The Pulpit Commentary — Ezekiel — Volume 2 — Section 231

get it) for a prey. (2) Taking ::Ti')?l~ a.s a that, 88 God Ju1d previously visited Israel noun "for the sake of its possession for with judgment on e.coount of sin, so hence- n pr;v " (Kliefoth), "that their suburbs forth would he visit her with graoe on oon- shon!d be a prey" (Hengstenberg), "on dition of repentance. I will turn UD.to you. ncc,rnut of its pa.stura.ge for a prey" (Schro- Always it is presupposed that Israel turna dn). (3) Changing t~~ into t:i~, ''in order unto Jehovah. to plunder its produce" (Hitzig) or "pas- Vers. 10, 11.-I will multiply man upon turage" (Fairbairn). you. Jehove.h's promise contemplated a. return of both sections of the Golah, tha Yers. 6, 7.-Becauae ye have borne the whole house of Israel, Ephraim as well a11 shame of the heathen (i.e. the shame cnst Judah (comp. eh. u.. 40), to the land from npou you by the heathen, see eh. :uxiv. which they had been deported, and a re- 2'.J) . . . 1111rely the heathen that are about storation of the united kingdom to a con- you, they shall bear their shame. Not the dition of prosperity in which its citie11 shame which should be cast upon them by should age.in be inhabited, its ruined home- Israel, which would be retaliation, but their steads repaired, its fields cultivated, and own shame-the she.me due to them in its_ flocks and 1:i-erds m~ltiplied (see oh. virtue of the Divine law of retribution (eh, xvi. 55; Isa. xhv. 26; hv. 3; lx1. 4)-a xvi. 52), their own curses come home to condition of prosperity so great that it roost, Ezekiel seeming to distinguish be- should surpass any measure or degree of tween retaliation and retribution. "The good fortune previously enjoyed (comp. le.w [of retribution] is demanded by the Deut. xxx. 5; Job xlii. 12). absolute righteousness of God. The ju- Ver. H.-Thou shalt devour men no more. dicial visitations of God cannot possibly be From the middle of ver. 12 the form of one-sided. Punishment can so mnch the address changes from the plural to the less strike Israel alone, a.s precisely in its singular, the whole country, mountains, punishment the deep degradation of heathen- and valleys being regarded o.s one land, 88 dom, its llposta.sy from God and its pride, in Deut. iii. 25. The chllrge preferred has set itself forth in the most striking against the country by her enemies was that way" (Hivernick). The certainty that she had been e. land that devoured men this law would operate in the case of the ana "bereaved its nations" ( or, "nation," helltLen no less the.n in that of Ismel, the Revised Version); literally, an eater-up of prophet expresses by representing Jehovah men and a bereaver of thy nations ; i.e. of u having lifted up his hand, or swom thllt Israel and Judah, perhaps also of the it should be so (comp. eh. xx. 5, 6, 15, 23, Oanaanites, their predecessors {Fllusset), 28;; xlvii.. 14; Exod. vi 8; Numb. xiv. 30; the image being that of a wild beast which Dent. mii. 40 ; !lild Virgil, '.lEneid,' xii. ravages the population and makes them 195, "Tenditque ad sidera dextram "). childless, as in eh. v. 17 and xiv. 15 (Rmend), Ver. 8.-P'or they are at hand to come. rather than that of an nnnature.l mother, a Keil !lild Plc.mptre mllke the subject of the Rabenmutler, as in 2 Kings vi. 29, who verb the materilll blessings in which Israel's devours her offspring (Ewe.Id). This charge, prosperity is depicted as consisting, viz. the in which, perhaps, the prophet detected an folillge and frnit her mountains were soon allusion to Numb. xiii. 32, had certainly to bellr for the people of Jehovah. The in times past been true; not, however, as majority of expositors believe the subject to Hengstenberg suggests, because the land be the people whose retum from exile was be.cl been " an apple of discord for the in this wa.y declared to be approaching. Asiatic llnd African powers," or, 88 Ewe.Id Nor is there any reason why Ezekiel shonld explains, because "the tremendous restless- not have represented the return from exile ness, the excited push and hurry of suoh a. as an event soon to take place, since of the mentally active city must in any case have seventy years of Cllptivity predicted by used up its inhllbitants more rapidly ; " Jeremiah (.xxv. 11) at least twenty yellre but, o.s Keil, Plumptre, and others interpret. had passed, if its oommencement be d!ltod because of the judgments of sword, famine, from the fourth year of Jehoiakim (eh. and pestilence sent upon the land by Je- .xxxiii. 21); and the fulfilment of Jehovah's hovllh for its sins. These judgments had pruruise was to the prophet so much e. so destroyed its inhabitants, first the Ca- matter of certainty (eh. xi. 17) thllt hls ne.anites, and latterly the two peoples of frn·eut imagination conceived it as at Israel and Judah, that" those who looked lrn11d. upon it deemed it a fate.I land, which Ver. 9.-I llm for you. He had pre- brought destruction to e.ll who should viously been age.inst (eh. v. 8; xiii. 8), but occupy it" (Currey). In the golden agt1 was now for Israel and against Seir (eh. to which the prophet looked forward, no %xxv. 3). This change of dispensation such reproach should be possible. Not implied no mutation in God, but merely only should the land not bereave its nations <ln. xuVI. 1-38.J THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL. 239