Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 44:23
And they shall teach my people [the difference] between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.
23, 24. General duties of the priests towards the people. They shall teach the people to distinguish between the holy and the common, between the clean and the unclean, cf. Eze 22:26; Lev 10:10; Hag 2:11; Mal 2:7.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Eze 44:23
They shall teach My people the difference between the holy and profane.
Steering between the rocks
I. You can judge of the moral character of any amusement by its healthful result, or by its baleful reaction. In proportion as a ship is swift, it wants a strong helmsman; in proportion as a horse is gay, it wants a stout driver; and people of exuberant nature will do well to look at the reaction of all their amusements. If an amusement sends you home at night nervous, so that you cannot sleep, and you rise up in the morning, not because you are slept out, but because your duty drags you from your slumbers, you have been where you ought not to have been. If any amusement sends you home longing for a life of romance and thrilling adventure, love that takes poison and shoots itself, moonlight adventures and hairbreadth escapes, you may depend upon it that you are the sacrificed victim of unsanctified pleasure. Our recreations are intended to build us up; and if they pull us down as to our moral or as to our physical strength, you may come to the conclusion that they are in the class spoken of by my text as obnoxious.
II. Those amusements are wrong which lead you into expenditure beyond your means. The table has been robbed to pay the club. The champagne has cheated the childrens wardrobe. Excursions that in a day make a tour around a whole months wages; ladies whose lifetime business it is to go shopping; bets on horses and a box at the theatre have their counterparts in uneducated children, bankruptcies that shock the money market and appall the Church, and that send drunkenness staggering across the richly figured carpet of the mansion, and dashing into the mirror, and drowning out the carol of music with the whooping of bloated sons come home to break their old mothers heart. When men go into amusements that they cannot afford, they first borrow what they cannot earn, and then they steal what they cannot borrow. First, they go into embarrassment, and then into lying, and then into theft; and when a man gets as far on as that, he does not stop short of the penitentiary. There is not a prison in the land where there are not victims of unsanctified amusements.
III. Those are unchristian amusements which become the chief business of a mans life. Your sports are merely means to an end. They are alleviations and helps. The arm of toil is the only arm strong enough to bring up the bucket out of the deep well of pleasure. Amusement is only the bower where business and philanthropy rest while on their way to stirring achievements. Amusements are merely the vines that grow about the anvil of toil, and the blossoming of the hammers. Alas for the man who spends his life in laboriously doing nothing, his days in hunting up lounging places and loungers, his nights in seeking out some gas-lighted foolery! The amusements of life are merely the orchestra playing while the great tragedy of life plunges through its five acts–infancy, childhood, manhood, old age, and death. Then exit the last chance for mercy. Enter the overwhelming realities of an eternal world!
IV. Those amusements are wrong which lead into bad company. If you belong to an organisation where you have to associate with the intemperate, with the unclean, with the abandoned, however well they may be dressed, in the name of God quit it. They will despoil your nature. They will undermine your moral character. They will drop you when you are destroyed. They will give not one cent to support your children when you are dead. They will weep not one tear at your burial. They will chuckle over your damnation.
V. Any amusement that gives you a distaste for domestic life is bad. How many bright domestic circles have been broken up by sinful pleasuring! The father went off, the mother went off, the child went off. There are today the fragments before me of a great many blasted households. Oh, if you have wandered away, I would like to charm you back by the sound of that one word home. Do you not know that you have but little more time to give to domestic welfare? Do you not see, father, that your children are soon to get out into the world, and all the influence for good you are to have over them you are to have now? Death will break in on your conjugal relations, and alas, if you have to stand over the grave of one who perished from your neglect! (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
They shall teach; by their place they were bound to instruct the people, Lev 10:10,11; this was part of their work, to read the law, expound it, and resolve questions arising about it. They were to be, as ministers ought now to be, apt to teach, 1Ti 3:2.
Between the holy and profane; whether legally and ceremonially so, or morally and really so, that they might keep the people from pollutions.
Between the unclean and the clean; the same thing in other words, only this seems to require priests patient instructing, till the people have learned to difference unclean and clean.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the profane,…. Persons and things; not in a ceremonial, nor merely in a moral, but in an evangelical sense, between truth and error; between the doctrine which is according to godliness, and that which is corrupt and unsound, and eats as cloth a canker; between holy worship, and superstition; between holy duties, and profane and Heathen rites and ceremonies; and between persons sanctified by the Spirit and grace of God, and unconverted ones:
and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean; impure persons, doctrines, and manners, and those which are agreeable to the word of God; the sense is, that they shall take pains to instruct persons in the knowledge of divine things, and shall do it truly, faithfully, and sincerely.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
23, 24. The priests shall teach the people the difference between “the holy and the common,” that they may know the inner meaning of their symbolic ritual (Eze 22:26; Hag 2:11-14), administer justice (compare Eze 45:17; Deu 17:8-12; Deu 21:5), keep to Jehovah’s laws, “and hallow my sabbaths.” (Compare Eze 20:12-21; Eze 22:8.)
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and cause them to discern between the clean and the unclean. And in a controversy they shall stand to judge. In accordance with my judgments shall they judge it. And they will keep my laws and my statutes in all my appointed feasts, and they shall hallow my sabbaths.”
The Zadokite priests would be responsible for trying cases in ‘courts’ of law. A proper judicial system with a recognised authority would be vital immediately on returning to the land. They would also be responsible for showing the people the difference between clean and unclean, which would have become blurred during the exile (compare Eze 22:26; Lev 10:10-11; Lev 11:47; Deu 33:10), and for the proper observance of the sacred feasts and of all sabbaths. Thus they had to regulate the religious life of the people in their new beginning.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Eze 44:23. And cause them to discern And declare to them what is the difference. Houbigant.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Eze 44:23 And they shall teach my people [the difference] between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.
Ver. 23. And they shall teach. ] Ministers must be able and “apt to teach.” 1Ti 3:2 Tit 1:9 Act 20:28
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
And they shall teach, &c. Reference to Pentateuch (Lev 10:11). App-92.
profane = common.
them. The 1611 edition of the Authorized Version reads “men”.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Eze 22:26, Lev 10:10, Lev 10:11, Deu 33:10, Hos 4:6, Mic 3:9-11, Zep 3:4, Hag 2:11-13, Mal 2:6-9, 2Ti 2:24, 2Ti 2:25, Tit 1:9-11
Reciprocal: Gen 7:2 – not Lev 11:47 – General Lev 13:3 – shall look Lev 14:57 – teach Lev 15:31 – Thus shall Isa 52:11 – touch Jer 15:19 – take Eze 42:20 – a separation Eze 48:15 – a profane Zec 7:3 – speak Col 4:17 – Take
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Eze 44:23. Holy and profane differ from each other in that the latter means only the thing is temporal or
earthly and not religious. It does not mean necessarily that it is something wrong morally. The sons of Aaron failed to distinguish between fire that was obtained from some ordinary (profane) human source, and that which was on the altar which was holy because it came from God (Lev 9:24).
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Part of the priests’ job would be to teach the people the difference between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean. The people would learn this difference as they observed the distinctions prescribed here and as the priests explained them to them (cf. Eze 22:26; Lev 10:10-11; Lev 11:47; Deu 33:10).
"The priests were by their lives to be examples of separateness; their ritual holiness was intended to promote ethical holiness among the people they were called to serve. [Note: Taylor, p. 272.]
This is also the duty of believer priests today (1Pe 1:13-16).