9, As elsewhere in the expectations of the pro- phets regarding the future, a pretty large space is occupied in Ezekiel with threatenings against foreign nations; nay, it would seem from 30% as if the ‘Day of the Lorp,’ which had been looked for from the time of Amos, was exclusively a day of judgment upon foreign peoples. The hos- tility of these peoples to Israel is also, it is true, specified as a ground of the Divine anger [thus we have the malicious joy and thirst for revenge of
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the Ammonites, 25°; the Moabites, v.8; the Edomites, v.12, and again in ch. 35; the Philis- tines, 25"; the Tyrians, 267]; but the main point of view always is that all the splendour and proud display of the heathen is to be brought low, ‘in order that they may know that I am Jahweh’ (25% 4. 17 ete.). Hence the longest and the severest threatenings are directed against the haughtiest and most powerful peoples: against Tyre (chs. 26-28), because she has declared herself to be the perfection of beauty (27°), and her king has claimed even to be a god (287) ; against the Egyptians (chs. 29-32), because the Pharaoh has boasted, ‘mine is the Nile, I have made it’ (29%). God is going to punish this arrogance as He formerly punished that of the Assyrian warriors, whose graves (as those of the most heinous offenders) are ‘ set in the uttermost parts of the pit’ (32°°, where by the way there is the first approximation to a distinction between inhabitants of the under world, and thus to the doctrine of the pains of hell).
10. A peculiarity of the eschatology of Ezekiel is his expectation of a hostile storm of great masses of people, led by Gog the prince of the land of Magog, against the resettled land of Israel, that is to say, after the dawn of the Messianic age (ch. 38 f.). Here too the essential point of view is that stated in 38! ‘that the nations may know me when I shall show myself holy before their eyes’ (cf. also 397). Neither here nor anywhere else in Ezekiel is there any hint that this know- ledge is to lead further to these peoples attaching themselves to Jahweh and thus sharing in Israel’s salvation. Gog is to fall upon the mountains of Israel; and so enormous shall be the number of his warriors, that for seven years on end their weapons shall serve for fuel, and seven years shall be required for the burying of their dead bodies.
When Ezekiel (38!) appeals to the predictions of former prophets concerning Gog, it is impossible to say what utterances of theirs (provided they have come down to us at all) he may have had in view. But, in any case, his allusion to them is a proof that the pre-exilic prophecies had already become to him the object of reflexion. And this implies at the same time the consciousness that the old form of prophecy, as the product of a direct operation of the spirit of God, was practically extinct, and had essentially to be replaced by literary activity.
11. To this last domain belongs, beyond doubt, the whole section made up of chs. 40-48, which, as was pointed out above, proved of epoch-making import- ance for the form afterwards assumed by the re- ligion of Israel, containing as it does a sketch of the new form to be given to the sanctuary and the cultus after the return of the people from exile.* Not that even in chs. 1-39 there are no hints at all pointing to this final aim of the Divine judg. ments, for we find such, for instance, in 204 and 37° 8, But in chs. 40-48 these interests—the re- construction of the temple in all its details, the exact regulation of offerings and festivals, ete.— come so strongly into the foreground that every- thing else, ic. all that does not belong to the cultus, looks like a mere appendage and scarcely worthy of mention.
(a) All the manifold and complicated regula- tions in chs. 40-48 have; strictly viewed, only one underlying idea—namely, the perfect representa- tion and conservation of the holiness of God, in opposition to the endless detriment done to it in the pre-exilic period. This conservation, more- over, is to be effected by means of a great number of external institutions and ordinances. To be sure, these are at bottom only symbolical pictures of the Divine holiness and of the zeal directed
* Cf. Bertholet, Der Verfassungsentwurf des Ezechiel in seiner religvonsgeschichtlichen Bedeutung, Freiburg i. B,, 1896,
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towards its maintenance, but strict attention to them is absolutely indispensable instead of being (as_ the sacrifices were in the estimation of the earlier prophets) merely an expression, that might be dispensed with at need, of a pious frame of mind, Ezekiel is in fact the founder of legal religion, the Leyitical system. It is, above all, characteristic of this standpoint that any wrong done to the holiness of God is estimated exclusively as an objective fact, without regard to the inten- tion and motive of the author of the wrong. Un- witting Levitical defilement and knowing sin in- volve exactly the same degree of guilt.
(6) At the head of all the regulations in question naturally stand those about holy ground. The idea that now the whole land is sacred to Jahweh, finds its symbolical expression in the high degree of holiness which attaches not only to the temple, the dwelling-place of Jahweh, but to the whole quarter surrounding the temple, on the summit of the hill (43"). For city and temple are henceforth to stand on a very lofty mountain (402), in token that they surpass in importance every other spot on earth. Any pollution of the sanctuary, such as was formerly occasioned by the close proximity of the royal graves to the temple (437), is now com- pletely excluded. The holiness of the fore-court is constantly recalled by the keeping shut of the east door (44+), by which Jahweh returned from the Mount of Olives to the sanctuary. But the whole of the sacred precincts, including the quarters of the priests and the Levites, is a térémdh of the land (451: 488"), a kind of oblation whereby all the rest of the land is likewise hallowed and made fit for use, as the fruits of the land are, through the rendering of the firstfruits to Jahweh. Directly adjoining the sacred precincts is the ground occupied by the city, and the land which appertains ex officio to the ‘prince.’ To the former of these a certain measure ot holiness still belongs; in fact, according to 48% (the closing word of the whole section), the city is to be called Jahweh-shammah, ‘Jahweh is there.’ It belongs to no one tribe exclusively, but members of all the tribes are to people it (48").