Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 23:45
And the righteous men, they shall judge them after the manner of adulteresses, and after the manner of women that shed blood; because they [are] adulteresses, and blood [is] in their hands.
45 49. Judgment on the adulterous women
45. the righteous ] righteous men. The prophet carries on the figure of the punishment of adulteresses. They are judged by righteous men. He has not in his mind the nations, the actual executors of judgment in the case of Israel. The word “righteous” throws no light on Isa 49:24.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The judgment to be executed by the hands of their allies.
Eze 23:45
The righteous men – Or, righteous men. The allies are so called as the instruments of Gods righteous judgments.
Eze 23:48
To cease – Because they are stricken and consumed. Compare marginal reference.
All women – i. e., all countries.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 45. And the righteous men] anashim tsaddikim. The Chaldeans, thus called because they are appointed by God to execute judgment on these criminals.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Righteous men; men that kept the law of their God, for some such there were about Aholibah herself; or prophets, such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and some few more: or else the Babylonians, who in the present controversy between Jerusalem and its king on the one part, and Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians on the other part, were comparatively the righteous men.
After the manner of adulteresses; which was, to be put to death by stoning, Lev 20:10; and murder was punished with death.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
45. the righteous mentheChaldeans; the executioners of God’s righteous vengeance (Eze16:38), not that they were “righteous” in themselves(Hab 1:3; Hab 1:12;Hab 1:13).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And the righteous men,…. Some understand this of the prophets, who were really righteous men; and foretold the righteous judgments of God that should come upon the idolatrous Jews, which was a judging them: others, of righteous men in general, who will one and all agree that persons guilty of such crimes ought to suffer the punishment adequate to them, and usually inflicted on such; but rather the Babylonians are here meant; who, though not righteous in themselves, or truly so, yet were so in comparison of the wicked Jews, who had a divine revelation, and knew better than to commit such idolatries; whereas these were Gentiles that knew not God, nor his will. So the Targum,
“and righteous men in respect (or comparison) of them;”
that is, of Israel and Judah; and they may be also called so, because they were the executioners of justice, the instruments of inflicting God’s righteous judgments on the Jews; and, among other things, for their perfidy and treachery to them; so that they would appear just in the eyes of other nations for treating them as they did:
they shall judge them after the manner of adulteresses, and after the manner of women that shed blood; that is, according to the law concerning such persons; and shall condemn them to suffer the punishment denounced on such, and shall execute it on them:
because they are adulteresses, the blood is in their hands; are guilty, not only of corporeal uncleanness, but of spiritual adultery; that is, idolatry; and of the murder of their prophets and righteous men, and even of their own children sacrificed to idols; than which nothing can be more unnatural and barbarous for women to do.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(45) The righteous men.That is, men to whom the judgment of righteousness is committed.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
45. Righteous men; they shall judge them As righteous men would execute lawful punishment upon such adulteresses, stoning them with stones (Lev 20:10; Deu 22:22; Deu 22:24), so a company of God’s executioners shall come upon Jerusalem and Samaria and they shall be removed (literally, tossed to and fro), spoiled, stoned, destroyed with fire and sword (Eze 5:2; Eze 6:4-10; Eze 16:40-41). The result shall be a world-wide warning against idolatry and its complete extermination in Israel (Eze 23:48-49). The influence of this chapter is seen throughout all Jewish literature. Take for example, this pathetic extract from the Hebrew Divan of R. Judah Halevy:
O cup of woe! Give pause! Give breathing space!
My veins and soul are full of bitterness. I think on Aholah
I drink thy cup; On Aholibah then I drain its dregs.
O Zion, “perfect beauty,” grace and love
Of old thou bindest on thee Of sages, too, are bound up in thy life,
These gladden in thy weal, these wail thy woe,
These weep thy ruin. Still from captive pit
Toward thee they yearn, and toward thy sacred gates
Each from his place they bow them down in prayer.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“And righteous men, they will judge them with the judgment of adulteresses and with the judgment of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses and blood is in their hands.”
God now appeals to all who are righteous to pass judgment on them. All who think truly will join with Him in condemning them as guilty of adultery and blood guiltiness, for they have clearly shown themselves to be guilty. Some see this as referring to the righteous remnant of Israel, but it may equally apply to all righteous men, of all truly moral men.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Eze 23:45. And the righteous men, &c. The Chaldeans are called righteous, because they came to inflict upon lewd women the punishments they had deserved; and not now to entice them to idolatry: righteous, because they inflicted righteous judgments. The following expressions allude to the common punishments of adulteresses under the law. See Lev. x, &c.
REFLECTIONS.1st, Israel and Judah, sister kingdoms, the daughters of one mother, sprung from the same original stock, are here considered under the character of two infamous women, Aholah and Aholibah.
1. They were early debauched by idolatry; even in Egypt they began to transgress, and lost their virgin honour.
2. Though they were God’s espoused ones, and he was pleased to take them for his own, and to raise them up a numerous offspring, yet they treacherously departed from him, and played the harlot. Aholah, which is Samaria, signifies her tabernacle, she having first forsook God’s tabernacle, and set up her own worship at Dan and Beth-el. She is called the elder, or greater, the kingdom of Israel consisting of ten tribes. Though she had revolted from the royal house of David, God still termed her his; but her abominable idolatries soon made a fatal and entire separation. She doated on her lovers, particularly on her Assyrian neighbours; contracted alliances with them; admired their idols, their worship, and military forces, which were so richly dressed; and placed on them the dependence which she withdrew from God. Yet she persisted also in the worship of the gods of Egypt, the beginning of her apostacy, and served the calves in Beth-el and Dan, as well as the newly-introduced deities of the Assyrians. Note; Whatever we doat upon becomes our idol; and God will not with impunity suffer us to give the honour, love, and homage, due to him, unto another.
3. For their apostacy, Samaria and Israel were destroyed. God made those on whom they had doated, and whose idols they served, the instruments of his vengeance. They discovered her nakedness, stripped her of all her treasures, led her children captives, and utterly ruined the kingdom; executing God’s judgments upon her; so that she became famous among women. Her crimes and her dreadful end were the general subject of conversation in the neighbouring lands, and afforded an awful warning not to imitate her sins, lest the same plagues should follow. Note; (1.) Those whom we have made our tempters, God in righteous judgment often makes our tormentors. (2.) They who render themselves famous by wickedness, will by God’s vengeance be made monuments of wretchedness.
2nd, Far from taking warning by Samaria’s fate, Jerusalem not only copied, but exceeded her abominations. She is called Aholibah, or, my tent or tabernacle is in her; God having chosen Zion for his peculiar abode; and this exceedingly aggravated the guilt of her apostacy.
1. She took the same way to defile herself which her sister had done, doting upon the Assyrians; admiring the dress and military appearance of their captains and soldiers; courting their alliance; depending on them for protection; increasing their idols beyond what Samaria had done; falling in love with the very pictures of their deified heroes, who were pourtrayed in rich attire on the walls of their temples, and sending messengers to Chaldea to form a league, and adopt their idols and worship. And no sooner had she taken the Babylonians to her adulterous bed, and defiled herself with their idols, than she was alienated from them, as lust and loathing often succeed each other. She rebelled under Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, 2Ki 1:18 and cast off the alliance with Babylon; and, calling to mind with pleasure the idolatries of the Egyptians, returned to play the harlot with them, doting on these paramours, as better suiting her insatiable lewdness, openly discovering her whoredoms and her nakedness, as a brazen prostitute hardened against shame. Note; (1.) Inordinate appetites indulged only grow more fickle and craving. (2.) Long habit of sin gives effrontery to the lewd, and they dare avow and boast of what others blush to name, and tremble but to think of.
2. God saw and abhorred such shameless idolatry, and his mind was alienated from her, as it was from her sister. He cast off Judah also from her relation to him, and left her, as a wife divorced, to all the miseries which must ensue when his protection was withdrawn. Note; They who provoke God to cast them from his favour, have only themselves to blame for the miseries which follow.
3rdly, We have,
1. Judgment pronounced on Jerusalem for her crimes. Those lovers on whom she doted are appointed to be her destroyers: their armies, with a vast train of carriages, at God’s command shall come up, besiege and destroy the cities, and lay waste the country. As a jealous husband, enraged with an adulterous wife, God will visit them in fury; the Chaldeans shall cut off their nose and ears, literally disfiguring them to render them loathsome, or destroying their king, princes, and priests, represented by these; and slay all the remnant of the people, except those who, stripped of all their ornaments, even to their clothes, shall be driven naked, as slaves, into a miserable captivity; and the few houses in Jerusalem which have stood the siege unhurt shall now be burnt with fire. Delivered into the hands of those they hated, and against whom they had rebelled, they must expect no favour or pity: they will deal hatefully with them; treat them with rigour and severity; plunder all their possessions; leave them naked and bare; and in the greatness of their punishment the greatness of their crimes will appear.
2. God’s wrath, evidently seen in their ruin, will make their sufferings still more bitter. Though he employs the Chaldeans as instruments, he says, I will do these things unto thee; and most righteous will he appear in his judgments: their flagrant idolatries justify his severest strokes of vengeance. Since they walked in Samaria’s ways, they deserve to drink of her cup full of fury, a cup of drunkenness, sorrow, astonishment, and desolation; the very dregs of which they must suck out; and, exposed to the scorn and derision of the nations around them, for madness and vexation at their wretched state, shall pluck off their own breasts, as men in a fit of rage and despair. Because they have forgotten God, which is the source of all their wickedness, and cast him behind their backs, despising his authority, and rejecting his government, he will lay upon them the punishment of their idolatries and lewdness, and make these to cease from among them; so that the remnant who are brought through this fiery furnace shall never return to idolatry again, as they never more did after the captivity. Note; (1.) They who share with the wicked in their sins may expect to share with them in their plagues. (2.) The cup of drunkenness will ever prove a cup of sorrow. (3.) They who by lewdness have made themselves vile, justly deserve to have their abominations discovered, and to be made the derision of every beholder.
4thly, After the account given of the wickedness of Judah and Israel, God appeals to the prophet, whether he ought any longer to plead for them, or whether he ought not in God’s name to condemn them to the death that they had deserved.
1. He must declare unto them their abominations; and they were exceeding sinful.
[1.] Gross idolatry, which is spiritual adultery, the breach of the covenant between God and them.
[2.] The most unnatural murders, even the sacrificing of their own children to Moloch; so besotted were they, and mad upon their idols.
[3.] Horrid profanation of God’s sanctuary. With the blood of innocents fresh upon them, that very day, with unhallowed feet and polluted lips, they dared appear before God in his temple, as if designing to affront him, or as if they thought with hypocritical services to impose upon him; and this they did in the midst of his house, setting up their idols even there, or without shame daring to appear among the foremost worshippers.
[4.] They profaned the sabbaths, not only by servile works, or taking their pleasures on that holy day; but by the worship of their idols, and the horrid sacrifices of their own children.
[5.] They courted the alliances of the heathen nations, the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans; received their ambassadors in great state and splendour, as a harlot attires and paints herself to meet her paramour; made them a noble entertainment; used the sacred incense to perfume the room, and the oil to anoint them, as a mark of peculiar honour; or perhaps, as some suspect, these were designed for the ambassador’s use, to be employed in their idols’ service. A great concourse of people also assembled to grace their public entrance; a multitude at ease, who flattered themselves that such great alliances must needs conduce to the security of the state.
And besides the Jewish populace, a number of Sabeans from the desert swelled the cavalcade; or of drunkards, as in the margin of our bibles, to drink healths, and huzza on this auspicious event; dressed up with bracelets on their hands, and crowns upon their heads, that they might make the most splendid appearance. God in vain admonished them of the folly, sin, and danger of such connections: they were grown old in adultery, and hardened against reproof. The alliance was concluded: Samaria first, and Jerusalem afterwards, as lewd and abandoned women, gladly received them, and joined in their idolatries. Note; (1.) The affectation of being on familiar terms with the great has been often a dangerous snare to men’s souls. (2.) They who desert God for human confidences, however smiling their undertakings at first may appear, will find in the issue a lie in their right hand.
2. He must denounce against them God’s wrath. The righteous men, they shall judge them; which some understand of the prophets of God, who foretold their doom, and passed sentence upon them; though others more probably apply it to the Babylonians, who were comparatively more righteous than they, and were appointed of God as the executioners of his righteous vengeance. Their crimes were capital, adulteries and murders manifold, and their punishment accordingly. A company at God’s command, the Chaldean army, shall come, and seize and spoil them. Some shall be stoned, slain with the engines that battered the city; others dispatched with the sword; their sons and daughters murdered in their presence; their city and every house burnt with fire. Thus, by the utter ruin of the kingdom, the worship of idols should be utterly destroyed, and never more be restored; and all who beheld their ruin should be warned against their sins. With such wrath and destruction should their lewdness be recompensed, and the burden of their guilt and punishment be heavily laid upon them; so that if they will not be taught any other way, by their sufferings at least they shall be made to know that God is the Lord, true to his threatenings, and almighty to accomplish them. Note; (1.) The falls of others should be our warning. (2.) However sinners may flatter themselves, a day of recompence is near, when they will receive the wrath which they have provoked.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Eze 23:45 And the righteous men, they shall judge them after the manner of adulteresses, and after the manner of women that shed blood; because they [are] adulteresses, and blood [is] in their hands.
Ver. 45. And the righteous men. ] So the Chaldees are called, because less wicked than the Jews (as the Scythians were better than the Athenians, and now the Indians than the Spaniards), and because they executed the righteous sentence of God upon those flagitious Jews.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
the righteous . . . shall judge. Reference to Pentateuch (Lev 20:10). App-92.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
the righteous: The Chaldeans, so called, because appointed by God to execute his judgment on these criminals. Eze 23:36, Jer 5:14, Hos 6:5, Zec 1:6, Joh 8:3-7
after the manner of adulteresses: Eze 23:37-39, Eze 16:38-43, Lev 20:10, Lev 21:9, Deu 22:21-24, Joh 8:7
because: Eze 23:37
Reciprocal: Num 14:33 – bear Deu 22:22 – General Eze 16:32 – General Eze 20:4 – judge them Eze 22:2 – bloody city Eze 23:24 – I will set Eze 23:29 – deal Eze 23:35 – therefore Eze 24:8 – I have set Hos 2:2 – Plead with Joh 8:41 – We be Rev 2:22 – and them Rev 17:16 – and naked
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Eze 23:45. These women were guilty of spiritual adultery (idolatry) and of literal bloodshed. Hence righteous men were to judge them according to their just deserts. This does not mean the men would be righteous as to their personal character, but in executing Gods judgment against the women they would be doing right.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Eze 23:45-49. And the righteous men, they shall judge them All just judges, yea, all men that have any sense of common honesty, will condemn their conduct, and pronounce them deserving of the punishment of adulteresses and murderers. Or, as others interpret the words, As upright magistrates used to condemn and execute judgment upon adulterers and murderers, so did the prophets, in the name of God, denounce sentence against Jerusalem and Samaria; and even the heathen princes, who executed the sentence, were more righteous than the apostate sufferers. Scott. I will bring a company upon them, &c. This is spoken of the Babylonians, who were to plunder and carry away a great part of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And the company shall stone them with stones, and despatch them with swords Stoning was the punishment of adulterers, and putting to death with the sword that of murderers. The Babylonian army might be properly said to be the executioners of both these punishments upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, as, without doubt, they killed many of them during the siege by the stones they cast from their engines, and slew many by the sword when they took the city by assault. Thus will I cause lewdness to cease, &c. Thus will I put an end to idolatry in the Jewish nation. That all women may be taught not to do after your lewdness That is, that all nations may dread defiling themselves with the guilt of your idolatries. For as the kingdoms of Israel and Judah are here described as two women, therefore, by all women here must be meant all nations. And ye shall bear the sins of your idols Ye shall bear the punishment due to your sins of idolatry. To bear sin, or iniquity, is an expression often used in the Scriptures to signify undergoing the punishment due to it.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
23:45 And the righteous men, they shall judge them after the manner of {s} adulteresses, and after the manner of women that shed blood; because they [are] adulteresses, and blood [is] in their hands.
(s) That is worthy of death, Eze 16:38 .