PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Ezekiel
Skinner, John · 157,203 words · 206 reading sections
I
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 Go…
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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 righteousn…
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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 t…
721 wordsSECTION 64Chapter 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 be…
828 wordsSECTION 65Chapter XI. The Sword Unsheathed. Chapter xxi.
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…
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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 ev…
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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 tra…
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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 Palest…
711 wordsSECTION 69Iv
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 roya…
813 wordsSECTION 70Chapter 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…
836 wordsSECTION 71Chapter XII. Jehovah’s Controversy With Israel. Chapter xx.
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 b…
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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…
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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…
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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 ver…
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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 prophecie…
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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 e…
329 wordsSECTION 77Chapter 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 fo…
789 wordsSECTION 78Chapter XIII. Ohola And Oholibah. Chapter xxiii.
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 chap…
688 wordsSECTION 79Chapter XIII. Ohola And Oholibah. Chapter xxiii.
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 pri…
528 wordsSECTION 80Chapter 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…
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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…
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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…
1,006 wordsSECTION 83I
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 fro…
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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 subm…
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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 …
567 wordsSECTION 86Chapter 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 essent…
829 wordsSECTION 87Chapter XV. Ammon, Moab, Edom, And Philistia. Chapter xxv.
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…
1,178 wordsSECTION 88Chapter XV. Ammon, Moab, Edom, And Philistia. Chapter xxv.
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 spiri…
871 wordsSECTION 89Chapter XV. Ammon, Moab, Edom, And Philistia. Chapter xxv.
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 playe…
761 wordsSECTION 90Chapter XV. Ammon, Moab, Edom, And Philistia. Chapter xxv.
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 Moa…
810 wordsSECTION 91Chapter XV. Ammon, Moab, Edom, And Philistia. Chapter xxv.
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 Eze…
454 wordsSECTION 92Chapter 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 …
766 wordsSECTION 93Chapter XVI. Tyre. Chapters xxvi., xxix. 17‐21.
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 developme…
843 wordsSECTION 94Chapter XVI. Tyre. Chapters xxvi., xxix. 17‐21.
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 struc…
657 wordsSECTION 95Chapter XVI. Tyre. Chapters xxvi., xxix. 17‐21.
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 s…
1,016 wordsSECTION 96Chapter XVI. Tyre. Chapters xxvi., xxix. 17‐21.
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…
1,154 wordsSECTION 97Chapter XVI. Tyre. Chapters xxvi., xxix. 17‐21.
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 …
561 wordsSECTION 98Chapter 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 reg…
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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 …
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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. A…
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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 d…
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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 Mak…
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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) ho…
572 wordsSECTION 104Chapter 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 eve…
740 wordsSECTION 105Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters xxix.‐xxxii.
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 e…
992 wordsSECTION 106Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters xxix.‐xxxii.
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 …
989 wordsSECTION 107Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters xxix.‐xxxii.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ 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 r…
714 wordsSECTION 108Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters xxix.‐xxxii.
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 whic…
837 wordsSECTION 109Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters xxix.‐xxxii.
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 …
688 wordsSECTION 110Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters xxix.‐xxxii.
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 w…
702 wordsSECTION 111Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters xxix.‐xxxii.
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…
832 wordsSECTION 112Chapter 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 no…
785 wordsSECTION 113Chapter XIX. The Prophet A Watchman. Chapter xxxiii.
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 i…
1,013 wordsSECTION 114Chapter XIX. The Prophet A Watchman. Chapter xxxiii.
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…
722 wordsSECTION 115Chapter XIX. The Prophet A Watchman. Chapter xxxiii.
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 elasti…
912 wordsSECTION 116Chapter XIX. The Prophet A Watchman. Chapter xxxiii.
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 ne…
655 wordsSECTION 117Chapter XIX. The Prophet A Watchman. Chapter xxxiii.
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 acco…
1,135 wordsSECTION 118Chapter 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 …
813 wordsSECTION 119Chapter XX. The Messianic Kingdom. Chapter xxxiv.
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 …
777 wordsSECTION 120Chapter XX. The Messianic Kingdom. Chapter xxxiv.
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 Jeho…
827 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.