The Pulpit Commentary — Ezekiel — Volume 1 — Section 354

Vere. 5, 6.-In the day thnt I lifted np result or their tea.ching, Neh. x. 31-33; mine hand. Tbe o.ttitnde was that of one xiii. 15-22.) Then I said. The hi..tory of who takes 11.n oath (Exod. vi. 8), and implies Numb. xiv. 26 nnd xxvi. 65 we.a probably in tho confirmation of the covenant made with Ezekiel's thoughts. Abmham. The lond flowing with milk and Ver. 16.-Their heart went a.fter their honey appears first in Exod. iii. 8, and be- idols. The worrls may point generally to cnme proverbial. The glory of all lands the fact that the idolatrous tendencies of the is peculi!lr to Ezelcicl. Isaiah (xiii. 19) people, though suppressed, were not really applies tho word to Babylon. eradicated. '£he history of Baal-peor (Numb. Vers. 7-10.-No specie.I mention of the xxv. 3-9) shows how rendy they were to idols of Egypt occurs in the Pentateuch, but it pass into act, and Amos v. 25, 26 implies a. lies, in the nature of the case, that this was tradition of other like acts during the whole the form of idolatry implied in the second period of the wanderings in the wilderness. commandment,and the history of the" golden Ver. 18.-I said unto their children, etc. calf" (Exod. xxxii. 4) shows that they had The words can refer to nothing bnt the great caught the infection of the Mnevis or Apis utterance of the Book of Deuteronomy as worship while they sojourned in Egypt. addressed to the children of those who bad Here apparently the prophet speaks of that perished in the wilderness. That utterance sojourn prior to the mission of Moses. In a.lso, it is implied, as indeed the Baal-peor bold anthropomorphic speech he represents history a.t the close of the forty years Jehovah as half purposing to make an end showed, fell on deaf ears. Then also there of the people there and then, and afterwards was, once again, in the inevitable anthropo- repenting. He wrought for his Name's sake, morphic language, a change of purpose, that the deliverance of the Exodus might from that of a. rigorous judgment to the manifest his righteousness and might, the mercy which prevailed against it. attributes specially implied in that Name, to Ver. 23.-Tnat I would scatter them among Egypt and the surrounding nations. They the heathen. The words seem to refer to should not have it in their power to say the generation that had grown up in the that he had abandoned the people whom he wilderness, a.nd, so taken, do not correspond had chosen. with the history of the conquest of Canaan. Ver. 11.-I gave them my statutes, eto. Whe.t Ezekiel contemplates, however, as the Ezekiel recognizes, almost in the very lon- resolve of Jehovah, is the commutation of gnage of Dent. xxx. 16-20, as fully as the the sentence of destruction for that of the writers of Ps. xi.x. and cxi.x. recognized, the dispersion of the people, leaving the time excellence of the Le.w. A mau who kept that and manner of that dispersion to be deter- Law in its fulness would have life in its mined by his own will. Possibly even in fullest and highest sense. He was beginning, the time of the judges, with its many con- however, to recognize, as Jeremiah had quests o.nd long periods of oppression, done (Jer. xxxi. 31), the powel'lessness of there were instances of such dispersion, and the Law to give that life without the aid of these, with others that would nl\tnrally something higher. The "new covenant" e.ccompa.ny a.n invasion like thn.t of Shishok was already dawning on the mind of the (2 Chron. xii. 2-9), not to speak of frequent scholar as on tha.t of the ma.ster. a.ttacks from Moabites, Ammonites, Philis- Ver. 12.-I gave them my sabbaths, eto. tines, Edomites, and Syrians, may have AB in Exod. xxxi. 12-17, the se.bbath is seemed to the prophet the working out, step treated as the centre.I sign (we might a.ltnost by step, of the dispersion which culminated 11e.y sacrament) of the Jewish Church, not iu the deportation of the ten tribes by Sba.1- only as a ma.rk differencing them from other maneser, and of Judah a.ad Benjamin by nations, but a.a between Jehovah and them, N ebuchndnezzar. Trnces of such disper- a witness of their ideal relation to ea.eh other, sions before Ezekiel's time meet us in Ps. a mee.us of making tha.t ideal relation a lxx.viii. 59-64; Isa. xL ll, 12 ; Zeph. iii. reality. 10, 20. Ver. 13.-lt is hctrdly necessary to count Ver. 25.-I ga.ve them also statutes that up t!Je several instances of rebellion, from were not good, eto. The words have some- the sin of the golden ea.If onward. Of times been understood as though Ezekiel direct violation of the se.bbath we ha.ve but applied these terms to the L!lw itself, either two recorded instances (Exod. xvi. 27 ; as speaking of what St. Paul Cillis its" weak Numb.xv. 32); but the prophet looked below e.nd beggarly elemeuts" (Gal. iv. 9), or as the surface, and would count a mere formal unable to work out the righteousne8s which observance, that did not sanctify the Bl\b- it commantletl. (Hom. iii. :W), and the lan- bctth, as a pollution of the holy day. (For guage of Heb. vii. 19 an,l x. 1 has bceu ur:;etl. p1unllel te11chiug in the prophets, see lee.. in support of this Yiew. One who has lvi. 2-4; !viii. 13; Jer. xvii. 21--27; and studied Ezekiel with auy caro will not necJ later on in the history, probably ns the muny words to show thllt such a conclusion  856 THE DOOK OF TIIE PROPHET EZEKIEL. [en. xx. 1-40,