PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Ezekiel
Skinner, John · 157,203 words · 206 reading sections
Contents
The Book of Ezekiel By The Rev. John Skinner, M.A. Professor of Old Testament Exegesis, Presbyterian College, London London Hodder And Stoughton 1895 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 Vi…
335 wordsSECTION 2Preface.
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 t…
261 wordsSECTION 3Chapter 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 …
839 wordsSECTION 4Chapter I. Decline And Fall Of The Jewish State.
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 chan…
903 wordsSECTION 5Chapter I. Decline And Fall Of The Jewish State.
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 commiser…
757 wordsSECTION 6Chapter I. Decline And Fall Of The Jewish State.
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 …
560 wordsSECTION 7Chapter 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 bee…
782 wordsSECTION 8Chapter II. Jeremiah And Ezekiel.
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 m…
1,314 wordsSECTION 9Chapter II. Jeremiah And Ezekiel.
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 rei…
835 wordsSECTION 10Chapter II. Jeremiah And Ezekiel.
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 idea…
1,022 wordsSECTION 11Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory Of God. Chapter i.
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 …
880 wordsSECTION 12Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory Of God. Chapter i.
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 …
685 wordsSECTION 13Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory Of God. Chapter i.
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 o…
676 wordsSECTION 14Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory Of God. Chapter i.
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…
731 wordsSECTION 15Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory Of God. Chapter i.
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 …
714 wordsSECTION 16Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory Of God. Chapter i.
“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 …
875 wordsSECTION 17Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory Of God. Chapter i.
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 …
665 wordsSECTION 18Chapter 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 …
683 wordsSECTION 19Chapter IV. Ezekiel’s Prophetic Commission. Chapters ii., iii.
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 th…
852 wordsSECTION 20Chapter IV. Ezekiel’s Prophetic Commission. Chapters ii., iii.
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 o…
806 wordsSECTION 21Chapter IV. Ezekiel’s Prophetic Commission. Chapters ii., iii.
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. …
738 wordsSECTION 22Chapter IV. Ezekiel’s Prophetic Commission. Chapters ii., iii.
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 J…
749 wordsSECTION 23Chapter IV. Ezekiel’s Prophetic Commission. Chapters ii., iii.
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 fi…
660 wordsSECTION 24I
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 gr…
726 wordsSECTION 25I
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…
1,023 wordsSECTION 26I
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 o…
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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…
968 wordsSECTION 28Iii
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 s…
769 wordsSECTION 29Iii
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…
733 wordsSECTION 30Iv
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.…
900 wordsSECTION 31Chapter VI. Your House Is Left Unto You Desolate. Chapters viii.‐xi.
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 bless…
746 wordsSECTION 32Chapter VI. Your House Is Left Unto You Desolate. Chapters viii.‐xi.
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 visi…
880 wordsSECTION 33Chapter VI. Your House Is Left Unto You Desolate. Chapters viii.‐xi.
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 tha…
623 wordsSECTION 34I
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 whi…
745 wordsSECTION 35I
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 implicate…
774 wordsSECTION 36I
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…
390 wordsSECTION 37Ii
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, …
754 wordsSECTION 38Ii
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 murder…
699 wordsSECTION 39Ii
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 …
596 wordsSECTION 40Chapter 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 characte…
1,099 wordsSECTION 41I
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 t…
587 wordsSECTION 42Ii
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…
657 wordsSECTION 43Ii
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 E…
670 wordsSECTION 44Iii
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 …
743 wordsSECTION 45Iii
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 charact…
623 wordsSECTION 46Chapter 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…
653 wordsSECTION 47I
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); …
952 wordsSECTION 48Ii
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 prophet…
694 wordsSECTION 49Ii
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…
773 wordsSECTION 50Ii
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 p…
463 wordsSECTION 51Iii
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 somewha…
749 wordsSECTION 52Chapter 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…
802 wordsSECTION 53Chapter IX. Jerusalem—An Ideal History. Chapter xvi.
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 aba…
813 wordsSECTION 54Chapter IX. Jerusalem—An Ideal History. Chapter xvi.
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.…
849 wordsSECTION 55Chapter IX. Jerusalem—An Ideal History. Chapter xvi.
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 t…
847 wordsSECTION 56Chapter IX. Jerusalem—An Ideal History. Chapter xvi.
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 sam…
1,026 wordsSECTION 57Chapter IX. Jerusalem—An Ideal History. Chapter xvi.
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 transgress…
884 wordsSECTION 58Chapter 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 th…
644 wordsSECTION 59I
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 fi…
759 wordsSECTION 60I
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 ow…
865 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.