‘Then I looked and behold, on the flat plate that was over the head of the cherubim there appeared above them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne.’

Here we are carried right back again to the first vision in chapter 1. The flat level plain of the colour of awesome ice borne by the cherubim, and the glorious, sparkling blue likeness to a throne above (Eze 1:22; Eze 1:26). But this time it is at Jerusalem. This is the first mention of the chariot since chapter 3, unless we take Eze 8:4 as such a reference. We are probably intended to see that it has arrived to take Yahweh away. Here the living creatures are identified as cherubim for the first time. Until now Ezekiel has not wanted to suggest that Yahweh’s permanent earthly throne was no longer in the temple.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Burning of the City

v. 1. Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament, the vaulted expanse above, that was above the head of the cherubim, the living creatures of the first vision, there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. In the previous chapter the Lord had left this throne and occupied a position at the threshold of the Holy Place. Here He is again on His throne above the cherubim, as the majestic Sovereign of the universe.

v. 2. And He spake unto the man clothed with linen, the chief of the six avenging angels, and said, Go in between the wheels, even under the cherub, here spoken of as collective, on account of the unity of the vision, and fill thine hand with coals of fire from between the cherubim, 1:13, and scatter them over the city, to bring about its destruction by fire. And he went in in my sight, performing the work which he was commanded to do while Ezekiel was witness of his act.

v. 3. Now, the cherubim stood on the right side of the house, that is, on the south side, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court, the Court of the Priests.

v. 4. Then the glory of the Lord, once more leaving its position on the throne above the cherubim, went up from the cherub, literally, “was raised up high from off the cherub,” and stood over the threshold of the house, removing to this place as before; and the house, the Sanctuary proper, was filled with the cloud, and the court, the inner court, was full of the brightness of the Lord’s glory, as reflected from the cloud which filled the Holy Place.

v. 5. And the sound of the cherubim’s wings, 1:24, was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of the almighty. God when He speaketh.

v. 6. And it came to pass that, when He had commanded the man clothed with linen, saying, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the cherubim; then he went in and stood beside the wheels, beneath the cherubim, who were now changed from ministers of God’s grace to ministers of God’s vengeance.

v. 7. And one cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubim, as they stood in close array, unto the fire that was between the cherubim and took thereof and put it into the hands of him that was clothed with linen, who had received his command directly from the Lord, who took it and went out, in order to carry out the punishment of burning upon the city.

v. 8. And there appeared in the cherubim the form of a man’s hand under their wings, this hand performing the office of handing out the fiery coals for the destruction of Jerusalem, The attention to details increases the effect of the entire passage: the idea of deliberate preparation for the ruin of the city.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Eze 10:1, Eze 10:2

Then I looked, etc. There follows on the work of judgment another theophany, like that of Eze 1:15-28. In the “expanse,” or firmament, like the “terrible crystal,” there is seen as before the likeness of a sapphire throne (see Eze 1:26, note). The form of the man who is the manifestation of Jehovah is implied, though not named. It is he who speaks to the captain of the six ministers of vengeance, himself the seventh, and bids him go in beneath the “whirling wheels” that are beneath the cherub (collective singular, as in Eze 9:9), and fill his hands with coals of fire (Eze 1:13), and scatter them over the city, as the symbol of its doom. We are reminded of Isaiah’s vision (Isa 6:6); but there the work of the fire was to purify, here simply to destroy.

Eze 10:3, Eze 10:4

Now the cherubim stood, etc. The position of the cherubim is defined, with a vivid distinctness of detail, which once more reminds us of Dante. They had been standing on the right, i.e. the southern side of the sanctuary. What follows is probably a reproduction of the change of positions described in Eze 9:3, and the verbs should be taken, therefore, as pluperfects. The cloud of glory, as in 1Ki 8:10, 1Ki 8:11 and Isa 6:1, Isa 6:2, the Shechinah, that was the taken of the Divine presence, filled the court, but the glory itself had moved to the threshold at the first stage of its departure.

Eze 10:5, Eze 10:6

And the sound of the cherubim. The use of God Almighty (El Shaddai; comp. Exo 6:3), the name of God as ruling over nature, while Jehovah expressed his covenant relationship to Israel, is, it may be noted, characteristic of the early stage of the religion of Israel (Gen 17:1; Gen 28:3; Gen 43:14; Gen 48:3). Shaddai alone appears eighty-one times in the Book of Job. Psa 29:1-11. explains the voice of El Shaddai (though there it is “the voice of Jehovah”) as meaning the roar of the thunder. The hands of the “living creatures,” now recognized as cherubim, had been mentioned in Eze 1:8, and it is one of those hands that gives the fire into the hands of the linen vested minister of wrath. The elemental forces of nature, of which the cherubim are, partly at least, the symbols, are working out the purposes of Jehovah. The two words translated wheels are different in the Hebrew. The first is singular and collective (galgal, the “whirling thing,” used of the wheel of a war chariot, Eze 23:24; Isa 5:28), and might well be translated “chariot” here. The second, that used in Eze 1:15, Eze 1:16, also in the singular, is applied to the single wheel of the four by which the angel, ministers stood.

Eze 10:8, Eze 10:9

The description of the theophany that follows, though essentially identical with that in Eze 1:1-28 is not a literal transcript of it. The prophet struggles, as before, to relate what he has actually seen in the visions of God. The fact is stated as explaining the mention of the “hand” in Eze 1:7. That, as in Eze 1:8, was one of their members (see notes on Eze 1:15-17). All that had seemed most startling and awful to him on the banks of Chebar is now seen againthe four living creatures, now named cherubim.the wheel by each, the unswerving motion of the wheels in their onward course.

Eze 10:11

Whither the head, etc. The word has been taken, as in Job 29:25, for the “chief” or “principal” wheel, that which for the time determined the course of the others. With all the complex structure of the cherubic chariot, all was simple in its action. The spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels, and that gave unity (Eze 1:20).

Eze 10:12

And their whole body. Here there is distinctly a new feature. In Eze 1:18 the “rings” of the wheels were “full of eyes.” Here the eyes are everywhere. It is not hard to interpret this part of the vision. The prophet receives a new impression of the all-seeing eye of Jehovah. Everywhere, as he stands face to face with the forces of nature, he can say, must say, within himself, “Thou God seest me” (Gen 16:13). There is an eye that looks upon him where he least expects it. The same thought appears in the stone with seven eyes in Zec 3:9. St. John reproduces it in the same form as Ezekiel, with the exception of the wheels, which form no part of his vision, in Rev 4:6.

Eze 10:13

As for the wheels, etc.; better, with the Revised Version, they were called in my hearing, the whirling wheels; or better still, to keep the collective force of the singular galgal, the chariot. He recognized that as the right name of the whole mysterious and complex form. It, was nothing less than the chariot throne of the King of the universe. There is no sufficient reason for taking the noun, with the Authorized Version, as a vocative.

Eze 10:14

The first face was the face of a cherub, etc.; better, with the Revised Version, of the cherub. This takes the place of “the face of an ox” in Eze 1:10, and it is first in order instead of being, as there, the third. It is as though, in this second vision, he recognizes that this was emphatically the cherubic form. Possibly the article indicates that this was the form that had given the “coals of fire” in Eze 1:7. Each form, we must remember, had the four faces, but the prophet names the face which each presented to him as he gazed.

Eze 10:15-17

As he gazes, the recognition is complete. What he sees in the courts of the temple is identical with the living creature by the river of Chebar. It moves as that moved, wheels and wings and cherubim, all as by one harmonious impulse.

Eze 10:18

Then the glory of the Lord, etc. The chariot throne was, as it were, ready for its kingly Rider. The “glory”-cloud, or Shechinah. takes its place over them, and the departure begins. From that hour the temple was, in Ezekiel’s thoughts, to be, till the time of restoration contemplated in ch. 40-48; what Shiloh had been, a God-deserted place. We arc reminded of the voice which Josephus tells us was heard before the final destruction of the second temple, exclaiming, “Let us depart hence,” as the priests were making ready for the Pentecostal feast (‘Bell. Jud.,’ 6.5. 3).

Eze 10:19

The departure has the east gate of the Lord’s house for its starting point. By that gate, in the later vision of the restored temple, the glory of the Lord was to return (Eze 43:4). For “every one” read “it,” sc. the galgal, or complex structure of the chariot. The Hebrew verb is in the singular, but, as the italics show, there is no word answering to “every one.”

Eze 10:20

Once more the prophet asserts, with fresh emphasis, the identity of the two visions which it had been given him to see. Now, as it were, he understands why the first vision was seen as coming from the north. He does not tell us whether the journey of which he saw the beginning was to end. For the present there was a halt, as we learn from Eze 11:23, “over the midst of the city.” Even when the vision ended, it had not gone further than the Mount of Olives. We may conjecture, however, that he thought of its goal as that more sacred region of the heavens in which it had at first manifested itself (see note on Eze 1:4). It was, at any rate, no longer in the temple. The banks of Chebar or any other place might become, as Bethel had been to Jacob (Gen 28:17), as “the house of God” and “the gate of heaven.”

HOMILETICS.

Eze 10:1

The throne of God.

The Greek conception of God was intellectual; the Hebrew, moral To the Hellenic thought he was the Supreme Mind; to the Jewish he was the Supreme Will and Authority. The one conceived him as the Architect of the universe, displaying his intelligence in a vast design; the other, as the Sovereign Ruler of all things. Thus the Hebrew symbol of the Divine is a glory above a heavenly throne, and with the Jew the most significant Divine thing is the throne. Each thought is true, and our later Christian theology combines them both. But there is an awful sublimity in the Old Testament religion springing from the moral and governmental view of God, and to miss this is to sink into naturalism. The modern tendency is in some respects diverting attention from the Hebrew Throne to the Greek Mind. We need to revive the Old Testament element of the thought of God. Perhaps greater regard to this will help us to face some of the peculiar difficulties of our own day.

I. THE THRONE OF GOD IS SUPREME. The throne seen in Ezekiel’s vision was “in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubim.” The most exalted and glorious beings lie at the foot of that awful throne.

1. God rules. He is will as well as thought. He does not merely know; he acts.

2. God rules in the present. Men rebel against the authority of God. Nevertheless, it still exists. It is not only that we shall appear before a future judgment bar of God. Already we live under his constant reign.

3. God‘s rule is supreme. Death, sin, Satan, are all beneath God, and ultimately they will be conquered and crushed, that he may be all in all Even Christ, who sits at the right hand of God, is “subject to him” (1Co 15:27, 1Co 15:28).

II. THE THRONE OF GOD IS RIGHTEOUS AND THEREFORE GLORIOUS.

1. It is righteous. The justice of God’s rule is not treated in the Old Testament as a source of terror, but, on the contrary, it is always praised and rejoiced in. The old cruel earthly tyrannies were felt to be so horribly unjust, that men turned with a sense of relief to the justice of the Supreme King. God is the Personal “Power that makes for righteousness.” The end of his government is the highest goodness.

2. It is therefore glorious. The old glory of mere brute force with the triumph of cruelty is a low and vulgar folly by the side of this Divine glory of righteousness. Here is the greatest glory of Godnot his omniscience nor his omnipotence, not the irresistible might and overwhelming majesty of his throne, but its righteousness. It is not a blood stained glory of the earthly conqueror, but the sapphire beauty of perfect purity, truth, justice, and benevolence.

III. THE THRONE OF GOD IS A CENTRE OF DIVINE REVELATION. The Greek method of seeking for God is by the way of intellect. The Great Mind is looked for in his plans. The Architect cf the universe is to be found by using the “argument from design.” But latterly this Aristotelian method has been confused in the minds of somethough, doubtless, only temporarily and by misunderstandingthrough the spread of the doctrine of evolution. Meanwhile our own age seems to need to return to the Hebrew method. Our best teachers point us in this direction. God is not chiefly the Infinite Intellect. He is the Will and the Power of right. We feel him in all force. But we discern him best in our own consciences. The unanswerable voice within that whispers, “Thou shalt” or “Thou shalt not,” is an utterance from the throne of God, and it bears witness to the existence, and more than the existence, the authority, of our supreme Lord and King.

Eze 10:2

Coals of fire.

The coals of fire which Ezekiel saw between the cherubim were to be poured forth in destruction upon the doomed city of Jerusalem. But there are various uses of Divine fire. Let us notice some of them.

I. COALS OF FIRE FOR DESTRUCTION‘. This dreadful destiny of Divine fire must he considered first, as it was the one intended by the prophet. “Our God is a consuming Fire.” There is not only punishment, there is destruction in the operation of fire. It hurts, but it also consumes; and its primary work is destruction. “The wages of sin is death.” God does not only chastise with the rod; he destroys with his fire. The earlier chastisement is to save from the later destruction. We may be thankful for the sharp lash if it drives us from the burning fire.

II. COALS OF FIRE FOR PURIFICATION. Fire does not only destroy; it refines. Refuse is burnt by it; silver is purified. God sends fiery trials to cleanse our souls by burning out the evil, and leaving the better nature freer and purged. Perhaps the fire which would be for destruction if we remained impenitent may be converted into a refiner’s furnace when we learn its burning lesson, and humble ourselves in the very flames of wrath. So let us use the fiery trials of life.

III. COALS OF FIRE FOR CONSECRATION. The whole offering of Jewish sacrifice was burnt upon the altar. There is a consuming zeal of God which wholly takes possession of his consecrated servant, and burns through him, so that he is no longer a slave of the earth, but is lifted up as on Elijah’s chariot. Still living in this world, indeed, for the service of God, he feels that the old Adam has been killed, the evil of his nature has been burnt out of him, self has been slain, and now he belongs wholly to God. Alas! so perfect a consecration is not attained by any of us. But Christ’s baptism in fire leads us up to it. It is a supreme mistake to suppose that our Lord calls us only to ease and rest. He calls to the pilgrimage, the battle, the cross, perhaps to the furnace. Even when life outside is smooth, the consecration of will and passion means a fiery ordeal.

IV. COALS OF FIRE FOR INSPIRATION. The engine is driven by coals of fire. Our physical energy is dependent on the burning up of the tissue of our bodies. The heat of enthusiasm is the inspiration and source of energy for mental and moral enterprises. Love is a great fire of burning coals, and when it becomes bright and warm, the soul grows strong for sacrifice and service. We may have false fires, indeed, fires of earthly passion that scorch and wither our better nature. No earth-born fire will kindle the devotion of the soul. For this live coals from off God’s altar are needed. The fire from between the cherubim kindles our fire. The great love of Christ coming like coals of fire can give us warmth of love and devotion, and inspire us fur the Christian life.

Eze 10:4

The moving glory.

It is difficult to follow the enraptured prophet through all the mystic mazes of his vision, and catch the meaning of the many gorgeous symbols that he discovers on every hand. But now and again certain points stand out with an individual significance even when their relation to the whole shifting panorama may strike us as somewhat obscure. Here we may take some hints from the moving of the Divine glory. This radiance moved from over the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house.

I. GOD‘S GLORY HAS COME FROM HEAVEN TO EARTH. Ezekiel saw the radiance pass from the cherub to the threshold of the house.

1. The glory has visited earth. It is not confined to celestial altitudes. Earth is not yet a godless hell. God, who talked with Adam before the Fall, also talked with Moses after the Fall. There is a Divine halo about every good life. Little children come “trailing clouds of glory,” and “of such is the kingdom of heaven.” But this glory is most present in Christ. Thus the beloved disciple said, “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father” (Joh 1:14).

2. The glory has reached common life. There were cherubim in the holy of holies at the temple, and there the Shechinah was said to dwell. But now Ezekiel sees the glory pass to the threshold of the house. It moves from the high priest’s sanctuary to the way of the common people, and seems to look forth from the doorway with cheering radiance and a benediction towards the great world outside. This has certainly happened in the free preaching of the gospel of Christ, and the equal privileges of all Christians. The Shechinah passed from the temple at Jerusalem to the Carpenter’s workshop at Nazareth; and ever since it has dwelt among the familiar haunts of men, consecrating daily toil, making simple lives beautiful with the light of God.

II. GOD‘S GLORY IS IN MOVEMENT. The fiery pillar of the wilderness moved from place to place. When by the Red Sea, it stood behind the camp and between this and the pursuing army of Egypt. In travel, it went on before the host. The presence of God is not always equally manifest at the same place. There are God-haunted realms, and there are apparently God-deserted regions. Physically, God is equally present everywhere. But morally, the conduct of men does not admit of an equal revelation of the Divine.

1. The glory may depart from its old seat. It left the temple, and it deserted the Jews. Poor down-trodden Palestine is now only to be called a “Holy Land” for the sake of its memories and associations. North Africa and Asia Minor, once the brightest centres of the Christian Church, have been left dark and deserted. This is not owing to God’s changing. His glory is not like the waning moon, or the setting sun, or the flickering lamp. But as men forsake him, “Ichabod!” must be uttered over their most sacred spots.

2. The glory may visit new scenes. It has shone over the martyrs of Madagascar and Uganda, and the native missionaries of the South Seas; it is beginning to dawn in the great dark continent, and among the teeming millions of India and China. There is no dark soul over which it will not shine, if only pardon is penitently sought.

Eze 10:8

The form of a man’s hand.

Those strange composite creatures, the cherubim of Ezekiel’s vision, have been described earlier as of human aspect (Eze 1:5), and in particular as having “the hands of a man” (Eze 1:8). This appearance of the hand is again referred to in the verse before us, so that we are led to think not merely of a general resemblance to human features, but of some special importance in the particular member thus emphatically and repeatedly named.

I. THE HAND IS MADE FOR WORK. So wonderful a mechanism is there in it, that a whole Bridgewater Treatise was devoted to an examination of its teleological significance. No machine of most delicate workmanship approaches the construction of the human hand. In familiar transactions of business “hand-made” goods are preferred to the “machine-made.” Now, the natural form of the hand shows that it is designed for work. It may be clenched into the fist for fighting, but this is not its natural condition, and all the finer qualities of fingers and thumb are here wasted. A clublike end to the arm would be better than a flat palm and supple fingers, if the primary purpose of the hand were pugilism. Nature declares that we are not made to fight; we are made to work.

II. HANDIWORK IS DIVINE AND HOLY. There are hands in heaven. By a figure of speech, God is said to have hands (e.g. Psa 8:6). The cherubim have hands. The strange thing is that these wondrous beings have both wings and hands, combining the fight of a bird with the work of a man. This is the ideal stateto be able to soar aloft in heavenly regions, and yet to have faculty for practical tasks. Too often winged souls lack working hands. They who soar, dream; they who work, pled. The perfect pattern of life represented by the cherubim is that of wings and handspower of flight and skill in work, poetry and practice, devotion and service, contemplation and activity, aspiration and application. Seen in heaven, the hands are holy. The shrivelled, paralyzed hand of the fakir is a token of fanatical folly. There is no disgrace in the horny band of toil. Work is Divine; for God works (Joh 5:17). Work is heavenly. There will be service in heaven. There is no paradise for the indolent.

III. THE HAND NEEDS TO BE REDEEMED. Sometimes it is brutalized into a weapon of hatred. Frequently it is soiled by deeds of evil. The swift, silent hand of the thief is a degraded hand. Every sin stains the hand that performs the wicked action. If the human hand express d the character of the work it is sometimes put to, it would be twisted, knotty, foul, sore, rotten. The hand wants redemptiona redemption which follows that of the head. For the poor hand is but the servant of the head, that shames it with evil orders. When Christ saves a soul, he brings “the redemption of the body.” The hand is then made holyonly to work what is good, only to write what is true, ready to stoop to uplift the fallen, to grasp with friendly pressure the hand of a poor distressed brother, to point to the way of heavenly perfection.

Eze 10:18

Glory departed.

In Eze 10:4 Ezekiel says that the glory visited the threshold of the house. Now he describes its departure and return to the cherubim.

I. THE GLORY OF NEW DIVINE REVELATIONS HAS DEPARTED. The glory that visited the threshold of the temple brought a special symbolical revelation, and when that revelation had been made the glory retreated and left the scene in its normal earthly condition. Revelation has come in epochs separated by periods of assimilation, when the newly revealed truth has been left to work among man like leaven. God gave the Law once for all from Sinai. The gospel was brought into the world by Christ and his apostles, and left there to spreadnot left without the aid of God’s Spirit and that inward revelation by which an old truth becomes new in each fresh heart that receives it, but still given as a completed thing in respect to its facts and substance. We have no more prophets like Isaiah nor apostles like St. Paul. But we do not need them, for Christ has given us the perfect truth for all time. Yet we cannot but feel that there was a wonder and a beauty in those old days when the glory of the growing revelation was flashing out upon an astonished world.

II. THE GLORY OF HIGHEST RAPTURE WILL DEPART. There are times when heaven is opened and we see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. Then we would fain build our tabernacles and retain the rare delight. But it is not to be. These angel visits are few and far between. Jacob wakes from his dream to the chili loneliness of the desolate hills of Bethel. The disciples who have witnessed the Transfiguration must descend from Hermon to the troubles of the plain, and exchange the society of Moses and Elijah for that of a raving lunatic. It is rare for the soul to be in a condition to enjoy the greatest bliss. But it is not necessary that this condition should remain; indeed, it is better to be in quieter moods for the homely tasks of life. Therefore we must still tread this lower earth, though we may have some fine glimpses of the heavenly splendour. The spray that is flung off from the great ocean of celestial bliss may occasionally reach us in drops of gold. Yet our vocation is to walk by faith. Meanwhile the departure of this glory does not mean the departure of God; he is with us in the dullest days. Nor does it mean our fall and shame; it may be best for the faithful servant to work in quiet without the full revelation of the Divine presence. We need ceaseless grace; we can wait for eternal glory.

III. THE GLORY OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE MAY DEPART. There is a glory which should be on us and abiding with us. All Christians are “called to be saints.” Few of us may behold the celestial splendour, but all of us should wear the aureole of purity. When we have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, the new glory of pardon and cleansing should abide. But, alas! even this glory too soon departs; the cleansed garments are again dragged through the mire, and the Christian, though renewed by Christ, dares not regard himself as a “saint.” When he falls into a great sin the glory has indeed departed. If the fresh fervour of youth fades, and a commonplace character is all that remains, must it nut be said that the glory has departed, though the faith and fidelity may remain?

Eze 10:22

Heavenly changelessness.

There is great resemblance between Eze 1:1-28. and Eze 10:1-22. Ezekiel is transported in spirit from the banks of the Babylonian river Chebar to the temple at Jerusalem. Yet the cherubim which he sees in the one place are exactly the same as those he has seen in the other. This fact of identity in great diversity of circumstances strikes the prophet as remarkable, and he chronicles it with emphasis. Earthly scenes change; heavenly facts remain.

I. THE RANGE OF HEAVENLY CHANGELESSNESS.

1. In various times. Divine grace is always essentially the same. On the very threshold of history Abraham is justified by faith; today faith is the one ground of the soul’s becoming right with God. The Psalms of David express the inmost essence of religion for modern Christians. The gospel of the first century is the gospel for the nineteenth century. The Christ of history is the Christ of the future. If we can see the old familiar countenances of the essential Divine facts that cheered and warned and guided our fathers, we have just the vision that we need todaythough, indeed, the old truths are to have fresh applications, and though, perhaps, we may have to remove the veils with which the errors of the past have sometimes obscured them.

2. In various places. The cherubim of Chebar were the cherubim of Jerusalem. The Christ of Nazareth is the Christ for London. The religion that dawned among the hills of Galilee spreads like a day over the whole earth, and shows itself as suitable for England as for the East, and as suitable for China and Africa and New Guinea as for Europe and America.

3. Under various circumstances. The quiet river bank was very different from noisy Jerusalem. Yet the same wondrous cherubim looked down upon both scenes, as the same stars of heaven gaze upon the city slums and the country villages, on the blood stained battlefield and the peaceful meadow. The same God is over all. The gospel of Christ is the same for allrich and poor, learned and ignorant, young and old.

II. THE CAUSES OF HEAVENLY CHANGELESSNESS.

1. Inherent truth. Our better changes come largely from the correction of mistakes. We are always having to unlearn our errors, to slough the old skin. But truth abides. In heaven all is true. God’s Word is true. Therefore while “all flesh is grass and the grass withers the Word of the Lord abideth forever” (1Pe 1:24, 1Pe 1:25).

2. Absolute perfection. Revelation came by stages of growth and development and through human channels. Hence its changes and the putting away of the old form of it in the Law for the new form of it in the gospel. But when we see through these earthly manifestations the really Divine behind them, we come upon absolute perfection, which is changeless.

3. Stable constancy. God is not fickle. His representative agents, symbolized by the cherubim, must be constant too. God will keep to his word. Therefore we may build upon his promise as on a granite rock. We change; he abideth faithful.

HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON

Eze 10:1

The throne of Deity.

The prophet, in this chapter, makes use of all the wealth of earthly and human imagery to enhance his readers’ conception of the glory of the Eternal. The throne here pictured is the throne of God, and the metaphor is employed in order to gather around the Deity all associations which may help to raise the thoughts in reverence, confidence, and adoration towards the King of the universe. At the same time, every figure drawn from earth, from man, must needs come short of the great reality; for the finite can do no more than merely suggest the Infinite.

I. GOD IS THE SUPREME KING BY UNDERIVED RIGHT. Earthly monarchs reign by right of conquest, or election, or inheritance. They come to reign, they begin to reign. In these respects there is contrast between the sovereigns who bear sway among men and the King of kings and Lord of lords; for he is Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. To examine, to question, to vindicate his right is an absurdity, an impossibility; it is the condition and foundation of all rights, and is indemonstrable and self-evident.

II. GOD IS SUPREME IN THE POSSESSION AND EXERCISE OF KINGLY POWER. Earthly sovereigns differ one from another in the military and naval forces they command, in the weight they bring to the councils of nations, in the respect and tear with which they are regarded. But there is no measure by which power such as emperors wield can be compared with Omnipotence. There is One, and there can be only One, who is almighty, who wields all the resources of the universe, and of whom it may be said that all the manifestations of his might are “but the whisperings of his power.”

III. GOD IS SUPREME IN THE UNIVERSALITY OF HIS DOMINION. Vast as are the realms of the greatest of earthly potentates, these are but a speck, a mote, when placed beside the kingdom of the Creator. For this both transcends all and includes all the kingdoms of the earth: “His kingdom ruleth over all.”

IV. GOD IS SUPREME IN THE RIGHTEOUSNESS WHICH IS CHARACTERISTIC OF HIS SWAY. The true glory of a prince does not lie so much in the extent of his dominions as in the justice of his rule and administration. All human righteousness is a mere reflection of the righteousness of the great King of heaven and earth. “A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.” A throne is sometimes thought of in association with the arbitrary and despotic exercise of power; all such associations must be dismissed when we come to think and speak of the Occupant of the throne of heaven. There may be that in his government which perplexes and baffles us; but nothing is so certain to our minds as his unswerving rectitude, his inflexible justice. Our highest powers of veneration are inadequate to conceive and to adore his moral attributes. Our proper attitude is to fall down before him and acknowledge the insufficiency of our purest homage.

V. GOD IS SUPREME IN HIS CLAIM UPON ALL HIS INTELLIGENT CREATION FOR HONOUR AND GLORY. It is sometimes represented by utilitarian thinkers that men’s faculties are misused and their time wasted in the attempt to “glorify God.” But the view of human nature is indeed both superficial and radically false which admits of such an objection to the practice of devotion. The worship which consists only of words and gestures is indeed an unprofitable superstition. But the worship which is spiritual is both acceptable to God and profitable and elevating to man. It is well to conceive of God as a King as well as a Father. Many human relationships must concur in order to present to our minds the claims of God upon our nature. To Christians the throne of Christ is the throne of God. “Thou art the King of glory, O Christ!”T.

Eze 10:4

The brightness of the Divine glory.

The Shechinah-cloud in the holiest place was the visible representation and symbol of the presence of the Eternal in the place set apart for special communion between God and man. Appealing primarily to the sense of sight, it did in reality appeal to the intelligence and the conscience of the people. It was the same luminous cloud which Ezekiel beheld in his vision, and in which he recognized the manifestation of the Divine presence and interest.

I. THE TRUE GLORY OF THE LORD CONSISTS IN HIS MORAL ATTRIBUTES. The Jews ever required a sign. But whilst the multitude may have rested in the sign, the enlightened and spiritual passed from the sign to the thing signified. True glory is not in material splendour, however dazzling, but in that excellence which is perfected in God, the Source of all goodness. Whilst the less reflecting may be more impressed with the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, which must indeed excite the reverent admiration of all to whom he makes himself known, such as are morally cultivated and susceptible will find the highest and purest glory in the Divine wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and love.

II. THIS GLORY IS PECULIARLY IMPRESSIVE WHERE THESE IS SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. As the man is affected by many things which are neither felt nor noticed by the brute, so the spiritually living and earnest are impressed and influenced by the contemplation of the Divine character and attributes. These may have no interest for the worldly and the selfish; but they are felt to be great, sacred, and precious realities by all natures that are brought by spiritual teaching into sympathy with God. “They are spiritually discerned.” There is a capacity within us which is only developed and satisfied when brought into contact with the purity and the grace of him who is a Spirit, and who will be worshipped in spirit and in truth.

III. THE VISION OF THIS BRIGHTNESS IS A MOTIVE AND STIMULUS TO HUMAN OBEDIENCE AND PRAISE. The hosts of heaven gaze upon the Divine glory, and by the vision are prompted to unceasing adoration, it is the same with the enlightened and spiritual among the sons of men. As the daybreak and the sunrise call forth the glad song of the lark as it soars aloft, so the rising of “the brightness of the Lord’s glory” upon a soul summons it to the glad exercise of exulting adoration. Nor does this term the only response. Man’s active nature renders the service which is due to him who is recognized as the Source of all good, of all blessing. Obedience is acted praise, as praise is uttered obedience.

IV. TO THE CHRISTIAN THE LORD JESUS IS THE RICHEST REVELATION OF THE DIVINE GLORY. The evangelist tells us that he and his fellow disciples beheld Christ’s glory, “the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” And the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes the Son of God as “the Emanation from the Divine glory.” They who look into Christ’s face behold the moral attributes of Deity in all their resplendent brightness, “They look unto him, and are lightened, and their laces are not ashamed.”T.

Eze 10:5

The voice of the Almighty.

The human voice deserves to be studied and admired as a most effective and delicate and exquisitely beautiful provision for the expression of thought and feeling. It is so ethereal, so semi-spiritual, that there seems scarcely any anthropomorphism in attributing it to the Creator himself. The sounds of nature may indeed be designated the voice of God. But the characteristics of the human utterance seem most justly attributable to him who comprehends in perfection within himself all those thoughts and emotions which are distinctive of the spiritual nature.

I. THE EXPRESSION CASTS LIGHT UPON THE NATURE OF GOD. The voice is, among all the inhabitants of this earth, man’s prerogative alone. And for this reasonman alone has reason, and therefore he alone has speech. There are noises and sounds, and even musical sounds, in nature; but to man alone belongs the voice, the organ of articulate speech and intelligible language. When voice is attributed to the Almighty God, it is implied that he is himself in perfection that Reason which he communicates to his creature man. Our intellect and thought are derived from his, and are akin to his; our reason is “the candle of the Lord” within.

II. THE EXPRESSION CASTS LIGHT UPON THE INTERCOURSE BETWEEN GOD AND MAN. The purpose of the voice is that man may communicate with his fellow man by means of articulate language, and by means of all those varied and delicate shades of intonation by which we convey our sentiments, and indicate satisfaction and disapproval, confidence and distrust, tenderness and severity, inquiry and command. Now, where we meet in Scripture with the phrase, “the voice of God Almighty when he speaketh,” we are led to think of the purpose for which he utters his voice. It is evidently to communicate with manmind with mindthat we may be acquainted with his thoughts, his wishes, his sentiments with regard to us, if we may use language so human. The whole of nature may be regarded as uttering the Divine thought, though, as the psalmist tells us, “there is no speech nor language, and their voice cannot be heard.” But his articulate speech comes through the medium of human mindsthe minds of prophets and apostles, and (above all) the mind of Christ Jesus. The Word speaks with the Divine voice; in him alone that voice reaches us with all the faultless tones, and with the perfect revelation which we need in order that we may realize and rejoice in the presence of the Divine Father of spirits, the Divine Saviour and Helper.

III. THIS EXPRESSION CASTS LIGHT UPON THE DUTY AND PRIVILEGE OF MAN.

1. It is ours to listen with grateful joy to the voice of God. “The friend of the bridegroom rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice.” Christ speaks, and his utterances are welcome to every believing and sympathetic nature; they are as the sound of a voice long expected and wished for, as it now fails upon the listening and eager ear. The sinner may well dread the voice which can speak to him as with the thunder of threatened vengeance. But the Christian recognizes the tones of love and the accents of gentleness.

2. It is ours to listen to the voice of God with believing submission and obedience. God’s voice is always with authority. Because he reveals himself as our Father, he does not cease to command. “Ye have not heard his voice at any time,” was the stern reproach addressed by Jesus to the unspiritual Jews. The exhortation comes to us all, “Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”T.

HOMILIES BY J.D. DAVIES

Eze 10:1-22

The machinery of God’s providence.

A man must be embodied ignorance who should suppose that all the activities of God’s government come within the range of his vision. Our knowledge is not the measure of existence.

“There are more things in heaven and earth
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”

What we know is an infinitesimal fraction of what we do not know. Hence every revelation of God’s administrative rule should be welcomed with eager delight.

I. GOD‘S ESSENTIAL MAJESTY IS INCONCEIVABLE. The difficulty for man to comprehend the nature and government of God lies, not on the part of God, but on the part of man. His spiritual nature is so environed with bars of flesh that he cannot discern spiritual realities. Truth finds its way into his mind mainly by the use of sensuous images. The difficulty is aggravated by long habits of neglect and self-indulgence. Under these circumstances, the marvel is that he knows as much about the world as he does. We can form no definite conception of the Infinite or of the Eternal; yet it appears to our reason that God must be infinite in capacity and eternal in duration. Possibly, God is above the conception of the oldest archangel. Possibly, God cannot reveal the whole extent of his nature to any created being. Certain it is that the wing of human imagination soon tires in its attempt to soar to the height of the Godhead. All the machinery of his rule is in harmony with himselfmajestic, ethereal, sublime! How shall man measure himself with God? Surely he is but a mote in the sunbeam, incomparably minute, yet to God incomparably precious!

II. GOD‘S PRESENCE, WITHOUT A CLOUD, IS TO MAN INSUPPORTABLE. On every occasion on which God has condescended to reveal himself to men there has been the attendant circumstance of a cloud. “God is light;” but to human sensibilities the full blaze of light is insufferable. When God appeared to Moses among the solitudes of Horeb, “the glory of the Lord appeared in a cloud.” The presence of God among the Hebrews in the desert was symbolized by the pillar of cloud. At the moment when the first Jewish temple was consecrated to the service of Jehovah, a mysterious “cloud filled the house of the Lord.” God was known to abide in the holy of holies, in the cloud that covered the mercy seat. When Moses and Elijah descended to commune with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, “a cloud overshadowed them,” and the voice of the Father “was heard out of the cloud.” At the close of our Lord’s earthly mission he ascended from earth to heaven from the heights near Bethany, “and a cloud received him out of the apostles’ sight.” So too the prophecies which announce the next appearance of our Lord indicate the surroundings of a cloud: “Behold! he cometh with clouds;” “Ye shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven.” Clouds distribute and attenuate the fierce light of the sun, and enhance the splendours of the scene. They are a manifestation of the component parts of light. They reveal its beauty and its power. So God attempers the brightness of his essential glory to suit the necessities of men.

III. GOD‘S ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IS AN ELABORATE AND COMPLEX SYSTEM. Human agency is intimately allied with the dynamic forces of nature on the one side, and with the active powers of angels on the other. The wheels (with the numerical symbol, four), impressive from their magnitude and their rotatory speed, indicate the mighty forces of nature. Even in these wheels the prophet discovers eyes, which are the symbol of intelligence. The cherubic beings are represented as combining the strength of the ox, the courage of the lion, the swiftness of the eagle, and the intelligence of man. Beneath their wings there is seen, ever and anon, a human handthe index of human agency and action. Resting on this complex system of cherubic life is seen the cerulean throne of God, bright as a sapphire stone. In the destruction of Jerusalem the Chaldean armies did not act alone. Nebuchadnezzar, probably, was not conscious that any power, other than his own will, was instigating him to the war. Nevertheless, he was an instrument of justice in the hand of God. There is much service done for God which is not intended. Said God respecting Cyrus, “I girded thee, though thou hast not known me.” Human kings and warriors are only parts of a complex system. Human will has a very limited circle in which to play; yet it has its place.

IV. IN THIS COMPLEX SYSTEM THE MEDIATOR FULFILS AN IMPORTANT PART. (Eze 10:2.) “The man clothed with linen” clearly represents the great High Priestthe Divine Mediator. He who brings mercy to men is also the Minister of judgment. He who proclaims “the acceptable year of the Lord” announces also “the day of vengeance of our God.” God will “judge the world by that Man whom he hath ordained.” If the great Shepherd will preserve his flock, he must destroy the wolves. Justice and mercy go hand in hand. As we see here the ministrations of angels, along with God’s Son, in the work of destruction; so in later days we see, in fact, the alliance of angels with Christ in the work of men’s salvation. Nor should we fail to overlook the promptitude with which the Son fulfilled his Father’s word, “Go in between the wheels,and fill thine hand with coals of fire,and scatter them over the city. And he went in in my sight.” Is not this a practical commentary upon Messiah’s words, “I do always the things that please him”? So with all God’s servants, “They go straight forward.”

V. GOD ENTERS UPON THE WORK OF DESTRUCTION SLOWLY AND RELUCTANTLY. We read in the fourth verse that the glory of the Lord withdrew from the inner court of the temple, and stood over the threshold of the house. Again, we read in the eighteenth verse that “the glory of the Lord departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight.” Again, in the next chapter the record runs, “And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city.” With slow and successive steps God departed from the sanctuary which he had chosen for his residence.. All this prefigured the “leaving the house desolate,” and the ascension from the Mount of Olives,” by our Lord. So has it always been. The axe is laid at the root of the treea delay of judgmentthat the tree may yet become fruitful. Infinite patience belongs to God. He “is slow to anger, while plenteous in mercy.” A great truth is embodied in the old adage

“The mill of God grinds slowly,
But it grinds exceeding small.”

VI. WE DISCOVER IN THIS VISION THE HARMONY OF SCRIPTURE. Between this unveiling of God’s purposes respecting Israel, and his purposes towards the world revealed in the Apocalypse of John, there are instructive resemblances. The cherubic forms again appear. Angels have special charge over the forces of naturewinds and fire and earthquake. So far as human vision reaches, kings and armies act by their own free will, and to accomplish their own ambitions; but when we are lifted up to God’s pedestal, and are shown the progress of events from that high standpoint, we see that a series of Divine agents is employedmen fulfilling their part in subordination to angelic ministers. In God’s great army we have generals and captains and lieutenants, as well as the rank-and-file. In the government of the universe, men fill a humble though an honourable place; and consequent on their diligence and fidelity now will be their promotion to higher office by and by. “Be thou ruler over five cities!” “Be thou ruler over ten cities!” “I appoint unto you kingdoms, as my Father hath appointed me.”D.

HOMILIES BY W. JONES

Eze 10:1, Eze 10:2, Eze 10:6, Eze 10:7

The vision of judgment by fire.

“Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubim,” etc. The vision recorded in this chapter is substantially a repetition of that which is described in the first chapter, as the prophet himself intimates (Eze 10:20, Eze 10:22). The only differences of any importance are that the prophet was not in the same place when he received this vision as when he received its counterpart, and that the symbolical actions in this have not occurred before. We shall not again notice those features of the manifestation which we considered in our treatment of the first chapter, but shall confine our attention to the symbolical actions, and at present to the scattering of coals of fire over the city. The work of judgment begun in the last chapter is continued in this one. The destroying angels have (in vision) gone forth slaying the guilty people; the dead bodies were lying in the temple courts and the city streets; and now the command is given to finish the work of judgment by scattering coals of fire over the city, and so destroying it. Three chief points call for attention.

I. THE AUTHOR OF THIS JUDGMENT. “He spake unto the man clothed with linen, and said, Go in between the wheels,” etc. The Speaker is the enthroned One: “God the Father sitting on the throne, to the Son, to whom he has given full power to execute judgment” (Joh 5:27). Notice:

1. The majesty of his state. (Eze 10:1.) It is not said that any manifestation or appearance of God was given in this vision. But Ezekiel beheld the appearance of the exalted throne over the cherubim, a throne as of pure and brilliant sapphire like the clear and deep vault of heaven. “The heaven-like colour of the throne indicates,” says Hengstenberg, “the infinite eminence of God’s dominion over the earth, with its impotence, sin, and unrighteousness.” The representation is intended to shadow forth the glory of God. How glorious he is! The glory of heavenly things far surpasses the highest glory of earth, and the glory of God transcends the highest of heaven. He is “glorious in holiness;” “the glorious Lord;” “the King of glory;” “the God of glory;” “the Father of glory;” and his kingdom is glorious in majesty.

2. The sovereignty of his authority. God is supreme over the forces of nature, symbolized by the wheels; over every form of life, symbolized by the cherubim, or “living creatures” (Eze 1:1-28.); over the six destroying angels (Eze 9:1-11.); and in a sense over “the man clothed with linen,” who is the Agent of the Father (cf. Joh 14:31; Joh 15:10; Joh 17:18). He commands the scattering of fire over the city. The Chaldeans could not have laid waste Jerusalem but for his permission. “His kingdom ruleth over all.” “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee; the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.”

II. THE GREAT AGENT OF THIS JUDGMENT. “And he spake unto the man clothed with linen, and said, Go in between the wheels,” etc. The man clothed in linen, who was to scatter the coals of fire over the city, was, as we have seen, the angel of Jehovah, otherwise called the angel of the covenant. Notice:

1. The diverse functions ascribed to him. In the preceding chapter he was summoned to the preservation of the pious; in this he is sent forth to complete the work of destruction because of sin. This is suggestive of his two comings into our world. He came as a Saviour, to bring forgiveness to sinners, and deliverance from sin, and comfort for mourners, and strength for the weak, and hope for the despairing, and to scatter wide the blessings of Divine grace. But he will come again as a Judge in dreadful majesty. “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, rendering vengeance on them that know not God,” etc. But a more correct and complete analogy to these diverse functions ascribed to him in this vision is in the fact that in his future coming he will both perfect the salvation of his people, and deliver over to punishment those who have rejected him. That coming will be either the cause of ineffable rapture and adoration (Rev 7:9-17), or of unutterable terror and anguish to every man (Rev 6:15-17).

2. The prompt obedience rendered by him. “And it came to pass, that when he had commanded the man clothed with linen, saying, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the cherubim; then he went in,” etc. (verses 6, 7). His delight was in doing the will or his Father. “Jesus saith, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” And at the close of his mission upon earth, he said with infinite satisfaction, “Father, I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou Rarest me to do.” He complied with his Father’s will at all times, in all things, and with his whole heart. How perfect is the example which he sets us in this respect! Let us imitate him, endeavouring to obey the holy will even as he did.

III. THE MEANS OF THIS JUDGMENT. “Fill thine hand with coals of fire, and scatter them over the city.” The fire denoted was elemental fire; for it was taken from between the wheels, and the wheels symbolize the forces of nature; and it was to be used in burning the city. In this use of fire we have an illustration of:

1. A most useful servant becoming a most terrible foe. The Most High, if he pleases, can turn our greatest comforts into our direst curses; and he may do so if we misuse them. “They had abused fire,” says Greenhill, “to maintain their gluttony, for fulness of bread was one of their sins; they burned incense to idols, and abused the altar fire, which had been the greatest refreshing to their souls; and now even this fire kindled upon them.” And as a matter of fact, fire was used in destroying the temple and other places in Jerusalem. Josephus tells how Nebuzaradan, by command of the King of Babylon, having despoiled the temple of its precious and sacred treasures, set fire to it. “When he had carried these off, he set fire to the temple in the fifth month, the first day of the month, in the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah, and in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar; he also burnt the palace and overthrew the city” (‘Ant.,’ 10. 8.5).

2. The divers uses of fire as represented in Holy Scripture. It is there used to set forth both cleansing and avenging powers. It is the symbol of the purification of the human heart and life from sin (Isa 6:6, Isa 6:7; Mal 3:2, Mal 3:3). It is also the symbol of the punishment of the incorrigibly corrupt (Mat 25:41). “Our God is a consuming Fire;” and we must each be brought consciously near unto him, either to be cleansed from our sin, or, failing in this, to bear the just judgment thereof; for the Divine fire is essentially antagonistic to sin.

CONCLUSION.

1. Let us eschew every form of sin.

2. Let us seek the application of the purifying fire of the Divine love to our hearts.W.J.

Eze 10:4, Eze 10:18, Eze 10:19

; and Eze 11:22, Eze 11:23

The withdrawal of the presence of God from a guilty people.

“Then the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub, and stood over tile threshold of the house,” etc. These verses, which are all essentially related to one subject, suggest the following observations.

I. THAT GOD NEVER WITHDRAWS HIS GRACIOUS PRESENCE FROM A PERSON OR A NATION UNTIL THEY HAVE QUITE FORSAKEN HIM. The chosen people had despised his laws; they had turned aside from his worship for the most debasing idolatries; they had filled the land with their violence; they had denied his observation of their lives, and his interest therein; and they had persecuted his prophets wire called them to repentance. They had abandoned him provokingly and persistently; and now he is about to take from them his gracious presence. That presence he never withdraws from any individual or from any community until he has been rejecteddriven away, as it were, by heinous and continued sin. In proof of this we may refer to the following and other portions of the sacred Scriptures: 1Sa 15:23, 1Sa 15:26; 1Sa 28:15-18; 1Ch 28:9; 2Ch 15:2; Psa 78:56-64; Jer 7:8-16.

II. THAT GOD WITHDRAWS HIS GRACIOUS PRESENCE FROM A PERSON OR A NATION VERY GRADUALLY. We have an intimation of his leaving the temple in Eze 9:3, where the glory of God departs from the holy of holies to the threshold of the house, by which is meant, says Schroder, “the outermost point, where the exit was from the court of the people into the city.” In Eze 9:4 the prophet beholds the same movement repeated. Then in verses 18 and 19 the Lord’s complete abandonment of the temple is symbolically exhibited. And in Eze 11:22, Eze 11:23 the symbol of the gracious presence departs from the city, and makes a temporary sojourn on the Mount of Olives before forsaking the land. Thus step by step the symbol of the glory of the Lord goes away from them. It is as though he forsook them with great reluctance. By his servant Hosea he expresses the same truth: “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel?” etc. (Hos 11:8). It seemed, too, as though he would be entreated by them not to depart from their midst, and moved away so gradually in order that they might so entreat him. And if God withdraws himself, or withholds his gracious influences from any one, he does so, as it were, with measured steps and slow. Men are not left to themselves and their own devices hastily. God waits long to be gracious unto man. He does not depart from any one until he has received great and protracted provocation. He is “the God of patience;” and “he delighteth in mercy.”

III. THAT WHEN GOD WITHDRAWS HIS GRACIOUS PRESENCE FROM A PERSON OR NATION THEY ARE BEREFT OF HIS PROTECTION. Shortly after Ezekiel had seen the glory of God pass away from the holy of holies to the threshold of the house (Eze 9:3), the destroying angels began their work of slaughter in the temple. And before the complete destruction of the city, the glory of God departed from it to the Mount of Olives. When the Lord had quite withdrawn his gracious presence they were at the mercy of their enemies, and troubles came upon them test and furiously. “When the sun is in apogee, says Greenhill, “gone from us, we have short days and long nights, little light but much darkness; and when God departs, you have much night, and little day left, your comforts fade suddenly, and miseries come upon you swiftly.” What a tragical example of this we have in the case of King Saul! When God had departed from him, and answered him no more, neither by prophets nor by dreams, he was sore distressed, and the terrible end was close at hand (1Sa 28:15-20; 1Sa 31:1-13.). “This is to be forsaken indeed, when God prepares to forsake us. Lo! then more than ever darkness comes over all the powers of man’s spirit and over his life, and even trusted, loved countenances of friends go into shadow. Good thoughts grow ever fewer, impulses to prayer ever more rare; admonitions of conscience cease; the holy of holies in the man becomes empty down to the four walls and the usual pious furniture” (Schroder).

CONCLUSION. “Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief in falling away from the living God: but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called Today; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” And let us pray, “Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.”W.J.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

3. The Coals of Fire on the City (Ch. 10).

1And I saw, and, behold, on the expanse that was above the head of the cherubim,as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne was seen [appeared] over them. 2And He spake unto the man clothed in linen, and said, Come hither between the wheels, hither under the cherub, and fill thy two hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim, and scatter over 3the city. And he came before mine eyes. And the cherubim stood on the right of the house, at the coming of the man; and the cloud filled the inner court. 4And the glory of Jehovah rose up above the cherub, over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the glory of Jehovah. 5And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard as far as the court, the outer one, as the voice of the Almighty God when He speaketh. 6And it came to pass, at His giving the command to the man clothed in linen, when He said, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the 7cherubim; then he came, and stood beside the wheel. And the cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubim unto the fire that was between the cherubim, and lifted it, and gave it into the two hands of him clothed in linen; and he took it, and went out. 8And there appeared in the cherubim the form of 9a mans hand under their wings. And I saw, and, behold, four wheels beside the cherubim, one wheel beside one cherub, and one wheel beside another cherub; 10and the appearance of the wheels as the look of the stone of Tartessus. And their appearance: one likeness to them four, as it were a wheel in the midst of a wheel. 11When they went, they went toward their four sides; they turned not in their going, for whither the head turned, they went after it; they turned not in 12their going. And all their flesh, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about; they four had their 13wheels. As regards the wheels attached to them [or: As regards the wheels, regarding14them], it was cried in mine ears, O wheels. And four faces were to every one: the face of the one was the face of the cherub, and the face of the second the face of a man, and of the third the face of a lion, and of the fourth the face of an 15eagle. And the cherubim mounted upwards: this was the living creature that I saw by the river Chebar. 16And when the cherubim went, the wheels went beside them; and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, 17the wheels also turned not from beside them. When the one stood the other stood, and when the one mounted up the other mounted up; for the spirit of the 18living creature was in them. And the glory of Jehovah went forth from above 19the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth before mine eyes, when they departed, and the wheels beside them; and it stood at the opening of the gate of Jehovahs house, the east [gate]; and the glory of the God of Israel was 20over them above. This was the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel at the river Chebar; and I knew that they were cherubim. 21Every one had four faces, and every one four wings, and the likeness of the hands of a man 22under their wings. And [as regards] the likeness of their faces, they were the faces which I saw by the river Chebar, [as regards] their appearances and themselves; they went every one straight forward.

Eze 10:2. Sept.: … .

Eze 10:6. … .

Eze 10:9. … .

Eze 10:11. ad quem ire declinabat qu prima erat

Eze 10:12. . .plena oculis in circuitu quat. rot.

Eze 10:13. Et rotas istas vocavit volubiles

Eze 10:19. K.

Eze 10:21. Sept.: … . .

EXEGETICAL REMARKS

What follows is to be regarded as a second act in this dramatic vision, for the first woe closes with the report in Eze 9:11. That the vision makes a new start is shown immediately in Eze 10:1 : And I saw, and, behold (Eze 8:2); and we shall be preserved from manifold perplexity if we mix up nothing from the previous chapter with this.Comp. first of all on Eze 1:22; Eze 1:25. By this express reference to chapter 1. it must already be clear (comp. Eze 10:20) that are the chajoth known from that passage. Comp. farther on Eze 1:26. The throne making its appearance prepares for the command of Him who is enthroned; but nothing appears except the throne, for the glory of Jehovah is conceived of as above the cherub, from which it moves in Eze 10:4. Keil (Klief.), following the punctuation, takes as an independent sentence: He (Jehovah) appeared above them.

Eze 10:2. Comp. on Eze 9:1-2.The vision in Ezekiel 1. corresponds with the temple-vision, an application of what was seen there to the case in hand (Mat 22:7)., as usual, in contrast with . is the intermediate space in the wheelwork, hence: between the four wheels on the ground. For although does not mean whirl, yet neither is it quite = (wheel), but it combines at the same time what was implied in the wheel, with the idea of swiftness in rolling, of repeated, frequent motion. Comp. in the meantime for illustration, on Eze 1:15 sq. confines within narrower limits the more general expression which precedes; hence here is neither the double cherub on the ark, nor the whole of the cherubim, but the definite (Eze 10:7) individual cherub.We are not certainly to think of any hearth for material fire as being between the cherubim, nor is the altar of incense (Isa 6:6) to be dragged in for explanation; but it is the wrath of God (comp. Eze 9:8), which destroys Jerusalem, that is symbolized, in accordance with the description in Eze 1:13. [Ew.: the punishment, as in Gen 19:24, the worst. Calv. adopts the view of a silent antithesis to Lev 6:12-13.] Herewith properly everything is already said as regards the judgment on the city; the statement in Eze 10:7 brings merely in addition the execution of it, which is immediately followed up by allusions (also to the vision in Ezekiel 1.), mostly of an explanatory character, which are meant to illustrate the matter with all fulness and circumstantial exactness.

Eze 10:3 begins to supplement by telling us where the cherubim (Eze 10:1-2) in this second act appeared to the prophet as standing, where they had taken up their position: on the right of the house [on account of the inner court (of the priests) which follows, to be explained of the temple proper]; according to most: on the south side or south-eastwards (Eze 10:19, Eze 11:23), in contrast with Eze 8:5 sq., 14 (Ew.: because the south is the place of fire and death, just as the Indian Jamas dwells there and comes thence); according to others: on this very account, and because of the execution of judgment by the Chaldeans, on the north side. Along with the cherubim the whole vision is transferred from Ezekiel 1., although first of all it is merely the cloud that is mentioned, which is certainly also the first thing in Eze 1:4 (comp. there). The circumstance that it fills the court of the priests is an impressive contrast to 1Ki 8:10 sq.

Eze 10:4 is almost a verbatim repetition of Eze 9:3, and accordingly the expression is to be understood as there of the double cherub on the ark, so that, as in Ezekiel 9. in connection with the judgment on the citizens, so here in connection with the burning of their city, the abandonment of the temple on the part of Jehovah is prefigured. The prophet explains how the connection in the latter case was made clear to him,how, namely, outside the temple-edifice the cherubim (chajoth) stood ready with the coals of fire, and the cloud threateningly filled the inner court, when at the same time in the most holy place the glory of Jehovah rose from its old resting-place, which the worship Sabbatically celebrated, so that it mounted up () over (, which may of course be for , but rather stands here in contrast with in Eze 9:3) the threshold of the whole, visible as well as raised high above all; cherubim and cherub balancing each other in this way, that the house (in the narrower sense) became full of brightness from the cloud which filled the inner court, the (inner) court became so from the glory of Jehovah taking its departure out of the most holy place. Comp. on the cloud and the brightness, Doctrinal Reflections, p. 117. And as the brightness in this way attended the glory of Jehovah visibly through the court of the priests, so in Eze 10:5 the sound of the wings, etc., ready for movement, accompanies it audibly; comp. on Eze 1:24. The mention of its being heard as far as the (outer) court proves the correctness of the exposition given of Eze 10:4, as being parallel to Eze 9:3. Comp. besides on Eze 1:24 (Exo 19:16; Exo 19:19; Exo 20:1; Exo 20:18 sq.).

Accordingly, after the adjustment of the relation of cherub and cherubim (the explanations of Eze 10:3 sq. are attached to the latter), Eze 10:6 returns to Eze 10:2, resuming the command to the man clothed in linen. The execution of what is there commanded is described as it began. , i.e. beside the one definite wheel to which he went; not an ideal combination of the wheels, as Hengst, or = plural (Sept. [Eng. Vers.]).

Then Eze 10:7 tells us how he obtained the fire (the coals of fire of Eze 10:2). The cherub next to that wheel (Eze 10:9) took it and gave it to him. Thus the band of avengers (Ezekiel 9.) under his leadership, in whom we recognised a setting forth of the divine glory, is parallel with the cherubs of the vision; one hand grasps the other (Rev 15:7; Rev 8:5). The character in which the priestly man appears as mediating exemption from judgment (Ezekiel 9.) has thus (quite in accordance with the departure of Jehovah on the throne of grace out of the most holy place, where also no sacrificial mediation is possible any longer) assumed the form of a mediation of pure judgment. This abandonment of the temple on the part of Jehovah, which is much more prominently connected with the judgment on Jerusalem than in Eze 9:3, prefigures the of the man (comp. Eze 9:7), who thus takes his departure from the court of the priests for the city. But the mention of the hand of the cherub in Eze 10:7, as well as of the wheel in Eze 10:6, gives occasion for the continuation of explanatory additions which follows.

First comes Eze 10:8. Eze 8:3; comp. on Eze 1:8.Then in reference to the wheel, Eze 10:9; comp. on Eze 1:15 sq., Eze 1:4; Eze 1:16. A distributive repetition of the statement.

Eze 10:10. Comp. on Eze 1:5; Eze 1:13; Eze 1:16. As the appearance of the wheels is described in two aspects, the expression is repeated, just like in Ezekiel 1.

Eze 10:11. Comp. on Eze 1:17; Eze 1:8-9. The head, according to Hengst, is: what is upmost, highest, most excellent, i.e. the wheel which for the time had the direction, and which the others required to follow. Hitz.: This is also the case with ordinary vehicles; but where each wheel has a fourfold movement, there are also four heads, consequently; the head which begins the movement and carries the other three heads along with it. Keil: whither the foremost turned. All these explanations keep aloof from any reference to the cherubim, while in Eze 10:9 the wheels stand beside them, and the following Eze 10:12 mentions the cherubim first. Comp. Eze 10:14. is therefore = in Eze 1:15, to which also seems to point. Consequently it is the primus motor, the face of the cherub giving the direction, which they followed as their head (comp. on Eze 1:11).

Eze 10:12. And all their flesh, etc., can only refer to the cherubim, which accordingly are described (Rev 4:6) additionally to Eze 1:18 (comp. there). expressly specifies the connection between the cherubim and wheels thus characterized.

Eze 10:13. Hengst. translates in a meaningless way: the wheels were called the whirl in my hearing. Comp. for , Eze 10:2, and for , Eze 9:1. The verse docs not so much wind up as prepare for what follows. The call (, the sign of the vocative) is not, however, addressed to the wheels, as Keil: to the wheels, to them it was cried in my hearing, O whirl; but it contains what was cried, as giving the signal for departure, in reference to them (as Eze 10:14 also shows), with a view to the cherubim, which are described according to their faces, which give the direction (comp. Eze 10:11). Comp. first on Eze 1:6; Eze 1:10. The description of the faces in detail makes prominent only one of each of the four cherubim. (Is it that which is directly in front of the prophet?Keil.) [Kimchi incorrectly: the first, second, etc., of the four faces of each.] The face of the one (first) was , i.e. simply of the one definitely referred to in Eze 10:2; Eze 10:7 (Klief.). That it is the oxs face is proved from the connection. If the north side is taken for it (see on Eze 1:10), then the definition in detail of the faces, significant as it is for the quarter from which the judgment breaks forth (Eze 10:3), may possibly be according to the quarter of the heavens, and not according to the standpoint of the beholder, so that on all four sides of the vision as a whole, one face would be made prominent. [Hence it is vain to connect with this the etymology of the word , which is still spoken of as worthy of notice by Kurtz, and accepted by Schmieder, viz. = arator, according to the Syriac; which would lead, as Umbreit assumes on grounds purely conjectural, to an ox-form as specially prominent in the whole phenomenon of the cherub, particularly on the ark of the covenant. Hitz., following the Sept., makes the whole verse disappear as a gloss.]

Eze 10:15. Now comes the soaring aloft of the cherubim, thus prepared for (Isa 33:10); and in this connection already (Eze 10:20) we have the identification with the vision in Ezekiel 1. Comp. there, Eze 10:20.

Eze 10:16. The connection of cherubim and wheels in their harmonious movement, repeated just as in Ezekiel 1., with the mention, however, here of their wings, which were not mentioned there. Comp. Eze 1:19 (Eze 10:11).

Eze 10:17. Eze 1:21; Eze 1:20.

Eze 10:18. corresponds with in Eze 10:7. It was really the last moment before the complete departure from the temple! The glory of Jehovah, after it had risen up from above the cherub in the most holy place, had shown itself aloft above the threshold of the temple-edifice as a whole (Eze 10:4); now it betakes itself thence, so as to be over the cherubim (Eze 10:3); and in Eze 10:19 the now (as in Ezekiel 1.) united () wholecherubim, wheels, and glory of Jehovahcompletes the abandonment of the temple as a whole. (comp. their standing-place in Eze 10:3), corresponding with in Eze 10:18. where the court of the people opened toward the city, at the east gate of the temple-edifice.(, comp. Gen 3:24 : .)

Eze 10:20. A repetition in completed form of Eze 10:15. There the cherubim were the living creature; here the living creature is the cherubim. The recognition of the chajoth as being cherubim is the explanation of the vision of Ezekiel 1., as referring to Jerusalem, and it was brought about by means of the double cherub on the ark of the covenant. The cherubim must certainly have been well known to the priest-prophet from that quarter. The circumstance that they had appeared to Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1.) as the living creature, threatened therefore alike the dead worship in the most holy place, and the service of the dead idols everywhere in Israel, with the wrath of the living God (), with infallibly certain judgment. Their appearance by the Chebar predicted already the departure of the glory of Jehovah from the most holy place, and the abandonment of the Holy City; it had predictions at the same time for those who were in exile, as Ezekiel 11. will show. Thus it appears important to Ezekiel to recapitulate in Eze 10:21-22 the common features which serve as proof.

DOCTRINAL REFLECTIONS

1. It is much less to the judgment on the city, of which the account is a very brief one, that the prophet directs his attention, than to the showing of the coincidence with Ezekiel 1. If the vision there was that of the glory of Jehovah, as Ezekiel expressly says in summing up (Eze 1:28 : ), its relation to the glory of Jehovah above the cherubim, in the most holy place of the temple at Jerusalem, remained an open question. Has the glory of Jehovah, therefore, forsaken the temple, or will it? is it about to depart from thence, that it appears by the Chebar amid the misery of the exile? We know from the Introduction to our book how important this matter is for Ezekiels mission and labours. The question, then, which had remained open, is answered by Ezekiel 10; and this the prophet does not merely by repeated allusion, running throughout the whole of Ezekiel 10., to Ezekiel 1. in the description, but also by the quite definite statement in Eze 10:15, and still more expressly in Eze 10:20 : . The removal of the presence of Jehovah (Eze 10:4; Eze 10:18) from the ark of the covenant (already in Eze 9:3), the corresponding manifestations in Eze 10:1 sq., 5, etc., to the well-known vision of Ezekiel 1. (already in Eze 8:4), form the exceedingly dramatic, and at the same time the characteristic element of our chapter, which consists in the identity of the symbol of the divine presence for purposes of worship in the most holy place of the temple with that seen in vision by the Chebar, having so important a bearing on the downfall of Jerusalem as well as on the prophetic task of Ezekiel and the prospects of his companions in exile.

2. Bunsen remarks: Hence the glory of God in the temple was none other than that which is reflected on the spirit of the pious man from the created universe. But this implies also that to the prophet, the law, or the ark of the covenant in the most holy place of the tabernacle, and afterwards of the temple, was a temporary phenomenon, and that the time for the spiritual knowledge and worship of God was approaching. It is a foreshadowing of what is announced in Joh 4:21, shortly before the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem. But this latter already wanted the ark of the covenant and the glory of the Eternal bound up therewith. We must, moreover, compare the departure to the Mount of Olives (Eze 11:22 sq.), and the entrance into the new temple (Eze 43:2 sq.). Cocceius says: Gods proper dwelling-place is not between the cherubim made of gold, in which there is no life, no energy, no motion, but between the cherubim which are chajoth, i.e. living creatures, who have eyes to see, who possess the light of truth and the fire of love in themselves, Gods life in them, and who therefore glorify God: where this is the case, there is Gods dwelling, His holy temple, His glorious presence.

3. If (Eze 10:14) it is just to the ox-faced cherub that the dispensing of the fire (Eze 10:7; Eze 10:2) is assigned, then, in fact, we have an approximation to Langes interpretation of the bullock as the suffering and bleeding life-form (Lebens-gebild), the tragic-sacrificial animal. Light-foot: When the high priest approached the ark in the holy of holies, the cherub, which of necessity first met his eye on his right, was turned to him with its ox-face.

4. The approach of the man clothed in priestly linen garments has, according to the representation of the prophet, not only something which reminds us of the entrance of the high priest into the holy of holies on the great day of atonement, but, in the fire of the divine wrath being handed out to him here, has a significant Christological feature in it, where the aspect of eternity at the fearful moment and the noble simplicity of the transaction have an overawing effect. Comp. Deu 18:15-16.

5. The holy fire of God cleanses every creature which it touches; but in the case of the pious, the burning coal is a gracious power of cleansing, as in Isaiah 6; for those who are thoroughly corrupt, it is a consuming fire of judgment (Schmieder).

6. In the harmony wherewith the glory and cherubim and wheels are represented as moving, there is mirrored, as Hvernick remarks, the ideal character of the heavenly world.
(For the rest, see Doctrinal Reflections on Eze 9:1.)

HOMILETIC HINTS

Eze 10:1 sq. By this it was meant to be shown that Christs majesty and power are higher than the heavens (Heb 7:26),not, indeed, in respect of a residence in space, but in respect of the greatness of His glory (St.).How great is the glory of the Lord, the great God, and how terrible is His majesty, when He rises up to punish sinners! Nah 1:2 (Tb. B.).He who formerly made the mark for sparing, behold, he now scatters coals of fire upon the city. So the Son of man is likewise the Judge of the world (Joh 5:22; Joh 5:27).Christ the Messiah was the Judge not only in the destruction of the last Jerusalem, but also in the destruction of the first (Luk 19:44) (Tb. B.).The exact counterpart in the New Testament to this judgment with fire on Jerusalem in the Old Testament is the day of Pentecost at Jerusalem, fiery though it also was: instead of the coals of fire, tongues of fire.

Eze 10:3. So oughtest thou also to be prepared and to stand prepared to execute the divine will; as in heaven, so on earth ought it to be (Stck.).That every one, therefore, should execute his office and calling as willingly and faithfully as the angels do in heaven (Heidel. Cat. 124).For the last time, when the glory is already on the way to take its departure. But also a beautiful type of the incarnation of the Word (B. B.).

Eze 10:4. This is to be forsaken indeed, when God prepares to forsake us. Lo! then more than ever darkness comes over all the powers of mans spirit and over his life, and even trusted, loved countenances of friends go into shadow. Good thoughts grow ever fewer, impulses to prayer ever more rare; admonitions of conscience cease; the holy of holies in the man becomes empty down to the four walls and the usual pious furniture, etc.

Eze 10:5. The wings of the cherubim were heard in the confession of believers and in the executionary troops (B. B.).So also in the announcement of the shepherds (Luk 2:15 sq.), as well as in the declaration of the wise men from the East, and then later and specially in the preaching of the apostles, was this rushing to be heard.The thunder of the Almighty will make itself be heard more distinctly at the end, where He has hitherto spoken tenderly to draw the miserable out of the world.

Eze 10:6 sq. In the execution of important works, one ought to offer his hand to another (Exo 4:28; Exo 4:30) (St.).Willingness and ability to perform the divine will is the meaning of the mans hand; its being concealed under the wings shows the servants of God in their mysterious dependence on Gods beck and command (St.).

Eze 10:9 sq. Comp. Homiletic Hints on Ezekiel 1.By this repeated and still plainer description the galgal is to be made very clear to us (Cocc.).

Eze 10:10. In the kingdom of Christ everything stands in a close union and beautiful harmony (St.).

Eze 10:11. Now so ought it also to be among Gods children and servants. Not the one thing here, and the other out there. At the same time, one may be in front, whom the others follow; this detracts nothing from the equality (B. B.).Dear friend, take no long counsel with flesh and blood, but follow after (St.).

Eze 10:12. The expression: full of eyes, points to the enlightenment for looking to the ways of the Church, for watching that the church wheels may always be on the way of righteousness (Lampe).

Eze 10:13. It may also be cried: Revolution! that everything must be turned topsyturvy. Evolution is better. But if the people, princes, and potentates will not themselves turn, then the Spirit of God in judgment causes them to be turned in manifold ways, so that the foremost comes to be hindermost.Oh, involution and change of all things in the world, until the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of God and of His Christ! (B. B.)The believer is always in motion; there is no standing still in the Christian life, but continual progress in virtue and purity (Stck.).

Eze 10:14. Laboriousness, humanity, heroic courage, and depth of insight into the mysteries of God are especially the gifts of grace wherewith God is wont to endow men for the spread of His kingdom (Lange).

Eze 10:15. So ought it to be with us also, Col 3:1 sq.Where God departs, His angels go with Him (B. B.).

Eze 10:16 sq. Repetition makes it the more certain.

Eze 10:20 sq. The prophet also grew in knowledge.

Eze 10:22. Like them ought we, none the less keeping our goal in view, to go after Him.

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

The Prophet is here introduced into other visions of God. Under the similitude of coals of fire, between the Cherubim, and the form of a man’s hand, the Prophet hath his attention greatly excited.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

We are here brought to visions and revelations of God. The Holy Ghost hath not been pleased to give the Church any certain account what is implied in the solemn things here spoken of; therefore humble waitings upon the Lord are more suitable, and becoming, than mere conjectures. One point, indeed, seems abundantly evident; that the man clothed with linen, is the same as is spoken of in the preceding chapter; and there should seem to be but little doubt, that this is the God-man, Christ Jesus. His going in between the wheels, and filling his hand with coals, and scattering them over the city, may perhaps be intended to show, that the whole government, both in nature, providence, grace, and glory, is his.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Eze 10:12

In chapter xlvii. of Alec Forbes, George Macdonald makes a young girl ask an old blind woman whether God might not cure her of her blindness if she asked Him. ‘Ay micht He, and ay will He,’ answered Tibbie,’ I’m only jist bidin’ His time. But I’m thinkin’ He’ll cure me better yet nor He cured that blin’ man. He’ll jist tak’ the body aff o’ me a’thegither, and syne I’ll see, no wi’ een like yours, but wi’ my haill speeritual body. Ye min’ that verse i’ the Prophecees o’ Ezakiel: I ken’t weel by hert. It says: “And their whole boady, and their backs, and their han’s, and their wings, and their wheels, were full o’ eyes roon aboot, even the wheels that they four had.” Isna that a gran’ text?… The wheels’ll be stopping at my door or lang.’

References. X. 13. J. Pulsford, Our Deathless Hope, p. 278. X. 14. T. T. Munger, Character Through Inspiration, p. 73.

Eze 10:16-17

We have more than enough of systems, of machinery, which, whether more or less perfect, will not go of itself. We may have done all that of ourselves we can do, and the moving spirit may yet be wanting. The spirit of the living creature is in the wheels.

Dora Greenwell.

Eze 10:18

The thought that there are crises in a nation’s history, where the voice of an invisible Lord is heard from its inmost sanctuary, pronouncing the awful words, ‘Let us depart hence,’ comes to us overloaded with symbolism and muffled in its imagery. Yet the imagery is itself full of meaning, forcing us to realize the way in which the civilization of Babylon had already impressed the imagination of the Prophet, and as it were stolen into the background of the distant temple so soon to be laid in ruins. This gorgeous heathen civilization has no attraction for his heart, yet it colours his imagination.

Miss Wedgwood, Message of Israel, p. 229.

References. X. 21. G. Gilfillan, The Dundee Pulpit, 1872, p. 161.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

Concerning the Cherubims

Eze 10

This chapter is a varied representation of the vision disclosed in the first chapter; including, indeed, two new points, but still practically being the first vision as contemplated from another point of view. The two chapters may be regarded as in a sense binocular: looking through both of them we seem to see the real vision, so far as human sense can apprehend it. What is this variety of the same vision but a repetition of what occurs constantly in human life? Is it not always the same things that we look at? Are there in reality two things to be observed? Is it the object that changes, or the point of view? Is it the revelation or the atmosphere that undergoes modification? Is the landscape the same on cloudy days as in the full tide of summer sunshine? Yet the land abides; the trees, the towns, the gardens, the rivers are all the same, yet not the same by reason of the varying light which plays upon them, giving distinctness and shadow, new accent and proportion, according to a mysterious operation not yet fully comprehended. It is the same with theology, or with theologies! thoughts, such as God, Man, Salvation, Destiny: there is a central quantity which abides the same and unchangeable, and yet in all practical effect that central quantity seems to be continually changing; what we have to accept is the doctrine that it is not the central quantity that changes, but the conditions, the atmospheric density, the degree of light, and innumerable other circumstances which constitute the medium through which all our observations are taken. What is today but a repetition cf yesterday? To-day has of course brought its own light, its own temperature, its own immediate appeals; yet the two days are not dissimilar, they are indeed continuous; in very truth they are the same day, though we have divided them with a black line which we call night What is this summer but a repetition of the summer of last year? Yet this summer has its own flowers and fruits, its own birds, its own aspect of glory; still there is but one summer in all time, a day of warmth and beauty and tenderness, a day of revelation and mystery and fructification, a day which seems to shadow forth somewhat of the brightness and meaning of eternity. So with all beauty, so with all childhood, so with everything that grows. The difference is in the external, not in the internal; in the outward and visible leaf, not in the inward and invisible root. This is the very glory of providence; in it there is no monotony or mere repetition or tediousness; the providential sovereignty abides, but all the events through which it expresses itself continually change their light, their shadow, their agony, their tragedy. He therefore who studies providence studies a book that is always the same, yet never the same. The student of providence never wearies. He sees differences that are minute, but being microscopic are not the less important. We lose much by studying only great broad lines of historical movement: he is the truest historian who can lead us to see the finest lines of human thought, purpose, and action, and who afterwards can combine these into massive philosophies and laws.

Ezekiel saw a “sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne.” So in all the world’s tumult, revolution, and tempestuous politics and wars, we ought to be able to see over and above the whole the outline of a throne. The meaning is that the misrule, the fury, the rush of elements, is far below the point of sovereignty, and is under the continual vigilance and rule of a supreme Power. “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” So early as the Book of Exodus we were made aware of a rulership enthroned in glory: “They saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.” Yet the prophet is very careful in his statement, not speaking as one who had seen the fulness of the glory or the vastness of the magnitude of the throne; he speaks of “the appearance of the likeness of a throne,” that is to say, it was an outline, a shadow, a hint, something projected by an object infinitely greater than itself, a shadow that might have come down from infinite heights. It is thus that we see God in nature, in providence, and in all human life “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”; “And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” It is given to the spiritually minded to see these outlines of sovereignty. Not always do they come upon the vision as distinct images, but the events themselves are actually shaped as into the outline of a throne; the events are from one point of view sundered and scattered and unrelated, yet as time elapses they are brought together by an invisible hand, and set up in expressive unity, so clearly indeed that the only image which will represent their new relation is the image of a throne filled with majesty. Blessed be God, this throne is not always to be a distant and dazzling object; there is a way by which men may share the glory and security of that throne “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am sat down with my Father in his throne.” Are we not all called to rulership? Are not the saints to judge the world? Is not all our toil, if rightly accepted and sanctified, to end in glory, honour, and immortality? These are questions which should cheer the heart amid all the rush of events, the turmoil of history, the tempest and fury of revolution.

In the second verse we have one new point varying the chapter from the opening vision:

“And he spake unto the man clothed with linen, and said, Go in between the wheels, even under the cherub, and fill thine hand with coals of fire from between the cherubims, and scatter them over the city.” ( Eze 10:2 )

A wonderful thing it is that fire burns and does not burn! Here is a man clothed with linen who goes in between the wheels, and fills his very hand with coals of fire: they do not burn him; he handles them with impunity; and yet when he scatters them over the city the whole metropolis burns to destruction. The elements are one thing in the hand of their Creator, and another when thrown in an act of judgment upon creation. The gospel is either a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death; fire either becomes a summer to warm, or a conflagration to destroy; fire is either servant or master as servant, a friend; as master, a destroyer. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

In the twelfth verse we read concerning the cherubims that “their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had.” Here is an image of vigilance. God has been called “All eye.” This is the terrible pain of living, that there is no privacy, no solitude, no possibility of a man getting absolutely with himself and by himself. Wherever we are we are in public. We can indeed exclude the vulgar public, the common herd, the thoughtless multitude; a plain deal door can shut out that kind of world: but what can shut out the beings who do the will of Heaven, and who are full of eyes, their very chariot wheels being luminous with eyes, everything round about them looking at us critically, penetratingly, judicially? We live unwisely when we suppose that we are not being superintended, observed, criticised, and judged. “Thou God seest me”; “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth.” What Ezekiel saw in vision John also saw: “In the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind…. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within.” All this must be taken as symbolic of vigilance and criticism. We need not regard this aspect of divine providence as alarming. The aspect will be to us what we are to it. Faithful servants are encouraged by the remembrance of the fact that the taskmaster’s eye is upon them; unfaithful servants will regard the action of that eye as a judgment. Thus God is to us what we are to God. If we are humble, he is gracious; if we are froward, he is haughty; if we are sinful, he is angry; if we are prayerful, he is condescending and sympathetic. Let the wicked man tremble when he hears that the whole horizon is starred with gleaming eyes that are looking him through and through; but let the good man rejoice that all heaven is one eye looking upon him with complacency, watching all his action that it may come to joy, reward, rest, and higher power of service in the generations yet to dawn. Whilst on the one hand we have an image of vigilance, we have in the fourteenth verse an image of manifoldness: “Every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.”

We have read that one face was like the face of an ox. It has been suggested that in the Syriac tongue the word “cherub” is derived from a word which signifies drawing the plough, which was considered the proper work of the ox. All these, however, may be but fanciful interpretations. The great doctrine is that the providence of God is manifold, and the ministry of God is also manifold, and that his Church should not have one aspect but many, looking in all directions, typifying all states of life and emotion, and providing for all the varying necessities of life and time and progress. The first face was that of a cherub, expressive of knowledge, wisdom, largeness of mind, omniscience; the second face was the face of a man, expressive of brotherhood, sympathy, relationship, so that the face could be approached, and all the powers and elements which it typified could be implored, reasoned with, appealed to; the third was the face of a lion, expressive of courage, determination, aggressiveness, strength; the fourth was the face of an eagle, expressive of loftiness, fearlessness, enterprise, holy ambition. This is to be the image of the Church. It is to know, to sympathise, to express strength, and to represent invincible determination and magnificent enterprise.

Now the prophet realises the vision in its inter-relations:

“When the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubims lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them. When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also: for the spirit of the living creature was in them” ( Eze 10:16-17 ).

The inspiration was common; all forces, actions, ministries, are after all in the hands of one sovereign. If the universe is an infinite machine, part is related to part with infinite skill, and the weight of the whole is as nothing, because of the ease with which the entire body moves: we have the action of wheels, representing smoothness; the action of wings, representing swiftness; combined action, representing unity; and the whole moving with such regularity, spontaneity, and completeness as to represent a living creature. Wheels move, wings fly, place is changed, yet it is possible amid all this mutability to realise the blessedness of permanence. The living creature is greater than the machine which he moves; that living creature we do not see, but we are sure of his presence because of the action which is patent to our vision.

The second new point is in the abandonment of the temple, related in Eze 10:18-19 :

“Then the glory of the Lord departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims. And the cherubims lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the Lord’s house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.”

A fearful picture is this when looked at in the light of its spiritual significance. The sun may be darkened, the moon may be turned into blood, the stable earth may be shaken and blown about like a withered leaf: say not tomorrow shall be as this day and more abundant, because we hold all our privileges conditionally; the very glory of the Lord may be ashamed of the Lord’s house, and may flee from it as from a polluted body. The cherubim do not rest with us because of our being necessary to their happiness; they only abide with us because of the good we are willing to receive from them: we do not honour God; God honours us. When did the Lord so communicate himself to any being as to deprive himself of any part of his sovereignty? God has not given anything that he cannot take away again. The gifts and calling of God are undoubtedly without repentance, so long as we receive and appropriate them with willing hands and grateful hearts; but he will not suffer his gifts to die with our death, or to remain with us when we have forsaken him, merely for the sake of preserving his literal word. Understand clearly, deeply, and once for all, that God only gives us life that we may live; he only gives us honour that we may reflect it, and use it for the good of others; he only causes his light to abide with us so long as it can be made useful to our own education and to the assistance and comfort of others. When the Church is unfaithful, God will abandon her altars. No matter how glorious the house we have built for him, if our lives be not more glorious still we may write “Ichabod” upon the temple doors, for the Lord hath fled away from us. No man can guarantee the continuity of his own genius. We have no unchangeable hold on our own life; what we have we have conditionally, we hold as trustees, and only as we are faithful can we rely upon the continued custody of the divinest blessings. Genius may fade, riches may flee, health may decay, and all outward things may become to us as the image of so many reproaches and rebukes, and even life itself may wither and die. This power of withdrawal on the part of God is a power we may not have sufficiently considered. We awake in the morning and expect to find everything as it was yesterday, when, lo! God may have visited us in the night-time, and taken away from us everything that made life a blessing and a hope. God never does this arbitrarily; when this is done there is a great moral reason below it and behind it: God acts by certain well-declared and unchangeable laws, every one of which we can read for ourselves; and we well know that obedience leads to blessedness, and disobedience leads to unrest and self-contempt. How unwilling is God to withdraw from his house! How loath he is to lift himself up from any mind that he may abandon that mind to its own devices, which hasten it swiftly to destruction! God lingers with us, communes with us, intercedes with us, asks us, Why will ye die? How good he is, and tender; how patient and longsuffering! What is the meaning of all this? Can our poor life be of consequence to him? Yes; he holds every one of us as of great value. He has made nothing that is insignificant; he looks upon each life as necessary to the completeness of his kingdom, and the fulness of his music. When one of us goes astray the Lord comes after the lost one with a shepherd’s tender care. Hear the word of the Lord so grand, so pathetic, so tearful: “Turn ye, turn ye! why will ye die?” “As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” On the other hand, remember this solemn word, that the glory of the Lord may lift up itself and flee away, and leave poor human, sinful, impenitent life to enter into the mystery of judgment and penalty.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XV

PROPHECIES ON THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM

Ezekiel 4-14

Jeremiah was preaching in Jerusalem while Ezekiel was preaching in a similar strain to the exiles in Babylon. Jeremiah found that the people thought that Jerusalem, the center of Jehovah worship, could not and would not be destroyed. Ezekiel found the same conditions in Babylon. In the time of Isaiah, when the Assyrians were close at hand, God protected them and swept away 185,000 of their army and saved Jerusalem with the Temple. Their confidence in the perpetuity of their city seemed to be fixed. So they did not believe their city, their Temple, and their country would be destroyed. “It is God’s nation, God’s people, and God’s Temple,” they said. Moreover, they had false prophets in Jerusalem, prophets who were preaching the safety of the city, also false prophets in Babylon among the exiles, preaching the same thing. They preached that the exiles should speedily return; that the power of Babylon would be destroyed. There was one lone man in Judah, and one lone man in Babylon, preaching the destruction of the nation. This gives us some idea of Ezekiel’s task, the tremendous task that he had, to make those people believe that their nation, their city and their Temple were going to be destroyed. In order to get them to believe that, he made use of all these symbols, metaphors, and other figures which we have in this great section. He made use of these symbols, or symbolic actions, to make his preaching more vivid and more impressive, and he began this series of symbolic actions about four and a half years before the city was surrounded by Nebuchadnezzar, about six years before it fell, for the siege lasted one and a half years.

The symbol of the siege of Jerusalem and its interpretation are found in Eze 4:1-3 . The great truth he wanted to impress upon them was that Jerusalem would be besieged and would be taken and destroyed; so he was commanded by Jehovah to take a tile, or a brick, a tablet in a plastic condition, and to draw thereon a picture of a city, representing mounds cast up against the city on every side, from which the enemy could shoot their arrows down into the city and at the defenders on the walls. He was also told to set a camp round about it representing the soldiers encamped; he was to place battering rams there. These were huge beams of wood with iron heads which were pushed with great force by a large number of men, and thus driven against the walls and would soon make great holes in them. Then he was told to take an iron pan and put that between himself and this miniature city to represent the force that was surrounding it, and as that iron pan was impenetrable, so this besieging force was impenetrable, hard, and relentless, and would inevitably take and destroy the city without mercy.

Then he was told to lie upon his left side as if a burden was upon him. He was to do this according to the number of the years of the iniquity of Israel. He was to be bound while lying thus on his left side and he was to remain in that position 390 days. Then he was to lie upon his right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days, representing the forty years of their iniquity; these, of course, are symbolic numbers in both cases. The commentators have been greatly baffled to figure out these periods which apply to Israel and Judah. The best explanation seems to be that of Hengstenberg who makes the 390 years refer to Israel’s sin of idolatry beginning with Jeroboam and going down to the final captivity; likewise, the forty years, to Judah’s iniquity beginning forty years prior to the same captivity. According to this reckoning Israel’s period of iniquity was much longer than that of Judah and this accords with the facts of their history.

The scarcity and pollution of their food during the siege and after is symbolized in Eze 4:9-17 . Ezekiel was to take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, and spelt, various kinds of cheap grains that the very poorest of the people ate, mix them together and cook them on a fire made with the most disgusting and loathsome kind of fuel possible, and eat about twenty shekels per day and drink a little more than a pint of water. Twenty shekels would be probably about a pound of our bread, one pound of this cheap, coarse bread, and a little over a pint of water a day. His soul revolted at such loathsome fuel and he was promised a better kind of fuel used by very poor people at that time. This again is a literary symbolism, the idea being to bring before those people the fact that terrible scarcity was before them, great depredation, and almost starvation, and when they were carried into the various nations their food would be unclean and polluted and they would be compelled to eat this unclean food.

The fate of the population by the siege and their dispersion is symbolized in Eze 5:1-4 . Ezekiel was told to take a sword, make it as sharp as a barber’s razor, cut off the hair upon his head, take balances and divide it into three equal portions. Evidently Ezekiel must have resembled Elijah more than he did Elisha. A third part of it was to be put in the fire in the midst of the city; a third part, to be smitten with the sword round about, evidently hacking it to pieces; and a third part, to be scattered to the winds, and the sword was to go after it and hack it to pieces.

What is the meaning? One-third of the inhabitants of their beloved city should perish with famine and pestilence; one-third should be slain in the siege; the other third should be scattered among all the nations of the earth, and even this third the sword should pursue and nearly all of them should be cut off. These arc striking symbols, full of meaning. They must have had some effect upon the hearers.

The interpretation of the foregoing symbols, as given by the prophet in Eze 5:5-17 , is that this is Jerusalem. Eze 5:5 says: “I have set her in the midst of the nations, and countries are round about her.” The remainder of this section goes on to show how Judah had sinned, how she had revolted, how she had forsaken God, and Eze 5:8 says, “Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I, even I, am against thee; and I will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations.” Verse Eze 5:10 : “Therefore the father shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments on thee; and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter unto all the winds . . . and will draw out a sword after them.” Verse Eze 5:13 : “Thus shall mine anger be accomplished . . . and I shall satisfy my fury upon them.”

The prophecies of Eze 6:1-7 ; Eze 6:11-14 are prophecies against the mountains of Israel, that is, the seats of idolatry. All the kings that sought to create a reformation among the people had to deal with the high places. Hezekiah removed many of them, and at last Josiah removed all of them. They were renewed in the reign of Jehoiachim and doubtless in the reign of Zedekiah. It was against these high places that the prophets had been uttering their denunciations for centuries. Ezekiel, from the plains of Babylon, looks across the vast distance and sees the mountaintops and the hills with their shrines and altars and idols and he utters his prophecies against them. In the latter part of Eze 6:3 he says, “I will destroy her high places,” and in Eze 6:5 he gives a terrible picture: “I will lay the dead bodies of the children of Israel before their idols; and I will scatter your bones around about your altars,” and then he pictures the destruction of the idolatrous symbols of worship.

But hope is held out to Israel. In Eze 6:8 is the gleam of hope through this awful picture of destruction: “Yet will I leave a remnant, in that ye shall have some that escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries.” And then he says that many of those scattered through the countries shall remember God and regent, verse Eze 6:9 : “And those of you that escape shall remember me among the nations whither they shall be carried captive,” and the last part of Eze 6:9 says, “And they shall loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.” There was hope for the people throughout the countries that some of them would survive. There was scarcely a ray of hope for the city that any should escape. So Ezekiel preaches the doctrine of the remnant as does Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, and all the other prophets of this period.

Eze 7 is a lament, or dirge, over the downfall of the kingdom of Judah, and it is divided into four parts, thus:

1. The end is come upon the four corners of the land (Eze 7:1-4 )

2. The end is come upon the inhabitants of the land (Eze 7:5-9 )

3. The ruin is come unto all classes and is universal (Eze 7:10-13 )

4. The picture of the dissolution of the state (Eze 7:14-27 ) The theme of Eze 8 is, Israel’s many idolatries, which have profaned the Lord’s house and have caused him to withdraw from it. The date of this prophecy is fourteen months after the previous sections we have studied, in the sixth month, 591 B.C., which corresponds to our October.

Then the prophet sees what he calls the image of jealousy in the Temple (Eze 8:1-6 ). He sees a new vision of the Lord, and the one who sat above that firmament whose appearance was like unto fire, appears to Ezekiel again and, strange to say (we have to interpret this as a vision in symbol), took him by a lock of the hair of his head and carried him all the way from Babylon to Jerusalem. The Spirit took him thus and set him down at the door of the gate of the inner court and there he saw what he calls an “image of jealousy.” It was not jealousy pictured, but an image of some of their deities, some form of Baal set up in the very Temple of Jehovah, which provoked him to jealousy. Thus, he pictures the idolatry of the people as existing in the very Temple and its sacred precincts made place for their idols.

The prophet now sees another vision, the secret idolatry of the elders in the chambers of the gateway (Eze 8:7-13 ). The images there were worshiped by the people at large. Now the elders, the leaders, are engaged in it, and he says in Eze 8:10 , “So I went in and saw; and behold, every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about.” Eze 8:11 : “And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel; and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, every man with his censor in his hand; and the odor of the cloud of incense went up.” All this is used to represent the elders, the leaders of the people of Jerusalem, who were idolaters in secret, if not openly.

The women were lamenting and weeping for Tammuz, or Adonis, a heathen solar mythical being, nature personified and represented in winter as perishing or languishing, and in spring, reviving. Some writers think it represents the hot season of the year, as nature is all dead and withered, and is revived later on. Here the women are described, the ladies, the society ladies of Jerusalem, weeping as the heathen women did, because the force of nature, represented in this physical being, was apparently dead. It was a strange sort of worship indeed. It is not known as to just what the nature of this worship was, but it was something like that.

Then Ezekiel was shown the sun worship (Eze 8:10-18 ). The latter part of Eze 8:16 says: “about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah, and their faces toward the east; and they were worshiping the sun toward the east.” This gives us some idea as to the depths to which the people had gone in their idolatrous worship, even in Jerusalem and the Temple.

The first act of divine judgment, the slaughter of the inhabitants, is presented in Eze 9 . Jehovah is represented as crying out and calling seven men, supernatural beings, six of them armed with a sword, and the seventh one armed with an inkhorn. These come forth into the Temple area and from there into the streets of the city. The man with the inkhorn set his mark upon all that should not be slain. Thus they entered the Temple; Ezekiel sat still in the vision and in a short while six supernatural men cut down a vast number. When they cut down all the Temple force they went out into the city and the slaughter went on. Eze 9:8 says, “And it came to pass, while they were smiting, and I was left, that I fell upon my face, and cried, and said, Ah Lord Jehovah! wilt thou destroy all the residue of Israel in thy pouring out of thy wrath upon Jerusalem?” Ezekiel saw that if these six angelic beings went through the city, not many would be left. He cried out but it was of no avail. The second act of divine judgment is symbolized in Eze 10 . Here Ezekiel sees the same glorious vision of God that he saw at first, and the voice came from him above the firmament saying to a man clothed in linen, “Take some fire” from that central place among the cherubim “take some of that divine fire and scatter it over the city.” Then we have the description of how one of the cherubim, with one of those arms, took some of the fire and handed it out to this other being and he went abroad and scattered that fire over the inhabitants of the city. That is a symbol also. The latter part of Eze 10 is simply an extended description of the same vision recorded in Eze 1 . We have a threat of destruction and a promise of restoration in Eze 2 . The occasion of the destruction of Jerusalem was virtually the revolt on the part of the princes against Nebuchadnezzar. It was the princes of Judah that led Zedekiah into revolt, the princes that were so obnoxious to Jeremiah, the princes of Judah that caused the downfall of the city and tried to put Jeremiah out of the way. Ezekiel, in vision, sees those princes and he sees them counseling and planning to make a league with Egypt and revolt against Nebuchadnezzar. He denounced them. Eze 10:2 says, “And he said unto me, Son of man, these are the men that devise iniquity and that give wicked counsel in this city; that say, The time is not near to build houses.” If we are going to fight, this city will be a caldron and we will be the flesh, and it is better to be in the frying pan than in the fire. This city, the capital, may be destroyed; the time of war has come; let us fight and stay inside.” They did so, and in the remainder of the chapter we have the denunciation of Ezekiel. He says, “I will bring you forth out of the midst thereof, and deliver you into the hands of strangers.” And that actually happened, for Nebuchadnezzar captured all these princes with Zedekiah; they were brought before him at Riblah and every one slain with the sword.

The latter part of the chapter states that there will be some left; a remnant will be saved among the exiles. There shall be a few found faithful, and in Eze 10:17-19 is a marvelous promise: “I will gather you out of all the countries where you have been scattered,” and in Eze 10:19 , he anticipates Christianity, saying, “I will give them a new heart, and put a new spirit within them, and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep mine ordinances, and do them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” The hope of the nation was in the exiles, not in the people that were left in Jerusalem. Immediately following that, the cherubim that had appeared near the house of Jehovah, were removed east on the Mount of Olives and departed thus from the city, signifying that Jehovah had abandoned Jerusalem.

There are two symbolic actions described in Eze 12 . Ezekiel is told to gather up such things as be would require to take with him if he were going into exile, just as one would pack his trunk or grip to go to another place. So Ezekiel packs up his goods in the sight of the people in the daytime, and has them all ready. That night he goes to the wall of the city and digs a hole through, and with his goods upon his shoulder makes his way through that hole of the wall to go out. It was a symbolic action, performed to impress the people. He interprets his action thus: The people of Jerusalem shall take their belongings and go into exile, and Zedekiah, the prince of Jerusalem, will dig a hole through the wall of the city and with his goods upon his shoulders will try to escape. He actually tried to do that, but was taken. Eze 12:11 says, “Say, I am your sign: like as I have done, so shall it be done unto them; they shall go into captivity.” Verse Eze 12:12 : “And the prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in the dark and shall go forth: they shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby: he shall cover his face, because he shall not see the land with his eyes.” This is a mild way of expressing the truth that Zedekiah tramped all the way to Babylon with his eyes having been bored out by Chaldean spears.

Another symbolic action is recorded in Eze 12:18-19 , as to the eating of bread and drinking of water, and then Ezekiel quotes a proverb, “The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.” They were saying that the visions and prophecies did not come true. He answers, “Thus saith the Lord God: I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but say unto them, The days are at hand, and the fulfilment of every vision.”

The false prophets and prophetesses are characterized in Eze 13 . Jeremiah had to contend with the false prophets, but Ezekiel had to contend with the false prophets and prophetesses. They are described thus:

1. The false prophets are described as jackals burrowing in the ground, and making things worse instead of better (Eze 13:1-7 ).

2. They whitewash the tottering walls that the people built and they daub them with untempered mortar (Eze 13:8-16 ). The people built up walls of defense by their foolish plans and the false prophets agreed with them. They tried to smooth the danger over, saying, “Peace for her.”

3. The denunciation of the false prophetesses (Eze 13:17-23 ). These women deceived the people. Verse Eze 13:18 : “Thus saith the Lord God: Woe to the women that sew pillows upon all elbows, and make kerchiefs for the head of persons of every stature to hunt souls!” These pillows were little cushions fastened on the joints of their hands and arms to act as charms. The custom exists today in the East. Ezekiel denounces them in verse Eze 13:20 : “Wherefore, thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against your pillows, wherewith ye there hunt the souls to make them fly, and I will tear them from your arms; and I will let the souls go, even the souls that ye hunt to make them fly.” These were the spiritualists of that day. They are with us yet, only their methods are different.

The answer of Jehovah to idolaters who inquire of him is found in Eze 14 :

1. The answer is this, Put away your idols or look out for the judgment of God. There is no use in coming to inquire of Jehovah through me if you are idolaters in heart (Eze 14:1-11 ).

2. The principle of divine judgment is found in Eze 14:12-23 . It is this: Righteous men shall not save sinners, only their own souls. Notice verse Eze 14:14 : “Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness.” Verse Eze 14:16 : “Though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they should deliver neither sons nor daughters; they only should be delivered, but the land should be desolate.” So no matter how many righteous men there may be, and how righteous they may be, only they themselves shall be saved in the terrible sack of the city. Thus, the righteous could not save Jerusalem, any more than Lot could save Sodom.

QUESTIONS

1. What the problem of Ezekiel in Babylon and what prophet with

2. What encouragement did the people have both in Jerusalem and in Babylon to believe in the safety of their holy city and nation, and what Ezekiel’s method of impressing upon the exiles the fallacy of such an argument?

3. What the symbol of the siege of Jerusalem and what its interpretation? (Eze 4:1-3 .)

4. How are the people bearing their sins here symbolized and what the interpretation? (Eze 4:4-8 .)

5. How is the scarcity and pollution of their food, during the siege and after, symbolized in Eze 4:9-17 ?

6. How is the fate of the population by the siege and their dispersion symbolized? (Eze 5:1-4 .)

7. What is the interpretation of the foregoing symbols, as given by the prophet in Eze 5:5-17 ?

8. What are the prophecies of Eze 6:1-7 ; Eze 6:11-14 and what is the history of these high places?

9. What hope is held out to Israel amid this awful picture?

10. What the theme of Eze 7 and what its parts?

11. What was the theme and date of Eze 8 ?

12. What was the “Image of Jealousy” seen by Ezekiel (Eze 8:1-6 ), and what the particulars of this vision?

13. What is the prophet’s vision of the elders and what its interpretation (Eze 8:7-13 )?

14. What was the abomination of Tammuz? (Eze 8:14-15 .)

15. What of the sun worship? (Eze 8:16-18 .)

16. How is the first act of divine judgment and slaughter of the inhabitants represented? (Eze 9 .)

17. How was the second act of divine judgment symbolized? (Eze 10 .)

18. Explain the threat of destruction and the promise of restoration in Eze 11 .

19. What two symbolic actions described in Eze 12 , and what their interpretation?

20. How are the false prophets and prophetesses characterized in Eze 13 ?

21. What is the answer of Jehovah to idolaters who inquire of him and what the divine principle of judgment? (Eze 14 .)

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Eze 10:1 Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubims there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne.

Ver. 1. Then I looked, and behold in the firmament. ] Heb, In that expanse or firmament mentioned, Eze 1:22 .

That was above the head of the cherubims. ] Called before “living creatures.” Eze 1:5 ; Eze 1:13-15 ; Eze 1:19 Now God is represented as in his temple, where things are more clearly descried and described. Psa 29:9 In his temple doth every one speak of his glory. Cherubims the angels are called, from the greatness of their knowledge, saith Jerome, as God’s Rabbis; or rather, because the Lord rideth upon them Psa 80:1 ; Psa 99:1 as upon his chariot. 1Ch 28:18 Here they are said to be under the firmament and near the throne to execute God’s commands with expedition. It is not therefore as those miscreants said, Eze 9:9 The Lord hath forsaken the earth.

There appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, ] i.e., Jehovah in his glory.

As the appearance. ] It was but as, and as the appearance: we cannot see God as he is. Some have seen Mercabah velo harocheb, say the Hebrews, the chariot, but not the rider therein.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Ezekiel Chapter 10

The vision which follows completes the picture of judgment begun in chapters 8, 9. While it recalls that which the prophet first beheld among the captives at Chebar, it has certain modifications which one might expect from the fact that, as he sat with the elders of Judah before him, he was brought by the Spirit in the visions of God to Jerusalem now in its day of visitation for its uncleanness of flesh and spirit, beginning with the sanctuary but taking cognizance of the city throughout, those only excepted who sighed and cried for all the abominations done in the midst. If it was a solemn sight for the captive prophet to see the glory of God in a heathen land, it was no less significant to see it arrayed in vengeance against the city whereon His eyes and His heart are perpetually.

“Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubim there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. And he spake unto the man clothed with linen, and said, Go in between the wheels, even under the cherub, and fill thine hand with coals of fire from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city. And he went in in my sight. Now the cherubim stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court.” (Ver. 1-3) Thus from Him who is not even named, but who fills the throne above, came the command intimating consuming judgment for the city; and he who was commissioned to mark the righteous for exemption is now told to fill his hand with coals of fire from between the cherubim and to scatter them over Jerusalem. The cloud of Jehovah’s presence was there; but it afforded no shelter, no direction now to the people who had abandoned all care for His will and preferred a calf or a dung-god to the Eternal of Israel. How changed from the day when Jehovah went before them, or filled the sanctuary!

“Then the glory of Jehovah went up from the cherub over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of Jehovah’s glory. And the sound of the cherubim’s wings was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of the Almighty God when he speaketh.” (Ver. 4, 5) The glory was departing, not coming to dwell there. Jehovah is leaving the seat which He was pleased to choose – not leaving it for ever, for He has chosen it for ever. But meanwhile He is morally driven away by the iniquities and apostasy of His own people. The prophecy of Ezekiel is explicit that He will return and dwell there, never more to quit His home as long as the earth lasts, for His people will then enjoy the rest of God under Messiah and the new covenant. But as David was forced to say in his last words that his house was not so with God, in like manner does our prophet here tell in mysterious symbols the rupture of the ties between God and Israel through the solemn signs of their judgment. In every way did He make it conspicuous to the prophet, if peradventure they might hear and live, arrested by the strange sights and sounds he was given to recount from the Lord. Whatever He might do at other times, it was unmistakably Jehovah who directed the sweeping destruction of His own city and sanctuary. Thus the faith of the believer would be strengthened by the dealings which cleared the ground of every tree which He had not planted.

Next we have the execution of the command in the vision, that all might be rendered the more impressive and sure to such as flattered themselves that, whatever the sharp lessons and chastenings of Jehovah, it could not be that He would disown Israel, and that, whatever the temporary successes of the foe, the land and the city and the temple must prove an unfailing bulwark against permanent advantage over the chosen people. So readily does man forget the immutable principles of God’s moral being and turn to his own ease and honour what God could only do for the maintenance of truth and righteousness to His own glory. “And it came to pass, that when he had commanded the man clothed with linen, saying, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the cherubim; then he went in, and stood beside the wheels. And one cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubim unto the fire that was between the cherubim, and took thereof, and put it into the hands of him that was clothed with linen: who took it, and went out. And there appeared in the cherubim the form of a man’s hand under their wings. And when I looked, behold, the four wheels by the cherubim, one wheel by one cherub, and another wheel by another cherub: and the appearance of the wheels was as the colour of a beryl stone. And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides; they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it; they turned not as they went. And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had. As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O wheel. And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle. And the cherubim were lifted up. This is the living creature that I saw by the river of Chebar. And when the cherubim went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them. When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also: for the spirit of the living creature was in them.” (Ver. 6-17) It is plain that, if the glory seen by the river Chebar returned, so emphatically identified in verses 15, 20, 22, it was but passingly and for the sad task both of sealing the judgment and of marking the abandonment of Israel as under the law and now apostate from God. The symbol of divine government in providence was there, but it took not its seat in the holiest. It stood at the threshold, and the court was full of the brightness of Jehovah’s glory, but there was no entrance within. It was a judicial visitation, in obedience to His behests who from above controlled every movement. Wrath was gone out against Jerusalem. He it was who directed all, not the dumb idols which carried away the Gentiles, having mouths but they speak not, having eyes and hands and ears but they hear not nor see nor handle, as vain as those who trust in them against God in the heavens who hath done whatsoever He hath pleased.

There are some features of difference from the earliest manifestation. Not that there is any severance of the wheels from the cherubic figures, or the least divergence from common action, or in the end of their complicated movements. All pervading intelligence is yet more asserted of the whole body, backs, hands, wings, wheels. “As for the wheels it was called in my hearing, Galgal” [wheel, or roll, roll]. In verse 18 we see a move of the gravest significance: “Then the glory of Jehovah departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of Jehovah’s house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above. This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubim. Every one had four faces apiece, and every one four wings; and the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings. And the likeness of their faces was the same faces which I saw by the river of Chebar, their appearances and themselves: they went every one straight forward.” (Ver. 18-22) There might be a lingering over the east gate, but the glory was departing.

Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Eze 10:1-2

1Then I looked, and behold, in the expanse that was over the heads of the cherubim something like a sapphire stone, in appearance resembling a throne, appeared above them. 2And He spoke to the man clothed in linen and said, Enter between the whirling wheels under the cherubim and fill your hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city. And he entered in my sight.

Eze 10:1-2 This is very similar to the description of YHWH’s portable throne chariot of Eze 1:13-25.

Eze 10:2 YHWH gives three commands to the angelic being dressed in linen.

1. enter, BDB 97, KB 112, Qal IMPERATIVE

2. fill, BDB 569, KB 583, Piel IMPERATIVE

3. scatter, BDB 284, KB 283, Qal IMPERATIVE

The imagery comes from the vision of Isa 6:6, where it is initially a purification ritual inaugurating Isaiah’s ministry. Here it is a judgment ritual, which is repeated in Rev 8:5. In may ways Isaiah (i.e., chapter 24) and Ezekiel are the beginning of apocalyptic imagery. This is developed in Daniel and Zechariah and becomes a significant Jewish genre during the interbiblical period.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

behold. Figure of speech Asterismos. App-8.

firmament = expanse. Compare Eze 1:22.

a sapphire stone. Compare Eze 1:26. Exo 24:10.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Chapter 10

And then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament [the heaven] that was above the head of the cherubims there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne ( Eze 10:1 ).

Again, the vision of the throne of God, similar to that which he had by the river Chebar in chapter 1.

And as he spake unto the man that was clothed with linen, and said, Go in between the wheels, even under the cherub, and fill your hand with the coals of fire from between the cherubims, and scatter them over the city. And he went in my sight. Now the cherubims stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court. Then the glory of the LORD went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the LORD’S glory ( Eze 10:2-4 ).

You say, “Oh, how beautiful.” No, it’s tragic, because the glory of God is leaving.

And the sound of the cherubim’s wings was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of the Almighty God when he speaks. And it came to pass, that when he had commanded the man clothed with linen, saying, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the cherubims; then he went in, and stood beside the wheels. And one cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubims unto the fire that was between the cherubims, and took from it, and put into it the hands of him that was clothed with linen; who took it, and went out. And there appeared in the cherubim’s form of a man’s hand under their wings. And when I looked, behold the four wheels by the cherubims, one wheel by the cherub, and another wheel by another cherub: and the appearance of the wheels was as the color of a beryl stone [or green]. And as for their appearances, they had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the middle of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides; they did not turn as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it; and turned not as they went ( Eze 10:5-11 ).

So, they are the four cherubs. Their wings are each touching each other and they are faced inwardly. So their movements are in straight type of movements, not turning their heads as they move, but each head just following in a straight type of movement.

And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had. As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O wheel. And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub ( Eze 10:12-14 ),

Now, in chapter 1 he said the face was like an ox. Here he’s getting a look at it from a different perspective. He is standing down and looking up, as it has now ascended upward, and in looking up at it from this angle, it looks more like a cherub, whatever a cherub looks like.

and the second face was like the face of a man, and the third face was like a lion, and the fourth was the face of an eagle ( Eze 10:14 ).

So the four faces, again, one in each direction.

And the cherubims were lifted up. This is the living creature that I saw by the river Chebar. And when the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubims lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them. When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these were lifted up also: for the spirit of the living creature was in them. Then the glory of the LORD departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims. And the cherubims lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: and when they went out, the wheels also were beside them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the LORD’S house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above ( Eze 10:15-19 ).

And so, now it has moved to the door of the east gate.

This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were cherubims. Every one had four faces, every one four wings; and the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings. And the likeness of their faces was the same faces which I saw by the river of Chebar, their appearances and themselves: and they went every one straight forward ( Eze 10:20-22 ).

Now, you have the difficulty of trying to describe in human language an indescribable kind of a thing like you’ve never seen before, as you observe these cherubim, these angelic beings. Cherubim is plural for cherub. The im is the plural in Hebrew. So, a cherub would be singular, a cherubim is plural, because there are four cherubim involved in this vision that Ezekiel saw, he uses the term cherubim, because it is plural.

There are these colors, there are these eyes, there are these faces, there are all of these aspects that he describes in human language as best he can. To us, it comes out as some kind of a monstrosity as far as the appearance is concerned, because we have never seen anything with four faces that in any wise would resemble what he’s talking about here. The lights that are flashing, the colors, when they move, the lightening, look at their movements.

And so Ezekiel is bound to language that he has, trying to describe these heavenly beings. Now, there is always that difficulty in trying in human language to describe that which is divine or heavenly.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Hey, if I’ve told you earthly things and you didn’t believe them, how are you going to believe if I tell you heavenly things?” Now, if we have difficulty describing earthly things, how in the world can you describe heavenly things? How would you describe to an aborigine in Australia a computer and how it operates? You’d have trouble, wouldn’t you? Because he has such a limited vocabulary, no understanding of modern technical instruments, how that you can punch out on this keyboard, but he doesn’t understand what a keyboard is.

Paul the apostle was caught up into heaven, but he was pretty smart, he said, “There is no language that can describe what I heard,” so he just left it there. He said, “It would be a crime for me to try to describe it in human language. There’s no way to do it,” so he didn’t even try. You know, when I get to heaven I’m going to talk to him about that. I think he should have at least tried. But he said it would be a crime to try and do it, because nothing that you could…there are no words that can describe that which Paul heard. So far beyond that any attempt would be less than what it was. It would be a crime, it would be so much less than what it actually was, that there’s just no way you can do it.

So, I’m certain that with everything else we get in heaven will be a new vocabulary. In order that we might again describe to each other those things that are of the heavens, those things that are heavenly.

So, Ezekiel is taking human language and trying to describe spiritual creatures, spiritual events. Doing the best that he can, but limited by his age and the technology and all that they had at that time, in his use of words, in describing these things.

Now, when you see the cherubim, it would be interesting if in this modern, more technical age, we would see them, if our descriptions would vary much from Ezekiel’s. Now, I really don’t know. He talked about their having the wings and touching each other. We think of Ezekiel and wings, you think of bird type wings. Maybe they’re not. Maybe we’d say, “They had wings like an F-04. And the noise sounds like a jet taking off.” And it could be that in using terms today we would use different terminology to describe these angelic heavenly creatures that are there about the throne of God, that are described here in Eze 1:1-28; Eze 2:1-10; Eze 3:1-27; Eze 4:1-17; Eze 5:1-17; Eze 6:1-14; Eze 7:1-27; Eze 8:1-18; Eze 9:1-11; Eze 10:1-22.

But, for parallel passages read Revelation, chapter 4, as John also describes these same creatures in the heavenly scene. Familiarize yourself with them because when John gets to heaven, the first thing that attracts his attention is the throne of God and these cherubim around the throne of God and their activity there. So, you might as well familiarize yourself with them, because that’s probably the first thing that you’ll be seeing when you get to heaven. And if you aren’t a little familiar with it, you’re going to be going around with your mouth wide open looking like someone who didn’t do their homework.

So, interesting what we have to look forward to as we one day will leave this three-dimensional plane or three-dimensional living and enter into that spiritual dimension where we too will see the real world, not this temporal world of fantasy that is about us, but the eternal world, God’s kingdom.

In the news reports this evening, there are reports of Libya attacking Sudan. I think it was on Thursday that a couple of their planes bombed an area of Sudan, killing some of the civilians. The Middle East is in turmoil. One week can bring so many new events; one week could bring us to the end, as far as that goes. Kaddafi is a real problem upon the world today. It is thought by the FBI and the CIA that he has paid huge sums of money for the assassination of President Reagan. That is why Reagan did not go to the funeral of Sadat.

The United States feels that they have a score to settle with Kaddafi, and we could easily become involved in a move against Libya. We are, in a sense, sort of looking for the excuse to do something about that situation there. So, the whole Middle East bears watching.

I’m so glad that I know the Lord and I know the score, because God has given it to us a long time ago. Libya will not be taken by the United States. Libya will be an ally of Russia when Russia invades Israel. Libya is already an ally of Russia. They have publicly announced the defense pact made in 1975, a mutual defense agreement and should the United States attack Libya it will definitely bring retaliation from Russia. And yet, we feel that we cannot allow Kaddafi to continue his madman policies. So, be glad you’re not Haag or any of these other men that have to make the decisions in this chaotic world in which we live.

But as Christians be alert, keep your eyes on the Lord, keep them looking up, because our redemption is so very, very close. God be with you and bless and keep you through the week. May the Lord strengthen you as the evil days are waxing worse and worse. As perilous times have come because of the pleasure madness of man. May the Lord establish your life in Christ and may your faith increase and your love and devotion for the things of God, for the things of the Spirit. In Jesus’ name. “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Eze 10:1-4

BURNING OF JERUSALEM; AND

WITHDRAWAL OF GOD’S PRESENCE

Here we have a continuation of the major theme of Ezekiel 8-11, which particularly deals with the final departure of the presence of God from the apostate capitol of the Once Chosen people. Eze 10:1-8 prophesy the burning of Jerusalem; and Eze 9:9-11 show preparations for the withdrawal of God’s presence, his final departure being revealed in the next chapter.

GOD’S COMMAND TO BURN THE CITY

Eze 10:1-4

“Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was over the head of the cherubim there appeared above them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. And he spake unto the man clothed in linen, and said, Go in between the whirling wheels, even under the cherub, and fill both thy hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city. And he went in in my sight. Now the cherubim stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court. And the glory of Jehovah mounted up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of Jehovah’s glory.”

“Coals of fire … scatter them over the city …” (Eze 10:2). This sentence of Jerusalem’s destruction took place in the Temple itself, “Thus making it manifest that the judgment is in vindication of the affronted holiness of God, caused by the sins of Israel against his covenant.

“And he spake …” (Eze 10:2). The speaker here is the person enthroned, namely, God.

The fire spoken of in this passage is far different from the fire of the altar. “That fire spoke of God’s grace (Lev 6:12-13); here it speaks of the destruction of the wicked.

Pearson noted that in Eze 10:2 a singular noun is used to describe the whole complex of whirling wheels, etc., supporting the sapphire throne. This indicates that the entire apparatus had the utility of standing as a representation of the presence and glory of the Almighty.

“The glory of Jehovah mounted up from the cherub …” (Eze 10:4). Cook used the past perfect tense here. “‘The glory of the Lord had gone up from the cherub to the threshold of the house,’ to describe what had happened before the man went in (Eze 10:3). This description runs through Eze 10:6.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The prophet next described the process of judgment. First, a preliminary vision was granted to him. The man with the inkhorn who had passed through the midst of the city, setting his mark on the sighing and crying men, was commanded to pass in between the whirling wheels and gather coals of fire in his hand and scatter them over the city.

Then appeared the glory of Jehovah over the threshold of the house, and the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard. Visions of the glory of God, similar to those which the prophet had seen by the Chebar, now were granted to him, but they were viewed as having close association with the process of judgment, which he was about to describe. The man who gathered his fire to scatter on Jerusalem went into the midst of these wheels,

and the visible glory of Jehovah as it departed from the threshold was closely associated with the wheels and the cherubim. The whole of the vision of the glory of God moved from the inner court of the Temple beyond the eastern gate of its outer court.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

Chapter Ten

The Divine Chariot Reappears

This tenth chapter gives a continuation of the vision, the first part of which is recorded in chapter 9. The man clothed with linen who had the inkhorn by his side is still before us and acts as the direct representative of God in judgment. Ezekiels attention was turned away from the earthly sanctuary to the heavens above. He says:

Then I looked, and behold, in the firmament that was over the head of the cherubim there appeared above them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. And he spake unto the man clothed in linen, and said, Go in between the whirling wheels, even under the cherub, and fill both thy hands with coals of fire from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city. And he went in in my sight. Now the cherubim stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court. And the glory of Jehovah mounted up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of Jehovahs glory. And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of God Almighty when He speaketh. And it came to pass, when he commanded the man clothed in linen, saying, Take fire from between the whirling wheels, from between the cherubim, that he went in, and stood beside a wheel. And the cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubim unto the fire that was between the cherubim, and took thereof, and put it into the hands of him that was clothed in linen, who took it and went out. And there appeared in the cherubim the form of a mans hand under their wings-vers. 1-8.

So marvelous and sublime is this vision that it is almost beyond human power to fully understand and appreciate it. We see here, as in chapter 1, the divine chariot in which Jehovah rides majestically through the universe, ordering everything according to the counsel of His own will. The prophet looked up and saw in the firmament that was over the head of the cherubim, a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne. It is the throne of the moral Governor of the universe. No matter how confused and confusing conditions may be on earth,

God sits exalted on His throne,

And ruleth all things well.

At His command the man clothed with linen was seen entering in between the whirling wheels under the cherubim. There his hands were filled with coals of fire from between these glorious beings-fire which was to be scattered over the city, indicating that the hour of its judgment had come.

We have something very similar in the book of the Revelation, in the eighth chapter, where the angel-priest is seen standing at the golden altar, offering up before God the smoke of the incense with prayers of His suffering saints on the earth. In response to these prayers the angel takes the censer and fills it with the fire of the altar and casts it upon the earth, thus indicating that the judgments of God are to be poured out upon this guilty world. And so here in Ezekiel 10, Gods patience having been exhausted, the people of Judah having sinned until there was no hope of repentance, the hour of their doom had struck. They could not see what was going on in the heavens; they did not realize that coals of fire from between the cherubim were being scattered over the city; but they were soon to know the meaning of all this in all its terror and its horror.

As the prophet beheld, the cherubim stood on the right side of the house when the man went in, and the cloud, we are told, filled the inner court. Then he saw the glory of Jehovah mounting up from the cherubim and standing suspended over the threshold of the house which was filled with the cloud, and the court, too, was resplendent with the brightness of Jehovahs glory.

Though the ears of the sinners of Judah were deaf to it all, the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of God Almighty when He speaketh. He commanded the man clothed in linen, bidding him take the fire from between the whirling wheels from between the cherubim-a command that was obeyed immediately. Hands that had been hidden formerly beneath the wings of these executors of the divine government, reached out and took the fire and put it into the hands of this man who received it and went out. It was the form of a mans hand that was seen under the wings, suggesting that God was reaching down to clasp the hand of His creatures and would have poured out upon them His rich grace had they been prepared to receive it, but now He must deal in judgment.

And I looked, and behold, four wheels beside the cherubim, one wheel beside one cherub, and another wheel beside another cherub; and the appearance of the wheels was like unto a beryl stone. And as for their appearance, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been within a wheel. When they went, they went in their four directions: they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it; they turned not as they went. And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had. As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing, the whirling wheels. And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle-vers. 9-14.

The wheels of government, as we saw in chapter 1, are intimately connected with the cherubim. There are wheels within wheels, because the counsels of God are being carried out even though man cannot comprehend them. At the very time that the Lord had to visit in judgment the city where He had placed His name, He was so overruling in connection with His faithful remnant that even the haughty Gentile oppressor would find it in his heart to show them mercy.

Nothing can turn aside these wheels of government to the place whither the head looked; that is, the head of the chariot. They followed it and turned not as they went. Puny man attempts to defy God, but it will result only in his being crushed beneath these mighty wheels. None who have ever hardened themselves against Him have prospered; and yet those wheels do not represent mere arbitrary fate, but the wheels themselves were full of eyes-eyes roundabout; eyes that speak of intelligence; the eyes of the Lord, in every place beholding the evil and the good. For the judgment of God is according to truth. There is nothing capricious about His government: He will not render unto man more than his right.

We have noticed already in our comments on the first chapter the significance of the four faces of the cherubim and so need not dwell upon that here.

And the cherubim mounted up: this is the living creature that I saw by the river Chebar. And when the cherubim went, the wheels went beside them; and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the wheels also turned not from beside them. When they stood, these stood; and when they mounted up, these mounted up with them: for the spirit of the living creature was in them-vers. 15-17.

Very definitely Ezekiel identifies this vision of the living creature with that which he saw previously by the River Chebar, but again he emphasizes the fact that the wheels were under the direct control of the cherubim. When they lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth the wheels also turned not from beside them; when the cherubim stood, the wheels were still; and when they soared up into the heavens the wheels were lifted up with them, for the spirit of the one was in the other.

And the glory of Jehovah went forth from over the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight when they went forth, and the wheels beside them: and they stood at the door of the east gate of Jehovahs house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above-vers. 18, 19.

As Ezekiel continued to gaze upon this wondrous scene he beheld the Shekinah glory issue forth from over the threshold of the house and rise up into the heavens until it stood over the cherubim; and then, as though riding majestically through the universe in the divine chariot, it crossed to the door of the east gate of Jehovahs house, and for a time seemed to be suspended above that entrance. It was as though Jehovah was loth to forsake His sanctuary. He lingered still in the place where He had set His name, but there was no evidence whatever of repentance on the part of the people, and so in a short time the glory was to ascend to heaven never to be seen again until the Lord Jesus Christ appeared on this earth.

This is the living creatine that I saw under the God of Israel by the river Chebar; and I knew that they were cherubim. Every one had four faces, and every one four wings; and the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings. And as for the likeness of their faces, they were the faces which I saw by the river Chebar, their appearances and themselves; they went every one straight forward-vers. 20-22.

Again the prophet identifies the vision with the living creature which he had seen by the River Chebar. Observe that the living creature is under the God of Israel. God Himself is invisible. His attributes are manifested in the cherubim. Justice and judgment, the Psalmist tells us, are the habitation of Thy throne (Psa 89:14), and these attributes are exemplified in the angelic figures.

How solemn the repetition of the words They went every one straight forward. Oh, the folly of supposing that it is possible for human power to thwart the will of God!

Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets

Eze 10:8

I. See what a Divine work creation is. Here, in this human hand beneath the angel’s wing, do we see the procedure of the Divine work. All God’s most beautiful things are related to use. Beauty and use are God’s two anointed ministers to the world. In the gospel of utilitarianism, there is the hand without the wing; in the gospel of mysticism there is no man’s hand under the wings.

II. See what Divine providence is. Man is the one manifold. (1) In the multiplicity of Divine operations we see the human hand beneath the angel’s wing. From His exalted concealment God is constantly energizing by the human hand. This in all ages has been. (2) And is not our redemption a hand, the human hand beneath the Divine wing-a hand stretched out, the “likeness of a man’s hand beneath the cherubim”? What is the humanity of Jesus, but the human hand beneath the Divine wing? (3) This thought rebukes the many false modern notions of God. See in this God’s own picture of His providence, and never be it ours to divorce that human from the Divine in God’s being.

III. See in the human hand beneath the wing of the angel, the relation of a life of action to a life of contemplation. In our most exalted flights we need the human hand. And by the hand understand deeds,-they administer even by bodily administration; but the hands under the wings show how they surpass the deeds of their action by the excellence of their contemplation.

IV. In a word, see what religion is. It is the human hand beneath the angel’s wing. Has your religion a hand in it? It is practical, human, sympathetic. Has it a wing? It is lofty, unselfish, inclusive, Divine. Has it a hand? How does it prove itself? By embracing this hand, laying hold upon, by works. Has it a wing? How does it prove itself? By prayer, by faith, by heaven.

E. Paxton Hood, Preacher’s Lantern, vol. i., p. 321.

Reference: Eze 10:8.-Homiletic Magazine; vol. x., p. 203.

Eze 10:13

(Eze 37:9)

If the wheel be taken as representing the whole scheme and fabric of nature, geological, astronomical, and elemental; and the breath, as the secret of life and motion, you have a philosophical conception of the universe. But if you contemplate the mechanism of nature, apart from the intelligence and vitality of the breath, your unphilosophical method of thought will confound your reason, and make the rational apprehension of anything an impossibility.

I. Consider the mystery of evil as included in the great whole and circuit of universal existence. Let us learn to contemplate the fall and the death of man, together with his new birth and resurrection, his ascension and glorification, as comprehended in the wheel of God. “O wheel!” Oh, endless round, from God, into the limitations and weaknesses of selfhood, into the mistakes and wilfulnesses of selfhood, and thence into exhausted powers, into weariness and suffering, and through weariness and suffering into reconciliation to the redeeming mercies of eternal love, and then onward and onward through successive purgations and renewals, towards rest and home in the fixed righteousness and blessedness of the Divine-human, the eternal-human, life.

II. What the human soul, all the world over, needs is not to be harangued, however eloquently, about the old accepted religion; but to be permeated, charmed, and taken captive, by a warmer and more potent breath of God than they ever felt before. The Divine breath is as exquisitely adapted to the requirements of the soul’s nature as a June morning to the planet. Nor does the morning breath leave the trees freer to delight themselves and develop themselves under its influence, than the breath of God allows each human mind to unfold according to its genius. Nothing stirs the central wheel of the soul like the breath of God. The whole man is quickened, his senses are new senses, his emotions new emotions, his reason, his affections, his imagination, are all newborn; the change is greater than he knows, he marvels at the powers in himself which the breath is opening and calling forth.

J. Pulsford, Our Deathless Hope, p. 278.

Reference: Eze 11:5.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x., No. 591.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

Eze 10:1-22. Once more the glory vision appears. The linen clothed man who had done the marking in the previous chapter is now executing judgment. Who is He? Evidently more than an angel. That he is a supernatural being is clear. He held the place of pre-eminence among the other angels (Eze 9:2-4). This angel is the Angel of the Lord, the same who appeared to the patriarchs, to Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah, and to others. It is the Son of God in the garb of an angel. In the same form he also appeared to Daniel on the banks of the river Hiddekel. Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz. His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude Dan 10:5-21. Here we have a complete description of the same person whom Ezekiel saw taking the coals of fire and scattering them over Jerusalem. judgment upon the guilty city came from His hands.

When we turn to the book of Revelation, we find a similar scene which has not yet been enacted. A careful comparison of this scene here with Rev 8:3-5 is suggested. This angel who presents the prayers before the throne and who casts the judgment fires on the earth is the same who received the seven-sealed book Rev 5:11. It is the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then the glory of the Lord departed from the threshold of the temple; over its portals Ichabod (the glory is departed) was now to be written.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

I looked: Isa 21:8, Isa 21:9, Hab 2:1

in the: Eze 1:22-26, Exo 24:10, Rev 4:2, Rev 4:3

above: Eze 10:20, Eze 11:22, Psa 18:10, Psa 68:17, Psa 68:18, Eph 1:20, 1Pe 3:22

as the: Eze 1:22, Eze 1:26, Gen 18:2, Gen 18:17, Gen 18:22, Gen 18:31, Gen 32:24, Gen 32:30, Jos 5:13-15, Jos 6:2, Jer 13:6, Jer 13:8, Jer 13:18-22, Joh 1:18, Rev 1:13

Reciprocal: Exo 28:18 – sapphire Exo 36:8 – cherubims Exo 37:9 – cherubims spread Psa 99:1 – he sitteth Psa 150:1 – in the firmament Isa 6:1 – sitting Isa 54:11 – sapphires Eze 1:17 – and Eze 8:4 – General Eze 10:19 – and the glory Eze 43:3 – according to the appearance Eze 43:7 – the place of my throne Rev 14:1 – I looked

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Eze 10:1. The objects named in this verse are used figuratively and refer to the glory that is to be attributed to the Lord.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Eze 10:1-3. Then I looked, &c. Most of this chapter has been explained in the notes on chap. 1. In the firmament, &c. See Eze 1:26. The repetition of the vision here signified that the heavy and terrible judgments of God were drawing nearer and nearer. He That sat on the throne; spake unto the man clothed in linen To the angel, as before, Eze 9:2; and said, Go in between the wheels, under the cherub Or, between the cherubim, according to the explication given Eze 10:7. And fill thy hand with coals of fire Which sparkled and ran up and down between the living creatures: see Eze 1:13. This part of the vision signified that the city would shortly be consumed by fire. Coals of fire do elsewhere denote the divine vengeance. Now the cherubim Which were part of the vision shown to the prophet; stood on the right side of the house In the inner court, on the north side of the temple, Eze 10:18; namely, the court of the priests. And the cloud filled the court A splendour, or brightness, went before, and a cloud followed it. The splendour signified the clearness of the judgment; and the clouds, the storms of calamity which would follow it.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Eze 10:1. Behold, in the firmamentthere appeared as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of a throne. This is the vision that was seen by the river Chebar, but now the vision opens in the temple. Messiah on his throne passing the final sentence on the polluted sanctuary, in which his holiness disdained to dwell. The throne seated on the dense blue of the sapphire gem, named last in Eze 1:26, is here put the first, the hour of judgment being at hand: his characters are sombrous and dark.

Eze 10:2. He spake to the man, the cherub clothed with linen, the spotless minister of justice. Though the hallowed emblems in the sanctuary were but figures on earth, they are all realities in heaven. This celestial minister went in between the wheels and brought a handful of burning coals and scattered them over the city, which designated the burning of Jerusalem, whose gods were numerous as its streets. These coals, if we may follow the language of the psalms, like the coals of juniper-wood, hard and hot, were portentous of the fiery indignation of the Lord. Psa 120:4; Psa 140:10. And who could penetrate the centre of the glory but the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that lived in all this living vision?

Eze 10:4. Then the glory of the Lord went up and the court was full of the brightness of the Lords glory. Like Ezekiel, these things Isaiah spake when he saw his glory. Joh 12:41. Allow me on this head to translate literally the words of Cocceius. The cloud which is the glory of the Lord descending on the throne, signifies the dwelling of God with his people in humble figure. But what is understood by the splendour of the glory of Jehovah filling the court? It is the WORD dwelling with men, who saw his glory [when made flesh] as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, shining in all Israel. For though all the Israelites did not know the glory of Jehovah, or the glory of the Lord, yet they heard his words, they attested his works, they saw his sufferings, which were radiances of the glory of God; for by these the faithful who dwell in the Word of God, (the name of promise) abide in him, and know him to be the Son of the living God.

Eze 10:8. The form of a mans hand under their wings. To this hand all power is given both in heaven and earth; it is the arm by which he rules the nations, and chastises his enemies with a rod of iron.

Eze 10:13. Oh wheel. So Montanus reads, whom our bible mostly follows. But others read, gelgel, oh orb, oh world, oh chariot, or oh sphere. The cherub is here called gelgel, and he commands I know not what, as roll on, act, do this or that; bids every creature hearken to the voice of God. Pooles Synopsis. The cry, oh wheel, obviously signifies, to proceed in the execution of Gods pleasure, and accomplish the designations of providence.

Eze 10:14. Every one had four faces. Some of the christian fathers trifle here, by a reference to the four evangelists. They give the man to Matthew, the lion to Mark, the ox to Luke, and the eagle to John. Let us say rather with David, the chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels. The calf is placed first of the four. See on Exo 32:4.

Eze 10:20. This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel, by the river of Chebar. Here is a distinction between the golden cherubim of the temple, which neither lived nor moved, and the vision which the prophet now saw. The Lord dwells in the midst of the living creatures, or armies of heaven, and delights also to dwell with men on the earth. The same Divinity which appeared once, appears the second time to console the prophet, and to assure the church of the living presence of his Glory. The Triune God is everywhere at hand.

REFLECTIONS.

What a vision! The everliving, the terrific vision of Jehovahs presence in the church. This is the glorious high throne, which has been the place of our sanctuary from the beginning. Isaiah saw the atoning altar there, that sinners might approach: Isa 6:5. This is the throne whence are issued all the commissions of prophets, and all the commands to chastise or to destroy incorrigible sinners. Before this throne the angels raise their songs, and make the temple shake by the strake of their wings.

The grandeur of his throne is distinguished by his guards. He who fixed his throne in the chariot of glory and flame, had all the angels of heaven at his command. He bids those who had charge over Jerusalem draw near, and they all approach to await his pleasure. Let us therefore implicitly submit to providence, as the counsel of God must be for the best and wisest end. An enemy can do nothing against a nation till his commission is first signed in heaven. The Lord commanded the man clothed in linen, chap. 9., to take coals of fire from the altar of his presence, and scatter them over the city, as an omen of his vengeance about to fall upon them by the enemy. Let us regard all the flashes of conscience, and all the terrors of a broken law, as indicative of the punishment about to follow, and let us with a penitent heart take refuge in him who is a hiding place, and who repents of slumbering evils, and turns away from his fierce wrath.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Eze 10:1-8. The Burning of the City.But the guilty city must be destroyed as well as the people: so the awful carnage is followed by a no less awful conflagrationprophetic of the fire, kindled later by Babylonian hands, which reduced the city to ashes (2Ki 25:9). But this fire was kindled by supernatural hands which took it from among the flames that flashed and blazed between the strange creatures in the Divine chariot (Eze 1:13); and again (cf. Eze 9:3) the ominous note is struck of the departure of Yahweh, confirmed by the loud whirr of the wings. Very solemn was the moment when the linen-clad angel took the fire and went forth to scatter it over the guilty city. But over this scene, as over the other (Eze 10:9), a veil of silence is drawn. The passage is overpoweringly dramatic. The Temple is desolate, Ezekiel is alone, around him are the slain, not far off is the mysterious chariot with its strange creatures, and, to crown all, the angel scattering flame over the city.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

10:1 Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the {a} cherubim there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne.

(a) Which in Eze 1:5 he called the four beasts.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

God’s preparations to judge the city 10:1-8

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Ezekiel next saw in his vision the cherubim that he had seen by the river Chebar (Eze 1:22; Eze 1:26). "Cherubim" probably comes from the Akkadian karabu, meaning "intercede," "be gracious," or "bless." [Note: See Cooke, pp. 112-14, for an extended note on cherubim; and The New Bible Dictionary, 1962 ed., s.v. "Cherubim," by R. K. Harrison, especially figures 56, 167, and 205.] Over their heads he again saw the throne-chariot that resembled a sapphire in its color and beauty. In Eze 1:26 the throne-chariot resembled lapis lazuli, another expensive blue stone. Perhaps the blue color represented the heavenly origin of this throne.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

YOUR HOUSE IS LEFT UNTO YOU DESOLATE

Eze 8:1-18; Eze 9:1-11; Eze 10:1-22; Eze 11:1-25

ONE of the most instructive phases of religious belief among the Israelites of the seventh century was the superstitious regard in which the Temple at Jerusalem was held. Its prestige as the metropolitan sanctuary had no doubt steadily increased from the time when it was built. But it was in the crisis of the Assyrian invasion that the popular sentiment in favour of its peculiar sanctity was transmuted into a fanatical faith in its inherent inviolability. It is well known that during the whole course of this invasion the prophet Isaiah had consistently taught that the enemy should never set foot within the precincts of the Holy City-that, on the contrary, the attempt to seize it would prove to be the signal for his annihilation. The striking fulfilment of this prediction in the sudden destruction of Sennacheribs army had an immense effect on the religion of the time. It restored the faith in Jehovahs omnipotence which was already giving way, and it granted a new lease of life to the very errors which it ought to have extinguished. For here, as in so many other cases, what was a spiritual faith in one generation became a superstition in the next. Indifferent to the divine truths which gave meaning to Isaiahs prophecy, the people changed his sublime faith in the living God working in history into a crass confidence in the material symbol which had been the means of expressing it to their minds. Henceforth it became a fundamental tenet of the current creed that the Temple and the city which guarded it could never fall into the hands of an enemy; and any teaching which assailed that belief was felt to undermine confidence in the national deity. In the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel this superstition existed in unabated vigour, and formed one of the greatest hindrances to the acceptance of their teaching. “The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these!” was the cry of the benighted worshippers as they thronged to its courts to seek the favour of Jehovah. {Jer 7:4} The same state of feeling must have prevailed among Ezekiels fellow exiles. To the prophet himself, attached as he was to the worship of the Temple, it may have been a thought almost too hard to bear that Jehovah should abandon the only place of His legitimate worship. Amongst the rest of the captives the faith in its infallibility was one of the illusions which must be overthrown before their minds could perceive the true drift of his teaching. In his first prophecy the fact had just been touched on, but merely as an incident in the fall of Jerusalem. About a year later, however, he received a new revelation, in which he learned that the destruction of the Temple was no mere incidental consequence of the capture of the city, but a main object of the calamity. The time was come when judgment must begin at the house of God.

The weird vision in which this truth was conveyed to the prophet is said to have occurred during a visit of the elders to Ezekiel in his own house. In their presence he fell into a trance, in which the events now to be considered passed before him; and after the trance was removed he recounted the substance of the vision to the exiles. This statement has been somewhat needlessly called in question, on the ground that after so protracted an ecstasy the prophet would not be likely to find his visitors still in their places. But this matter-of-fact criticism overreaches itself. We have no means of determining how long it would take for this series of events to be realised. If we may trust anything to the analogy of dreams-and of all conditions to which ordinary men are subject the dream is surely the closest analogy to the prophetic ecstasy-the whole may have passed in an incredibly short space of time. If the statement were untrue, it is difficult to see what Ezekiel would have gained by making it. If the whole vision were a fiction, this must of course be fictitious too; but even so it seems a very superfluous piece of invention.

We prefer, therefore, to regard the vision as real, and the assigned situation as historical; and the fact that it is recorded suggests that there must be some connection between the object of the visit and the burden of the revelation which was then communicated. It is not difficult to imagine points of contact between them. Ewald has conjectured that the occasion of the visit may have been some recent tidings from Jerusalem which had opened the eyes of the “elders” to the real relation that existed between them and their brethren at home. If they had ever cherished any illusions on the point, they had certainly been disabused of them before Ezekiel had this vision. They were aware, whether the information was recent or not, that they were absolutely disowned by the new authorities in Jerusalem, and that it was impossible that they should ever come back peaceably to their old place in the state. This created a problem which they could not solve, and the fact that Ezekiel had announced the fall of Jerusalem may have formed a bond of sympathy between him and his brethren in exile which drew them to him in their perplexity. Some such hypothesis gives at all events a fuller significance to the closing part of the vision, where the attitude of the men in Jerusalem is described, and where the exiles are taught that the hope of Israels future lies with them. It is the first time that Ezekiel has distinguished between the fates in store for the two sections of the people, and it would almost appear as if the promotion of the exiles to the first place in the true Israel was a new revelation to him. Twice during this vision he is moved to intercede for the “remnant of Israel,” as if the only hope of a new people of God lay in sparing at least some of those who were left in the land. But the burden of the message that now comes to him is that in the spiritual sense the true remnant of Israel is not in Judaea, but among the exiles in Babylon. It was there that the new Israel was to be formed, and the land was to be the heritage, not of those who clung to it and exulted in the misfortunes of their banished brethren, but of those who under the discipline of exile were first prepared to use the land as Jehovahs holiness demanded.

The vision is interesting, in the first place, on account of the glimpse it affords of the state of mind prevailing in influential circles in Jerusalem at this time. There is no reason whatever to doubt that here in the form of a vision we have reliable information regarding the actual state of matters when Ezekiel wrote. It has been supposed by some critics that the description of the idolatries in the Temple does not refer to contemporary practices, but to abuses that had been rife in the days of Manasseh and had been put a stop to by Josiahs reformation. But the vision loses half its meaning if it is taken as merely an idealised representation of all the sins that had polluted the Temple in the course of its history. The names of those who are seen must be names of living men known to Ezekiel and his contemporaries, and the sentiments put in their mouth, especially in the latter part of the vision, are suitable only to the age in which he lived. It is very probable that the description in its general features would also apply to the days of Manasseh; but the revival of idolatry which followed the death of Josiah would naturally take the form of a restoration of the illegal cults which had flourished unchecked under his grandfather. Ezekiels own experience before his captivity, and the steady intercourse which had been maintained since, would supply him with the material which in the ecstatic condition is wrought up into this powerful picture.

The thing that surprises us most is the prevailing conviction amongst the ruling classes that “Jehovah had forsaken the land.” These men seem to have partly emancipated themselves, as politicians in Israel were apt to do, from the restraints and narrowness of the popular religion. To them it was a conceivable thing that Jehovah should abandon His people. And yet life was worth living and fighting for apart from Jehovah. It was of course a merely selfish life, not inspired by national ideals, but simply a clinging to place and power. The wish was father to the thought; men who so readily yielded to the belief in Jehovahs absence were very willing to be persuaded of its truth. The religion of Jehovah had always imposed a check on social and civic wrong, and men whose power rested on violence and oppression could not but rejoice to be rid of it. So they seem to have acquiesced readily enough in the conclusion to which so many circumstances seemed to point, that Jehovah had ceased to interest Himself either for good or evil in them and their affairs. Still, the wide acceptance of a belief like this, so repugnant to all the religious ideas of the ancient world, seems to require for its explanation some fact of contemporary history. It has been thought that it arose from the disappearance of the ark of Jehovah from the Temple. It seems from the third chapter of Jeremiah that the ark was no longer in existence in Josiahs reign, and that the want of it was felt as a grave religious loss. It is not improbable that this circumstance, in connection with the disasters which had marked the last days of the kingdom, led in many minds to the fear and in some to the hope that along with His most venerable symbol Jehovah Himself had Vanished from their midst.

It should be noticed that the feeling described was only one of several currents that ran in the divided society of Jerusalem. It is quite a different point of view that is presented in the taunt quoted in Eze 11:15, that the exiles were far from Jehovah, and had therefore lost their right to their possessions. But the religious despair is not only the most startling fact that we have to look at; it is also the one that is made most prominent in the vision. And the Divine answer to it given through Ezekiel is that the conviction is true; Jehovah has forsaken the land. But in the first place the cause of His departure is found in those very practices for which it was made the excuse: and in the second, although He has ceased to dwell in the midst of His people, He has lost neither the power nor the will to punish their iniquities. To impress these truths first on his fellow-exiles and then on the whole nation is the chief object of the chapter before us.

Now we find that the general sense of God-forsakenness expressed itself principally in two directions. On the one hand it led to the multiplication of false objects of worship to supply the place of Him who was regarded as the proper tutelary Divinity of Israel; on the other hand, it produced a reckless, devil-may-care spirit of resistance against any odds, such as was natural to men who had only material interests to fight for, and nothing to trust in but their own right hand. Syncretism in religion and fatalism in politics-these were the twin symptoms of the decay of faith among the upper classes in Jerusalem. But these belong to two different parts of the vision which we must now distinguish.

I.

The first part deals with the departure of Jehovah as caused by religious offences perpetrated in the Temple, and with the return of Jehovah to destroy the city on account of these offences. The prophet is transported in “visions of God” to Jerusalem and placed in the outer court near the northern gate, outside of which was the site where the “image of Jealousy” had stood in the time of Manasseh. Near him stands the appearance which he had learned to recognise as the glory of Jehovah, signifying that Jehovah has, for a purpose not yet disclosed, revisited His Temple. But first Ezekiel must be made to see the state of things which exists in this Temple which had once been the seat of Gods presence. Looking through the gate to the north, he discovers that the image of Jealousy has been restored to its old place. This is the first and apparently the least heinous of the abominations that defiled the sanctuary.

The second scene is the only one of the four which represents a secret cult. Partly perhaps for that reason it strikes our minds as the most repulsive of all; but that was obviously not Ezekiels estimate of it. There are greater abominations to follow. It is difficult to understand the particulars of Ezekiels description, especially in the Hebrew text (the LXX is simpler); but it seems impossible to escape the impression that there was something obscene in a worship where idolatry appears as ashamed of itself. The essential fact, however, is that the very highest and most influential men in the land were addicted to a form of heathenism, whose objects of worship were pictures of “horrid creeping things, and cattle, and all the gods of the house of Israel.” The name of one of these men, the leader in this superstition, is given, and is significant of the state of life in Jerusalem shortly before its fall. Jaazaniah was the son of Shaphan, who is probably identical with the chancellor of Josiahs reign whose sympathy with the prophetic teaching was evinced by his zeal in the cause of reform. We read of other members of the family who were faithful to the national religion, such as his son Ahikam, also a zealous reformer, and his grandson Gedaliah, Jeremiahs friend and patron, and the governor appointed over Judah by Nebuchadnezzar after the taking of the city. The family was thus divided both in religion and politics. While one branch was devoted to the worship of Jehovah and favoured submission to the king of Babylon, Jaazaniah belonged to the opposite party and was the ringleader in a peculiarly obnoxious form of idolatry.

The third “abomination” is a form of idolatry widely diffused over Western Asia-the annual mourning for Tammuz. Tammuz was originally a Babylonian deity (Dumuzi), but his worship is specially identified with Phoenicia, whence under the name Adonis it was introduced into Greece. The mourning celebrates the death of the god, which is an emblem of the decay of the earths productive powers, whether due to the scorching heat of the sin or to the cold of winter. It seems to have been a comparatively harmless rite of nature-religion, and its popularity among the women of Jerusalem at this time may be due to the prevailing mood of despondency which found vent in the sympathetic contemplation of that aspect of nature which most suggests decay and death.

The last and greatest of the abominations practised in and near the Temple is the worship of the sun. The peculiar enormity of this species of idolatry can hardly lie in the object of adoration; it is to be sought rather in the place where it was practised, and in the rank of those who took part in it, who were probably priests. Standing between the porch and the altar, with their backs to the Temple, these men unconsciously expressed the deliberate rejection of Jehovah which was involved in their idolatry. The worship of the heavenly bodies was probably imported into Israel from Assyria and Babylon, and its prevalence in the later years of the monarchy was due to political rather than religious influences. The gods of these imperial nations were esteemed more potent than those of the states which succumbed to their power, and hence men who were losing confidence in their national deity naturally sought to imitate the religions of the most powerful peoples known to them.

In the arrangement of the four specimens of the religious practices which prevailed in Jerusalem, Ezekiel seems to proceed from the most familiar and explicable to the more outlandish defections from the purity of the national faith. At the same time his description shows how different classes of society were implicated in the sin of idolatry-the elders, the women, and the priests. During all this time the glory of Jehovah has stood in the court, and there is something very impressive in the picture of these infatuated men and women preoccupied with their unholy devotions and all unconscious of the presence of Him whom they deemed to have forsaken the land. To the open eye of the prophet the meaning of the vision must be already clear, but the sentence comes from the mouth of Jehovah Himself: “Hast thou seen, Son of man? Is it too small a thing for the house of Judah to practise the abominations which they have here practised, that they must also fill the land with violence, and (so) provoke Me again to anger? So will I act towards them in anger: My eye shall not pity, nor will I spare.” {Eze 8:17-18}

The last words introduce the account of the punishment or Jerusalem, which is given of course in the symbolic form suggested by the scenery of the vision. Jehovah has meanwhile risen from His throne near the cherubim, and stands on the threshold of the Temple. There He summons to His side the destroyers who are to execute His purpose-six angels, each with a weapon of destruction in his hand. A seventh of higher rank clothed in linen appears with the implements of a scribe in his girdle. These stand “beside the brasen altar,” and await the commands of Jehovah. The first act of the judgment is a massacre of the inhabitants of the city, without distinction of age or rank or sex. But, in accordance with his strict view of the Divine righteousness, Ezekiel is led to conceive of this last judgment as discriminating carefully between the righteous and the wicked. All those who have inwardly separated themselves from the guilt of the city by hearty detestation of the iniquities perpetrated in its midst are distinguished by a mark on their foreheads before the work of slaughter begins. What became of this faithful remnant it does not belong to the vision to declare. Beginning with the twenty men before the porch, the destroying angels follow the man with the inkhorn through the streets of the city, and slay all on whom he has not set his mark. When the messengers have gone out on their dread errand, Ezekiel, realising the full horror of a scene which he dare not describe, falls prostrate before Jehovah, deprecating the outbreak of indignation which threatened to extinguish “the remnant of Israel.” He is reassured by the declaration that the guilt of Judah and Israel demands no less a punishment than this, because the notion that Jehovah had forsaken the land had opened the floodgates of iniquity, and filled the land with bloodshed and the city with oppression. Then the man in the linen robes returns and announces, “It is done as Thou hast commanded.”

The second act of the judgment is the destruction of Jerusalem by fire. This is symbolised by the scattering over the city of burning coals taken from the altar-hearth under the throne of God. The man with the linen garments is directed to step between the wheels and take out fire for this purpose. The description of the execution of this order is again carried no further than what actually takes place before the prophets eyes: the man took the fire and went out. In the place where we might have expected to have an account of the destruction of the city, we have a second description of the appearance and motions of the merkaba, the purpose of which it is difficult to divine. Although it deviates slightly from the account in chapter 1, the differences appear to have no significance, and indeed it is expressly said to be the same phenomenon. The whole passage is certainly superfluous, and might be omitted but for the difficulty of imagining any motive that would have tempted a scribe to insert it. We must keep in mind the possibility that this part of the book had been committed to writing before the final redaction of Ezekiels prophecies, and the description in Eze 8:8-17 may have served a purpose there which is superseded by the fuller narrative which we now possess in chapter 1.

In this way Ezekiel penetrates more deeply into the inner meaning of the judgment on city and people whose external form he had announced in his earlier prophecy. It must be admitted that Jehovahs strange work bears to our minds a more appalling aspect when thus presented in symbols than the actual calamity would bear when effected through the agency of second causes. Whether it had the same effect on the mind of a Hebrew, who hardly believed in second causes, is another question. In any case it gives no ground for the charge made against Ezekiel of dwelling with a malignant satisfaction on the most repulsive features of a terrible picture. He is indeed capable of a rigorous logic in exhibiting the incidence of the law of retribution which was to him the necessary expression of the Divine righteousness. That it included the death of every sinner and the overthrow of a city that had become a scene of violence and cruelty was to him a self-evident truth, and more than this the vision does not teach. On the contrary, it contains traits which tend to moderate the inevitable harshness of the truth conveyed. With great reticence it allows the execution of the judgment to take place behind the scenes, giving only those details which were necessary to suggest its nature. While it is being carried out the attention of the reader is engaged in the presence of Jehovah, or his mind is occupied with the principles which made the punishment a moral necessity. The prophets expostulations with Jehovah show that he was not insensible to the miseries of his people, although he saw them to be inevitable. Further, this vision shows as clearly as any passage in his writings the injustice of the view which represents him as more concerned for petty details of ceremonial than for the great moral interests of a nation. If any feeling expressed in the vision is to be regarded as Ezekiels own, then indignation against outrages on human life and liberty must be allowed to weigh more with him than offences against ritual purity. And, finally, it is clearly one object of the vision to show that in the destruction of Jerusalem no individual shall be involved who is not also implicated in the guilt which calls down wrath upon her.

II.

The second part of the vision (chapter 11) is hut loosely connected with the first. Here Jerusalem still exists, and men are alive who must certainly have perished in the “visitation of the city” if the writer had still kept himself within the limits of his previous conception. But in truth the two have little in common, except the Temple, which is the scene of both, and the cherubim, whose movements mark the transition from the one to the other. The glory of Jehovah is already departing from the house when it is stayed at the entrance of the east gate, to give the prophet his special message to the exiles.

Here we are introduced to the more political aspect of the situation in Jerusalem. The twenty-five men who are gathered in the east gate of the Temple are clearly the leading statesmen in the city; and two of them, whose names are given, are expressly designated as “princes of the people.” They are apparently met in conclave to deliberate on public matters, and a word from Jehovah lays open to the prophet the nature of their projects. “These are the men that plan ruin, and hold evil counsel in this city.” The evil counsel is undoubtedly the project of rebellion against the king of Babylon which must have been hatched at this time and which broke out into open revolt about three years later. The counsel was evil because directly opposed to that which Jeremiah was giving at the time in the name of Jehovah. But Ezekiel also throws invaluable light on the mood of the men who were urging the king along the path which led to ruin. “Are not the houses recently built?” they say, congratulating themselves on their success in repairing the damage done to the city in the time of Jehoiachin. The image of the pot and the flesh is generally taken to express the feeling of easy security in the fortifications of Jerusalem with which these light-hearted politicians embarked on a contest with Nebuchadnezzar. But their mood must be a gloomier one than that if there is any appropriateness in the language they use. To stew in their own juice, and over a fire of their own kindling, could hardly seem a desirable policy to sane men, however strong the pot might be. These councillors are well aware of the dangers they incur, and of the misery which their purpose must necessarily bring on the people. But they are determined to hazard everything and endure everything on the chance that the city may prove strong enough to baffle the resources of the king of Babylon. Once the fire is kindled, it will certainly be better to be in the pot than in the fire; and so long as Jerusalem holds out they will remain behind her walls. The answer which is put into the prophets mouth is that the issue will not be such as they hope for. The only “flesh” that will be left in the city will be the dead bodies of those who have been slain within her walls by the very men who hope that their lives will be given them for a prey. They themselves shall be dragged forth to meet their fate far away from Jerusalem on the “borders of Israel.” It is not unlikely that these conspirators kept their word. Although the king and all the men of war fled from the city as soon as a breach was made, we read of certain high officials who allowed themselves to be taken in the city. {Jer 52:7} Ezekiels prophecy was in their case literally fulfilled; for these men and many others were brought to the king of Babylon at Riblah, “and he smote them and put them to death at Riblah in the land of Hamath.”

While Ezekiel was uttering this prophecy one of the councillors, named Pelatiah, suddenly fell down dead. Whether a man of this name had suddenly died in Jerusalem under circumstances that had deeply impressed the prophets mind, or whether the death belongs to the vision, it is impossible for us to tell. To Ezekiel the occurrence seemed an earnest of the complete destruction of the remnant of Israel by the wrath of God, and, as before, he fell on his face to intercede for them. It is then that he receives the message which seems to form the Divine answer to the perplexities which haunted the minds of the exiles in Babylon.

In their attitude towards the exiles the new leaders in Jerusalem took up a position as highly privileged religious persons, quite at variance with the scepticism which governed their conduct at home. When they were following the bent of their natural inclinations by practising idolatry and perpetrating judicial murders in the city, their cry was, “Jehovah hath forsaken the land; Jehovah seeth it not.” When they were eager to justify their claim to the places and possessions left vacant by their banished countrymen, they said, “They are far from Jehovah: to us the land is given in possession.” They were probably equally sincere and equally insincere in both professions. They had simply learned the art which comes easily to men of the world of using religion as a cloak for greed, and throwing it off when greed could be best gratified without it. The idea which lay under their religious attitude was that the exiles had gone into captivity because their sins had incurred Jehovahs anger, and that now His wrath was exhausted and the blessing of His favour would rest on those who had been left in the land. There was sufficient plausibility in the taunt to make it peculiarly galling to the mind of the exiles, who had hoped to exercise some influence over the government in Jerusalem, and to find their places kept for them when they should be permitted to return. It may well have been the resentment produced by tidings of this hostility towards them in Jerusalem that brought their elders to the house of Ezekiel to see if he had not some message from Jehovah to reassure them.

In the mind of Ezekiel, however, the problem took another form. To him a return to the old Jerusalem had no meaning; neither buyer nor seller should have cause to congratulate himself on his position. The possession of the land of Israel belonged to those in whom Jehovahs ideal of the new Israel was realised, and the only question of religious importance was, Where is the germ of this new Israel to be found? Amongst those who survive the judgment in the old land, or amongst those who have experienced it in the form of banishment? On this point the prophet receives an explicit revelation in answer to his intercession for “the remnant of Israel.” “Son of man, thy brethren, thy brethren, thy fellow-captives, and the whole house of Israel of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, They are far from Jehovah: to us it is given-the land for an inheritance! Because I have removed them far among the nations, and have scattered them among the lands, and have been to them but little of a sanctuary in the lands where they have gone, therefore say, Thus saith Jehovah, so will I gather you from the peoples, and bring you from the lands where ye have been scattered, and will give you the land of Israel.” The difficult expression “I have been but little of a sanctuary” refers to the curtailment of religious privileges and means of access to Jehovah which was a necessary consequence of exile. It implies, however, that Israel in banishment had learned in some measure to preserve that separation from other peoples and that peculiar relation to Jehovah which constituted its national holiness. Religion perhaps perishes sooner from the overgrowth of ritual than from its deficiency. It is a historical fact that the very meagreness of the religion which could be practised in exile was the means of strengthening the more spiritual and permanent elements which constitute the essence of religion. The observances which could be maintained apart from the Temple acquired an importance which they never afterwards lost; and although some of these, such as circumcision, the Passover, the abstinence from forbidden food, were purely ceremonial, others, such as prayer, reading of the Scriptures, and the common worship of the synagogue, represent the purest and most indispensable forms in which communion with God can find expression. That Jehovah Himself became even in small measure what the word “sanctuary” denotes indicates an enrichment of the religious consciousness of which perhaps Ezekiel himself did not perceive the full import.

The great lesson which Ezekiels message seeks to impress on his hearers is that the tenure of the land of Israel depends on religious conditions. The land is Jehovahs, and He bestows it on those who are prepared to use it as His holiness demands. A pure land inhabited by a pure people is the ideal that underlies all Ezekiels visions of the future. It is evident that in such a conception of the relation between God and His people ceremonial conditions must occupy a conspicuous place. The sanctity of the land is necessarily of a ceremonial order, and so the sanctity of the people must consist partly in a scrupulous regard for ceremonial requirements. But after all the condition of the land with respect to purity or uncleanness only reflects the character of the nation whose home it is. The things that defile a land are such things as idols and other emblems of heathenism, innocent blood unavenged, and unnatural crimes of various kinds. These things derive their whole significance from the state of mind and heart which they embody; they are the plain and palpable emblems of human sin. It is conceivable that to some minds the outward emblems may have seemed the true seat of evil, and their removal an end in itself apart from the direction of the will by which it was brought about. But it would be a mistake to charge Ezekiel with any such obliquity of moral vision. Although he conceives sin as a defilement that leaves its mark on the material world, he clearly teaches that its essence lies in the opposition of the human will to the will of God. The ceremonial purity required of every Israelite is only the expression of certain aspects of Jehovahs holy nature, the bearing of which on mans spiritual life may have been obscure to the prophet, and is still more obscure to us. And the truly valuable element in compliance with such rules was the obedience to Jehovahs expressed will which flowed from a nature in sympathy with His. Hence in this chapter, while the first thing that the restored exiles have to do is to cleanse the land of its abominations, this act will be the expression of a nature radically changed, doing the will of God from the heart. As the emblems of idolatry that defile the land were the outcome of an irresistible national tendency to evil, so the new and sensitive spirit, taking on the impress of Jehovahs holiness through the law, shall lead to the purification of the land from those things that had provoked the eyes of His glory. “They shall come thither, and remove thence all its detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them another heart, and put a new spirit within them. I will take away the stony heart from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh: that they may walk in My statutes, and keep My judgments, and do them: and so shall they be My people, and I will be their God”. {Eze 11:18-20}

Thus in the mind of the prophet Jerusalem and its Temple are already virtually destroyed. He seemed to linger in the Temple court until he saw the chariot of Jehovah withdrawn from the city as a token that the glory had departed from Israel. Then the ecstasy passed away, and he found himself in the presence of the men to whom the hope of the future had been offered, but who were as yet unworthy to receive it.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary