"Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions."--_Ezekiel
18:30._
VERY sad things were going on among the Jews. A great many of them were
carried away out of their beautiful hilly land of Canaan, to live among
the flat wet marshes round Babylon, and only a few were left with their
king Zedekiah at Jerusalem.
Jeremiah was speaking God's words to the people of Jerusalem; Ezekiel
was speaking God's words to the people who were captives by the river
side. They both said the same thing--that the only way to be peaceful,
and not to suffer worse and worse, would be to repent and leave off
their sins that had displeased God, and pray to Him to spare them, and
then to bear patiently the punishment that had begun. But this was just
what Zedekiah and his people would not do.
They misused Jeremiah for giving them such advice, and they would not
own the king of Babylon for their master; and instead of believing
God's true prophets, they listened to the false ones, who said, that in
a very little while the captives would come back again, and all would
be well.
Then Ezekiel took a tile, a great flat piece of pottery, and he drew on
it the walls and towers of the city of Jerusalem, and made little tents
and banks round it, and he lay down by it on his side, and watched it.
And he weighed out for himself a very little bad bread to eat.
Then, when the people came to ask him why he did this, he said that it
was to show them how it would be with their own Jerusalem far away.
The Babylonians would come round it, and set up their tents, and make
banks of earth to keep the people in, and shoot stones and arrows, and
climb the walls. Inside there would be no better food than Ezekiel was
eating--no, nor so good--and everyone would be starving, and dying of
thirst.
Then the enemy would break in, and carry all the chief of them away
to Babylon, and keep them prisoners there--till the whole people had
come to repent of their sins, and had turned to the Lord with all their
hearts.
For God has no pleasure in man's being punished. He only punishes that
we may turn away from our sin and do right, and be saved at last.
If only these Jews would have listened to Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and
repented, they would have been spared; but instead of that, they went
on growing worse and worse, till they had to have seventy long years of
punishment before they could be forgiven.
We must take care when we are punished that we are sorry, and not
obstinate and hard, or we shall have to be punished more and more.