glance shortly at its contents here rather than in

its proper connection in the development of the prophet’s thought. It will

easily be seen that the description is somewhat idealised; no details are

given of the commodities which Tyre _sold_ to the nations—only as an

afterthought (ver. 33) is it intimated that by sending forth her wares she

has enriched and satisfied many nations. So the goods which she _bought_

of them are not represented as given in exchange for anything else; Tyre

is poetically conceived as an empress ruling the peoples by the potent

spell of her influence, compelling them to drudge for her and bring to her

feet the gains they have acquired by their heavy labour. Nor can the list

of nations(79) or their gifts be meant as exhaustive; it only includes

such things as served to exhibit the immense variety of useful and costly

articles which ministered to the wealth and luxury of Tyre. But making

allowance for this, and for the numerous difficulties which the text

presents, the passage has evidently been compiled with great care; it

shows a minuteness of detail and fulness of knowledge which could not have

been got from books, but displays a lively personal interest in the

affairs of the world which is surprising in a man like Ezekiel.

The order followed in the enumeration of nations is not quite clear, but

is on the whole geographical. Starting from Tarshish in the extreme west

(ver. 12), the prophet mentions in succession Javan (Ionia), Tubal, and

Meshech (two tribes to the south‐east of the Black Sea), and Togarmah

(usually identified with Armenia) (vv. 13, 14). These represent the

northern limit of the Phœnician markets. The reference in the next verse

(v. 15) is doubtful, on account of a difference between the Septuagint and

the Hebrew text. If with the former we read “Rhodes” instead of “Dedan,”

it embraces the nearer coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, and this

is perhaps on the whole the more natural sense. In this case it is

possible that up to this point the description has been confined to the

sea trade of Phœnicia, if we may suppose that the products of Armenia

reached Tyre by way of the Black Sea. At all events the overland traffic

occupies a space in the list out of proportion to its actual importance, a

fact which is easily explained from the prophet’s standpoint. First, in a

line from south to north, we have the nearer neighbours of Phœnicia—Edom,

Judah, Israel, and Damascus (vv. 16‐18). Then the remoter tribes and

districts of Arabia—Uzal(80) (the chief city of Yemen), Dedan (on the

eastern side of the Gulf of Akaba), Arabia and Kedar (nomads of the

eastern desert), Havilah,(81) Sheba, and Raamah (in the extreme south of

the Arabian peninsula) (vv. 19‐22). Finally the countries tapped by the

eastern caravan route—Haran (the great trade centre in Mesopotamia),

Canneh (? Calneh, unknown), Eden (differently spelt from the garden of

Eden, also unknown), Assyria, and Chilmad (unknown) (ver. 23). These were

the “merchants” and “traders” of Tyre, who are represented as thronging

her market‐place with the produce of their respective countries.

The imports, so far as we can follow the prophet’s enumeration, are in

nearly all cases characteristic products of the regions to which they are

assigned. Spain is known to have furnished all the metals here

mentioned—silver, iron, lead, and tin. Greece and Asia Minor were centres

of the slave traffic (one of the darkest blots on the commerce of

Phœnicia), and also supplied hardware. Armenia was famous as a horse‐

breeding country, and thence Tyre procured her supply of horses and mules.

The ebony and tusks of ivory must have come from Africa; and if the

Septuagint is right in reading “Rhodes” in ver. 15, these articles can

only have been collected there for shipment to Tyre.(82) Through Edom come

pearls and precious stones.(83) Judah and Israel furnish Tyre with

agricultural and natural produce, as they had done from the days of David

and Solomon—wheat and oil, wax and honey, balm and spices. Damascus yields

the famous “wine of Helbon”—said to be the only vintage that the Persian

kings would drink—perhaps also other choice wines.(84) A rich variety of

miscellaneous articles, both natural and manufactured, is contributed by

Arabia,—wrought iron (perhaps sword‐blades) from Yemen; saddle‐cloths from

Dedan; sheep and goats from the Bedouin tribes; gold, precious stones, and

aromatic spices from the caravans of Sheba. Lastly, the Mesopotamian

countries provide the costly textile fabrics from the looms of Babylon so

highly prized in antiquity—“costly garments, mantles of blue, purple, and

broidered work,” “many‐coloured carpets,” and “cords twisted and

durable.”(85)

This survey of the ramifications of Tyrian commerce will have served its

purpose if it enables us to realise in some measure the conception which

Ezekiel had formed of the power and prestige of the maritime city, whose

destruction he so confidently announced. He knew, as did Isaiah before

him, how deeply Tyre had struck her roots in the life of the old world,

how indispensable her existence seemed to be to the whole fabric of

civilisation as then constituted. Both prophets represent the nations as

lamenting the downfall of the city which had so long ministered to their

material welfare. The overthrow of Tyre would be felt as a world‐wide

calamity; it could hardly be contemplated except as part of a radical

subversion of the established order of things. This is what Ezekiel has in

view, and his attitude towards Tyre is governed by his expectation of a

great shaking of the nations which is to usher in the perfect kingdom of

God. In the new world to which he looks forward no place will be found for

Tyre, not even the subordinate position of a handmaid to the people of God

which Isaiah’s vision of the future had assigned to her. Beneath all her

opulence and refinement the prophet’s eye detected that which was opposed

to the mind of Jehovah—the irreligious spirit which is the temptation of a

mercantile community, manifesting itself in overweening pride and self‐

exaltation, and in sordid devotion to gain as the highest end of a

nation’s existence.

The twenty‐sixth chapter is in the main a literal prediction of the siege

and destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. It is dated from the year in

which Jerusalem was captured, and was certainly written after that event.

The number of the month has accidentally dropped out of the text, so that

we cannot tell whether at the time of writing the prophet had received

actual intelligence of the fall of the city. At all events it is assumed

that the fate of Jerusalem is already known in Tyre, and the manner in

which the tidings were sure to have been received there is the immediate

occasion of the prophecy. Like many other peoples, Tyre had rejoiced over

the disaster which had befallen the Jewish state; but her exultation had a

peculiar note of selfish calculation, which did not escape the notice of

the prophet. Ever mindful of her own interest, she sees that a barrier to

the free development of her commerce has been removed, and she

congratulates herself on the fortunate turn which events have taken: “Aha!

the door of the peoples is broken, it is turned towards me; she that was

full hath been laid waste!”(86) (ver. 2). Although the relations of the

two countries had often been friendly and sometimes highly advantageous to

Tyre, she had evidently felt herself hampered by the existence of an

independent state on the mountain ridge of Palestine. The kingdom of

Judah, especially in days when it was strong enough to hold Edom in

subjection, commanded the caravan routes to the Red Sea, and doubtless

prevented the Phœnician merchants from reaping the full profit of their

ventures in that direction. It is probable that at all times a certain

proportion of the revenue of the kings of Judah was derived from toll

levied on the Tyrian merchandise that passed through their territory; and

what they thus gained represented so much loss to Tyre. It was, to be

sure, a small item in the mass of business transacted on the exchange of

Tyre. But nothing is too trivial to enter into the calculations of a

community given over to the pursuit of gain; and the satisfaction with

which the fall of Jerusalem was regarded in Tyre showed how completely she

was debased by her selfish commercial policy, how oblivious she was to the

spiritual interests bound up with the future of Israel.

Having thus exposed the sinful cupidity and insensibility of Tyre, the

prophet proceeds to describe in general terms the punishment that is to

overtake her. Many nations shall be brought up against her, irresistible

as the sea when it comes up with its waves; her walls and fortifications

shall be rased; the very dust shall be scraped from her site, so that she

is left “a naked rock” rising out of the sea, a place where fishermen

spread their nets to dry, as in the days before the city was built.

Then follows (vv. 7‐14) a specific announcement of the manner in which

judgment shall be executed on Tyre. The recent political attitude of the

city left no doubt as to the quarter from which immediate danger was to be

apprehended. The Phœnician states had been the most powerful members of

the confederacy that was formed about 596 to throw off the yoke of the

Chaldæans, and they were in open revolt at the time when Ezekiel wrote.

They had apparently thrown in their lot with Egypt, and a conflict with

Nebuchadnezzar was therefore to be expected. Tyre had every reason to

avoid a war with a first‐rate power, which could not fail to be disastrous

to her commercial interests. But her inhabitants were not destitute of

martial spirit; they trusted in the strength of their position and their

command of the sea, and they were in the mood to risk everything rather

than again renounce their independence and their freedom. But all this

avails nothing against the purpose which Jehovah has purposed concerning

Tyre. It is He who brings Nebuchadnezzar, the king of kings, from the

north with his army and his siege‐train, and Tyre shall fall before his

assault, as Jerusalem has already fallen. First of all, the Phœnician

cities on the mainland shall be ravaged and laid waste, and then

operations commence against the mother‐city herself. The description of

the siege and capture of the island fortress is given with an abundance of

graphic details, although, strangely enough, without calling attention to

the peculiar method of attack that was necessary for the reduction of

Tyre. The great feature of the siege would be the construction of a huge

mole between the shore and the island; once the wall was reached the

attack would proceed precisely as in the case of an inland town, in the

manner depicted on Assyrian monuments. When the breach is made in the

fortifications the whole army pours into the city, and for the first time

in her history the walls of Tyre shake with the rumbling of chariots in

her streets. The conquered city is then given up to slaughter and pillage,

her songs and her music are stilled for ever, her stones and timber and

dust are cast into the sea, and not a trace remains of the proud mistress

of the waves.

In the third strophe (vv. 15‐21) the prophet describes the dismay which

will be caused when the crash of the destruction of Tyre resounds along

the coasts of the sea. All the “princes of the sea” (perhaps the rulers of

the Phœnician colonies in the Mediterranean) are represented as rising

from their thrones, and putting off their stately raiment, and sitting in

the dust bewailing the fate of the city. The dirge in which they lift up

their voices (vv. 17, 18) is given by the Septuagint in a form which

preserves more nearly than the Hebrew the structure as well as the beauty

which we should expect in the original:—

How is perished from the sea—

The city renowned!

She that laid her terror—

On all its inhabitants!

[Now] are the isles affrighted—

In the day of thy falling!

But this beautiful image is not strong enough to express the prophet’s

sense of the irretrievable ruin that hangs over Tyre. By a bold flight of

imagination he turns from the mourners on earth to follow in thought the

descent of the city into the under‐world (vv. 19‐21). The idea that Tyre

might rise from her ruins after a temporary eclipse and recover her old

place in the world was one that would readily suggest itself to any one

who understood the real secret of her greatness. To the mind of Ezekiel

the impossibility of her restoration lies in the fixed purpose of Jehovah,

which includes, not only her destruction, but her perpetual desolation.

“When I make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited;

when I bring up against thee the deep, and the great waters cover thee;

then I will bring thee down with them that go down to the pit, with the

people of old time, and I will make thee dwell in the lowest parts of the

earth, like the immemorial waste places, with them that go down to the

pit, that thou be not inhabited nor establish thyself in the land of the

living.” The whole passage is steeped in weird poetic imagery. The

“deep”(87) suggests something more than the blue waters of the

Mediterranean: it is the name of the great primeval Ocean, out of which

the habitable world was fashioned, and which is used as an emblem of the

irresistible judgments of God.(88) The “pit” is the realm of the dead,

Sheôl, conceived as situated under the earth, where the shades of the

departed drag out a feeble existence from which there is no deliverance.

The idea of Sheôl is a frequent subject of poetical embellishment in the

later books of the Old Testament; and of this we have an example here when

the prophet represents the once populous and thriving city as now a

denizen of that dreary place. But the essential meaning he wishes to

convey is that Tyre is numbered among the things that were. She “shall be

sought, and shall not be found any more for ever,” because she has entered

the dismal abode of the dead, whence there is no return to the joys and

activities of the upper world.

Such then is the anticipation which Ezekiel in the year 586 had formed of

the fate of Tyre. No candid reader will suppose that the prophecy is

anything but what it professes to be—a _bonâ‐fide_ prediction of the total

destruction of the city in the immediate future and by the hands of

Nebuchadnezzar. When Ezekiel wrote, the siege of Tyre had not begun; and

however clear it may have been to observant men that the next stage in the

campaign would be the reduction of the Phœnician cities, the prophet is at

least free from the suspicion of having prophesied after the event. The

remarkable absence of characteristic and special details from the account

of the siege is the best proof that he is dealing with the future from the

true prophetic standpoint and clothing a divinely imparted conviction in

images supplied by a definite historical situation. Nor is there any

reason to doubt that in some form the prophecy was actually published

among his fellow‐exiles at the date to which it is assigned. On these

points critical opinion is fairly unanimous. But when we come to the

question of the fulfilment of the prediction we find ourselves in the

region of controversy, and, it must be admitted, of uncertainty. Some

expositors, determined at all hazards to vindicate Ezekiel’s prophetic

authority, maintain that Tyre was actually devastated by Nebuchadnezzar in

the manner described by the prophet, and seek for confirmations of their

view in the few historical notices we possess of this period of

Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. Others, reading the history differently, arrive at

the conclusion that Ezekiel’s calculations were entirely at fault, that

Tyre was not captured by the Babylonians at all, and that his oracle

against Tyre must be reckoned amongst the unfulfilled prophecies of the

Old Testament. Others again seek to reconcile an impartial historical

judgment with a high conception of the function of prophecy, and find in

the undoubted course of events a real though not an exact verification of

the words uttered by Ezekiel. It is indeed almost by accident that we have

any independent corroboration of Ezekiel’s anticipation with regard to the

immediate future of Tyre. Oriental discoveries have as yet brought to

light no important historical monuments of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar;

and outside of the book of Ezekiel itself we have nothing to guide us

except the statement of Josephus, based on Phœnician and Greek

authorities,(89) that Tyre underwent a thirteen years’ siege by the

Babylonian conqueror. There is no reason whatever to call in question the

reliability of this important information, although the accompanying

statement that the siege began in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar is

certainly erroneous. But unfortunately we are not told how the siege

ended. Whether it was successful or unsuccessful, whether Tyre was reduced

or capitulated, or was evacuated or beat off her assailants, is nowhere

indicated. To argue from the silence of the historians is impossible; for

if one man argues that a catastrophe that took place “before the eyes of

all Asia” would not have passed unrecorded in historical books, another

might urge with equal force that a repulse of Nebuchadnezzar was too

uncommon an event to be ignored in the Phœnician annals.(90) On the whole

the most reasonable hypothesis is perhaps that after the thirteen years

the city surrendered on not unfavourable terms; but this conclusion is

based on other considerations than the data or the silence of Josephus.

The chief reason for believing that Nebuchadnezzar was not altogether

successful in his attack on Tyre is found in a supplementary prophecy of

Ezekiel’s, given in the end of the twenty‐ninth chapter (vv. 17‐21). It

was evidently written after the siege of Tyre was concluded, and so far as

it goes it confirms the accuracy of Josephus’ sources. It is dated from

the year 570, sixteen years after the fall of Jerusalem; and it is, in

fact, the latest oracle in the whole book. The siege of Tyre therefore,

which had not commenced in 586, when ch. xxvi. was written, was finished

before 570; and between these terminal dates there is just room for the

thirteen years of Josephus. The invasion of Phœnicia must have been the

next great enterprise of the Babylonian army in Western Asia after the

destruction of Judah, and it was only the extraordinary strength of Tyre

that enabled it to protract the struggle so long. Now what light does

Ezekiel throw on the issue of the siege? His words are: “Nebuchadnezzar,

king of Babylon, has made his army to serve a great service against Tyre;

every head made bald and every shoulder peeled, yet _he and his army got

no wages out of Tyre_ for the service which he served against her.” The

prophet then goes on to announce that the spoils of Egypt should be the

recompense to the army for their unrequited labour against Tyre, inasmuch

as it was work done for Jehovah. Here then, we have evidence first of all

that the long siege of Tyre had taxed the resources of the besiegers to

the utmost. The “peeled shoulders” and the “heads made bald” is a graphic

detail which alludes not obscurely to the monotonous navvy work of

carrying loads of stones and earth to fill up the narrow channel between

the mainland and the island,(91) so as to allow the engines to be brought

up to the walls. Ezekiel was well aware of the arduous nature of the

undertaking, the expenditure of human effort and life which was involved,

in the struggle with natural obstacles; and his striking conception of

these obscure and toiling soldiers as unconscious servants of the Almighty

shows how steadfast was his faith in the word he proclaimed against Tyre.

But the important point is that they obtained from Tyre no reward—at least

no adequate reward—for their herculean labours. The expression used is no

doubt capable of various interpretations. It might mean that the siege had

to be abandoned, or that the city was able to make extremely easy terms of

capitulation, or, as Jerome suggests, that the Tyrians had carried off

their treasures by sea and escaped to one of their colonies. In any case

it shows that the historical event was not in accordance with the details

of the earlier prophecy. That the wealth of Tyre would fall to the

conquerors is there assumed as a natural consequence of the capture of the

city. But whether the city was actually captured or not, the victors were

somehow disappointed in their expectation of plunder. The rich spoil of

Tyre, which was the legitimate reward of their exhausting toil, had

slipped from their eager grasp; to this extent at least the reality fell

short of the prediction, and Nebuchadnezzar had to be compensated for his

losses at Tyre by the promise of an easy conquest of Egypt.

But if this had been all it is not probable that Ezekiel would have deemed

it necessary to supplement his earlier prediction in the way we have seen

after an interval of sixteen years. The mere circumstance that the sack of

Tyre had failed to yield the booty that the besiegers counted on was not

of a nature to attract attention amongst the prophet’s auditors, or to

throw doubt on the genuineness of his inspiration. And we know that there

was a much more serious difference between the prophecy and the event than

this. It is from what has just been said extremely doubtful whether

Nebuchadnezzar actually destroyed Tyre, but even if he did she very

quickly recovered much of her former prosperity and glory. That her

commerce was seriously crippled during the struggle with Babylonia we may

well believe, and it is possible that she never again was what she had

been before this humiliation came upon her. But for all that the

enterprise and prosperity of Tyre continued for many ages to excite the

admiration of the most enlightened nations of antiquity. The destruction

of the city, therefore, if it took place, had not the finality which

Ezekiel had anticipated. Not till after the lapse of eighteen centuries

could it be said with approximate truth that she was like “a bare rock in

the midst of the sea.”

The most instructive fact for us, however, is that Ezekiel reissued his

original prophecy, knowing that it had not been literally fulfilled. In

the minds of his hearers the apparent falsification of his predictions had

revived old prejudices against him which interfered with the prosecution

of his work. They reasoned that a prophecy so much out of joint with the

reality was sufficient to discredit his claim to be an authoritative

exponent of the mind of Jehovah; and so the prophet found himself

embarrassed by a recurrence of the old unbelieving attitude which had

hindered his public activity before the destruction of Jerusalem. He has

not for the present “an open mouth” amongst them, and he feels that his

words will not be fully received until they are verified by the

restoration of Israel to its own land. But it is evident that he himself

did not share the view of his audience, otherwise he would certainly have

suppressed a prophecy which lacked the mark of authenticity. On the

contrary he published it for the perusal of a wider circle of readers, in

the conviction that what he had spoken was a true word of God, and that

its essential truth did not depend on its exact correspondence with the

facts of history. In other words, he believed in it as a true reading of

the principles revealed in God’s moral government of the world—a reading

which had received a partial verification in the blow which had been dealt

at the pride of Tyre, and which would receive a still more signal

fulfilment in the final convulsions which were to introduce the day of

Israel’s restoration and glory. Only we must remember that the prophet’s

horizon was necessarily limited; and as he did not contemplate the slow

development and extension of the kingdom of God through long ages, so he

could not have taken into account the secular operation of historic causes

which eventually brought about the ruin of Tyre.

Chapter XVII. Tyre (Continued): Sidon. Chapters xxvii., xxviii.

The remaining oracles on Tyre (chs. xxvii., xxviii. 1‐19) are somewhat

different both in subject and mode of treatment from the chapter we have

just finished. Ch. xxvi. is in the main a direct announcement of the fall

of Tyre, delivered in the oratorical style which is the usual vehicle of

prophetic address. She is regarded as a state occupying a definite place

among the other states of the world, and sharing the fate of other peoples

who by their conduct towards Israel or their ungodliness and arrogance

have incurred the anger of Jehovah. The two great odes which follow are

purely ideal delineations of what Tyre is in herself; her destruction is

assumed as certain rather than directly predicted, and the prophet gives

free play to his imagination in the effort to set forth the conception of

the city which was impressed on his mind. In ch. xxvii. he dwells on the

external greatness and magnificence of Tyre, her architectural splendour,

her political and military power, and above all her amazing commercial

enterprise. Ch. xxviii., on the other hand, is a meditation on the

peculiar genius of Tyre, her inner spirit of pride and self‐sufficiency,

as embodied in the person of her king. From a literary point of view the

two chapters are amongst the most beautiful in the whole book. In the

twenty‐seventh chapter the fiery indignation of the prophet almost

disappears, giving place to the play of poetic fancy, and a flow of lyric

emotion more perfectly rendered than in any other part of Ezekiel’s

writings. The distinctive feature of each passage is the elegy pronounced

over the fall of Tyre; and although the elegy seems just on the point of

passing into the taunt‐song, yet the accent of triumph is never suffered

to overwhelm the note of sadness to which these poems owe their special

charm.

I

Ch. xxvii. is described as a dirge over Tyre. In the previous chapter the

nations were represented as bewailing her fall, but here the prophet

himself takes up a lamentation for her; and, as may have been usual in

real funereal dirges, he commences by celebrating the might and riches of

the doomed city. The fine image which is maintained throughout the chapter

was probably suggested to Ezekiel by the picturesque situation of Tyre on

her sea‐girt rock at “the entries of the sea.” He compares her to a

stately vessel riding at anchor(92) near the shore, taking on board her

cargo of precious merchandise, and ready to start on the perilous voyage

from which she is destined never to return. Meanwhile the gallant ship

sits proudly in the water, tight and seaworthy and sumptuously furnished;

and the prophet’s eye runs rapidly over the chief points of her elaborate

construction and equipment (vv. 3‐11). Her timbers are fashioned of

cypress from Hermon,(93) her mast is a cedar of Lebanon, her oars are made

of the oak of Bashan, her deck of sherbîn‐wood(94) (a variety of cedar)

inlaid with ivory imported from Cyprus. Her canvas fittings are still more

exquisite and costly. The sail is of Egyptian byssus with embroidered

work, and the awning over the deck was of cloth resplendent in the two

purple dyes procured from the coasts of Elishah.(95) The ship is fitted up

for pleasure and luxury as well as for traffic, the fact symbolised being

obviously the architectural and other splendours which justified the

city’s boast that she was “the perfection of beauty.”

But Tyre was wise and powerful as well as beautiful; and so the prophet,

still keeping up the metaphor, proceeds to describe how the great ship is

manned. Her steersmen are the experienced statesmen whom she herself has

bred and raised to power; her rowers are the men of Sidon and Aradus, who

spend their strength in her service. The elders and wise men of Gebal are

her shipwrights (literally “stoppers of leaks”); and so great is her

influence that all the naval resources of the world are subject to her

control. Besides this Tyre employs an army of mercenaries drawn from the

remotest quarters of the earth—from Persia and North Africa, as well as

the subordinate towns of Phœnicia; and these, represented as hanging their

shields and helmets on her sides, make her beauty complete.(96) In these

verses the prophet pays a tribute of admiration to the astuteness with

which the rulers of Tyre used their resources to strengthen her position

as the head of the Phœnician confederacy. Three of the cities

mentioned—Sidon, Aradus, and Gebal or Byblus—were the most important in

Phœnicia; two of them at least had a longer history than herself, yet they

are here truly represented as performing the rough menial labour which

brought wealth and renown to Tyre. It required no ordinary statecraft to

preserve the balance of so many complex and conflicting interests, and

make them all co‐operate for the advancement of the glory of Tyre; but

hitherto her “wise men” had proved equal to the task.

The second strophe (vv. 12‐25) contains the survey of Tyrian commerce,

which has already been analysed in another connection.(97) At first sight

it appears as if the allegory were here abandoned, and the impression is

partly correct. In reality the city, although personified, is regarded as

the emporium of the world’s commerce, to which all the nations stream with

their produce. But at the end it appears that the various commodities

enumerated represent the cargo with which the ship is laden. Ships of

Tarshish—_i.e._, the largest class of merchant vessels then afloat, used

for the long Atlantic voyage—wait upon her, and fill her with all sorts of

precious things (ver. 25). Then in the last strophe (vv. 26‐36), which

speaks of the destruction of Tyre, the figure of the ship is boldly

resumed. The heavily freighted vessel is rowed into the open sea; there

she is struck by an east wind and founders in deep water. The image

suggests two ideas, which must not be pressed, although they may have an

element of historic truth in them: one is that Tyre perished under the

weight of her own commercial greatness, and the other that her ruin was

hastened through the folly of her rulers. But the main idea is that the

destruction of the city was wrought by the power of God, which suddenly

overwhelmed her at the height of her prosperity and activity. As the waves

close over the doomed vessel the cry of anguish that goes up from the

drowning mariners and passengers strikes terror into the hearts of all

seafaring men. They forsake their ships, and having reached the safety of

the shore abandon themselves to frantic demonstrations of grief, joining

their voices in a lamentation over the fate of the goodly ship which

symbolised the mistress of the sea (vv. 32‐36)(98):—

Who was like Tyre [so glorious]—

In the midst of the sea?

When thy wares went forth from the seas—

Thou filledst the peoples;

With thy wealth and thy merchandise—

Thou enrichedst the earth.

Now art thou broken from the seas—

In depths of the waters;

Thy merchandise and all thy multitude—

Are fallen therein.

All the inhabitants of the islands—

Are shocked at thee,

And their kings shudder greatly—

With tearful countenances.

They that trade among the peoples ...—

Hiss over thee;

Thou art become a terror—

And art no more for ever.

Such is the end of Tyre. She has vanished utterly from the earth; the

imposing fabric of her greatness is like an unsubstantial pageant faded;

and nothing remains to tell of her former glory but the mourning of the

nations who were once enriched by her commerce.

II

Ch. xxviii. 1‐19.—Here the prophet turns to the prince of Tyre, who is

addressed throughout as the impersonation of the consciousness of a great

commercial community. We happen to know from Josephus that the name of the

reigning king at this time was Ithobaal or Ethbaal II. But it is manifest

that the terms of Ezekiel’s message have no reference to the individuality

of this or any other prince of Tyre. It is not likely that the king could

have exercised any great political influence in a city “whose merchants

were all princes”; indeed, we learn from Josephus that the monarchy was

abolished in favour of some sort of elective constitution not long after

the death of Ithobaal. Nor is there any reason to suppose that Ezekiel has

in view any special manifestation of arrogance on the part of the royal

house, such as a pretension to be descended from the gods. The king here

is simply the representative of the genius of the community, the sins of

heart charged against him are the expression of the sinful principle which

the prophet detected beneath the refinement and luxury of Tyre, and his

shameful death only symbolises the downfall of the city. The prophecy

consists of two parts: first, an accusation against the prince of Tyre,

ending with a threat of destruction (vv. 2‐10); and second, a lament over

his fall (vv. 11‐19). The point of view is very different in these two

sections. In the first the prince is still conceived as a man; and the

language put into his mouth, although extravagant, does not exceed the

limits of purely human arrogance. In the second, however, the king appears

as an angelic being, an inhabitant of Eden and a companion of the cherub,

sinless at first, and falling from his high estate through his own

transgression. It almost seems as if the prophet had in his mind the idea

of a tutelary spirit or genius of Tyre, like the angelic princes in the

book of Daniel who preside over the destinies of different nations.(99)

But in spite of its enhanced idealism, the passage only clothes in forms

drawn from Babylonian mythology the boundless self‐glorification of Tyre;

and the expulsion of the prince from paradise is merely the ideal

counterpart of the overthrow of the city which is his earthly abode.

The sin of Tyre is an overweening pride, which culminated in an attitude

of self‐deification on the part of its king. Surrounded on every hand by

the evidences of man’s mastery over the world, by the achievements of

human art and industry and enterprise, the king feels as if his throne on

the sea‐girt island were a veritable seat of the gods, and as if he

himself were a being truly divine. His heart is lifted up; and, forgetful

of the limits of his mortality, he “sets his mind like the mind of a god.”

The godlike quality on which he specially prides himself is the superhuman

wisdom evinced by the extraordinary prosperity of the city with which he

identifies himself. Wiser than Daniel! the prophet ironically exclaims;

“no secret thing is too dark for thee!” “By thy wisdom and thine insight

thou hast gotten thee wealth, and hast gathered gold and silver into thy

treasuries: by thy great wisdom in thy commerce thou hast multiplied thy

wealth, and thy heart is lifted up because of thy riches.” The prince sees

in the vast accumulation of material resources in Tyre nothing but the

reflection of the genius of her inhabitants; and being himself the

incarnation of the spirit of the city, he takes the glory of it to himself

and esteems himself a god. Such impious self‐exaltation must inevitably

call down the vengeance of Him who is the only living God; and Ezekiel

proceeds to announce the humiliation of the prince by the “most ruthless

of the nations”—_i.e._, the Chaldæans. He shall then know how much of

divinity doth hedge a king. In face of them that seek his life he shall

learn that he is man and not God, and that there are forces in the world

against which the vaunted wisdom of Tyre is of no avail. An ignominious

death(100) at the hand of strangers is the fate reserved for the mortal

who so proudly exalted himself against all that is called God.

The thought thus expressed, when disengaged from its peculiar setting, is

one of permanent importance. To Ezekiel, as to the prophets generally,

Tyre is the representative of commercial greatness, and the truth which he

here seeks to illustrate is that the abnormal development of the

mercantile spirit had in her case destroyed the capacity of faith in that

which is truly divine. Tyre no doubt, like every other ancient state,

still maintained a public religion of the type common to Semitic paganism.

She was the sacred seat of a special cult, and the temple of Melkarth was

considered the chief glory of the city. But the public and perfunctory

worship which was there celebrated had long ceased to express the highest

consciousness of the community. The real god of Tyre was not Baal nor

Melkarth, but the king, or any other object that might serve as a symbol

of her civic greatness. Her religion was one that embodied itself in no

outward ritual; it was the enthusiasm which was kindled in the heart of

every citizen of Tyre by the magnificence of the imperial city to which he

belonged. The state of mind which Ezekiel regards as characteristic of

Tyre was perhaps the inevitable outcome of a high civilisation informed by

no loftier religious conceptions than those common to heathenism. It is

the idea which afterwards found expression in the deification of the Roman

emperors—the idea that the state is the only power higher than the

individual to which he can look for the furtherance of his material and

spiritual interests, the only power, therefore, which rightly claims his

homage and his reverence. None the less it is a state of mind which is

destructive of all that is essential to living religion; and Tyre in her

proud self‐sufficiency was perhaps further from a true knowledge of God

than the barbarous tribes who in all sincerity worshipped the rude idols

which represented the invisible power that ruled their destinies. And in

exposing the irreligious spirit which lay at the heart of the Tyrian

civilisation the prophet lays his finger on the spiritual danger which

attends the successful pursuit of the finite interests of human life. The

thought of God, the sense of an immediate relation of the spirit of man to

the Eternal and the Infinite, are easily displaced from men’s minds by

undue admiration for the achievements of a culture based on material

progress, and supplying every need of human nature except the very

deepest, the need of God. “For that is truly a man’s religion, the object

of which fills and holds captive his soul and heart and mind, in which he

trusts above all things, which above all things he longs for and hopes

for.”(101) The commercial spirit is indeed but one of the forms in which

men devote themselves to the service of this present world; but in any

community where it reigns supreme we may confidently look for the same

signs of religious decay which Ezekiel detected in Tyre in his own day. At

all events his message is not superfluous in an age and country where

energies are well‐nigh exhausted in the accumulation of the means of

living, and whose social problems all run up into the great question of

the distribution of wealth. It is essentially the same truth which Ruskin,

with something of the power and insight of a Hebrew prophet, has so

eloquently enforced on the men who make modern England—that the true

religion of a community does not live in the venerable institutions to

which it yields a formal and conventional deference, but in the objects

which inspire its most eager ambitions, the ideals which govern its

standard of worth, in those things wherein it finds the ultimate ground of

its confidence and the reward of its work.(102)

The lamentation over the fall of the prince of Tyre (vv. 11‐19) reiterates

the same lesson with a boldness and freedom of imagination not usual with

this prophet. The passage is full of obscurities and difficulties which

cannot be adequately discussed here, but the main lines of the conception

are easily grasped. It describes the original state of the prince as a

semi‐divine being, and his fall from that state on account of sin that was

found in him. The picture is no doubt ironical; Ezekiel actually means

nothing more than that the soaring pride of Tyre enthroned its king or its

presiding genius in the seat of the gods, and endowed him with attributes

more than mortal. The prophet accepts the idea, and shows that there was

sin in Tyre enough to hurl the most radiant of celestial creatures from

heaven to hell. The passage presents certain obvious affinities with the

account of the Fall in the second and third chapters of Genesis; but it

also contains reminiscences of a mythology the key to which is now lost.

It can hardly be supposed that the vivid details of the imagery, such as

the “mountain of God,” the “stones of fire,” “the precious gems,” are

altogether due to the prophet’s imagination. The mountain of the gods is

now known to have been a prominent idea of the Babylonian religion; and

there appears to have been a widespread notion that in the abode of the

gods were treasures of gold and precious stones, jealously guarded by

griffins, of which small quantities found their way into the possession of

men. It is possible that fragments of these mythical notions may have

reached the knowledge of Ezekiel during his sojourn in Babylon and been

used by him to fill up his picture of the glories which surrounded the

first estate of the king of Tyre. It should be observed, however, that the

prince is not to be identified with the cherub or one of the cherubim. The

words “Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have set thee so”

(ver. 14) may be translated “With the ... cherub I set thee”; and

similarly the words of ver. 16, “I will destroy thee, O covering cherub,”

should probably be rendered “And the cherub hath destroyed thee.” The

whole conception is greatly simplified by these changes, and the principal

features of it, so far as they can be made out with clearness, are as

follows: The cherub is the warden of the “holy mountain of God,” and no

doubt also (as in ch. i.) the symbol and bearer of the divine glory. When

it is said that the prince of Tyre was placed with the cherub, the meaning

is that he had his place in the abode of God, or was admitted to the

presence of God, so long as he preserved the perfection in which he was

created (ver. 15). The other allusions to his original glory, such as the

“covering” of precious stones and the “walking amidst fiery stones,”

cannot be explained with any degree of certainty.(103) When iniquity is

found in him so that he must be banished from the presence of God, the

cherub is said to destroy him from the midst of the stones of fire—_i.e._,

is the agent of the divine judgment which descends on the prince. It is

thus doubtful whether the prince is conceived as a perfect human being,

like Adam before his fall, or as an angelic, superhuman creature; but the

point is of little importance in an ideal delineation such as we have

here. It will be seen that even on the first supposition there is no very

close correspondence with the story of Eden in the book of Genesis, for

there the cherubim are placed to guard the way of the tree of life only

after man has been expelled from the garden.

But what is the sin that tarnished the sanctity of this exalted personage

and cost him his place among the immortals? Ideally, it was an access of

pride that caused his ruin, a spiritual sin, such as might originate in

the heart of an angelic being.

By that sin fell the angels: how can man, then,

The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?

His heart was lifted up because of his beauty, and he forfeited his

godlike wisdom over his brilliance (ver. 17). But really, this change

passing over the spirit of the prince in the seat of God is only the

reflection of what is done on earth in Tyre. As her commerce increased,

the proofs of her unjust and unscrupulous use of wealth were accumulated

against her, and her midst was filled with violence (ver. 16). This is the

only allusion in the three chapters to the wrong and oppression and the

outrages on humanity which were the inevitable accompaniments of that

greed of gain which had taken possession of the Tyrian community. And

these sins are regarded as a demoralisation taking place in the nature of

the prince who is the representative of the city; by the “iniquity of his

traffic he has profaned his holiness,” and is cast down from his lofty

seat to the earth, a spectacle of abject humiliation for kings to gloat

over. By a sudden change of metaphor the destruction of the city is also

represented as a fire breaking out in the vitals of the prince and

reducing his body to ashes—a conception which has not unnaturally

suggested to some commentators the fable of the phœnix which was supposed

periodically to immolate herself in a fire of her own kindling.

III

A short oracle on Sidon completes the series of prophecies dealing with

the future of Israel’s immediate neighbours (vv. 20‐23). Sidon lay about

twenty miles farther north than Tyre, and was, as we have seen, at this

time subject to the authority of the younger and more vigorous city. From

the book of Jeremiah,(104) however, we see that Sidon was an autonomous

state, and preserved a measure of independence even in matters of foreign

policy. There is therefore nothing arbitrary in assigning a separate

oracle to this most northerly of the states in immediate contact with the

people of Israel, although it must be admitted that Ezekiel has nothing

distinctive to say of Sidon. Phœnicia was in truth so overshadowed by Tyre

that all the characteristics of the people have been amply illustrated in

the chapters that have dealt with the latter city. The prophecy is

accordingly delivered in the most general terms, and indicates rather the

purpose and effect of the judgment than the manner in which it is to come

or the character of the people against whom it is directed. It passes

insensibly into a prediction of the glorious future of Israel, which is

important as revealing the underlying motive of all the preceding

utterances against the heathen nations. The restoration of Israel and the

destruction of her old neighbours are both parts of one comprehensive

scheme of divine providence, the ultimate object of which is a

demonstration before the eyes of the world of the holiness of Jehovah.

That men might know that He is Jehovah, God alone, is the end alike of His

dealings with the heathen and with His own people. And the two parts of

God’s plan are in the mind of Ezekiel intimately related to each other;

the one is merely a condition of the realisation of the other. The

crowning proof of Jehovah’s holiness will be seen in His faithfulness to

the promise made to the patriarchs of the possession of the land of

Canaan, and in the security and prosperity enjoyed by Israel when brought

back to their land a purified nation. Now in the past Israel had been

constantly interfered with, crippled, humiliated, and seduced by the petty

heathen powers around her borders. These had been a pricking brier and a

stinging thorn (ver. 24), constantly annoying and harassing her and

impeding the free development of her national life. Hence the judgments

here denounced against them are no doubt in the first instance a

punishment for what they had been and done in the past; but they are also

a clearing of the stage that Israel might be isolated from the rest of the

world, and be free to mould her national life and her religious

institutions in accordance with the will of her God. That is the substance

of the last three verses of the chapter; and while they exhibit the

peculiar limitations of the prophet’s thinking, they enable us at the same

time to do justice to the singular unity and consistency of aim which

guided him in his great forecast of the future of the kingdom of God.

There remains now the case of Egypt to be dealt with; but Egypt’s

relations to Israel and her position in the world were so unique that

Ezekiel reserves consideration of her future for a separate group of

oracles longer than those on all the other nations put together.

Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters xxix.‐xxxii.

Egypt figures in the prophecies of Ezekiel as a great world‐power

cherishing projects of universal dominion. Once more, as in the age of

Isaiah, the ruling factor in Asiatic politics was the duel for the mastery

of the world between the rival empires of the Nile and the Euphrates. The

influence of Egypt was perhaps even greater in the beginning of the sixth

century than it had been in the end of the eighth, although in the

interval it had suffered a signal eclipse. Isaiah (ch. xix.) had predicted

a subjugation of Egypt by the Assyrians, and this prophecy had been

fulfilled in the year 672, when Esarhaddon invaded the country and

incorporated it in the Assyrian empire. He divided its territory into

twenty petty principalities governed by Assyrian or native rulers, and

this state of things had lasted with little change for a generation.

During the reign of Asshurbanipal Egypt was frequently overrun by Assyrian

armies, and the repeated attempts of the Ethiopian monarchs, aided by

revolts among the native princes, to reassert their sovereignty over the

Nile Valley were all foiled by the energy of the Assyrian king or the

vigilance of his generals. At last, however, a new era of prosperity

dawned for Egypt about the year 645. Psammetichus, the ruler of Saïs, with

the help of foreign mercenaries, succeeded in uniting the whole land under

his sway; he expelled the Assyrian garrison, and became the founder of the

brilliant twenty‐sixth (Saïte) dynasty. From this time Egypt possessed in

a strong central administration the one indispensable condition of her

material prosperity. Her power was consolidated by a succession of

vigorous rulers, and she immediately began to play a leading part in the

affairs of Asia. The most distinguished king of the dynasty was Necho II.,

the son and successor of Psammetichus. Two striking facts mentioned by

Herodotus are worthy of mention, as showing the originality and vigour

with which the Egyptian administration was at this time conducted. One is

the project of cutting a canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, an

undertaking which was abandoned by Necho in consequence of an oracle

warning him that he was only working for the advantage of

foreigners—meaning no doubt the Phœnicians. Necho, however, knew how to

turn the Phœnician seamanship to good account, as is proved by the other

great stroke of genius with which he is credited—the circumnavigation of

Africa. It was a Phœnician fleet, despatched from Suez by his orders,

which first rounded the Cape of Good Hope, returning to Egypt by the

Straits of Gibraltar after a three years’ voyage. And if Necho was less

successful in war than in the arts of peace, it was not from want of

activity. He was the Pharaoh who defeated Josiah in the plain of Megiddo,

and afterwards contested the lordship of Syria with Nebuchadnezzar. His

defeat at Carchemish in 604 compelled him to retire to his own land; but

the power of Egypt was still unbroken, and the Chaldæan king knew that he

would yet have to reckon with her in his schemes for the conquest of

Palestine.

At the time to which these prophecies belong the king of Egypt was Pharaoh

Hophra (in Greek, Apries), the grandson of Necho II. Ascending the throne

in 588 B.C., he found it necessary for the protection of his own interests

to take an active part in the politics of Syria. He is said to have

attacked Phœnicia by sea and land, capturing Sidon and defeating a Tyrian

fleet in a naval engagement. His object must have been to secure the

ascendency of the Egyptian party in the Phœnician cities; and the stubborn

resistance which Nebuchadnezzar encountered from Tyre was no doubt the

result of the political arrangements made by Hophra after his victory. No

armed intervention was needed to ensure a spirited defence of Jerusalem;

and it was only after the Babylonians were encamped around the city that

Hophra sent an Egyptian army to its relief. He was unable, however, to

effect more than a temporary suspension of the siege, and returned to

Egypt, leaving Judah to its fate, apparently without venturing on a battle

(Jer. xxxvii. 5‐7). No further hostilities between Egypt and Babylon are

recorded during the lifetime of Hophra. He continued to reign with vigour

and success till 571, when he was dethroned by Amasis, one of his own

generals.

These circumstances show a remarkable parallel to the political situation

with which Isaiah had to deal at the time of Sennacherib’s invasion. Judah

was again in the position of the “earthen pipkin between two iron pots.”

It is certain that neither Jehoiakim nor Zedekiah, any more than the

advisers of Hezekiah in the earlier period, would have embarked on a

conflict with the Mesopotamian empire but for delusive promises of

Egyptian support. There was the same vacillation and division of counsels

in Jerusalem, the same dilatoriness on the part of Egypt, and the same

futile effort to retrieve a desperate situation after the favourable

moment had been allowed to slip. In both cases the conflict was

precipitated by the triumph of an Egyptian party in the Judæan court; and

it is probable that in both cases the king was coerced into a policy of

which his judgment did not approve. And the prophets of the later period,

Jeremiah and Ezekiel, adhere closely to the lines laid down by Isaiah in

the time of Sennacherib, warning the people against putting their trust in

the vain help of Egypt, and counselling passive submission to the course

of events which expressed the unalterable judgment of the Almighty.

Ezekiel indeed borrows an image that had been current in the days of

Isaiah in order to set forth the utter untrustworthiness and dishonesty of

Egypt towards the nations who were induced to rely on her power. He

compares her to a staff of reed, which breaks when one grasps it, piercing

the hand and making the loins to totter when it is leant upon.(105) Such

had Egypt been to Israel through all her history, and such she will again

prove herself to be in her last attempt to use Israel as the tool of her

selfish designs. The great difference between Ezekiel and Isaiah is that,

whereas Isaiah had access to the councils of Hezekiah and could bring his

influence to bear on the inception of schemes of state, not without hope

of averting what he saw to be a disastrous decision, Ezekiel could only

watch the development of events from afar, and throw his warnings into the

form of predictions of the fate in store for Egypt.

The oracles against Egypt are seven in number: (i) ch. xxix. 1‐16; (ii)

17‐21; (iii) xxx. 1‐19; (iv) 20‐26; (v) xxxi.; (vi) xxxii. 1‐16; (vii)

17‐32. They are all variations of one theme, the annihilation of the power

of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, and little progress of thought can be traced

from the first to the last. Excluding the supplementary prophecy of ch.

xxix. 17‐21, which is a later addition, the order appears to be strictly

chronological.(106) The series begins seven months before the capture of

Jerusalem (ch. xxix. 1), and ends about eight months after that

event.(107) How far the dates refer to actual occurrences coming to the

knowledge of the prophet it is impossible for us to say. It is clear that

his interest is centred on the fate of Jerusalem then hanging in the

balance; and it is possible that the first oracles (chs. xxix. 1‐16, xxx.

1‐19) may be called forth by the appearance of Hophra’s army on the scene,

while the next (ch. xxx. 20‐26) plainly alludes to the repulse of the

Egyptians by the Chaldæans. But no attempt can be made to connect the

prophecies with incidents of the campaign; the prophet’s thoughts are

wholly occupied with the moral and religious issues involved in the

contest, the vindication of Jehovah’s holiness in the overthrow of the

great world‐power which sought to thwart His purposes.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Ch. xxix. 1‐16 is an introduction to all that follows, presenting a

general outline of the prophet’s conceptions of the fate of Egypt. It

describes the sin of which she has been guilty, and indicates the nature

of the judgment that is to overtake her and her future place among the

nations of the world. The Pharaoh is compared to a “great dragon,”

wallowing in his native waters, and deeming himself secure from

molestation in his reedy haunts. The crocodile was a natural symbol of

Egypt, and the image conveys accurately the impression of sluggish and

unwieldy strength which Egypt in the days of Ezekiel had long produced on

shrewd observers of her policy. Pharaoh is the incarnate genius of the

country; and as the Nile was the strength and glory of Egypt, he is here

represented as arrogating to himself the ownership and even the creation

of the wonderful river. “My river is mine, and I have made it” is the

proud and blasphemous thought which expresses his consciousness of a power

that owns no superior in earth or heaven. That the Nile was worshipped by

the Egyptians with divine honours did not alter the fact that beneath all

their ostentatious religious observances there was an immoral sense of

irresponsible power in the use of the natural resources to which the land

owed its prosperity. For this spirit of ungodly self‐exaltation the king

and people of Egypt are to be visited with a signal judgment, from which

they shall learn who it is that is God over all. The monster of the Nile

shall be drawn from his waters with hooks, with all his fishes sticking to

his scales, and left to perish ignominiously on the desert sands. The rest

of the prophecy (vv. 8‐16) gives the explanation of the allegory in

literal, though still general, terms. The meaning is that Egypt shall be

laid waste by the sword, its teeming population led into captivity, and

the land shall lie desolate, untrodden by the foot of man or beast for the

space of forty years. “From Migdol to Syene”(108)—the extreme limits of

the country—the rich valley of the Nile shall be uncultivated and

uninhabited for that period of time.

The most interesting feature of the prophecy is the view which is given of

the final condition of the Egyptian empire (vv. 13‐16). In all cases the

prophetic delineations of the future of different nations are coloured by

the present circumstances of those nations as known to the writers.

Ezekiel knew that the fertile soil of Egypt would always be capable of

supporting an industrious peasantry, and that her existence did not depend

on her continuing to play the _rôle_ of a great power. Tyre depended on

her commerce, and apart from that which was the root of her sin could

never be anything but the resort of poor fishermen, who would not even

make their dwelling on the barren rock in the midst of the sea. But Egypt

could still be a country, though shorn of the glory and power which had

made her a snare to the people of God. On the other hand the geographical

isolation of the land made it impossible that she should lose her

individuality amongst the nations of the world. Unlike the small states,

such as Edom and Ammon, which were obviously doomed to be swallowed up by

the surrounding population as soon as their power was broken, Egypt would

retain her distinct and characteristic life as long as the physical

condition of the world remained what it was. Accordingly the prophet does

not contemplate an utter annihilation of Egypt, but only a temporary

chastisement succeeded by her permanent degradation to the lowest rank

among the kingdoms. The forty years of her desolation represent in round

numbers the period of Chaldæan supremacy during which Jerusalem lies in

ruins. Ezekiel at this time expected the invasion of Egypt to follow soon

after the capture of Jerusalem, so that the restoration of the two peoples

would be simultaneous. At the end of forty years the whole world will be

reorganised on a new basis, Israel occupying the central position as the

people of God, and in that new world Egypt shall have a separate but

subordinate place. Jehovah will bring back the Egyptians from their

captivity, and cause them to return to “Pathros,(109) the land of their

origin,” and there make them a “lowly state,” no longer an imperial power,

but humbler than the surrounding kingdoms. The righteousness of Jehovah

and the interest of Israel alike demand that Egypt should be thus reduced

from her former greatness. In the old days her vast and imposing power had

been a constant temptation to the Israelites, “a confidence, a reminder of

iniquity,” leading them to put their trust in human power and luring them

into paths of danger by deceitful promises (vv. 6‐7). In the final

dispensation of history this shall no longer be the case: Israel shall

then know Jehovah, and no form of human power shall be suffered to lead

their hearts astray from Him who is the rock of their salvation.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Ch. xxx. 1‐19.—The judgment on Egypt spreads terror and dismay among all

the neighbouring nations. It signalises the advent of the great day of

Jehovah, the day of His final reckoning with the powers of evil

everywhere. It is the “time of the heathen” that has come (ver. 3). Egypt

being the chief embodiment of secular power on the basis of pagan

religion, the sudden collapse of her might is equivalent to a judgment on

heathenism in general, and the moral effect of it conveys to the world a

demonstration of the omnipotence of the one true God whom she had ignored

and defied. The nations immediately involved in the fall of Egypt are the

allies and mercenaries whom she has called to her aid in the time of her

calamity. Ethiopians, and Lydians, and Libyans, and Arabs, and

Cretans,(110) the “helpers of Egypt,” who have furnished contingents to

her motley army, fall by the sword along with her, and their countries

share the desolation that overtakes the land of Egypt. Swift messengers

are then seen speeding up the Nile in ships to convey to the careless

Ethiopians the alarming tidings of the overthrow of Egypt (ver. 9). From

this point the prophet confines his attention to the fate of Egypt, which

he describes with a fulness of detail that implies a certain acquaintance

both with the topography and the social circumstances of the country. In

ver. 10 Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldæans are for the first time mentioned

by name as the human instruments employed by Jehovah to execute His

judgment on Egypt. After the slaughter of the inhabitants, the next

consequence of the invasion is the destruction of the canals and

reservoirs and the decay of the system of irrigation on which the

productiveness of the country depended. “The rivers [canals] are dried up,

and the land is made waste, and the fulness thereof, by the hand of

strangers” (ver. 12). And with the material fabric of her prosperity the

complicated system of religious and civil institutions which was entwined

with the hoary civilisation of Egypt vanishes for ever. “The idols are

destroyed; the potentates(111) are made to cease from Memphis, and princes

from the land of Egypt, so that they shall be no more” (ver. 13). Faith in

the native gods shall be extinguished, and a trembling fear of Jehovah

shall fill the whole land. The passage ends with an enumeration of various

centres of the national life, which formed as it were the sensitive

ganglia where the universal calamity was most acutely felt. On these

cities,(112) each of which was identified with the worship of a particular

deity, Jehovah executes the judgments in which He makes known to the

Egyptians His sole divinity and destroys their confidence in false gods.

They also possessed some special military or political importance, so that

with their destruction the sceptres of Egypt were broken and the pride of

her strength was laid low (ver. 18).

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Ch. xxx. 20‐26.—A new oracle, dated three months later than the preceding.

Pharaoh is represented as a combatant, already disabled in one arm and

sore pressed by his powerful antagonist the king of Babylon. Jehovah

announces that the wounded arm cannot be healed, although he has retired

from the contest for that purpose. On the contrary, both his arms shall be

broken and the sword struck from his grasp, while the arms of

Nebuchadnezzar are strengthened by Jehovah, who puts His own sword into

his hand. The land of Egypt, thus rendered defenceless, falls an easy prey

to the Chaldæans, and its people are dispersed among the nations. The

occasion of the prophecy is the repulse of Hophra’s expedition for the

relief of Jerusalem, which is referred to as a past event. The date may

either mark the actual time of the occurrence (as in ch. xxiv. 1), or the

time when it came to the knowledge of Ezekiel. The prophet at all events

accepts this reverse to the Egyptian arms as an earnest of the speedy

realisation of his predictions in the total submission of the proud empire

of the Nile.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Ch. xxxi. occupies the same position in the prophecies against Egypt as

the allegory of the richly laden ship in those against Tyre (ch. xxvii.).

The incomparable majesty and overshadowing power of Egypt are set forth

under the image of a lordly cedar in Lebanon, whose top reaches to the

clouds and whose branches afford shelter to all the beasts of the earth.

The exact force of the allegory is somewhat obscured by a slight error of

the text, which must have crept in at a very early period. As it stands in

the Hebrew and in all the ancient versions the whole chapter is a

description of the greatness not of Egypt but of Assyria. “To whom art

thou like in thy greatness?” asks the prophet (ver. 2); and the answer is,

“Assyria was great as thou art, yet Assyria fell and is no more.” There is

thus a double comparison: Assyria is compared to a cedar, and then Egypt

is tacitly compared to Assyria. This interpretation may not be altogether

indefensible. That the fate of Assyria contained a warning against the

pride of Pharaoh is a thought in itself intelligible, and such as Ezekiel

might very well have expressed. But if he had wished to express it, he

would not have done it so awkwardly as this interpretation supposes. When

we follow the connection of ideas we cannot fail to see that Assyria is

not in the prophet’s thoughts at all. The image is consistently pursued

without a break to the end of the chapter, and then we learn that the

subject of the description is “Pharaoh and all his multitude” (ver. 18).

But if the writer is thinking of Egypt at the end, he must have been

thinking of it from the beginning, and the mention of Assyria is out of

place and misleading. The confusion has been caused by the substitution of

the word _Asshur_ (in ver. 3) for _T’asshur_, the name of the sherbîn

tree, itself a species of cedar. We should therefore read, “Behold a

T’asshur, a cedar in Lebanon,” etc.;(113) and the answer to the question

of ver. 2 is that the position of Egypt is as unrivalled among the

kingdoms of the world as this stately tree among the trees of the forest.

With this alteration the course of thought is perfectly clear, although

incongruous elements are combined in the representation. The towering

height of the cedar with its top in the clouds symbolises the imposing

might of Egypt and its ungodly pride (cf. vv. 10, 14). The waters of the

flood which nourish its roots are those of the Nile, the source of Egypt’s

wealth and greatness. The birds that build their nests in its branches and

the beasts that bring forth their young under its shadow are the smaller

nations that looked to Egypt for protection and support. Finally, the

trees in the garden of God who envy the luxuriant pride of this monarch of

the forest represent the other great empires of the earth who vainly

aspired to emulate the prosperity and magnificence of Egypt (vv. 3‐9).

In the next strophe (vv. 10‐14) we see the great trunk lying prone across

mountain and valley, while its branches lie broken in all the water‐

courses. A “mighty one of the nations” (Nebuchadnezzar) has gone up

against it, and felled it to the earth. The nations have been scared from

under its shadow; and the tree which “but yesterday might have stood

against the world” now lies prostrate and dishonoured—“none so poor as do

it reverence.” And the fall of the cedar reveals a moral principle and

conveys a moral lesson to all other proud and stately trees. Its purpose

is to remind the other great empires that they too are mortal, and to warn

them against the soaring ambition and lifting up of the heart which had

brought about the humiliation of Egypt: “that none of the trees by the

water should exalt themselves in stature or shoot their tops between the

clouds, and that their mighty ones should not stand proudly in their

loftiness (all who are fed by water); for they are all delivered to death,

to the under‐world with the children of men, to those that go down to the

pit.” In reality there is no more impressive intimation of the vanity of

earthly glory than the decay of those mighty empires and civilisations

which once stood in the van of human progress; nor is there a fitter

emblem of their fate than the sudden crash of some great forest tree

before the woodman’s axe.

The development of the prophet’s thought, however, here reaches a point

where it breaks through the allegory, which has been hitherto consistently

maintained. All nature shudders in sympathy with the fallen cedar: the

deep mourns and withholds her streams from the earth; Lebanon is clothed

with blackness, and all the trees languish. Egypt was so much a part of

the established order that the world does not know itself when she has

vanished. While this takes place on earth, the cedar itself has gone down

to Sheôl, where the other shades of vanished dynasties are comforted

because this mightiest of them all has become like to the rest. This is

the answer to the question that introduced the allegory. To whom art thou

like? None is fit to be compared to thee; yet “thou shalt be brought down

with the trees of Eden to the lower parts of the earth, thou shalt lie in

the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that are slain of the sword.” It

is needless to enlarge on this idea, which is out of keeping here, and is

more adequately treated in the next chapter.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Ch. xxxii. consists of two lamentations to be chanted over the fall of

Egypt by the prophet and the daughters of the nations (vv. 16, 18). The

first (vv. 1‐16) describes the destruction of Pharaoh, and the effect

which is produced on earth; while the second (vv. 17‐32) follows his shade

into the abode of the dead, and expatiates on the welcome that awaits him

there. Both express the spirit of exultation over a fallen foe, which was

one of the uses to which elegiac poetry was turned amongst the Hebrews.

The first passage, however, can hardly be considered a dirge in any proper

sense of the word. It is essential to a true elegy that the subject of it

should be conceived as dead, and that whether serious or ironical it

should celebrate a glory that has passed away. In this case the elegiac

note (of the elegiac _measure_ there is hardly a trace) is just struck in

the opening line: “O young lion of the nations! [How] art thou undone!”

But this is not sustained: the passage immediately falls into the style of

direct prediction and threatening, and is indeed closely parallel to the

opening prophecy of the series (ch. xxix.). The fundamental image is the

same: that of a great Nile monster spouting from his nostrils and fouling

the waters with his feet (ver. 2). His capture by many nations and his

lingering death on the open field are described with the realistic and

ghastly details naturally suggested by the figure (vv. 3‐6). The image is

then abruptly changed in order to set forth the effect of so great a

calamity on the world of nature and of mankind. Pharaoh is compared to a

brilliant luminary, whose sudden extinction is followed by a darkening of

all the lights of heaven and by consternation amongst the nations and

kings of earth (vv. 7‐10). It is thought by some that the violence of the

transition is to be explained by the idea of the heavenly constellation of

the dragon, answering to the dragon of the Nile, to which Egypt had just

been likened.(114) Finally all metaphors are abandoned, and the desolation

of Egypt is announced in literal terms as accomplished by the sword of the

king of Babylon and the “most terrible of the nations” (vv. 11‐16).

But all the foregoing oracles are surpassed in grandeur of conception by

the remarkable Vision of Hades which concludes the series—“one of the most

weird passages in literature” (Davidson). In form it is a dirge supposed

to be sung at the burial of Pharaoh and his host by the prophet along with

the daughters of famous nations (ver. 18). But the theme, as has been

already observed, is the entrance of the deceased warriors into the under‐

world, and their reception by the shades that have gone down thither

before them. In order to understand it we must bear in mind some features

of the conception of the under‐world, which it is difficult for the modern

mind to realise distinctly. First of all, Sheôl or the “pit,” the realm of

the dead, is pictured to the imagination as an adumbration of the grave or

sepulchre, in which the body finds its last resting‐place; or rather it is

the aggregate of all the burying‐grounds scattered over the earth’s

surface. There the shades are grouped according to their clans and

nationalities, just as on earth the members of the same family would

usually be interred in one burying‐place. The grave of the chief or king,

the representative of the nation, is surrounded by those of his vassals

and subjects, earthly distinctions being thus far preserved. The condition

of the dead appears to be one of rest or sleep; yet they retain some

consciousness of their state, and are visited at least by transient gleams

of human emotion, as when in this chapter the heroes rouse themselves to

address the Pharaoh when he comes among them. The most material point is

that the state of the soul in Hades reflects the fate of the body after

death. Those who have received the honour of decent burial on earth enjoy

a corresponding honour among the shades below. They have as it were a

definite status and individuality in their eternal abode, whilst the

spirits of the unburied slain are laid in the lowest recesses of the pit,

in the limbo of the uncircumcised. On this distinction the whole

significance of the passage before us seems to depend. The dead are

divided into two great classes: on the one hand the “mighty ones,” who lie

in state with their weapons of war around them; and on the other hand the

multitude of “the uncircumcised,(115) slain by the sword”—_i.e._, those

who have perished on the field of battle and been buried promiscuously

without due funereal rites.(116) There is, however, no moral distinction

between the two classes. The heroes are not in a state of blessedness; nor

is the condition of the uncircumcised one of acute suffering. The whole of

existence in Sheôl is essentially of one character; it is on the whole a

pitiable existence, destitute of joy and of all that makes up the fulness

of life on earth. Only there is “within that deep a lower deep,” and it is

reserved for those who in the manner of their death have experienced the

penalty of great wickedness. The moral truth of Ezekiel’s representation

lies here. The real judgment of Egypt was enacted in the historical scene

of its final overthrow; and it is the consciousness of this tremendous

visitation of divine justice, perpetuated amongst the shades to all

eternity, that gives ethical significance to the lot assigned to the

nation in the other world. At the same time it should not be overlooked

that the passage is in the highest degree poetical, and cannot be taken as

an exact statement of what was known or believed about the state after

death in Old Testament times. It deals only with the fate of armies and

nationalities and great warriors who filled the earth with their renown.

These, having vanished from history, preserve through all time in the

under‐world the memory of Jehovah’s mighty acts of judgment; but it is

impossible to determine whether this sublime vision implies a real belief

in the persistence of national identities in the region of the dead.

These, then, are the principal ideas on which the ode is based, and the

course of thought is as follows. Ver. 18 briefly announces the occasion

for which the dirge is composed; it is to celebrate the passage of Pharaoh

and his host to the lower world, and consign him to his appointed place

there. Then follows a scene which has a certain resemblance to a well‐

known representation in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah (vv. 9‐11). The

heroes who occupy the place of honour among the dead are supposed to rouse

themselves at the approach of this great multitude, and hailing them from

the midst of Sheôl, direct them to their proper place amongst the

dishonoured slain. “The mighty ones speak to him: ‘Be thou in the recesses

of the pit: whom dost thou excel in beauty? Go down and be laid to rest

with the uncircumcised, in the midst of them that are slain with the

sword.’ ”(117) Thither Pharaoh has been preceded by other great conquerors

who once set their terror in the earth, but now bear their shame amongst

those that go down to the pit. For there is Asshur and all his company:

there too are Elam and Meshech and Tubal, each occupying its own allotment

amongst nations that have perished by the sword (vv. 22‐26). Not theirs is

the enviable lot of the heroes of old time(118) who went down to Sheôl in

their panoply of war, and rest with their swords under their heads and

their shields(119) covering their bones. And so Egypt, which has perished

like these other nations, must be banished with them into the bottom of

the pit (vv. 27, 28). The enumeration of the nations of the uncircumcised

is then resumed; Israel’s immediate neighbours are amongst them—Edom and

the dynasties of the north (the Syrians), and the Phœnicians, inferior

states which played no great part as conquerors, but nevertheless perished

in battle and bear their humiliation along with the others (vv. 29, 30).

These are to be Pharaoh’s companions in his last resting‐place, and at the

sight of them he will lay aside his presumptuous thoughts and comfort

himself over the loss of his mighty army (vv. 31 f.).

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

It is necessary to say a few words in conclusion about the historical

evidence for the fulfilment of these prophecies on Egypt. The

supplementary oracle of ch. xxix. 17‐21 shows us that the threatened

invasion by Nebuchadnezzar had not taken place sixteen years after the

fall of Jerusalem. Did it ever take place at all? Ezekiel was at that time

confident that his words were on the point of being fulfilled, and indeed

he seems to stake his credit with his hearers on their verification. Can

we suppose that he was entirely mistaken? Is it likely that the remarkably

definite predictions uttered both by him and Jeremiah(120) failed of even

the partial fulfilment which that on Tyre received? A number of critics

have strongly maintained that we are shut up by the historical evidence to

this conclusion. They rely chiefly on the silence of Herodotus, and on the

unsatisfactory character of the statement of Josephus. The latter writer

is indeed sufficiently explicit in his affirmations. He tells us(121) that

five years after the capture of Jerusalem Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt,

put to death the reigning king, appointed another in his stead, and

carried the Jewish refugees in Egypt captive to Babylon. But it is pointed

out that the date is impossible, being inconsistent with Ezekiel’s own

testimony, that the account of the death of Hophra is contradicted by what

we know of the matter from other sources (Herodotus and Diodorus), and

that the whole passage bears the appearance of a translation into history

of the prophecies of Jeremiah which it professes to substantiate. That is

vigorous criticism, but the vigour is perhaps not altogether

unwarrantable, especially as Josephus does not mention any authority.

Other allusions by secular writers hardly count for much, and the state of

the question is such that historians would probably have been content to

confess their ignorance if the credit of a prophet had not been mixed up

with it.

Within the last seventeen years, however, a new turn has been given to the

discussion through the discovery of monumental evidence which was thought

to have an important bearing on the point in dispute. In the same volume

of an Egyptological magazine(122) Wiedemann directed the attention of

scholars to two inscriptions, one in the Louvre and the other in the

British Museum, both of which he considered to furnish proof of an

occupation of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar. The first was an Egyptian

inscription of the reign of Hophra. It was written by an official of the

highest rank, named _Nes‐hor_, to whom was entrusted the responsible task

of defending Egypt on its southern or Ethiopian frontier. According to

Wiedemann’s translation, it relates among other things an irruption of

Asiatic bands (Syrians, people of the north, Asiatics), which penetrated

as far as the first cataract, and did some damage to the temple of Chnum

in Elephantine. There they were checked by Nes‐hor, and afterwards they

were crushed or expelled by Hophra himself. Now the most natural

explanation of this incident, in connection with the circumstances of the

time, would seem to be that Nebuchadnezzar, finding himself fully occupied

for the present with the siege of Tyre, incited roving bands of Arabs and

Syrians to plunder Egypt, and that they succeeded so far as to penetrate

to the extreme south of the country. But a more recent examination of the

text, by Maspero and Brugsch,(123) reduces the incident to much smaller

dimensions. They find that it refers to a mutiny of Egyptian mercenaries

(Syrians, Ionians, and Bedouins) stationed on the southern frontier. The

governor, Nes‐hor, congratulates himself on a successful stratagem by

which he got the rebels into a position where they were cut down by the

king’s troops. In any case it is evident that it falls very far short of a

confirmation of Ezekiel’s prophecy. Not only is there no mention of

Nebuchadnezzar or a regular Babylonian army, but the invaders or mutineers

are actually said to have been annihilated by Hophra. It may be said, no

doubt, that an Egyptian governor was likely to be silent about an event

which cast discredit on his country’s arms, and would be tempted to

magnify some temporary success into a decisive victory. But still the

inscription must be taken for what it is worth, and the story it tells is

certainly not the story of a Chaldæan supremacy in the valley of the Nile.

The only thing that suggests a connection between the two is the general

probability that a campaign against Egypt must have been contemplated by

Nebuchadnezzar about that time.

The second and more important document is a cuneiform fragment of the

annals of Nebuchadnezzar. It is unfortunately in a very mutilated

condition, and all that the Assyriologists have made out is that in the

thirty‐seventh year of his reign Nebuchadnezzar fought a battle with the

king of Egypt. As the words of the inscription are those of Nebuchadnezzar

himself, we may presume that the battle ended in a victory for him, and a

few disconnected words in the later part are thought to refer to the

tribute or booty which he acquired.(124) The thirty‐seventh year of

Nebuchadnezzar is the year 568 B.C., about two years after the date of

Ezekiel’s last utterance against Egypt. The Egyptian king at this time was

Amasis, whose name (only the last syllable of which is legible) is

supposed to be that mentioned in the inscription.(125) What the ulterior

consequences of this victory were on Egyptian history, or how long the

Babylonian domination lasted, we cannot at present say. These are

questions on which we may reasonably look for further light from the

researches of Assyriology. In the meantime it appears to be established

beyond reasonable doubt that Nebuchadnezzar did attack Egypt, and the

probable issue of his expedition was in accordance with Ezekiel’s latest

prediction: “Behold, I give to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the land

of Egypt; and he shall spoil her spoil, and plunder her plunder, and it

shall be the wages for his army” (ch. xxix. 19). There can of course be no

question of a fulfilment of the earlier prophecies in their literal terms.

History knows nothing of a total captivity of the population of Egypt or a

blank of forty years in her annals when her land was untrodden by the foot

of man or of beast. These are details belonging to the dramatic form in

which the prophet clothed the spiritual lesson which it was necessary to

impress on his countrymen—the inherent weakness of the Egyptian empire as

a power based on material resources and rearing itself in opposition to

the great ends of God’s kingdom. And it may well have been that for the

illustration of that truth the humiliation that Egypt endured at the hands

of Nebuchadnezzar was as effective as her total destruction would have

been.

PART IV. THE FORMATION OF THE NEW ISRAEL.

Chapter XIX. The Prophet A Watchman. Chapter xxxiii.

One day in January of the year 586 the tidings circulated through the

Jewish colony at Tel‐abib that “the city was smitten.” The rapidity with

which in the East intelligence is transmitted through secret channels has

often excited the surprise of European observers. In this case there is no

extraordinary rapidity to note, for the fate of Jerusalem had been decided

nearly six months before it was known in Babylon.(126) But it is

remarkable that the first intimation of the issue of the siege was brought

to the exiles by one of their own countrymen, who had escaped at the

capture of the city. It is probable that the messenger did not set out at

once, but waited until he could bring some information as to how matters

were settling down after the war. Or he may have been a captive who had

trudged the weary road to Babylon in chains under the escort of

Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard,(127) and afterwards succeeded in making

his escape to the older settlement where Ezekiel lived. All we know is

that his message was not delivered with the despatch which would have been

possible if his journey had been unimpeded, and that in the meantime the

official intelligence which must have already reached Babylon had not

transpired among the exiles who were waiting so anxiously for tidings of

the fate of Jerusalem.(128)

The immediate effect of the announcement on the mind of the exiles is not

recorded. It was doubtless received with all the signs of public mourning

which Ezekiel had anticipated and foretold.(129) They would require some

time to adjust themselves to a situation for which, in spite of all the

warnings that had been sent them, they were utterly unprepared; and it

must have been uncertain at first what direction their thoughts would

take. Would they carry out their half‐formed intention of abandoning their

national faith and assimilating themselves to the surrounding heathenism?

Would they sink into the lethargy of despair, and pine away under a

confused consciousness of guilt? Or would they repent of their unbelief,

and turn to embrace the hope which God’s mercy held out to them in the

teaching of the prophet whom they had despised? All this was for the

moment uncertain; but one thing was certain—they could no more return to

the attitude of complacent indifference and incredulity in which they had

hitherto resisted the word of Jehovah. The day on which the tidings of the

city’s destruction fell like a thunderbolt in the community of Tel‐abib

was the turning‐point of Ezekiel’s ministry. In the arrival of the

“fugitive” he recognises the sign which was to break the spell of silence

which had lain so long upon him, and set him free for the ministry of

consolation and upbuilding which was henceforth to be his chief vocation.

A presentiment of what was coming had visited him the evening before his

interview with the messenger, and from that time “his mouth was opened,

and he was no more dumb” (ver. 22). Hitherto he had preached to deaf ears,

and the echo of his ineffectual appeals had come back in a deadening sense

of failure which had paralysed his activity. But now in one moment the

veil of prejudice and vain self‐confidence is torn from the heart of his

hearers, and gradually but surely the whole burden of his message must

disclose itself to their intelligence. The time has come to work for the

formation of a new Israel, and a new spirit of hopefulness stimulates the

prophet to throw himself eagerly into the career which is thus opened up

before him.

It may be well at this point to try to realise the state of mind which

emerged amongst Ezekiel’s hearers after the first shock of consternation

had passed away. The seven chapters (xxxiii.‐xxxix.) with which we are to

be occupied in this section all belong to the second period of the

prophet’s work, and in all probability to the earlier part of that period.

It is obvious, however, that they were not written under the first impulse

of the tidings of the fall of Jerusalem. They contain allusions to certain

changes which must have occupied some time; and simultaneously a change

took place in the temper of the people resulting ultimately in a definite

spiritual situation to which the prophet had to address himself. It is

this situation which we have to try to understand. It supplies the

external conditions of Ezekiel’s ministry, and unless we can in some

measure interpret it we shall lose the full meaning of his teaching in

this important period of his ministry.

At the outset we may glance at the state of those who were left in the

land of Israel, who in a sense formed part of Ezekiel’s audience. The very

first oracle uttered by him after he had received his emancipation was a

threat of judgment against these survivors of the nation’s calamity (vv.

23‐29). The fact that this is recorded in connection with the interview

with the “fugitive” may mean that the information on which it is based was

obtained from that somewhat shadowy personage. Whether in this way or

through some later channel, Ezekiel had apparently some knowledge of the

disastrous feuds which had followed the destruction of Jerusalem. These

events are minutely described in the end of the book of Jeremiah (chs.

xl.‐xliv.). With a clemency which in the circumstances is surprising the

king of Babylon had allowed a small remnant of the people to settle in the

land, and had appointed over them a native governor, Gedaliah, the son of

Ahikam, who fixed his residence at Mizpah. The prophet Jeremiah elected to

throw in his lot with this remnant, and for a time it seemed as if through

peaceful submission to the Chaldæan supremacy all might go well with the

survivors. The chiefs who had conducted the guerilla warfare in the open

against the Babylonian army came in and placed themselves under the

protection of Gedaliah, and there was every prospect that by refraining

from projects of rebellion they might be left to enjoy the fruits of the

land without disturbance. But this was not to be. Certain turbulent

spirits under Ishmael, a member of the royal family, entered into a

conspiracy with the king of Ammon to destroy this last refuge of peace‐

loving Israelites. Gedaliah was treacherously murdered; and although the

murder was partially avenged, Ishmael succeeded in making his escape to

the Ammonites, while the remains of the party of order, dreading the

vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar, took their departure for Egypt and carried

Jeremiah forcibly with them. What happened after this we do not know; but

it is not improbable that Ishmael and his followers may have held

possession of the land by force for some years. We read of a fresh

deportation of Judæan captives to Babylon five years after the capture of

Jerusalem (Jer. lii. 30); and this may have been the result of an

expedition to suppress the depredations of the robber band that Ishmael

had gathered round him. How much of this story had reached the ears of

Ezekiel we do not know; but there is one allusion in his oracle which

makes it probable that he had at least heard of the assassination of

Gedaliah. Those he addresses are men who “stand upon their sword”—that is

to say, they hold that might is right, and glory in deeds of blood and

violence that gratify their passionate desire for revenge. Such language

could hardly be used of any section of the remaining population of Judæa

except the lawless banditti that enrolled themselves under the banner of

Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah.

What Ezekiel is mainly concerned with, however, is the moral and religious

condition of those to whom he speaks. Strange to say, they were animated

by a species of religious fanaticism, which led them to regard themselves

as the legitimate heirs to whom the reversion of the land of Israel

belonged. “Abraham was one,” so reasoned these desperadoes, “and yet he

inherited the land: but we are many; to us the land is given for a

possession” (ver. 24). Their meaning is that the smallness of their number

is no argument against the validity of their claim to the heritage of the

land. They are still many in comparison with the solitary patriarch to

whom it was first promised; and if he was multiplied so as to take

possession of it, why should they hesitate to claim the mastery of it?

This thought of the wonderful multiplication of Abraham’s seed after he

had received the promise seems to have laid fast hold of the men of that

generation. It is applied by the great teacher who stands next to Ezekiel

in the prophetic succession to comfort the little flock who followed after

righteousness and could hardly believe that it was God’s good pleasure to

give them the kingdom. “Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that

bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him”

(Isa. li. 2). The words of the infatuated men who exulted in the havoc

they were making on the mountains of Judæa may sound to us like a

blasphemous travesty of this argument; but they were no doubt seriously

meant. They afford one more instance of the boundless capacity of the

Jewish race for religious self‐delusion, and their no less remarkable

insensibility to that in which the essence of religion lay. The men who

uttered this proud boast were the precursors of those who in the days of

the Baptist thought to say within themselves, “We have Abraham to our

father,” not understanding that God was able “of these stones to raise up

children to Abraham” (Matt. iii. 9). All the while they were perpetuating

the evils for which the judgment of God had descended on the city and the

Hebrew state. Idolatry, ceremonial impurity, bloodshed, and adultery were

rife amongst them (vv. 25, 26); and no misgiving seems to have entered

their minds that because of these things the wrath of God comes on the

children of disobedience. And therefore the prophet repudiates their

pretensions with indignation. “Shall ye possess the land?” Their conduct

simply showed that judgment had not had its perfect work, and that

Jehovah’s purpose would not be accomplished until “the land was laid waste

and desolate, and the pomp of her strength should cease, and the mountains

of Israel be desolate, so that none passed through” (ver. 28). We have

seen that in all likelihood this prediction was fulfilled by a punitive

expedition from Babylonia in the twenty‐third year of Nebuchadnezzar.

But we knew before that Ezekiel expected no good thing to come of the

survivors of the judgment in Judæa. His hope was in those who had passed

through the fires of banishment, the men amongst whom his own work lay,

and amongst whom he looked for the first signs of the outpouring of the

divine Spirit. We must now return to the inner circle of Ezekiel’s

immediate hearers, and consider the change which the calamity had produced

on them. The chapter now before us yields two glimpses into the inner life

of the people which help us to realise the kind of men with whom the

prophet had to do.

In the first place it is interesting to learn that in his more frequent

public appearances the prophet rapidly acquired a considerable reputation

as a popular preacher (vv. 30‐33). It is true that the interest which he

excited was not of the most wholesome kind. It became a favourite

amusement of the people hanging about the walls and doors to come and

listen to the fervid oratory of their one remaining prophet as he declared

to them “the word that came forth from Jehovah.” It is to be feared that

the substance of his message counted for little in their appreciative and

critical listening. He was to them “as a very lovely song of one that hath

a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument”: “they heard his

words, but did them not.” It was pleasant to subject oneself now and then

to the influence of this powerful and heart‐searching preacher; but

somehow the heart was never searched, the conscience was never stirred,

and the hearing never ripened into serious conviction and settled purpose

of amendment. The people were thoroughly respectful in their demeanour and

apparently devout, coming in crowds and sitting before him as God’s people

should. But they were preoccupied: “their heart went after their gain”

(ver. 31) or their advantage. Self‐interest prevented them from receiving

the word of God in honest and good hearts, and no change was visible in

their conduct. Hence the prophet is not disposed to regard the evidences

of his newly acquired popularity with much satisfaction. It presents

itself to his mind as a danger against which he has to be on his guard. He

has been tried by opposition and apparent failure; now he is exposed to

the more insidious temptation of a flattering reception and superficial

success. It is a tribute to his power, and an opportunity such as he had

never before enjoyed. Whatever may have been the case heretofore, he is

now sure of an audience, and his position has suddenly become one of great

influence in the community. But the same resolute confidence in the truth

of his message which sustained Ezekiel amidst the discouragements of his

earlier career saves him now from the fatal attractions of popularity to

which many men in similar circumstances have yielded. He is not deceived

by the favourable disposition of the people towards himself, nor is he

tempted to cultivate his oratorical gifts with a view to sustaining their

admiration. His one concern is to utter the word that shall come to pass,

and so to declare the counsel of God that men shall be compelled in the

end to acknowledge that he has been “a prophet among them” (ver. 33). We

may be thankful to the prophet for this little glimpse from a vanished

past—one of those touches of nature that make the whole world kin. But we

ought not to miss its obvious moral. Ezekiel is the prototype of all

popular preachers, and he knew their peculiar trials. He was perhaps the

first man who ministered regularly to an attached congregation, who came

to hear him because they liked it and because they had nothing better to

do. If he passed unscathed through the dangers of the position, it was

through his overpowering sense of the reality of divine things and the

importance of men’s spiritual destiny; and also we may add through his

fidelity in a department of ministerial duty which popular preachers are

sometimes apt to neglect—the duty of close personal dealing with

individual men about their sins and their state before God. To this

subject we shall revert by‐and‐by.

This passage reveals to us the people in their lighter moods, when they

were able to cast off the awful burden of life and destiny and take

advantage of such sources of enjoyment as their circumstances afforded.

Mental dejection in a community, from whatever cause it originates, is

rarely continuous. The natural elasticity of the mind asserts itself in

the most depressing circumstances; and the tension of almost unendurable

sorrow is relieved by outbursts of unnatural gaiety. Hence we need not be

surprised to find that beneath the surface levity of these exiles there

lurked the feeling of despair expressed in the words of ver. 10 and more

fully in those of ch. xxxvii. 11: “Our transgressions and our sins are

upon us, and we waste away in them: how should we then live?” “Our bones

are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off.” These accents of

despondency reflect the new mood into which the more serious‐minded

portion of the community had been plunged by the calamities that had

befallen them. The bitterness of unavailing remorse, the consciousness of

national death, had laid fast hold of their spirits and deprived them of

the power of hope. In sober truth the nation was dead beyond apparent hope

of revival; and to an Israelite, whose spiritual interests were all

identified with those of his nation, religion had no power of consolation

apart from a national future. The people therefore abandoned themselves to

despair, and hardened themselves against the appeals which the prophet

addressed to them in the name of Jehovah. They looked on themselves as the

victims of an inexorable fate, and were disposed perhaps to resent the

call to repentance as a trifling with the misery of the unfortunate.

And yet, although this state of mind was as far removed as possible from

the godly sorrow that worketh repentance, it was a step towards the

accomplishment of the promise of redemption. For the present, indeed, it

rendered the people more impenetrable than ever to the word of God. But it

meant that they had accepted in principle the prophetic interpretation of

their history. It was no longer possible to deny that Jehovah the God of

Israel had revealed His secret to His servants the prophets. He was not

such a Being as the popular imagination had figured. Israel had not known

Him; only the prophets had spoken of Him the thing that was right. Thus

for the first time a general conviction of sin, a sense of being in the

wrong, was produced in Israel. That this conviction should at first lead

to the verge of despair was perhaps inevitable. The people were not

familiar with the idea of the divine righteousness, and could not at once

perceive that anger against sin was consistent in God with pity for the

sinner and mercy towards the contrite. The chief task that now lay before

the prophet was to transform their attitude of sullen impenitence into one

of submission and hope by teaching them the efficacy of repentance. They

have learned the meaning of judgment; they have now to learn the

possibility and the conditions of forgiveness. And this can only be taught

to them through a revelation of the free and infinite grace of God, who

has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should

turn from his way and live” (ver. 11). Only thus can the hard and stony

heart be taken away from their flesh and a heart of flesh given to them.

We can now understand the significance of the striking passage which

stands as the introduction to this whole section of the book (ch. xxxiii.

1‐20). At this juncture of his ministry Ezekiel’s thoughts went back on an

aspect of his prophetic vocation which had hitherto been in abeyance. From

the first he had been conscious of a certain responsibility for the fate

of each individual within reach of his words (ch. iii. 16‐21). This truth

had been one of the keynotes of his ministry; but the practical

developments which it suggested had been hindered by the solidarity of the

opposition which he had encountered. As long as Jerusalem stood the exiles

had been swayed by one common current of feeling—their thoughts were

wholly occupied by the expectation of an issue that would annul the gloomy

predictions of Ezekiel; and no man dared to break away from the general

sentiment and range himself on the side of God’s prophet. In these

circumstances anything of the nature of pastoral activity was obviously

out of the question. But now that this great obstacle to faith was removed

there was a prospect that the solidity of popular opinion would be broken

up, so that the word of God might find an entrance here and there into

susceptible hearts. The time was come to call for personal decisions, to

appeal to each man to embrace for himself the offer of pardon and

salvation. Its watchword might have been found in words uttered in another

great crisis of religious destiny: “The kingdom of heaven suffereth

violence, and the violent take it by force.” Out of such “violent men” who

act for themselves and have the courage of their convictions the new

people of God must be formed; and the mission of the prophet is to gather

round him all those who are warned by his words to “flee from the wrath to

come.”

Let us look a little more closely at the teaching of these verses. We find

that Ezekiel restates in the most emphatic manner the theological

principles which underlie this new development of his prophetic duties

(vv. 10‐20). These principles have been considered already in the

exposition of ch. xviii.; and it is not necessary to do more than refer to

them here. They are such as these: the exact and absolute righteousness of

God in His dealings with individuals; His unwillingness that any should

perish, and His desire that all should be saved and live; the necessity of

personal repentance; the freedom and independence of the individual soul

through its immediate relation to God. On this closely connected body of

evangelical doctrine Ezekiel bases the appeal which he now makes to his

hearers. What we are specially concerned with here, however, is the

direction which they imparted to his activity. We may study in the light

of Ezekiel’s example the manner in which these fundamental truths of

personal religion are to be made effective in the ministry of the gospel

for the building up of the Church of Christ.

The general conception is clearly set forth in the figure of the watchman,

with which the chapter opens (vv. 1‐9). The duties of the watchman are

simple, but responsible. He is set apart in a time of public danger to

warn the city of the approach of an enemy. The citizens trust him and go

about their ordinary occupations in security so long as the trumpet is not

sounded. Should he sleep at his post or neglect to give the signal, men

are caught unprepared and lives are lost through his fault. Their blood is

required at the watchman’s hand. If, on the other hand, he gives the alarm

as soon as he sees the sword coming, and any man disregards the warning

and is cut down in his iniquity, his blood is upon his own head. Nothing

could be clearer than this. Office always involves responsibility, and no

responsibility could be greater than that of a watchman in time of

invasion. Those who suffer are in either case the citizens whom the sword

cuts off; but it makes all the difference in the world whether the blame

of their death rests on themselves for their foolhardiness or on the

watchman for his unfaithfulness. Such then, as Ezekiel goes on to explain,

is his own position as a prophet. The prophet is one who sees further into

the spiritual issues of things than other men, and discovers the coming

calamity which is to them invisible. We must notice that a background of

danger is presupposed. In what form it was to come is not indicated; but

Ezekiel knows that judgment follows hard at the heels of sin, and seeing

sin in his fellow‐men he knows that their state is one of spiritual peril.

The prophet’s course therefore is clear. His business is to announce as in

trumpet tones the doom that hangs over every man who persists in his

wickedness, to re‐echo the divine sentence which he alone may have heard,

“O wicked man, thou shalt surely die.” And again the main question is one

of responsibility. The watchman cannot ensure the safety of every citizen,

because any man may refuse to take the warning he gives. No more can the

prophet ensure the salvation of all his hearers, for each one is free to

accept or despise the message. But whether men hear or whether they

forbear, it is of the utmost moment for himself that that warning should

be faithfully proclaimed and that he should thus “deliver his soul.”

Ezekiel seems to feel that it is only by frankly accepting the

responsibility which thus devolves on himself that he can hope to impress

on his hearers the responsibility that rests on them for the use they make

of his message.

These thoughts appear to have occupied the mind of Ezekiel on the eve of

his emancipation, and must have influenced his subsequent action to an

extent which we can but vaguely estimate. It is generally considered that

this description of the prophet’s functions covers a whole department of

work of which no express account is given. Ezekiel writes no “Pastor’s

Sketches,” and records no instances of individual conversion through his

ministry. The unwritten history of the Babylonian captivity must have been

rich in such incidents of spiritual experience, and nothing could have

been more instructive to us than the study of a few typical cases had it

been possible. One of the most interesting features of the early history

of Mohammedanism is found in the narratives of personal adhesion to the

new religion; and the formation of the new Israel in the age of the Exile

is a process of infinitely greater importance for humanity at large than

the genesis of Islam. But neither in this book nor elsewhere are we

permitted to follow that process in its details. Ezekiel may have

witnessed the beginnings of it, but he was not called upon to be its

historian. Still, the inference is probably correct that a conception of

the prophet’s office which holds him accountable to God for the fate of

individuals led to something more than mere general exhortations to

repentance. The preacher must have taken a personal interest in his

hearers; he must have watched for the first signs of a response to his

message, and been ready to advise and encourage those who turned to him

for guidance in their perplexities. And since the sphere of his influence

and responsibility included the whole Hebrew community in which he lived,

he must have been eager to seize every opportunity to warn individual

sinners of the error of their ways, lest their blood should be required at

his hand. To this extent we may say that Ezekiel held a position amongst

the exiles somewhat analogous to that of a spiritual director in the

Catholic Church or the pastor of a Protestant congregation. But the

analogy must not be pressed too far. The nurture of the spiritual life of

individuals could not have presented itself to him as the chief end of his

ministrations. His business was first to lay down the conditions of

entrance into the new kingdom of God, and then out of the ruins of the old

Israel to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Perhaps the nearest

parallel to this department of his work which history affords is the

mission of the Baptist. The keynote of Ezekiel’s preaching was the same as

that of John: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Both

prophets were alike animated by a sense of crisis and urgency, based on

the conviction that the impending Messianic age would be ushered in by a

searching judgment in which the chaff would be separated from the wheat.

Both laboured for the same end—the formation of a new circle of religious

fellowship, in anticipation of the advent of the Messianic kingdom. And as

John, by an inevitable spiritual selection, gathered round him a band of

disciples, amongst whom our Lord found some of His most devoted followers,

so we may believe that Ezekiel, by a similar process, became the

acknowledged leader of those whom he taught to wait for the hope of

Israel’s restoration.

There is nothing in Ezekiel’s ministry that appeals more directly to the

Christian conscience than the serious and profound sense of pastoral

responsibility to which this passage bears witness. It is a feeling which

would seem to be inseparable from the right discharge of the ministerial

office. In this, as in many other respects, Ezekiel’s experience is

repeated, on a higher level, in that of the apostle of the Gentiles, who

could take his hearers to record that he was “pure from the blood of all

men,” inasmuch as he had “taught them publicly and from house to house,”

and “ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears” (Acts xx.

17‐35). That does not mean, of course, that a preacher is to occupy

himself with nothing else than the personal salvation of his hearers. St.

Paul would have been the last to agree to such a limitation of the range

of his teaching. But it does mean that the salvation of men and women is

the supreme end which the minister of Christ is to set before him, and

that to which all other instruction is subordinated. And unless a man

realises that the truth he utters is of tremendous importance on the

destiny of those to whom he speaks, he can hardly hope to approve himself

as an ambassador for Christ. There are doubtless temptations, not in

themselves ignoble, to use the pulpit for other purposes than this. The

desire for public influence may be one of them, or the desire to utter

one’s mind on burning questions of the day. To say that these are

temptations is not to say that matters of public interest are to be

rigorously excluded from treatment in the pulpit. There are many questions

of this kind on which the will of God is as clear and imperative as it can

possibly be on any point of private conduct; and even in matters as to

which there is legitimate difference of opinion amongst Christian men

there are underlying principles of righteousness which may need to be

fearlessly enunciated at the risk of obloquy and misunderstanding.

Nevertheless it remains true that the great end of the gospel ministry is

to reconcile men to God and to cultivate in individual lives the fruits of

the Spirit, so as at the last to present every man perfect in Christ. And

the preacher who may be most safely entrusted with the handling of all

other questions is he who is most intent on the formation of Christian

character and most deeply conscious of his responsibility for the effect

of his teaching on the eternal destiny of those to whom he ministers. What

is called preaching to the age may certainly become a very poor and empty

thing if it is forgotten that the age is made up of individuals each of

whom has a soul to save or lose. What shall it profit a man if the

preacher teaches him how to win the whole world and lose his own life? It

is fashionable to hold up the prophets of Israel as models of all that a

Christian minister ought to be. If that is true, prophecy must at least be

allowed to speak its whole lesson; and amongst other elements Ezekiel’s

consciousness of responsibility for the individual life must receive due

recognition.

Chapter XX. The Messianic Kingdom. Chapter xxxiv.

The term “Messianic” as commonly applied to Old Testament prophecy bears

two different senses, a wider and a narrower. In its wider use it is

almost equivalent to the modern word “eschatological.” It denotes that

unquenchable hope of a glorious future for Israel and the world which is

an all but omnipresent feature of the prophetic writings, and includes all

predictions of the kingdom of God in its final and perfect manifestation.

In its stricter sense it is applied only to the promise of the ideal king

of the house of David, which, although a very conspicuous element of

prophecy, is by no means universal, and perhaps does not bulk quite so

largely in the Old Testament as is generally supposed. The later Jews were

guided by a true instinct when they seized on this figure of the ideal

ruler as the centre of the nation’s hope; and to them we owe this special

application of the name “Messiah,” the “Anointed,” which is never used of

the Son of David in the Old Testament itself. To a certain extent we

follow in their steps when we enlarge the meaning of the word “Messianic”

so as to embrace the whole prophetic delineation of the future glories of

the kingdom of God.

This distinction may be illustrated from the prophecies of Ezekiel. If we

take the word in its more general sense, we may say that all the chapters

from the thirty‐fourth to the end of the book are Messianic in character.

That is to say, they describe under various aspects the final condition of

things which is introduced by the restoration of Israel to its own land.

Let us glance for a moment at the elements which enter into this general

conception of the last things as they are set forth in the section of the

book with which we are now dealing. We exclude from view for the present

the last nine chapters, because there the prophet’s point of view is

somewhat different, and it is better to reserve them for separate

treatment.

The chapters from the thirty‐fourth to the thirty‐seventh are the

necessary complement of the call to repentance in the first part of ch.

xxxiii. Ezekiel has enunciated the conditions of entrance to the new

kingdom of God, and has urged his hearers to prepare for its appearing. He

now proceeds to unfold the nature of that kingdom, and the process by

which Jehovah is to bring it to pass. As has been said, the central fact

is the restoration of Israel to the land of Canaan. Here the prophet found

a point of contact with the natural aspirations of his fellow‐exiles.

There was no prospect to which they had clung with more eager longing than

that of a return to national independence in their own land; and the

feeling that this was no longer possible was the source of the abject

despair from which the prophet sought to rouse them. How was this to be

done? Not simply by asserting in the face of all human probability that

the restoration would take place, but by presenting it to their minds in

its religious aspects as an object worthy of the exercise of almighty

power, and an object in which Jehovah was interested for the glory of His

great name. Only by being brought round to Ezekiel’s faith in God could

the exiles recover their lost hope in the future of the nation. Thus the

return to which Ezekiel looks forward has a Messianic significance; it is

the establishment of the kingdom of God, a symbol of the final and perfect

union between Jehovah and Israel.

Now in the chapters before us this general conception is exhibited in

three separate pictures of the Restoration, the leading ideas being the

Monarchy (ch. xxxiv.), the Land (chs. xxxv., xxxvi.), and the Nation (ch.

xxxvii.). The order in which they are arranged is not that which might

seem most natural. We should have expected the prophet to deal first with

the revival of the nation, then with its settlement on the soil of

Palestine, and last of all with its political organisation under a Davidic

king. Ezekiel follows the reverse order. He begins with the kingdom, as

the most complete embodiment of the Messianic salvation, and then falls

back on its two presuppositions—the recovery and purification of the land

on the one hand, and the restitution of the nation on the other. It is

doubtful, indeed, whether any logical connection between the three

pictures is intended. It is perhaps better to regard them as expressing

three distinct and collateral aspects of the idea of redemption, to each

of which a certain permanent religious significance is attached. They are

at all events the outstanding elements of Ezekiel’s eschatology so far as

it is expounded in this section of his prophecies.

We thus see that the promise of the perfect king—the Messianic idea in its

more restricted signification—holds a distinct but not a supreme place in

Ezekiel’s vision of the future. It appears for the first time in ch. xvii.

at the end of an oracle denouncing the perfidy of Zedekiah and foretelling

the overthrow of his kingdom; and again, in a similar connection, in an

obscure verse of ch. xxi.(130) Both these prophecies belong to the time

before the fall of the state, when the prophet’s thoughts were not

continuously occupied with the hope of the future. The former is

remarkable, nevertheless, for the glowing terms in which the greatness of

the future kingdom is depicted. From the top of the lofty cedar which the

great eagle had carried away to Babylon Jehovah will take a tender shoot

and plant it in the mountain height of Israel. There it will strike root

and grow up into a lordly cedar, under whose branches all the birds of the

air find refuge. The terms of the allegory have been explained in the

proper place.(131) The great cedar is the house of David; the topmost

bough which was taken to Babylon is the family of Jehoiachin, the direct

heirs to the throne. The planting of the tender shoot in the land of

Israel represents the founding of the Messiah’s kingdom, which is thus

proclaimed to be of transcendent earthly magnificence, overshadowing all

the other kingdoms of the world, and convincing the nations that its

foundation is the work of Jehovah Himself. In this short passage we have

the Messianic idea in its simplest and most characteristic expression. The

hope of the future is bound up with the destiny of the house of David; and

the re‐establishment of the kingdom in more than its ancient splendour is

the great divine act to which all the blessings of the final dispensation

are attached.

But it is in the thirty‐fourth chapter that we find the most comprehensive

exposition of Ezekiel’s teaching on the subject of the monarchy and the

Messianic kingdom. It is perhaps the most political of all his prophecies.

It is pervaded by a spirit of genuine sympathy with the sufferings of the

common people, and indignation against the tyranny practised and tolerated

by the ruling classes. The disasters that have befallen the nation down to

its final dispersion among the heathen are all traced to the misgovernment

and anarchy for which the monarchy was primarily responsible. In like

manner the blessings of the coming age are summed up in the promise of a

perfect king, ruling in the name of Jehovah and maintaining order and

righteousness throughout his realm. Nowhere else does Ezekiel approach so

nearly to the political ideal foreshadowed by the statesman‐prophet Isaiah

of a “king reigning in righteousness and princes ruling in judgment” (Isa.

xxxii. 1), securing the enjoyment of universal prosperity and peace to the

redeemed people of God. It must be remembered of course that this is only

a partial expression of Ezekiel’s conception both of the past condition of

the nation and of its future salvation. We have had abundant evidence(132)

to show that he considered all classes of the community to be corrupt, and

the people as a whole implicated in the guilt of rebellion against

Jehovah. The statement that the kings have brought about the dispersion of

the nation must not therefore be pressed to the conclusion that civic

injustice was the sole cause of Israel’s calamities. Similarly we shall

find that the redemption of the people depends on other and more

fundamental conditions than the establishment of good government under a

righteous king. But that is no reason for minimising the significance of

the passage before us as an utterance of Ezekiel’s profound interest in

social order and the welfare of the poor. It shows moreover that the

prophet at this time attached real importance to the promise of the

Messiah as the organ of Jehovah’s rule over His people. If civil wrongs

and legalised tyranny were not the only sins which had brought about the

destruction of the state, they were at least serious evils, which could

not be tolerated in the new Israel; and the chief safeguard against their

recurrence is found in the character of the ideal ruler whom Jehovah will

raise up from the seed of David. How far this high conception of the

functions of the monarchy was modified in Ezekiel’s subsequent teaching we

shall see when we come to consider the position assigned to the prince in

the great vision at the end of the book.(133)

In the meantime let us examine somewhat more closely the contents of ch.

xxxiv. Its leading ideas seem to have been suggested by a Messianic

prophecy of Jeremiah’s with which Ezekiel was no doubt acquainted: “Woe to

the shepherds that destroy and scatter the flock of My pasture! saith

Jehovah. Therefore thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, against the

shepherds that tend My people, Ye have scattered My flock, and dispersed

them, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of

your doings, saith Jehovah. And I will gather the remnant of My flock from

all the lands whither I have dispersed them, and will restore them to

their folds; and they shall be fruitful and multiply. And I will set

shepherds over them who shall feed them: and they shall not fear any more,

nor be frightened, nor be lacking, saith Jehovah” (Jer. xxiii. 1‐4). Here

we have the simple image of the flock and its shepherds, which Ezekiel, as

his manner is, expands into an allegory of the past history and future

prospects of the nation. How closely he follows the guidance of his

predecessor will be seen from the analysis of the chapter. It may be

divided into four parts.

i. The first ten verses are a strongly worded denunciation of the

misgovernment to which the people of Jehovah had been subjected in the

past. The prophet goes straight to the root of the evil when he

indignantly asks, “Should not the shepherds feed the flock?” (ver. 2). The

first principle of all true government is that it must be in the interest

of the governed. But the universal vice of Oriental despotism, as we see

in the case of the Turkish empire at the present day, or Egypt before the

English occupation, is that the rulers rule for their own advantage, and

treat the people as their lawful spoil. So it had been in Israel: the

shepherds had fed themselves, and not the flock. Instead of carefully

tending the sick and the maimed, and searching out the strayed and the

lost, they had been concerned only to eat the milk(134) and clothe

themselves with the wool and slaughter the fat; they had ruled with

“violence and rigour.” That is to say, instead of healing the sores of the

body politic, they had sought to enrich themselves at the expense of the

people. Such misconduct in the name of government always brings its own

penalty; it kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. The flock which is

spoiled by its own shepherds is scattered on the mountains and becomes the

prey of wild beasts; and so the nation that is weakened by internal

misrule loses its powers of defence and succumbs to the attacks of some

foreign invader. But the shepherds of Israel have to reckon with Him who

is the owner of the flock, whose affection still watches over them, and

whose compassion is stirred by the hapless condition of His people.

“Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of Jehovah; ... Behold, I am

against the shepherds; and I will require My flock at their hand; and I

will make them to cease from feeding [My] flock, that they who feed

themselves may no longer shepherd them; and I will deliver My flock from

their mouth, that they be not food for them” (vv. 9, 10).

ii. But Jehovah not only removes the unworthy shepherds; He Himself takes

on Him the office of shepherd to the flock that has been so mishandled

(vv. 11‐16). As the shepherd goes out after the thunderstorm to call in

his frightened sheep, so will Jehovah after the storm of judgment is over

go forth to “gather together the outcasts of Israel” (Psalm cxlvii. 2). He

will seek them out and deliver them from all places whither they were

scattered in the day of clouds and darkness; then He will lead them back

to the mountain height of Israel, where they shall enjoy abundant

prosperity and security under His just and beneficent rule. By what

agencies this deliverance is to be accomplished is nowhere indicated. It

is the unanimous teaching of the prophets that the final salvation of

Israel will be effected in a “day of Jehovah”—_i.e._, a day in which

Jehovah’s own power will be specially manifested. Hence there is no need

to describe the process by which the Almighty works out His purpose of

salvation; it is indescribable: the results are certain, but the

intermediate agencies are supernatural, and the precise method of

Jehovah’s intervention is as a rule left indefinite. It is particularly to

be noted that the Messiah plays no part in the actual work of deliverance.

He is not the hero of a national struggle for independence, but comes on

the scene and assumes the reins of government after Jehovah has gotten the

victory and restored peace to Israel.(135)

iii. The next six verses (17‐22) add a feature to the allegory which is

not found in the corresponding passage in Jeremiah. Jehovah will judge

between one sheep and another, especially between the rams and he‐goats on

the one hand and the weaker animals on the other. The strong cattle had

monopolised the fat meadows and clear settled waters, and as if this were

not enough, they had trampled down the residue of the pastures and fouled

the waters with their feet. Those addressed are the wealthy and powerful

upper class, whose luxury and wanton extravagance had consumed the

resources of the country, and left no sustenance for the poorer members of

the community. Allusions to this kind of selfish tyranny are frequent in

the older prophets. Amos speaks of the nobles as panting after the dust on

the head of the poor, and of the luxurious dames of Samaria as oppressing

the poor and crushing the needy, and saying to their lords, “Bring us to

drink” (Amos ii. 7, iv. 1). Micah says of the same class in the southern

kingdom that they cast out the women of Jehovah’s people from their

pleasant houses, and robbed their children of His glory for ever (Micah

ii. 9). And Isaiah, to take one other example, denounces those who “take

away the right from the poor of My people, that widows may be their prey,

and that they may rob the orphans” (Isa. x. 2). Under the corrupt

administration of justice which the kings had tolerated for their own

convenience litigation had been a farce; the rich man had always the ear

of the judge, and the poor found no redress. But in Israel the true

fountain of justice could not be polluted; it was only its channels that

were obstructed. For Jehovah Himself was the supreme judge of His people;

and in the restored commonwealth to which Ezekiel looks forward all civil

relations will be regulated by a regard to His righteous will. He will

“save His flock that they be no more a prey, and will judge between cattle

and cattle.”

iv. Then follows in the last section (vv. 23‐31) the promise of the

Messianic king, and a description of the blessings that accompany his

reign: “I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them—My

servant David: he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I

Jehovah will be their God, and My servant David shall be a prince in their

midst: I Jehovah have spoken it.” There are one or two difficulties

connected with the interpretation of this passage, the consideration of

which may be postponed till we have finished our analysis of the chapter.

It is sufficient in the meantime to notice that a Davidic kingdom in some

sense is to be the foundation of social order in the new Israel. A prince

will arise, endowed with the spirit of his exalted office, to discharge

perfectly the royal functions in which the former kings had so lamentably

failed. Through him the divine government of Israel will become a reality

in the national life. The Godhead of Jehovah and the kingship of the

Messiah will be inseparably associated in the faith of the people:

“Jehovah their God, and David their king” (Hosea iii. 5) is the expression

of the ground of Israel’s confidence in the latter days. And this kingdom

is the pledge of the fulness of divine blessing descending on the land and

the people. The people shall dwell in safety, none making them afraid,

because of the covenant of peace which Jehovah will make for them,

securing them against the assaults of other nations.(136) The heavens

shall pour forth fertilising “showers of blessing”; and the land shall be

clothed with a luxuriant vegetation which shall be the admiration of the

whole earth.(137) Thus happily situated Israel shall shake off the

reproach of the heathen, which they had formerly to endure because of the

poverty of their land and their unfortunate history. In the plenitude of

material prosperity they shall recognise that Jehovah their God is with

them, and they shall know what it is to be His people and the flock of His

pasture.(138)

We have now before us the salient features of the Messianic hope, as it is

presented in the pages of Ezekiel. We see that the idea is developed in

contrast with the abuses that had characterised the historic monarchy in

Israel. It represents the ideal of the kingdom as it exists in the mind of

Jehovah, an ideal which no actual king had fully realised, and which most

of them had shamefully violated. The Messiah is the vicegerent of Jehovah

on earth, and the representative of His kingly authority and righteous

government over Israel. We see further that the promise is based on the

“sure mercies of David,” the covenant which secured the throne to David’s

descendants for ever. Messianic prophecy is legitimist, the ideal king

being regarded as standing in the direct line of succession to the crown.

And to these features we may add another, which is explicitly developed in

ch. xxxvii. 22‐26, although it is implied in the expression “one shepherd”

in the passage with which we have been dealing. The Messianic kingdom

represents the unity of all Israel, and particularly the reunion of the

two kingdoms under one sceptre. The prophets attach great importance to

this idea.(139) The existence of two rival monarchies, divided in interest

and often at war with each other, although it had never effaced the

consciousness of the original unity of the nation, was felt by the

prophets to be an anomalous state of things, and seriously detrimental to

the national religion. The ideal relation of Jehovah to Israel was as

incompatible with two kingdoms as the ideal of marriage is incompatible

with two wives to one husband. Hence in the glorious future of the

Messianic age the schism must be healed, and the Davidic dynasty restored

to its original position at the head of an undivided empire. The

prominence given to this thought in the teaching of Hosea shows that even

in the northern kingdom devout Israelites cherished the hope of reunion

with their brethren under the house of David as the only form in which the

redemption of the nation could be achieved. And although, long before

Ezekiel’s day, the kingdom of Samaria had disappeared from history, he too

looks forward to a restoration of the ten tribes as an essential element

of the Messianic salvation.

In these respects the teaching of Ezekiel reflects the general tenor of

the Messianic prophecy of the Old Testament. There are just two questions

on which some obscurity and uncertainty must be felt to rest. In the first

place, what is the precise meaning of the expression “My servant David”?

It will not be supposed that the prophet expected David, the founder of

the Hebrew monarchy, to reappear in person and inaugurate the new

dispensation. Such an interpretation would be utterly false to Eastern

modes of thought and expression, besides being opposed to every indication

we have of the prophetic conception of the Messiah. Even in popular

language the name of David was current, after he had been long dead, as

the name of the dynasty which he had founded. When the ten tribes revolted

from Rehoboam they said, exactly as they had said in David’s lifetime,

“What portion have we in David? neither have we inheritance in the son of

Jesse: to your tents, O Israel: now see to thine own house, David.”(140)

If the name of David could thus be invoked in popular speech at a time of

great political excitement, we need not be surprised to find it used in a

similar sense in the figurative style of the prophets. All that the word

means is that the Messiah will be one who comes in the spirit and power of

David, a representative of the ancient family who carries to completion

the work so nobly begun by his great ancestor.

The real difficulty is whether the title “David” denotes a unique

individual or a line of Davidic kings. To that question it is hardly

possible to return a decided answer. That the idea of a succession of

sovereigns is a possible form of the Messianic hope is shown by a passage

in the thirty‐third chapter of Jeremiah. There the promise of the

righteous sprout of the house of David is supplemented by the assurance

that David shall never want a man to sit on the throne of Israel;(141) the

allusion therefore appears to be to the dynasty, and not to a single

person. And this view finds some support in the case of Ezekiel from the

fact that in the later vision of chs. xl.‐xlviii. the prophet undoubtedly

anticipates a perpetuation of the dynasty through successive

generations.(142) On the other hand it is difficult to reconcile this view

with the expressions used in this and the thirty‐seventh chapters. When we

read that “My servant David shall be their prince for ever,”(143) we can

scarcely escape the impression that the prophet is thinking of a personal

Messiah reigning eternally. If it were necessary to decide between these

two alternatives, it might be safest to adhere to the idea of a personal

Messiah, as conveying the fullest rendering of the prophet’s thought.

There is reason to think that in the interval between this prophecy and

his final vision Ezekiel’s conception of the Messiah underwent a certain

modification, and therefore the teaching of the later passage cannot be

used to control the explanation of this. But the obscurity is of such a

nature that we cannot hope to remove it. In the prophets’ delineations of

the future there are many points on which the light of revelation had not

been fully cast; for they, like the Christian apostle, “knew in part and

prophesied in part.” And the question of the way in which the Messiah’s

office is to be prolonged is precisely one of those which did not greatly

occupy the mind of the prophets. There is no perspective in Messianic

prophecy: the future kingdom of God is seen, as it were, in one plane, and

how it is to be transmitted from one age to another is never thought of.

Thus it may become difficult to say whether a particular prophet, in

speaking of the Messiah, has a single individual in view or whether he is

thinking of a dynasty or a succession. To Ezekiel the Messiah was a

divinely revealed ideal, which was to be fulfilled in a person; whether

the prophet himself distinctly understood this is a matter of inferior

importance.

The second question is one that perhaps would not readily occur to a plain

man. It relates to the meaning of the word “prince” as applied to the

Messiah. It has been thought by some critics that Ezekiel had a special

reason for avoiding the title “king”; and from this supposed reason a

somewhat sweeping conclusion has been deduced. We are asked to believe

that Ezekiel had in principle abandoned the Messianic hope of his earlier

prophecies—_i.e._, the hope of a restoration of the Davidic kingdom in its

ancient splendour. What he really contemplates is the abolition of the

Hebrew monarchy, and the institution of a new political system entirely

different from anything that had existed in the past. Although the Davidic

prince will hold the first place in the restored community, his dignity

will be less than royal; he will only be a titular monarch, his power

being overshadowed by the presence of Jehovah, the true king of Israel.

Now so far as this view is suggested by the use of the word “prince”

(literally “leader” or “president”) in preference to “king,”(144) it is

sufficiently answered by pointing to the Messianic passage in ch. xxxvii.,

where the name “king” is used three times and in a peculiarly emphatic

manner of the Messianic prince.(145) There is no reason to suppose that

Ezekiel drew a distinction between “princely” and “kingly” rank, and

deliberately withheld the higher dignity from the Messiah. Whatever may be

the exact relation of the Messiah to Jehovah, there is no doubt that he is

conceived as a king in the full sense of the term, possessed of all regal

qualities, and shepherding his people with the authority which belonged to

a true son of David.

But there is another consideration which weighs more seriously with the

writers referred to. There is reason to believe that Ezekiel’s conception

of the final kingdom of God underwent a change which might not unfairly be

described as an abandonment of the Messianic expectation in its more

restricted sense. In his latest vision the functions of the prince are

defined in such a way that his position is shorn of the ideal significance

which properly invests the office of the Messiah. The change does not

indeed affect his merely political status. He is still son of David and

king of Israel, and all that is here said about his duty towards his

subjects is there presupposed. But his character seems to be no longer

regarded as thoroughly reliable, or equal to all the temptations that

arise wherever absolute power is lodged in human hands. The possibility

that the king may abuse his authority for his private advantage is

distinctly contemplated, and provision is made against it in the statutory

constitution to which the king himself is subject. Such precautions are

obviously inconsistent with the ideal of the Messianic kingdom which we

find, for example, in the prophecy of Isaiah. The important question

therefore comes to be, whether this lower view of the monarchy is

anticipated in the thirty‐fourth and thirty‐seventh chapters. This does

not appear to be the case. The prophet still occupies the same standpoint

as in ch. xvii., regarding the Davidic monarchy as the central religious

institution of the restored state. The Messiah of these chapters is a

perfect king, endowed with the Spirit of God for the discharge of his

great office, one whose personal character affords an absolute security

for the maintenance of public righteousness, and who is the medium of

communication between God and the nation. In other words, what we have to

do with is a Messianic prediction in the fullest sense of the term.

In concluding our study of Ezekiel’s Messianic teaching, we may make one

remark bearing on its typological interpretation. The attempt is sometimes

made to trace a gradual development and enrichment of the Messianic idea

in the hands of successive prophets. From that point of view Ezekiel’s

contribution to the doctrine of the Messiah must be felt to be

disappointing. No one can imagine that his portrait of the coming king

possesses anything like the suggestiveness and religious meaning conveyed

by the ideal which stands out so clearly from the pages of Isaiah. And,

indeed, no subsequent prophet excels or even equals Isaiah in the

clearness and profundity of his directly Messianic conceptions. This fact

shows us that the endeavour to find in the Old Testament a regular

progress along one particular line proceeds on too narrow a view of the

scope of prophecy. The truth is that the figure of the king is only one of

many types of the Christian dispensation which the religious institutions

of Israel supplied to the prophets. It is the most perfect of all types,

partly because it is personal, and partly because the idea of kingship is

the most comprehensive of the offices which Christ executes as our

Redeemer. But, after all, it expresses only one aspect of the glorious

future of the kingdom of God towards which prophecy steadily points. We

must remember also that the order in which these types emerge is

determined not altogether by their intrinsic importance, but partly by

their adaptation to the needs of the age in which the prophet lived. The

main function of prophecy was to furnish present and practical direction

to the people of God; and the form under which the ideal was presented to

any particular generation was always that best fitted to help it onwards,

one stage nearer to the great consummation. Thus while Isaiah idealises

the figure of the king, Jeremiah grasps the conception of a new religion

under the form of a covenant, the second Isaiah unfolds the idea of the

prophetic servant of Jehovah, Zechariah and the writer of the 110th Psalm

idealise the priesthood. All these are Messianic prophecies, if we take

the word in its widest acceptation; but they are not all cast in one

mould, and the attempt to arrange them in a single series is obviously

misleading. So with regard to Ezekiel we may say that his chief Messianic

ideal (still using the expression in a general sense) is the sanctuary,

the symbol of Jehovah’s presence in the midst of His people. At the end of

ch. xxxvii. the kingdom and the sanctuary are mentioned together as

pledges of the glory of the latter days. But while the idea of the

Messianic monarchy was a legacy inherited from his prophetic precursors,

the Temple was an institution whose typical significance Ezekiel was the

first to unfold. It was moreover the one that met the religious

requirements of the age in which Ezekiel lived. Ultimately the hope of the

personal Messiah loses the importance which it still has in the present

section of the book; and the prophet’s vision of the future concentrates

itself on the sanctuary as the centre of the restored theocracy, and the

source from which the regenerating influences of the divine grace flow

forth to Israel and the world.

Chapter XXI. Jehovah’s Land. Chapters xxxv., xxxvi.

The teaching of this important passage turns on certain ideas regarding

the land of Canaan which enter very deeply into the religion of Israel.

These ideas are no doubt familiar in a general way to all thoughtful

readers of the Old Testament; but their full import is scarcely realised

until we understand that they are not peculiar to the Bible, but form part

of the stock of religious conceptions common to Israel and its heathen

neighbours.(146) In the more advanced Semitic religions of antiquity each

nation had its own god as well as its own land, and the bond between the

god and the land was supposed to be quite as strong as that between the

god and the nation. The god, the land, and the people formed a triad of

religious relationship, and so closely were these three elements

associated that the expulsion of a people from its land was held to

dissolve the bond between it and the god. Thus while in practice the land

of a god was coextensive with the territory inhabited by his worshippers,

yet in theory the relation of the god to his land is independent of his

relation to the inhabitants; it was _his_ land whether the people in it

were his worshippers or not. The peculiar confusion of ideas that arose

when the people of one god came to reside permanently in the territory of

another is well illustrated by the case of the heathen colony which the

king of Assyria planted in Samaria after the exile of the ten tribes.

These settlers brought their own gods with them; but when some of them

were slain by lions, they perceived that they were making a mistake in

ignoring the rights of the god of the land. They sent accordingly for a

priest to instruct them in the religion of the god of the land; and the

result was that they “feared Jehovah and served their own gods” (2 Kings

xvii. 24‐41). It was expected no doubt that in course of time the foreign

deities would be acclimatised.

In the Old Testament we find many traces of the influence of this

conception on the Hebrew religion. Canaan was the land of Jehovah (Hosea

ix. 3) apart altogether from its possession by Israel, the people of

Jehovah. It was Jehovah’s land before Israel entered it, the inheritance

which He had selected for His people out of all the countries of the

world, the Land of Promise, given to the patriarchs while as yet they were

but strangers and sojourners in it. Although the Israelites took

possession of it as a nation of conquerors, they did so in the

consciousness that they were expelling from Jehovah’s dwelling‐place a

population which had polluted it by their abominations. From that time

onwards the tenure of the soil of Palestine was regarded as an essential

factor of the national religion. The idea that Jehovah could not be

rightly worshipped outside of Hebrew territory was firmly rooted in the

mind of the people, and was accepted by the prophets as a principle

involved in the special relations that Jehovah maintained with the people

of Israel.(147) Hence no threat could be more terrible in the ears of the

Israelites than that of expatriation from their native soil; for it meant

nothing less than the dissolution of the tie that subsisted between them

and their God. When that threat was actually fulfilled there was no

reproach harder to bear than the taunt which Ezekiel here puts into the

mouth of the heathen: “These are Jehovah’s people—and yet they are gone

forth out of His land” (ch. xxxvi. 20). They felt all that was implied in

that utterance of malicious satisfaction over the collapse of a religion

and the downfall of a deity.

There is another way in which the thought of Canaan as Jehovah’s land

enters into the religious conceptions of the Old Testament, and very

markedly into those of Ezekiel. As the God of the land Jehovah is the

source of its productiveness and the author of all the natural blessings

enjoyed by its inhabitants. It is He who gives the rain in its season or

else withholds it in token of His displeasure; it is He who multiplies or

diminishes the flocks and herds which feed on its pastures, as well as the

human population sustained by its produce. This view of things was a

primary factor in the religious education of an agricultural people, as

the ancient Hebrews mainly were. They felt their dependence on God most

directly in the influences of their uncertain climate on the fertility of

their land, with its great possibilities of abundant provision for man and

beast, and on the other hand its extreme risk of famine and all the

hardships that follow in its train. In the changeful aspects of nature

they thus read instinctively the disposition of Jehovah towards

themselves. Fruitful seasons and golden harvests, diffusing comfort and

affluence through the community, were regarded as proofs that all was well

between them and their God; while times of barrenness and scarcity brought

home to them the conviction that Jehovah was alienated. From the allusions

in the prophets to droughts and famines, to blastings and mildew, to the

scourge of locusts, we seem to gather that on the whole the later history

of Israel had been marked by agricultural distress. The impression is

confirmed by a hint of Ezekiel’s in the passage now before us. The land of

Canaan had apparently acquired an unenviable reputation for barrenness.

The reproach of the heathen lay upon it as a land that “devoured men and

bereaved its population.”(148) The reference may be partly (as Smend

thinks) to the ravages of war, to which Palestine was peculiarly exposed

on account of its important strategic situation. But the “reproach of

famine”(149) was certainly one point in its ill fame among the surrounding

nations, and it is quite sufficient to explain the strong language in

which they expressed their contempt. Now this state of things was plainly

inconsistent with amicable relations between the nation and its God. It

was evidence that the land lay under the blight of Jehovah’s displeasure,

and the ground of that displeasure lay in the sin of the people. Where the

land counted for so much as an index to the mind of God, it was a

postulate of faith that in the ideal future when God and Israel were

perfectly reconciled the physical condition of Canaan should be worthy of

Him whose land it was. And we have already seen that amongst the glories

of the Messianic age the preternatural fertility of the Holy Land holds a

prominent place.

This conception of Canaan as the land of Jehovah undoubtedly has its

natural affinities with religious notions of a somewhat primitive kind. It

belongs to the stage of thought at which the power of a god is habitually

regarded as subject to local limitations, and in which accordingly a

particular territory is assigned to every deity as the sphere of his

influence. It is probable that the great mass of the Hebrew people had

never risen above this idea, but continued to think of their country as

Jehovah’s land in precisely the same way as Assyria was Asshur’s land and

Moab the land of Chemosh. The monotheism of the Old Testament revelation

breaks through this system of ideas, and interprets Jehovah’s relation to

the land in an entirely different sense. It is not as the exclusive sphere

of His influence that Canaan is peculiarly associated with Jehovah’s

presence, but mainly because it is the scene of His historical

manifestation of Himself, and the stage on which events were transacted

which revealed His Godhead to all the world. No prophet has a clearer

perception of the universal sweep of the divine government than Ezekiel,

and yet no prophet insists more strongly than he on the possession of the

land of Canaan as an indispensable symbol of communion between God and His

people. He has met with God in the “unclean land” of his exile, and he

knows that the moral government of the universe is not suspended by the

departure of Jehovah from His earthly sanctuary. Nevertheless he cannot

think of this separation as other than temporary. The final reconciliation

must take place on the soil of Palestine. The kingdom of God can only be

established by the return both of Israel and Jehovah to their own land;

and their joint possession of that land is the seal of the everlasting

covenant of peace that subsists between them.

We must now proceed to study the way in which these conceptions influenced

the Messianic expectations of Ezekiel at this period of his life. The

passage we are to consider consists of three sections. The thirty‐fifth

chapter is a prophecy of judgment on Edom. The first fifteen verses of ch.

xxxvi. contain a promise of the restoration of the land of Israel to its

rightful owner. And the remainder of that chapter presents a comprehensive

view of the divine necessity for the restoration and the power by which

the redemption of the people is to be accomplished.

I

At the time when these prophecies were written the land of Israel was in

the possession of the Edomites. By what means they had succeeded in

effecting a lodgment in the country we do not know. It is not unlikely

that Nebuchadnezzar may have granted them this extension of their

territory as a reward for their services to his army during the last siege

of Jerusalem. At all events their presence there was an accomplished fact,

and it appeals to the mind of the prophet in two aspects. In the first

place it was an outrage on the majesty of Jehovah which filled the cup of

Edom’s iniquity to the brim. In the second place it was an obstacle to the

restoration of Israel which had to be removed by the direct intervention

of the Almighty. These are the two themes which occupy the thoughts of

Ezekiel, the one in ch. xxxv. and the other in ch. xxxvi. Hitherto he has

spoken of the return to the land of Canaan as a matter of course, as a

thing necessary and self‐evident and not needing to be discussed in

detail. But as the time draws near he is led to think more clearly of the

historical circumstances of the return, and especially of the hindrances

arising from the actual situation of affairs.

But besides this one cannot fail to be struck by the effective contrast

which the two pictures—one of the mountain land of Israel, and the other

of the mountain land of Seir—present to the imagination. It is like a

prophetic amplification of the blessing and curse which Isaac pronounced

on the progenitors of these two nations. Of the one it is said:—

God give thee of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the

earth,

And abundance of corn and wine.

And of the other:—

Surely far from the fatness of the earth shall thy dwelling be,

And far from the dew of heaven from above.(150)

In that forecast of the destiny of the two brothers the actual

characteristics of their respective countries are tersely and accurately

expressed. But now, when the history of both nations is about to be

brought to an issue, the contrast is emphasised and perpetuated. The

blessing of Jacob is confirmed and expanded into a promise of unimagined

felicity, and the equivocal blessing on Esau is changed into an

unqualified and permanent curse. Thus, when the mountains of Israel break

forth into singing, and are clothed with all the luxuriance of vegetation

in which the Oriental imagination revels, and cultivated by a happy and

contented people, those of Seir are doomed to perpetual sterility and

become a horror and desolation to all that pass by.

Confining ourselves, however, to the thirty‐fifth chapter, what we have

first to notice is the sins by which the Edomites had incurred this

judgment. These may be summed up under three heads: first, their

unrelenting hatred of Israel, which in the day of Judah’s calamity had

broken out in savage acts of revenge (ver. 5); second, their rejoicing

over the misfortunes of Israel and the desolation of its land (ver. 15);

and third, their eagerness to seize the land as soon as it was vacant

(ver. 10). The first and second of these have been already spoken of under

the prophecies on foreign nations; it is only the last that is of special

interest in the present connection. Of course the motive that prompted

Edom was natural, and it may be difficult to say how far real moral guilt

was involved in it. The annexation of vacant territory, as the land of

Israel practically was at this time, would be regarded according to modern

ideas as not only justifiable but praiseworthy. Edom had the excuse of

seeking to better its condition by the possession of a more fertile

country than its own, and perhaps also the still stronger plea of pressure

by the Arabs from behind. But in the consciousness of an ancient people

there was always another thought present; and it is here if anywhere that

the sin of Edom lies. The invasion of Israel did not cease to be an act of

aggression because there were no human defenders to bar the way. It was

still Jehovah’s land, although it was unoccupied; and to intrude upon it

was a conscious defiance of His power. The arguments by which the Edomites

justified their seizure of it were none of those which a modern state

might use in similar circumstances, but were based on the religious ideas

which were common to all the world in those days. They were aware that by

the unwritten law which then prevailed the step they meditated was

sacrilege; and the spirit that animated them was arrogant exultation over

what was esteemed the humiliation of Israel’s national deity: “The two

nations and the two countries shall be mine, and I will possess them,

although Jehovah was there” (ver. 10: cf. vv. 12, 13). That is to say, the

defeat and captivity of Israel have proved the impotence of Jehovah to

guard His land; His power is broken, and the two countries called by His

name lie open to the invasion of any people that dares to trample

religious scruples underfoot. This was the way in which the action of Edom

would be interpreted by universal consent; and the prophet is only

reflecting the general sense of the age when he charges them with this

impiety. Now it is true that the Edomites could not be expected to

understand all that was involved in a defiance of the God of Israel. To

them He was only one among many national gods, and their religion did not

teach them to reverence the gods of a foreign state. But though they were

not fully conscious of the degree of guilt they incurred, they

nevertheless sinned against the light they had; and the consequences of

transgression are never measured by the sinner’s own estimate of his

culpability. There was enough in the history of Israel to have impressed

the neighbouring peoples with a sense of the superiority of its religion

and the difference in character between Jehovah and all other gods. If the

Edomites had utterly failed to learn that lesson, they were themselves

partly to blame; and the spiritual insensibility and dulness of conscience

which everywhere suppressed the knowledge of Jehovah’s name is the very

thing which in the view of Ezekiel needs to be removed by signal and

exemplary acts of judgment.

It is not necessary to enter minutely into the details of the judgment

threatened against Edom. We may simply note that it corresponds point for

point with the demeanour exhibited by the Edomites in the time of Israel’s

final retribution. The “perpetual hatred” is rewarded by perpetual

desolation (ver. 9); their seizure of Jehovah’s land is punished by their

annihilation in the land that was their own (vv. 6‐8); and their malicious

satisfaction over the depopulation of Palestine recoils on their own heads

when their mountain land is made desolate “to the rejoicing of the whole

earth” (vv. 14, 15). And the lesson that will be taught to the world by

the contrast between the renewed Israel and the barren mountain of Seir

will be the power and holiness of the one true God: “they shall know that

I am Jehovah.”

II

The prophet’s mind is still occupied with the sin of Edom as he turns in

the thirty‐sixth chapter to depict the future of the land of Israel. The

opening verses of the chapter (vv. 1‐7) betray an intensity of patriotic

feeling not often expressed by Ezekiel. The utterance of the single idea

which he wishes to express seems to be impeded by the multitude of

reflections that throng upon him as he apostrophises “the mountains and

the hills, the watercourses and the valleys, the desolate ruins and

deserted cities” of his native country (ver. 4). The land is conceived as

conscious of the shame and reproach that rest upon it; and all the

elements that might be supposed to make up the consciousness of the

land—its naked desolation, the tread of alien feet, the ravages of war,

and the derisive talk of the surrounding heathen (Edom being specially in

view)—present themselves to the mind of the prophet before he can utter

the message with which he is charged: “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah;

Behold, I speak in My jealousy and My anger, because ye have borne the

shame of the heathen: therefore ... I lift up My hand, Surely the nations

that are round about you—even they shall bear their shame” (vv. 6, 7).

The jealousy of Jehovah is here His holy resentment against indignities

done to Himself, and this attribute of the divine nature is now enlisted

on the side of Israel because of the despite which the heathen had heaped