The Pulpit Commentary — Ezekiel — Volume 1 — Section 355

was nr,t in his thoughts at all. For liirn (comp. Exod. xvi. 15 for n. pcmi.llcl deriva- the Law was" holv and just and good," Rnd tion of the word mai·ones). Taking the a its stRtutes such ·that man who should words in their ordinn.ry sense, t.hcy scom keep them should ernn live in them (\'ers. to express only e. slight degree of contempt. 13, 21). He is speaking of the time that "What, then, is tile phi.co to which you followed on the second publication of that go?"-what is the"wllithcr" to which it Law, nnd what he says is that the people leads? Ilut I incline (with Ewald ancl who rebelled against it were left., as it Smcnd) to see in tile word "go into " the were, to a law of another kind. The barnr, meaning which it llo.s in Gen. xvi. 2 n.nd darker forms of idPlatry are described by xix. 81, and elsewhere, as a euphemism for him, with a grave irony, RS statutes and sexual union. So later the word "Bo.mah" judgments of another 1,.ind, working, not becomes a witness that tllose wllo worship life, llllt death. Sin became, by God's in the high place go there (o.s in ver. 30) to appointment, the punishment of sin, that it commit whoredom literally and spiritually. might be manifest as exceeding sinful. So Its name showed tlla.t it was what I have Stephen says of Israel that " God turned, called "a chapel of prostitution" (oh. xvi. and gave them up to worship the host of 24, 25). heaven" (Acts vii 42). So St. Paul paints Ver. 30.-Say ye unto the house of Israel, the corruptions of the heathen world as the eto. The words are addressed primarily result of God's giving them up to "vile to the elders who had come to consult the affections" (Rom. i. 24, 25). So in God's prophet (ver. 1), but through them to all future dealings with a.n apostate form of their contemporaries and fellow-countrymen. Christianity, the same apostle declares that They still in heart and even in deed (comp. "God shall send them strong delusions that Is,1.. lvii. 4-6, 11, and lxv. 3, as showing they should believe a lie" (2 Thess. ii 11). the habits of the exiles) clung to the old Ps. .lx.xxi. 12 may have been in Ezekiel's idolatries. The question for them was thoughts as asserting the same general law. whether they would continue to walk in the Ver. 26.-I polluted them through their ways of their fathers. If so, it was true of own gifts. The noun includes all forms of them, as of the elders, that the Lord to blessing bestowed on Israel-its corn and whom they came would not be inquired or wine and oil (see eh. xvi. 19, 20), even by them. • its sons and daughters, the fruit of the Ver. 32.-That whioh oometh into your womb, as well as tl.ie increase of the earth. mind, etc. The prophet reads the secret (For the prevalence of Moloch-worship, and thoughts of the inquirers. If the tewple for the phrase, "pass through," see notes on were destroyed, they thought, then the one eh. xvi. 21.) The sins were to bring deso- restraint on the idolatries they loved would lation as their punishment, and then men be removed. They would be no longer a. would learn to know Jehovah as indeed separate people, and would be free to adopt he is. the cultus of the heathen among whom they Ver. 28.-lt was a special aggravation of lived. If that was not Jehovah's purpose the sin that it was committed in the very for them, then there must be no destruction land into which they had been brought by of the temple, no dispersion among the the oath (the" hand lifted np ") of Jehovah, nations. They come to Ezekiel to know that it might be a holy land, a witness of which of the two alternatives he, as the the Diviue righteousness to the nations prophet of Jehovah, has in store, and his round about. The forms of worship include answer is that he is bound to neither. that of the high places, and the thick trees They could not abdicate their high position, (Isa. !vii 5; Jer. ii. 20; iii. 6) which and would remain under the burden of its witnessed the cultus of the Asherah or of responsibilities. Scatt-ei:ed though they A.ah taroth. might be among the heathen, yet even there Ver. 29.-What is the high place, etc.? the "mighty hand and the stretched-out lie.mah, in the plural Ba11Wth, was the arm" (we note the phrases as from Deut. iv. HcLrtw for "high place." At first it was 34; v. 15) would hunt them down, and applied to the hill on which some local punish them for their iniquities. sauctuary stood (I Sam. ix. 12 ; 1 Kings Vera. 34, 35.-The prophet's words seem iii. 4), but was gradually extended, after the to look beyond the horizon of any fulfilment bni:<liog of the temple as the one appointed as yet seen in history, of which the return sa,,ctuary, to otl.ier places which were looked of the exiles under Zerubbabel was but the u1,u11 as l!Rcred, and which became the scenes pledge aud earnest. He contemplates not or fill idolatrous a11d forbidden worship. a return straight from Babylon to Jerusalem, 1-~zekiel empha.aizes his scorn by e. conjec- but a gathering from all the countries in tur,d derivatiou of the word, as if derived which they had been scattered (Isa. xi, 11). fruJJ, the two words ba ("go") ancl mak When gatherecl, the whole nation is to bo (" 11 hi1Jwr "); or, p :rhaps, What comes f brought into the wilderness of the peoples, ffl. :xx. 1-4.!J.J THE BOOK OF THE Pil.OPf!ET EZEKIEL. 357