Necho's defeat at Carchemish on the Euphrates (Jer. xlvi. 1), with the result that Jehoiakim immediately thereafter transferred bis allegiance (if he had not already done so) to the Babylonian sovereign, which, how- ever, he preserved inviolate for not more than three years (2 Kings xxiv. 1), when, to punish his infidelity, Nebuchadnezzar's armies appeared upon the scene and bore off a number of captives, amongst whom were Daniel and his companions, all princes of the blood (Dan. i. 1, 3, 6). Whether Jehoiakim was eventually deported to Babylon (2 Chron. xxxvi. 6), or how he met his death (Jer. x.xii. 19), is not known; but, after eleven years of inglorious reign, he perished, and was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin, who proved even a more despicable character and worthless ruler ( eh. xix. 5-9; Jer. xxii. 24-30) than his father, and in three months' time was forcibly suppressed by his overlord (2 Chron. xxxvi. 9; 2 Kings xxiii. 8). Having, perhaps, found reason to suspect his fidelity, Nebuchadnezzar suddenly descended on Jerusalem, and put an end to his career of vice and violence, idolatry and treachery, conveying him, along with ten thousand of his chief people, among them Ezekiel, to the river Che bar, in the land of the Chaldeans, and setting up in his room his uncle Mattanias, whose name was, in accordance with custom, changed to Zedekiah (2 Kings xxiv. 10-17). This happened in the year B.c. 600. Zedekiah turned out no better than his predecessors. A poor roi faineant (Cheyne), who was quite content to receive a "base" kingllom from the hands of the King of Babylon, and yet wanted honesty enough to keep his oath and covenant with his superior (eh. xvii. 13-15),-this wretched "mockery-king" had been five years upon the throne when Ezekiel felt divinely impelled to step forth as a watchman to the house of Israel. The religious and political condition of the times, as well in Jerusalem as on the banks of the Chebar, may be gauged with much exactness from the statements of the two prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who exercised their ministries in, these spheres respectively. ( 1) As regards the situation in Judah, so far from the stroke of judgment which had fallen on Jerusalem having sobered its idol-mad and vice-intoxi- cated inhabitants, it only plunged them deeper intb immorality and superstition. As their fathers from the first had been a rebellious nation, so continued they to be an impudent and stiff-hearted people ( eh. ii. 4; iii. 7), who changed Jehovah's judgments into wickedness, and walked not in his statutes (eh. v. 6, 7), but defiled his sanctuary with their detestable things and abominations (eh. v. 11). Nor this alone, but high places, altars, and images were conspicuous "upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak" ( eh. vi. 13), as from the first it had been with their fathers ( eh. xx. 28). Whether the picture sketched by Ezekiel of what be saw in the temple at Jerusalem (eh. viii.), when transported thither iu vision, be regarded as a description of real objects that were standing and of actual incidents that were going forward in the sacred edifice at the time vi INTRODUCTION TO
of the prophet's ,visit (Ewald, Havernick), or merely as an outline of ideal scenes and occurrences that were presented to his mind's eye (Keil, Fairbairn, Schroder), the impression it was meant to convey was that of Judah's and Jerusalem's total corruption, of their permanent revolt from Jehovah, of their total abandonment to and complete saturation with the wicked spirits of idolatry, immorality, and infidelity. As much as this was stated by Jehovah himself to the prophet, when he gazed in horror on the six executioners, who, in obedience to Divine command, went forth to "slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women"- " The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness : for they say, The Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not" ( eh. ix. 9). As if, moreover, to show that this terrible indictment had not been over- drawn, the sins of Jerusalem were rehearsed by Jehovah in a special communication to the prophet in the seventh year of the captivity, which recounted a catalogue of abominations scarcely to be paralleled in any of the surrounding heathen nations-idolatry, lewdness, oppression, sacrilege, murder, amongst all classes of the population, from the princes and priests to the people of the land (eh. xxii.). Nor is there ground for hinting that perhaps this was a mere fancy sketch dictated by excited feeling on the part of the prophet, since it is too painfully confirmed by what Jeremiah reports as having been witnessed by himself in the days of Jehoiachin, immediately before the deportation of that monarch and the :flower of his nobility: "The land is full of adulterers; . . . both prophet and priest are profane; in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord . . . • I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evil- doer,;, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah" (Jer. xxiii. 10-14). And that no change for the better was wrought by that terrible visitation upon the hearts of the people that-,iremained behind in Jerusalem and Judah as Zedekiah's subjects, was further revealed to the prophet by the vision of the two baskets of figs, of which those in the one basket, 1epresenting Zedekiah's subjects, were so bad that they could not be eaten (Jer. xxiv. 8)-a similitude which more than endorses the truth set forth in Ezekiel's parable of the worthless vine (eh. xv.). In point of fact, so utterly had Zedekiah's subjects misconstrued the reason and purport of that calamity which had sent their countrymen into exile, that they began mistakenly to flatter themselves that, while their banishe<l brethren had probably been justly enough punished for their iniquities, they, the remnant who had been spared, were the special favourites of Heaven, to v:hom the land was given for a possession (eh. xi. 15)-an hallucination ·~· hich not even the downfall of their city sufficed to dispel ( eh. xxxiii. 2\\. So far from dreading that a time nri.ght come when they would be ejc:cted from the land like their expatriated kinsmen, they confidently THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL. vii