INTRODUCTION TO EZEKIEL
Ezekiel (the strength of God), one of the four greater prophets, was the son of a
priest named Buzi, and was taken captive in the captivity of Jehoiachin, eleven
years before the destruction of
Jewish exiles who settled on the banks of the Chebar, a "river? or stream of
a period of more than twenty-two years. We learn from an incidental allusion
(ch. 24:18), that he was married, and had a house (ch. 8:1), in his place of exile,
and lost his wife by a sudden and unforeseen stroke. He lived in the highest
consideration among his companions in exile, and their elders consulted him
on all occasions. He is said to have been buried on the
banks of the
The tomb, said to have been built by Jehoiachin, is shown, a few days journey
from
will and character and his devoted adherence to the rites and ceremonies of his
national religion. The depth of his matter and the marvellous nature of his visions
make him occasionally obscure. (Smith’s
Bible Dictionary)
The Life of the Prophet.
The sole information available for constructing a biography
of Ezekiel is
furnished by his own writings. Outside of these he is mentioned only
by
Josephus (‘
49:8), neither of whom communicates any item of importance.
Whether
Ezekiel was the prophet’s birth name conferred on him by
his parents, or,
an
official title assumed by himself on commencing his vocation as a seer, cannot
be
determined, although the former is by far the more probable hypothesis. In
either case it can hardly be questioned that the appellation was
providentially
designed to be symbolic of his character and calling. The Hebrew
term laqez]j,y] —
in
the Septuagint and in Sirach Iezekih>l, in the Vulgate Ezechiel,
in German
Ezechiel, or Hezekiel — is a compound either of lae qZij"z]. (Gesenius),
meaning “whom God will
strengthen,” or “he whose
character is a personal
proof of the strengthening of God” (Baumgarten), or of lae qzej’y] (Ewald),
signifying “God is strong,” or “he
in relation to whom God is strong”
(Hengstenberg). As regards suitability the two interpretations stand upon
a
level; for while Ezekiel was commissioned to a rebellious house
whose
children were “stiff-hearted” (bleAzqez]jiyi) and “of a hard
forehead”
(jx"meAyqez]ji), on the other hand he was assured that God had made his
face hard (μyqez]j}) against their faces, and
his forehead hard (qz;j;) against
their foreheads (ch. 2:5; 3:7-8). In
respect of social rank Ezekiel
belonged to the priestly order, being the son of Buzi, of whom nothing
further is reported, though it is interesting to note that the
name Ezekiel
had
been borne by one of sacerdotal dignity as far back as the time of
David (I Chronicles 24:16). Unlike Hilkiah’s
son Jeremiah of
Anathoth, who, as a priest of the line of Ithamar,
sprang from the lower or
middle classes of the community, Ezekiel, as a Zadokite (ch. 40:46;
43:19; 44:15-16; I Kings 2:35), deriving from the superior
line of
Eleazar the son of Aaron, was properly a member of the Jerusalem
aristocracy — a circumstance which will account for his having been
carried off in Jehoiachin’s captivity,
while Jeremiah was left behind (II Kings
24:14), as well as explain the readiness with which in one
of his
visions (ch.11:1) he recognized two of the princes of the people.
How old the prophet was when the doom of exile fell on him
and the other
magnates of
affirms that Ezekiel was then a youth (pai~v
w]n); but, if Hengstenberg
be
correct in regarding the thirtieth year (ch.
1:1), corresponding to
the
fifth year of exile, as the thirtieth year of the prophet’s life, he must
have been twenty-five years of age when he bade farewell to his native
land. Other explanations have been offered of the date fixed upon by
Ezekiel as the chronological starting
point of his prophetical activity. The
thirtieth year has been declared to date from Nabopolassar’s
ascension of
the
Babylonian throne, which is usually set down at B.C. 625, or from
the
eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, rendered memorable by the finding of
Hilkiah’s book of the Law, or from the preceding year of jubilee;
and
manifestly if either of these modes of reckoning be adopted, the
number
thirty will afford no clue whatever to the prophet’s age. All of
them, however,
lie
open to objections as strong as those directed against the proposal to count
from the prophet’s birth, which, to say the least, is as natural a mode of
reckoning
as
either of the others, and in any case may be provisionally adopted,
since it practically synchronizes with the so called Babylonian
and
Jewish eras above named, and harmonizes with indications. given
by
the
prophet’s writing, as e.g. with his accurate knowledge of the sanctuary,
as
well as with his mature priestly spirit, that when he entered on his calling
he
was no longer a stripling.
The influences in the midst of which Ezekiel’s youthful
days were spent
can
readily be imagined. In addition to the solemnizing impressions and
quickening impulses which must have been imparted to his opening
intelligence and tender heart by the temple services, in which from an
early
age,
in all probability, like another Samuel, he took part, for an earnest and
religious soul like his, the strange ferment produced by Hilkiah’s book of
the
Law, whether that was Deuteronomy, Leviticus, or the whole Pentateuch,
and
the vigorous reformation to which, during Josiah’s last years, it led, could
not
fail to have a powerful fascination. Nor is it likely that he remained
insensible to the energetic ministry which, during all the
twenty-five years
of
his residence in
predecessor Jeremiah. Rather is there evidence in his obvious leaning
on
the
elder prophet, revealing itself in words and phrases, completed
sentences and connected paragraphs, that his whole inner life had
been
deeply permeated, and in fact effectively molded, by the spirit
of his
teacher, and that when the stroke fell upon his country and people
as well
as
on himself, he went away into exile, whither Daniel had a few years
before preceded him (Daniel 1:1), inspired with the feelings and
brooding on
the
thoughts he had learnt from the venerated seer he had left behind.
From this time forward the prophet’s home was in the land
of the
Chaldeans, at a city called Tel-Abib (ch. 3:15), or “hill of corn
ears,” perhaps so named in consequence of the fertility of the surrounding
district — a city whose site has not yet been discovered, though
Ezekiel
himself locates it on the river Chebar.
If this stream (rb;K]) be
identified, as
it
is by Gesenius, Havernick, Keil, and the majority of expositors, with the
Habor (rwObj;) to which the captive Israelites were carried by Shalmanezer
or
Sargon (II Kings 17:6) upwards of a hundred years before, and the
Habor be found in the Chaboras of the
Greeks and Romans, which, rising
at
the foot of the
Circesium — which is doubtful — then the quarter to which the
prophet
and
his fellow exiles were deported must be looked for in Northern
Smend urge with reason that the two words “Chebar”
and “Habor” do not
agree in sound; that whereas the Habor
was (probably a district) in
the
Chebar is invariably represented as having been a
river in the land of
the
Chaldeans, and that to this land the Judaean exiles are always declared
to
have been removed. Hence the last-named authorities prefer to look for
the
Chebar in a tributary stream or canal of the
Euphrates, near
mentioned that in it the prophet would have found himself
established in
the
midst of the main body of the exiles from both kingdoms, to all of
whom ultimately. although immediately to those of
a
reference; yet, inasmuch as the northern exiles might easily enough have
been reached by the prophet’s words without his residing among them, this
consideration cannot be allowed to decide the question.
Unlike Jeremiah, who appears to have remained unmarried,
Ezekiel had a
wife whom he tenderly cherished as “the
desire of his eyes,” but who
suddenly died in the ninth year of his captivity, or four years
after he had
entered on his prophetic calling (ch.24). Whether, like Isaiah,
the first
of
the “greater” prophets, he had children, is not reported. If he had, it is
clear that neither wife nor children hindered him any more than
they
hindered Isaiah from responding to the Divine voice which summoned
him
to
be a watchman to the house of
had
come to Isaiah, in the form of a sublime theophany;
only not, as in
Isaiah’s case, while he worshipped in the temple, from
which at the
moment he was far removed, but as he sat among the exiles (in the
midst of
the
Golah) on the banks of the Chebar.
He was then thirty years of age.
With few interruptions, he exercised his sacred vocation
till his fifty-second
year. How long after he lived it is impossible to tell.
Not the slightest value
can
be attached to the tradition preserved by the Fathers and Talmudists
that he was put to death by a prince of his own people on account of his
prophecies, and was buried in the tomb of Shem and Arphaxad.
The Times of the Prophet.
When Ezekiel entered on his calling as a prophet in B.C.
595, the northern
while the final overthrow of
approaching. When Ezekiel was born, in BC.
625, in the eighteenth year of
Josiah, it seemed as if better days wore about to dawn for
both this land
and
people. Through the labors of Jeremiah, who had five years before
been invested with prophetic dignity — in the expressive language of
Jehovah, “set over the nations and over the kingdoms,
to root out, and to
pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to
plant”
(Jeremiah 1:10) — and of
Zephaniah, who probably commenced his
work about the same period (Zephaniah 1:1), seconded as these were
by
the young king’s vigorous reformation and Hilkiah’s
finding of the book
of
the Law of Jehovah, idolatry had been well nigh purged from the realm.
Yet the moral and religious improvement of the people
proved as transient
as
it had been superficial. With the death of Josiah from a wound received
on
the fatal field of
son
Shallum under the throne name of Jehoahaz,
a
violent reaction in
favor of heathenism set in. At the end of three months, Shallum
having
been deposed by Necho II., Josiah’s conqueror, who
still lay encamped at
Riblath, his elder brother Eliakim,
under the title of Jehoiakim, was
installed in his room as vassal to the King of Egypt. Then followed, in B.C.
605, Necho’s defeat at
with the result that Jehoiakim immediately
thereafter transferred his
allegiance (if he had not already done so) to the Babylonian
sovereign,
which, however, he preserved inviolate for not more than three
years
(II Kings 24:1), 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 (Daniel
1:1, 3, 6). Whether Jehoiakim was
eventually deported to Babylon
(II Chronicles 36:6), or how he met his death (Jeremiah
22:19), 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 (ch. 19:5-9;
Jeremiah 22:24-30)
than his father, and in three months’ time was forcibly suppressed by his
overlord (II Chronicles 36:9; II Kings 23:8). 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 Chebar,
in the land of the Chaldeans, and
setting up ia his room his uncle Mattanias, whose name was, in accordance
with custom, changed to Zedekiah (II Kings 24:10-17). This happened
in
the year B.C. 600. Zedekiah turned out no better than his predecessors.
A poor roi faineant, who was quite content to receive a “base”
kingdom from the hands of the King of Babylon, and yet wanted
honesty
honesty to keep his oath and covenant with his superior
(ch.17:13-15),
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
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.
had fallen on
inhabitants, it only plunged
them deeper into 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 (ch.2:4;
3:7),
who changed Jehovah’s judgments into wickedness, and walked
not
in His statutes (ch.5:6-7), but defiled His sanctuary with
their
detestable things and abominations (Ibid. 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” (ch.6:13),
as from the first it had been with their fathers
(ch.20:28). Whether the picture
sketched by Ezekiel of what he
saw in the temple at
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
of the prophet’s visit, or merely as an outline of ideal
scenes and occurrences
that were presented to his mind’s eye, the impression it was
meant to convey
was that of
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
full of blood, and the city full of perverseness: for they say,
The Lord hath
forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth
not” (ch.
9:6,9). As if, moreover, to
show that this terrible indictment had not been overdrawn, the
sins of
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 (Ezekiel 22). 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
they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the
hands of
evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all
unto me
as
And that no change for the
better was wrought by that terrible
visitation upon the hearts of the people that remained behind in
and
the vision of the two baskets of figs, of which those in the
one basket,
representing Zedekiah’s subjects, were so bad that they could not be
eaten
(Jeremiah 24:8) — a similitude which more than endorses the truth set
forth in Ezekiel’s parable of the worthless vine (ch.15). 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
banished
brethren had probably been justly enough punished for their
iniquities, they,
the remnant who had been spared, were the special favorites of
Heaven,
to whom the land was given for a possession (ch.11:15) — an
hallucination which not even the downfall of their city sufficed to
dispel
(ch. 33:24). So far from dreading that a time might
come when
they would be ejected from the land like their expatriated
kinsmen, they
confidently assured one another they had seen the last of
Nebuchadnezzar’s
armies, and that, even if they had not, their city was
impregnable
(ch.11:3). In vain Jeremiah told
them their city’s fate was sealed
— that
both they and Zedekiah their king should be delivered up into
Nebuchadnezzar’s hands (Jeremiah
21:7; 24:8-10; 32:3-5; 34:2-3);
their princes and prophets encouraged them in the delusion that
they
should not serve the King of Babylon (Ibid. ch.
27:9). In Zedekiah’s
fourth year, exactly
twelve months before Ezekiel’s stepping forth as a
prophet, one of these false prophets — “lower,” or “fallen
prophets,” as
Cheyne prefers to call them, regarding them as “honest though
misguided
enthusiasts” — Hananiah by name, announced
in the temple, before the
priests and all the people, as well as in Jeremiah’s hearing, that
within two
full years Jehovah would break the yoke of the King of Babylon
from off
the neck of all the nations (Ibid. ch.
28:1-4). To such a vaticination he
had probably been moved by the arrival shortly before of an
embassy from
the Kings of Edom,
for its object the formation of a league against the eastern
conqueror
(Ibid. ch.27:3), and which
seemingly had so far succeeded as to draw
into its meshes the weak Judaean
sovereign, and to excite among THE
UNREFLECTING
POPULACE wild expectations of a speedy
deliverance
from the yoke of
disappointment. So far from Hananiah’s vain
glorious announcement
coming true, was Jeremiah’s instantaneous rejoinder, within a
brief space
the easy yoke of wood the nation then bore would be exchanged
for one of
iron, which moreover Hananiah himself
would not behold, since in that
year he should die for having taught rebellion against the Lord
(Ibid. ch.
28:16). Yet the ferment occasioned by Hananiah’s
prediction
did not cease, but spread beyond the bounds of
banks of the Chebar and penetrated to
the palace of the king. “The valiant
son of Nabopolassar,” who seldom
dallied with incipient revolt, but usually
pounced upon his victims in the midst of their treasonable
projects, would
speedily have crushed the new alliance, and with it Zedekiah, had
not
Zedekiah, fearing an evil fate,
taken time by the forelock and dispatched an
embassy to
thither himself (Ibid. ch. 51:59). to give to his offended suzerain
assurances of continued loyalty. How much of truth such assurances
contained was not long in appearing, as five years later he broke
into open
revolt against the King of Babylon (II Kings 24:20), leaguing
himself
with
With that rapidity of movement
which characterized “the favorite of
Merodach,” as it has distinguished all great generals, the troops
of Babylon
were on the march, and stood in front of
of Hophra could be mustered; and
although for a time, when these latter
did arrive, the Chaldean soldiers
were compelled to raise the siege, it was
only to return after Hophra’s defeat
or retreat — it is uncertain which —
to invest the city with stricter closeness than before. After
a siege of
eighteen months, the supposed impregnable fortress fell. Zedekiah,
who
with his court had precipitately fled from the palace, was
captured in the
plains of
who cruelly massacred his sons and his nobles. before his eyes, blinded
himself, bound him with chains, and carried him to
unconsciously fulfilling both the word of Jeremiah uttered one year
before,
that “Zedekiah should speak with the King of
and that his eyes should behold the king’s eyes” (Jeremiah 32:4), and
that of Ezekiel spoken five years before, that Zedekiah should
be brought
to the land of the Chaldeans, which
yet he should not see, though he should
die there (ch. 12:13). On the city’s
fall a massacre of its inhabitants
ensued, pitiless and unsparing, realizing all the horrors
suggested by
Ezekiel’s parable of a boiling
pot (ch.24:2-5). A month after, its
fortified walls were laid in ruins, its temple, palaces, and
mansions, with
“all the houses of
such of them as had escaped both sword and fire, swept away to
swell the
company of exiles upon the Chebar,
leaving only a handful of the poorest
of the poor upon their native soil, to act as its vine
dressers and
husbandmen, with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam as their governor, and
Jeremiah as Jehovah’s prophet by
his side II Kings 25.; II Chronicles 36.;
Jeremiah chapters 39., 40., 52.).
it was in
be kindred spirits
to Ezekiel, pious hearts who recognized in their
banishment from
who mourned over their own and their country’s declension,
and who, as
by the rivers of
remembered
just as certainly there would be others, and these probably the
larger
number, who carried with
them their old habits of idolatry, and showed as
little disposition to abate their devotion to heathenism as
their fathers had
done before them
(ch.20:30), or as their brethren were then doing
in
to be inquiring at Jehovah’s prophet, they were setting up
idols in their
heart (ch. 14:4); when they listened
to the prophet’s preaching,
whether he denounced their heathen practices and called them to
repentance, or prophesied against them Heaven’s judgments for their
wickedness, they applauded his eloquence (ch.33:32), and puzzled
their heads over his parables (ch.
20:49), but never dreamed of doing
as he told them. In
the breasts of both sections of the community there kept
on slumbering delusive hopes of a speedy deliverance from
exile, fostered
on the one side by the secret conviction that Jehovah would
not prove
unfaithful to His chosen city and people, and, on the other side, by the
unauthorized utterances of false prophets and prophetesses in their
midst,
who “saw peace for
people to trust in their lies” (ch.13:16, 19). It was
to meet and, if
possible, to dissipate these baseless hallucinations that
Jeremiah’s letter
was dispatched by the hands of Zedekiah’s ambassadors,
counseling the
exiles to settle down quietly in their new country, seek the
peace of the city
and empire to which they had been carried, and serve the King
of Babylon,
since not until seventy
years rolled by would Jehovah cause them to return
to their own land (Jeremiah
29:5-14; II Chronicles 36:21); and although
perhaps both parties in the Golah,
the pious and irreligious, had they been
left to themselves, might not have felt indisposed to acquiesce
in the course
recommended by the prophet — the one, prompted by that habit of
obedience and submission to the Divine will which was not in them
entirely
extinguished, and the other, by the comparatively comfortable environment
in which they found themselves, materially, socially,
politically, and
religiously (or rather, irreligiously), in the rich, powerful,
pleasure-loving
and idol serving empire of
not left to themselves, but were injuriously acted on by the
false prophets
in their midst, one of whom, Shemaiah
the Nehelamite, actually went the
length of sending back a reply to Jeremiah’s communication,
suggesting
that the Priest Zephaniah should arrest and confine the prophet
as a
madman (Jeremiah 29:24-29); and so the dream kept on haunting
them
that the Captivity would not be long. It is even possible that
Jeremiah’s
prophecy of
had been commissioned to read in
have contributed to keep alive the delusion that after all the
“orthodox”
prophets had been right, and Jeremiah, the “renegade” and
“heretic,” in the
wrong, and that before long the dreary period of exile would
terminate;
and when, as the years went by, Zedekiah seemed to be firmly
established
on his throne, and tidings came from the old country of the
stout resistance
Tyre was offering to the forces of Nebuchadnezzar, as well as
of the
projected alliance of
oppressor, it was scarcely surprising that this delusion should
gather
strength, and that a large part of Ezekiel’s fulminations should be
directed
against it. It was manifestly in close connection with Jeremiah’s
letter to
the exiles, and in support of the policy it advised, that Ezekiel, in the fifth
year of Zedekiah, stepped forth as a prophet of Jehovah.
The
The special task assigned to the prophet, rather than
spontaneously
undertaken by him, was in general to act
as a watchman unto the house of
danger of persevering in his wickedness, and to the righteous man
of the
peril involved
in turning aside from his righteousness.
More particularly the
prophet’s duty should be fourfold:
Ø
to beat down and
dispel forever the foolish hopes that had been excited in
the minds of his fellow exiles as to a speedy deliverance from
the yoke of
Ø
by proclaiming the absolutely
certain and positively near approach of
apostasy and incurable corruption of
the whole theocratic people, as the all-sufficient
justification both of
the judgments that had already overtaken them, and of these
that
were still impending;
Ø
to awaken in them individually
a feeling of sincere repentance, and so
to call out from the ruins of the old a new
the promises which had been given to the old: and when this
was done,
and
Ø
to comfort the
sorrowing community of pious hearts with a prospect of
restoration after the term of seventy years should have been
fulfilled.
In all these respects the mission of Ezekiel was distinct
from the parts which had been
assigned to his renowned predecessors, Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well
as from that
devolved on his illustrious contemporary, Daniel. Whereas Daniel
served as a
prophet of Jehovah to the mighty world empire in which he was a
high and
trusted official, Ezekiel exercised the same function towards the
exiles
from
whereas Isaiah had been summoned to begin his official labors at
the time
when the final overthrow of
10:1-6; 39:6-7), and Jeremiah saw the outbreak of that
awful visitation
which the son of Amoz had foretold, to
Ezekiel fell the task of “personally
introducing the rebellious house of
the
waste of the heathen” (Baumgarten, in Herzog’s ‘Real-Encyclopadie,’
art.
“Ezechiel”). Or, to express
the life problem of Ezekiel more shortly, it
was
his business to interpret for
history, and to lead her forth “through repentance unto
salvation” (Cornill,
‘Der Prophet Ezechiel,’
p. 22).
The first of the above-named parts of the prophet’s
calling he discharged,
first by performing a variety of symbolic actions and rehearsing
others he
had
witnessed, in which were represented the siege of
(ch. 4:1-8;
24:1-14), the miseries to be endured by its inhabitants
(ch.
4:9-17; 5:1-11; 9:7-11; 12:17-20), the burning of the city
(ch.10:1-2) from which (ch.11:23) as already from its temple
the glory of
Jehovah had departed (ch. 10:18),
ending in the exile and captivity of Zedekiah
and
his subjects (ch.12:1-13); next, by delivering a number of parabolic or
allegorical
addresses, in which were depicted
deportation to
compositions (ch. 19:1-14; 21:8-17) and
spirited narrations (Ibid. vs.18-27), in
which the same melancholy events, the approach of Nebuchadnezzar
and the
desolation of Jerusalem, were foretold.
The second he fulfilled by reporting to the elders
who sat before him in his house, the
visions Jehovah had caused him to behold of the image of jealousy
and of the chambers
of
imagery in the temple at
mischief and gave wicked counsel in the city (ch.11:1-21); by
reciting in their
hearing the story of
both in highly figurative (chps.16 and 23) and in plainly prosaic speech
(chps. 20 and 22); and by
reproving both them and the people they
represented for their own insincerity and apostasy (ch.14.).
The third part of his mission he pursued throughout,
never exulting in the lurid
pictures he drew, either of
aiming at awakening in the breasts of his hearers a conviction
of their
guiltiness and a feeling of repentance; and although, while
standing, his endeavors only met with resistance and mostly ended
in
failure, yet there cannot be a doubt that after the city fell his words gained
a
readier access to his listeners’ hearts, and were more successful in
conducting the exiles to a better state of mind.
The fourth and last part of his life work, which
became possible only when the city
had
succumbed and the people’s hearts had been softened, he carried out by giving
them in God’s name the promise of a true Shepherd, who should feed them in
place
of
the false shepherds who had neglected and destroyed them (ch.
34:23); by
assuring them of the final overthrow of, their old adversary
as
of any new combinations that might arise against them (ch.38); by illustrating
the
possibility of their political and religious resuscitation (ch. 37:1-14) as well as of
their ultimate reunion (Ibid. vs.15-20); and finally, by
depicting, in a vision of a
re-erected temple, a re-divided land, and a reorganized worship
(chps.40-48),
the
glories of the future, when, at the close of seventy years, Jehovah
should turn again their captivity
In addition to his mission to
fulfill with reference to the heathen nations by which God’s
ancient people
had
been surrounded and not infrequently opposed, and this he discharged
by
composing the prophecies comprised in Ezekiel 25-32. Some
interpreters regard these predictions as the commencement of the
consolation Ezekiel was directed to offer to humbled
if
the prophet’s thoughts were that
should derive comfort and hope from the fact that, even while
punishing
her,
Jehovah was preparing the way for her recovery by pouring out the
vials of His wrath upon her foes. It is, however, doubtful if
the prophet did
not
mean, along with this at least, to sound a note of warning to these
foreign peoples who had in times past so often harassed
even then exulting in her overthrow, as if the day and hour of their final
triumph over her were at hand; that although Jehovah had visited
her on
account of her iniquities, He certainly did not mean them to
escape, but
rather intended they should read in
of
their own; for “if judgment had begun at
the house of God, what should
the end be” of those that did not belong to, but were the enemies, of
that
house? (I Peter 4:17)
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