The Pulpit Commentary — Ezekiel — Volume 1 — Section 175

HOMILIES BY, VARIOUS AUTHORS. Ver. 4.-Th-e mark of spiritual concern. The defection and idolatry already described in the previous chapter could neither be disregarded nor unavenged. A nation that had enjoyed privileges so conspicuously great as Israel, and that bad, in spite of all such privileges, apostatized from the God to whom they owed everything that distinguished them from the surrounding nations, had written its own sentence of condemnation. Bnt the Divine retribution is never undiscriminating. The laws of national life are each that the righteous are often slain with the wicked; but their calamity is not a sign of Divine displeasure. And above this earth, upon which anomalies are ever witnessed-anomalies calling for both submission and faith-there is a recrion where perfect discrimination is ever exhibited. This passage teaches a precious le;son. The Judge of all the earth will do right; he will separate the wheat from the chaff. "The Lord knoweth them that are his." They bear his own mark, the impress of his own seal. They shall be delivered in the judgment that shall overtake the disobedient and rebellious. The Divine Priest of salvation himself gives the direction, "Come not near any man upon whom is the mark!" l. THE PREVALENCE OF MORAL ABOMINATIONS IN A 00:MMUtHTY. The various idolatries that had been brought into Jerusalem had led the population of that city into error and sin. Even in the neighbourhood and the precincts of the temple itself the worship and the practices of the heathen prevailed unchecked. A holy God, and commandments righteous and pure, were forsaken for deities and for rites which were the expression of human degradation and corruption. Where is the community in which there is nothing parallel to the state of things at Jerusalem in the time of Ezekiel? Wealth, luxury, pleasure, a worldly standard of judgment and of life, are too often substituted for the lofty and exacting religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. With irreligion come vice and crime in varying forms. Abominations are wrought in every great city in Christendom at which angels may weep. II. THE RETRIBUTIVE JUDGMENT OF Gon. The six men with the battle-axes, whom the prophet saw in his vision, were directed to execute a righteous sentence upon the inhabitants of the city; they were without pity to slay the sinful and rebellious of every age and every class. 'l'here is something awful in the resolve of the Lord, as recorded by the prophet, "I will recompense their way upon their head." No one who has studied the history of the nations of the earth will question the actiun of a retributive Providence. In the facts which meet us there is indeed much that perplexes us; but we are not left in doubt as to the fate of the selfish, the worldly, the unjust, the cruel, the voluptuous, in a word, the idolatrous, those who forget and forsake God. However it may be hereafter, there is no room for questioning how it is in this world with those who rebel against God. lIL THE INDIFFERENCE WITH WHICH PREVAILING INIQUITY IB TOO GENERALLY REGARDED. Such indifference is sometimes justified by argument: as when men say that the world's sin is fated and inevitable, and that it is needless aad 'useless to trouble ourselves concerning it. But generally this is merely a sign of selfishness and hardness of heart. Men shut their eyes and deafen their ears to the evidences of prevailing sin; to recognize it would disagreeably disturb them in their pursuits, their pleasures, their dreams. IV. THE SUFFERING AND DIBTBESB OCCASIONED TO THE TRUE PEOPLE OF Gon DY '1'IIE BPEOTAOLE OF ABOUNDING INIQUITY. There are those, thank God, in every com- munity of professed Christians who are not unaffected by the abominations which a.re att. IX, 1-11.] THE BOOK OF 'l'HE PROPHET EZEKIEL; 169