Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 16:27
Behold, therefore I have stretched out my hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary [food], and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way.
27. I have stretched ] I stretched and diminished them that hated were ashamed. The reference appears to be to the distant times of the Philistine supremacy in the last days of the Judges.
thine ordinary food] Or, allotted portion, Exo 21:10. The measure is one to which an offended husband might have recourse. Hos 2:9, “therefore will I take back my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof.”
daughters of the Philistines ] i.e. the cities or small Philistine lordships. The clause might explain the phrase “diminished thy portion” her territory was seized by her enemies.
which are ashamed ] were ashamed. Cf. Amo 3:9, “Publish ye in the palaces of Ashdod and say, Assemble ye on the mountains of Samaria, and behold what oppressions are in the midst thereof.” Whether the prophet speaks of Egyptian idolatry in the early times of Israel’s life from historical sources may be uncertain. Such idolatry at this period seems nowhere else spoken of; comp. the list Jdg 10:6. Possibly as he charges the people with idolatry in Egypt (ch. Eze 20:7; Eze 23:3; Eze 23:8; Eze 23:19; Eze 23:21) they may not have shaken themselves clear of it even in the period of the Judges. The connexion of the country with Egypt was at all times very close.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Have diminished thine ordinary food – As a husband lessens the things which minister to the luxury of an unfaithful wife, so did the Lord cut Israel short in consequence of her unfaithfulness.
Daughters – The small cities. The Philistines have left a permanent record of their supremacy in the name of the holy land – Palestine. It was a special shame to be subjected to so small a power as that of Philistia (see Isa 14:29); but the very Philistines were ashamed of Judahs unfaithfulness, and were themselves truer to their false gods than Judah was to Yahweh.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Eze 16:27
I have stretched out My hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee.
The tyranny of Satan
To be delivered unto the will of them that hate us–this seems given as amongst the most oppressive of calamities–the judgment which God, after having long striven with the unrighteousness of a nation, selects from the stores of His retributive appointments. Suppose one person knew another to be his rancorous enemy, bent on doing him every kind of injury, and causing him every kind of pain; it may be that this enemy had left the kingdom and gone to foreign parts, so that it did not seem likely that he would again cross the path of the object of his bitter dislike. But the individual himself may be called to quit his home, and navigate distant seas; and he himself, falling amongst pirates, may find that, though life is spared, liberty is gone, and that he is to be sold as a slave on reaching the land. Who can tell the anguish of his soul? The endearing recollections of his native shores crowd thickly upon him; and he thinks that not only shall he never again meet the friends of his youth, but that he shall drag out the remainder of his days in subjection to some tyrant whose delight will be to torment. Yet perhaps not so! It is a galling thing that he–a freeborn man–should stand in the slave market, exposed for sale like a mere beast of burden; but it may be that, through this degradation, he shall recover all that he has lost. He therefore waits with trembling eagerness to know who his purchaser shall be. On a sudden his eye rests on his ancient enemy; he cannot be mistaken. He knows that form; it will not allow him to doubt. Oh! that he might hide himself! But in vain! His foe has purchased him; he has paid down the demanded price. Tell me! did the man till this moment feel himself utterly wretched? Now, the case would be much the same with a community or nation as with the individual. If a nation must yield to a foreign power, it would desire that it might not be to a power by which it had always been held in dislike, and with which it had often been at war. The galling thing would be, not merely that we were subdued, but that we were subdued by those to whom we knew ourselves to be objects of inveterate hatred, and who cherished against us deep-rooted antipathy. Now, whilst these may be thoroughly accurate illustrations of our text, they are not those which cause the passage to be surveyed under its most instructive aspects. The text, when separated from its local and temporary application, may justly be considered as describing the state to which the human race was reduced when, by the first rebellion against God, it severed the links which had heretofore associated the Creator and the creature. We all admit that through the apostasy of Adam, Satan acquired a dominion over the globe which he never could have held had our first parents remained firm in their allegiance, He became, in the language of St. Paul, The God of this world. If it were to be said of the Jews that God delivered them unto the will of them that hated them, it is easy to be said of man in general that God surrendered him to the hands of the devil. Though never let it be for a moment forgotten that whilst He thus allowed judgment to fall on sin, and caused the disobedient to eat of the fruit of their own ways, He was providing for the emancipation of our race–arranging that His blessed Son should be manifested for the express purpose of destroying the works of the devil. And you are yet to be told the worst feature in this our natural condition. Not only are we slaves, but they that hate us are they that rule over us. There can be nothing darker, if we may judge from the scattered touches of Scripture, than the character of apostate angels. Fallen from the very summit of created glory, their debasement seems to bear proportion with their original eminence; and they move to and fro burning with the fiercest animosity against God, and eager for nothing but to drag down others to share their sufferings and their shame. It may have been that it was hatred to man which first moved Satan to attempt his destruction. That haughty spirit, chafed by his defeat, and furious at his own exile from happiness, could not endure to look on the purities and felicities of Paradise. Man was innocent, and that made him hateful; man was happy, and he was therefore instinctively detested. And if we may speak of man as an object of hatred to Satan whilst he held fast his allegiance, what may we suppose him now–now that, seduced into apostasy, he hath been rescued by the interference of God manifest in the flesh? Was the lofty angel to be passed by and this inferior being taken note of? And was it to be the result of Satans machinations against the inmates of Paradise that a richer than that rich garden was to open to them all its loveliness, and a deeper than the happiness they then enjoyed be placed within reach as their everlasting portion? This surely were sufficient to account for a hatred the most intense and inveterate on the part of the devil toward man! Again, Satan must hate man, so that whosoever is the servant of this chief of fallen angels is accurately in the condition described in our text; and every one of you is that servant, on whom there has not passed the great moral change of conversion. Oh! that we could bring all that imagery which was furnished by the slave market, or the horrors of an invasion, and force those who are yet indifferent to religion to recognise in it a delineation of themselves! He who really feels that the devil is both his master and his enemy is not far from embracing Christ as his Redeemer and his friend. But it in no degree alters the fact of your being ruled by one who hates you that you are blind to your condition, and not even conscious of being ruled at all: it does but make that condition all the worse. Why, suppose that when the inveterate enemy has entered the slave market, and possessed himself of the wretched being who actually quails before his look;–suppose he should speak soothingly to his victim, easing his chains as he leads him away, promising him abundance and enjoyment, and all because he knows a generous friend of the poor captive is waiting on the road, and will be attracted by a cry of disquietude or a shriek of distress;–suppose this, and you suppose precisely the policy of Satan, who, if he can only prevent a man from feeling that uneasiness which would prompt an appeal to the Saviour, is quite content to defer the season for giving swing to all his malice and wreaking all his vengeance. But that season will come. It is little, it is nothing to say that imagination is utterly incompetent to the giving to such season its due measure of horror. We pretend not to lift the veil which shrouds from human gaze the future, with its direful retribution. But we may venture to say that in the brief description of our text is condensed whatever tongue can express, or thought compass, of the wretchedness which must be the portion of the lost. We do not attempt to carry the description further; we have adventured thus far only in hopes that the terrors of the future may scare some of those who, if they were this instant to die, must have these terrors for their own. Why shrink ye from our picture of the man sold to be a slave–a slave to his bitter enemy, who has long sought opportunity of indulging all the vengeance of a fierce and implacable nature? Wherefore are ye moved by this imagined wretchedness? Wherefore is the cheek pale, and wherefore the blood cold, as you fancy that you hear the clanking chain and the stifled cry, and behold the oppressor grinding down the captive? Wherefore is it? Because there is a consciousness which you cannot repress, of being in the power of one who hates you. This is supreme misery in itself, and such a finishing stroke to all others as leaves nothing for imagination to add. It is, indeed, to one who hates you that you are making yourselves slaves in following the course which the God of this world prescribes to the children of disobedience. That the devil hates you witness what he has already done to make mankind wretched. Witness a devastated earth; witness every grave; witness every tear. He was a murderer from the beginning; and to his foul machinations we owe all our woe. Oh! shall it then be that you will so live that, when you come to die, there will remain nothing but that you go down to the prison house of woe, to experience all the terribleness of the saying–a saying from which the most hardened amongst you instinctivley recoils when it is exhibited as brought to pass on earth;–the saying that when God has a vast vengeance to inflict, and a vast retribution to exact, He appoints for the guilty–what:–that they be delivered unto the evil of them that hate them? (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 27. Have diminished thine ordinary] chukkech means here the household provision made for a wife-food, clothing, and money.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Behold; open thine eyes, thou secure and foolish adulteress, see what hath been done against thee, and consider it is for thy lewdness.
I have stretched out my hand; I have chastised and punished already in some measure.
Over thee; it may be read, against thee. In like phrase Isa 5:25; 9:12,17,21; 10:4, expresseth the punishing of this people.
Diminished thine ordinary food; abated of that plentiful allowance a kind Husband made, and an unfaithful wife abused: it refers to scarcity and penury, with which God did punish idolatrous Israel, and this more than once.
Delivered thee; stirred up first such to fight against them, and then gave victory to their arms, yet they might use the conquered as they pleased; sent them into captivity into an enemys land, where they that hated them ruled over them, and no doubt such would satisfy their own lusts on these captives.
The daughters of the Philistines: either it is a Hebraism, the daughters of the Philistines for the whole nation, or else some particular cities and principalities of the Philistines, which quarrelled with and prevailed against the Jews, when God had been so provoked by the sins of the Jews. Idolaters, but in this honester than the Jews; they were constant to their own god, and did not, as the Jews, lewdly go a whoring with every idol they saw.
Which are ashamed of thy lewd way; will therefore reprove, and teach thee some modesty and chastity.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
27. The consequent judgments,which, however, proved of no avail in reforming the people (Isa 9:13;Jer 5:3).
delivered thee unto . . .Philistines (2Ki 16:6;2Ch 28:18; 2Ch 28:19).
ashamed of thy lewd wayThePhilistines were less wanton in idolatry, in that they did not, likeIsrael, adopt the idols of every foreign country but were contentwith their own (Eze 16:57;Jer 2:11).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Behold, therefore I have stretched out my hand over thee,…. His chastising and correcting hand, to show his resentment at their sins, and bring them to a sense of them, and repentance for them:
and have diminished thine ordinary [food]; their stated allowances, the common mercies and blessings of life they had been indulged with, but now were lessened; and particularly a famine was brought upon them, as well as they were deprived of other favours for their sins; God dealing with them as husbands with their wanton wives, who keep them to stricter allowance, and closer confinement, in order to check and tame them:
and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee, the daughters of the Philistines; which perhaps may refer to the times of Ahaz, when the Philistines invaded the cities of the low country, and of the south of Judah, and took many of their cities, and brought Judah low,
2Ch 28:18;
which are ashamed of thy lewd way: of their inconstancy in changing their religion, relinquishing the worship of the true God, and embracing that of others, when they abode by their ancient religion and worship, Jer 2:10. The Targum is,
“to whom if I had sent my prophets, they would have been ashamed;”
see Mt 11:21.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Here God reproves the hardness of the Jews because admonition did not render them wise. The common proverb aptly says, “fools grow wise only by the rod;” and when their obstinacy is such that the rod does no good, their faults are indeed desperate. Hence God complains, when he had chastised the Jews, that even this did not profit them, for they were so perverse that they did not apply their minds to reflect upon their sins. For God’s blows ought to rouse us up, so that our faults previously hidden ought to be brought to light and knowledge; but when we champ the bit, and are not affected by the blows, then our abandoned disposition is made manifest. Now the Prophet condemns this obstinacy in the Jews: I have extended, says he, my hand over thee. He now enumerates two kinds of chastisement, first, when God deprived the Jews of the abundance of the possessions by which they were enriched; and then because he had subjected them to the lust of their enemies. Those who translate justification as Jerome does, depart from the sense of the Prophet: חק, chek, signifies, indeed, a statute and edict, and he explains it of the law. But how will this agree with the Prophet’s retaining the simile already used? for he compares God to a husband. God now pronounces that he had taken away their appointed portion, when he saw himself a laughingstock through his impure wife; that is, what he had intended for both food and clothing: for husbands spend a fixed sum on their wives in food, clothing, and ornament. And God previously recounted, among other things, that what he had conferred upon the Jews they had spent in superstitions. Hence, for this reason, he now says, I have taken away their allotted portion, that is, what I had assigned to them. This was one part of the chastisement: for he compares the fruitfulness of the land and other advantages to the portion which the husband assigns to the wife.
Now the other chastisement follows — their being harassed by their enemies; for not only did the Jews find themselves encompassed by the Philistines, but they were delivered up and bound to slavery, as Moses says, (Deu 32:30,) How, then, could one vanquish ten, and ten chase a thousand, unless we had been shut up in his hand? He shows, therefore, that our enemies are never our superiors unless God enslaves us to them. But those who do not calmly subject themselves to God’s command, but are refractory, are delivered into the enemy’s hand, that their contumacy may be subdued by severe tyranny. Now we understand what the Prophet means by this verse: he enlarges upon the people’s wickedness in not turning to God, though they felt by clear experience that they were under a curse. They ought to examine their lives, to groan before God, to acknowledge their fault, and to beg for pardon: since no feeling was awakened, the Prophet gathers that their obstinacy was desperate. This passage is worthy of our notice, that we may be attentive to God’s chastisements. Whenever God even raises his finger and threatens us, let us know that he is anxious for our safety: hence in our turn let us rouse ourselves and implore his pity, and especially let us repent of our sins by which we see his anger to have been enflamed. (Jer 2:30.) But if we remain slothful, we see that no excuse for us remains, since God elsewhere complains that he is trifled with, when he has chastised his children in vain. Here, נפש, nepish, the soul is used for lust or desire, as I have explained it. It follows —
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(27) Diminished thine ordinary food.This cutting short of the power and prosperity of Israel was a discipline of correction designed to bring her to a consciousness of her sin.
The daughters of the Philistines, i.e., their cities, according to the figurative language of the chapter, and indeed the common figurative language of Scripture. Philistia was but a small power in the south-west corner of Palestine, yet from the time of the Judges down through the whole period of the monarchy, they were the persistent foes of Israel. During the time immediately before Samuel, they held nearly the entire land in subjection, and although subdued by David, they became troublesome again in the times of the later kings (see 2Ch. 26:7; 2Ch. 28:18), and are often spoken of not only by the earlier prophets, Isaiah and Amos, but also by Jeremiah (Jer. 25:20; Jer. 47:1; Jer. 47:4), Ezekiel (Eze. 25:15-16), and Zechariah Zec. 9:6).
Ashamed of thy lewd way.The Philistines, true to their own false gods, despised the Israelites for their unfaithfulness to Jehovah. It is the old but ever new story of the heathen repelled from the truth by the unworthiness of its professed followers.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
27. I have stretched have diminished thine ordinary food hate thee Literally, I stretched diminished their allotted food hated thee. “That is, her fixed or allotted support was lessened, just as an insulted husband would take something from the wife’s stipend.” Orelli. “The reference seems to be to the distant times of Philistine supremacy in the last days of the judges.” Davidson.
The daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way Even the Philistines are ashamed of this harlot (Amo 3:9). Even the cities of Philistia do not encourage such a mixed religious cult as this “holy city” of Jerusalem, and this is seen to explain why so much of Israelitish territory is controlled by Philistia.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“Behold therefore I have stretched out my hand over you, and have diminished your allotted portion, and delivered you into the will of those who hate you, the daughters of the Philistines, who are ashamed of your lewd ways.”
Compare here 2Ch 28:18; Isa 9:12 which demonstrate that the Philistines were an ever present menace, taking advantage, when they dared, of any weakness. They occupied many towns of Judah ‘and dwelt there’. The extent of Israel’s land was becoming less and less. Thus when Jerusalem rebelled against Babylon it would again give them their opportunity which they took (Eze 25:15), for which they would eventually be punished by God (Eze 25:15-17; Jer 25:20; Jer 47:1; Zep 2:4-5; Zec 9:6).
So as a result of Philistine activity their ‘allotted portion’ had been further reduced, and life became a burden. We have an example of this from the Taylor Prism where Sennacherib says of Hezekiah ‘His towns which I had despoiled I cut off from his land, giving them to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, Padi, king of Ekron, and Sillibel, king of Gaza, and so reduced his land.’ All these were Philistine kings. But God here points out that the Philistines were more righteous than Jerusalem for they despised the flagrant behaviour of Jerusalem in welcoming many gods. Even the ungodly Philistines were mainly faithful to their own gods.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Eze 16:27 Behold, therefore I have stretched out my hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary [food], and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way.
Ver. 27. I have stretched out my hand over thee. ] To cut thee short. as Hos 2:9
And have diminished thine ordinary food.
The daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
I have stretched out My hand, &c. Reference to Petit. (Exo 7:19, &c.) App-92.
over = against.
ordinary food = allowance. Referring to food as measured out to captives or slaves.
will = desire. Hebrew. nephesh. App-13.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
I have: Eze 14:9, Isa 5:25, Isa 9:12, Isa 9:17
and have: Deu 28:48-57, Isa 3:1, Hos 2:9-12
thine: Chukkach “thy portion;” the household provision of a wife – food, clothes, and money.
delivered: The Jews, under Manasseh, and the succeeding kings of Judah, made the temple itself the scene of their open and abominable idolatries, in addition to all their idol temples! which appears to be meant by “the eminent place,” and “highplaces in every street,” Eze 16:24. Allured by the prosperity of the Egyptians, they also connected themselves with them, and joined in their multiplied and abominable idolatries. And when Jehovah punished them by wars and famines, and by the Philistines, whose daughters are represented as ashamed of their enormous idolatries, instead of being amended, they formed alliances with the Assyrians, and worshipped their gods, and they even followed every idol which was worshipped between Canaan and Chaldea. Eze 16:37, Eze 23:22, Eze 23:25, Eze 23:28, Eze 23:29, Eze 23:46, Eze 23:47, Psa 106:41, Jer 34:21, Rev 17:16
daughters: or, cities, 2Ki 24:2, 2Ch 28:18, 2Ch 28:19, Isa 9:12
which: Eze 16:47, Eze 16:57, Eze 5:6, Eze 5:7
Reciprocal: 2Sa 1:20 – Philistines Jer 2:33 – hast Eze 6:14 – will I Eze 16:46 – her daughters Amo 4:6 – and want Luk 15:14 – arose Act 26:1 – stretched
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Eze 16:27. Some of the nations with which Judah committed spiritual fornication (idolatry) were suffered to torment her. The Philistines are named here in that connection, and an account of it may be read in 2 Chronicles 28 : IS, 19. Ashamed of thy letod way was true, for even the Philistines did not go to the extremes in adopting gods foreign to their own nation (See Jer 2:11) that Judah did.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Eze 16:27-29. Behold, therefore Open thine eyes, thou secure and foolish adulteress, see what has been done against thee, and consider it is for thy lewdness. I have stretched out my hand over thee I have chastised and punished thee already in some measure. And have diminished thine ordinary food Have taken away some of thy opulence, and abridged thee of many necessaries and conveniences. And delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee Have excited them to make war against thee, have given them victory over thee, and delivered thee into their power. The daughters of the Philistines This and what follows was effected in the reign of King Ahaz, 2Ch 28:16; 2Ch 28:18. The daughters of the Philistines are here put for the Philistines, as the daughters of Samaria, Sodom, and Syria stand for the people of those places, to carry on the allegory and comparison between them and Jerusalem, being all of them described as so many lewd women, prostituting themselves to idols, Eze 16:41. By the same metaphor Samaria and Sodom are called sisters to Jerusalem, Eze 16:46. Which are ashamed of thy lewd way Who have not had the wickedness to imitate thy evil deeds; for they have not forsaken the religion of their country as you Jews have done, nor have been so fond of foreign idolatries. Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians The Jews courted the alliance of their two potent neighbours, the Egyptians and Assyrians, as it served their present turn; and, to ingratiate themselves with them, served their idols, Jer 2:18; Jer 2:36. This is particularly recorded of Ahaz, 2Ch 28:23. Thou hast multiplied thy fornication in Canaan unto Chaldea The sense is, thou hast defiled thyself with all the idolatries of the heathen, beginning with those that were practised by the former inhabitants of Canaan, and, by degrees, learning new kinds of idolatry, derived from distant countries, such as Chaldea was reckoned. It is said unto Chaldea, to signify that they learned and practised the idolatries of Chaldea before they were carried captives thither.