Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 22:1
Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
The fourth word of judgment Ezek. 22:1-16. The sins which have brought ruin upon Jerusalem are the sins which disgraced the pagan inhabitants of Canaan, whom the Israelites were to cast out (compare Lev. 18). The commission of like sins would insure like judgment.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XXII
This chapter contains a recital of the sins of Jerusalem, 1-12;
for which God threatens it with severe judgments, 13-16,
in order to purify it from the dross, 17-22.
And as the corruption is general, pervading prophets, priests,
princes, and people; so, it is declared, shall be the
punishment, 23-31.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXII
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me….. The word of prophecy from the Lord, as the Targum, another prophecy:
saying; as follows:
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Blood-guiltiness of Jerusalem and the burden of its sins. Eze 22:1-5 contain the principal accusation relating to bloodshed and idolatry; and Eze 22:6-16 a further account of the sins of the people and their rulers, with a brief threatening of punishment. – Eze 22:1. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Eze 22:2. And thou, son of man, wilt thou judge? wilt thou judge the city of blood-guiltiness? then show it all its abominations, Eze 22:3. And say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, City, which sheddeth blood in the midst of it, that her time may come, and maketh idols within itself for defilement. Eze 22:4. Through thy blood which thou hast shed hast thou made thyself guilty, and through thine idols which thou hast made hast thou defiled thyself, and hast drawn thy days near, and hast come to thy years; therefore I make thee a scorn to the nations, and ridicule to all lands. Eze 22:5. Those near and those far off from thee shall ridicule thee as defiled in name, rich in confusion. – The expression ‘ proves this address to be a continuation of the reproof of Israel’s sins, which commenced in Eze 20:4. The epithet city of blood-guiltiness, as in Ezekiel Eze 24:6, Eze 24:9 (compare Nah 3:1), is explained in Eze 22:3. The apodosis commences with , and is continued in Eze 22:3 ( ). , that her time, i.e., her time of punishment, may come: , like in Eze 21:30. is not a continuation of the infinitive , but of the participle . , of which different renderings have been given, does not mean “over itself,” i.e., as a burden with which it has laden itself (Hvernick); still less “for itself” (Hitzig), a meaning which never has, but literally “upon,” i.e., in itself, covering the city with it, as it were. , thou hast brought near, brought on thy days, that is to say, the days of judgment, and hast come to, arrived at thy years, sc. the years of visitation and punishment (cf. Jer 11:23). This meaning is readily supplied by the context. , defiled, unclean with regard to the name, i.e., having forfeited the name of a holy city through capital crimes and other sinful abominations. is internal confusion, both moral and religious, as in Amo 3:9 (cf. Psa 55:10-12).
In Eze 22:6-12 there follows an enumeration of a multitude of sins which had been committed in Jerusalem. – Eze 22:6. Behold, the princes of Israel are every one, according to his arm, in thee to shed blood. Eze 22:7. Father and mother they despise in thee; toward the foreigner they act violently in the midst of thee; orphans and widows they oppress in thee. Eze 22:8. Thou despisest my holy things, and desecratest my Sabbaths. Eze 22:9. Slanderers are in thee to shed blood, and they eat upon the mountains in thee; they practise lewdness in thee. Eze 22:10. They uncover the father’s nakedness in thee; they ravish the defiled in her uncleanness in thee. Eze 22:11. They take gifts in thee to shed blood; interest and usury thou takest, and overreachest thy neighbours with violence, and thou forgettest me, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. – By the repetition of the refrain, to shed blood (Eze 22:6, Eze 22:9, and Eze 22:12), the enumeration is divided into three groups of sins, which are placed in the category of blood-guiltiness by the fact that they are preceded by this sentence and the repetition of it after the form of a refrain. the first group (Eze 22:6-8) embraces sins which are committed in daring opposition to all the laws of morality. By the princes of Israel we are to understand primarily the profligate kings, who caused innocent persons to be put to death, such, for example, as Jehoiakim (2Ki 24:4), Manasseh (2Ki 21:16), and others. The words are rendered by Hitzig and Kliefoth, they were ready to help one another; and in support of the rendering they appeal to Psa 83:9. But in that case would stand for rof dnat , or rather for , – a substitution which cannot be sustained. Nor can they be taken in the sense proposed by Hvernick, every one relying upon his arm, i.e., looking to physical force alone, but simply every one according to his arm, i.e., according to his strength or violence, are they in thee. In this case does not require anything to be supplied, any more than in the similar combination in Eze 22:9. Followed by with an infinitive, it means to be there with the intention of doing anything, or making an attempt, i.e., to direct his efforts to a certain end. In Eze 22:7 it is not the princes who are the subject, but the ungodly in general. is the opposite of (Exo 20:12). In the reproofs which follow, compare Exo 22:20.; Lev 19:13; Deu 24:14. With insolence and violence toward men there is associated contempt of all that is holy. For Eze 22:8, see Eze 20:13. – In the second group, Eze 22:9-11, in addition to slander and idolatry, the crimes of lewdness and incest are the principal sins for which the people are reproved; and here the allusion to Lev 18 and 19 is very obvious. The reproof of slander also points back to the prohibition in Lev 19:16. Slander to shed blood, refers to malicious charges and false testimony in a court of justice (vid., 1Ki 21:10-11). For eating upon the mountains, see Eze 18:6. The practice of zimmah is more specifically described in Eze 22:10 and Eze 22:11. For the thing itself, compare Lev 18:7-8; Lev 19:15 and Lev 19:9. The threefold in Eze 22:11 does not mean every one, but one, another, and the third, as the correlative shows. – The third group, Eze 22:12, is composed of sins of covetousness. For the first clause, compare the prohibition in Exo 23:2; for the second, Eze 18:8, Eze 18:13. The reproof finishes with forgetfulness of God, which is closely allied to covetousness.
Eze 22:13-16 The Lord is enraged at such abominable doings. He will interfere, and put an end to them by scattering Judah among the heathen. – Eze 22:13. And, behold, I smite my hand because of thy gain which thou hast made, and over thy bloodguiltiness which is in the midst of thee. Eze 22:14. Will thy heart indeed stand firm, or will thy hands be strong for the day when I shall deal with thee? I Jehovah have spoken it, and also do it. Eze 22:15. I will scatter thee among the nations, and disperse thee in the lands, and will utterly remove thine uncleanness from thee. Eze 22:16. And thou wilt be desecrated through thyself before the eyes of the nations, and know that I am Jehovah. – Eze 22:13 is closely connected with the preceding verse. This serves to explain the fact that the only sins mentioned as exciting the wrath of God are covetousness and blood-guiltiness. , as 2Ki 11:12 clearly shows, is a contracted expression for (Eze 21:19), and the smiting of the hands together is a gesture indicative of wrathful indignation. For the form , contracted from , see the comm. on Eze 16:45. – As Eze 22:13 leads on to the threatening of judgment, so does Eze 22:14 point in anticipation to the terrible nature of the judgment itself. The question, “will thy heart stand firm?” involves a warning against security. is the opposite of (cf. Eze 21:12), as standing forms the antithesis to passing away (cf. Psa 102:27). , as in Eze 16:59 and Eze 7:27. The Lord will scatter them (cf. Eze 12:15; Eze 20:23), and remove the uncleanness of sin, namely, by purifying the people in exile (cf. Isa 4:4). , from , to cause to cease, with , to take completely away. , Niphal of fo lahpiN , . , connected with , as in Eze 20:9, not from , as many of the commentators who follow the Septuagint and Vulgate suppose. , not in te, in thyself, but through thee, i.e., through thy sinful conduct and its consequences.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Sins of Jerusalem. | B. C. 591. |
1 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 2 Now, thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city? yea, thou shalt shew her all her abominations. 3 Then say thou, Thus saith the Lord GOD, The city sheddeth blood in the midst of it, that her time may come, and maketh idols against herself to defile herself. 4 Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed; and hast defiled thyself in thine idols which thou hast made; and thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years: therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the heathen, and a mocking to all countries. 5 Those that be near, and those that be far from thee, shall mock thee, which art infamous and much vexed. 6 Behold, the princes of Israel, every one were in thee to their power to shed blood. 7 In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow. 8 Thou hast despised mine holy things, and hast profaned my sabbaths. 9 In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood: and in thee they eat upon the mountains: in the midst of thee they commit lewdness. 10 In thee have they discovered their fathers’ nakedness: in thee have they humbled her that was set apart for pollution. 11 And one hath committed abomination with his neighbour’s wife; and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter in law; and another in thee hath humbled his sister, his father’s daughter. 12 In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord GOD. 13 Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee. 14 Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the LORD have spoken it, and will do it. 15 And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee. 16 And thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the sight of the heathen, and thou shalt know that I am the LORD.
In these verses the prophet by a commission from Heaven sits as a judge upon the bench, and Jerusalem is made to hold up her hand as a prisoner at the bar; and, if prophets were set over other nations, much more over God’s nation, Jer. i. 10. This prophet is authorized to judge the bloody city, the city of bloods. Jerusalem is so called, not only because she had been guilty of the particular sin of blood-shed, but because her crimes in general were bloody crimes (ch. vii. 23), such as polluted her in her blood, and for which she deserved to have blood given her to drink. Now the business of a judge with a malefactor is to convict him of his crimes, and then to pass sentence upon him for them. These two things Ezekiel is to do here.
I. He is to find Jerusalem guilty of many heinous crimes here enumerated in a long bill of indictment, and it is billa vera–a true bill; so he writes upon it whose judgment we are sure is according to truth. He must show her all her abominations (v. 2), that God may be justified in all the desolations brought upon her. Let us take a view of all the particular sins which Jerusalem here stands charged with; and they are all exceedingly sinful.
1. Murder: The city sheds blood, not only in the suburbs, where the strangers dwell, but in the midst of it, where, one would think, the magistrates would, if any where, be vigilant. Even there people were murdered either in duels or by secret assassinations and poisonings, or in the courts of justice under colour of law, and there was no care taken to discover and punish the murderers according to the law (Gen. ix. 6), no, nor so much as the ceremony used to expiate an uncertain murder (Deut. xxi. 1), and so the guilt and pollution remains upon the city. Thus thou hast become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed, v. 4. This crime is insisted most upon, for it was Jerusalem’s measure-filling sin more than any; it is said to be that which the Lord would not pardon, 2 Kings xxiv. 4. (1.) The princes of Israel, who should have been the protectors of injured innocence, every one were to their power to shed blood, v. 6. They thirsted for it, and delighted in it, and whoever came within their power were sure to feel it; whoever lay at their mercy were sure to find none. (2.) There were those who carried tales to shed blood, v. 9. They told lies of men to the princes, to whom they knew it would be pleasing, to incense them against them; or they betrayed what passed in private conversation, to make mischief among neighbours, and set them together by the ears, to bite, and devour, and worry one another, even to death. Note, Those who, by giving invidious characters and telling ill-natured stories of their neighbours, sow discord among brethren, will be accountable for all the mischief that follows upon it; as he that kindles a fire will be accountable for all the hurt it does. (3.) There were those who took gifts to shed blood (v. 12), who would be hired with money to swear a man out of his life, or, if they were upon a jury, would be bribed to find an innocent man guilty. When so much barbarous bloody work of this kind was done in Jerusalem we may well conclude, [1.] That men’s consciences had become wretchedly profligate and seared and their hearts hardened; for those would stick at no wickedness who would not stick at this. [2.] That abundance of quiet, harmless, good people were made away with, whereby, as the guilt of the city was increased, so the number of those that should have stood in the gap to turn away the wrath of God was diminished.
2. Idolatry: She makes idols against herself to destroy herself, v. 3. And again (v. 4), Thou hast defiled thyself in thy idols which thou hast made. Note, Those who make idols for themselves will be found to have made them against themselves, for idolaters put a cheat upon themselves and prepare destruction for themselves; besides that thereby they pollute themselves, they render themselves odious in the eyes of the just and jealous God, and even their mind and conscience are defiled, so that to them nothing is pure. Those who did not make idols themselves were yet found guilty of eating upon the mountains, or high places (v. 9), in honour of the idols and in communion with idolaters.
3. Disobedience to parents (v. 7): In thee have the children set light by their father and mother, mocked them, cursed them, and despised to obey them, which was a sign of a more than ordinary corruption of nature as well as manners, and a disposition to all manner of disorder, Isa. iii. 5. Those that set light by their parents are in the highway to all wickedness. God had made many wholesome laws for the support of the paternal authority, but no care was taken to put them in execution; nay, the Pharisees in their day taught children, under pretence of respect to the Corban, to set light by their parents and refuse to maintain them, Matt. xv. 5.
4. Oppression and extortion. To enrich themselves they wronged the poor (v. 7): They dealt by oppression and deceit with the stranger, taking advantage of his necessities, and his ignorance of the laws and customs of the country. In Jerusalem, that should have been a sanctuary to the oppressed, they vexed the fatherless and widows by unreasonable demands and inquisitions, or troublesome law-suits, in which might prevails against right. “Thou hast taken usury and increase (v. 12); not only there are those in thee that do it, but thou hast done it.” It was an act of the city or community; the public money, which should have been employed in public charity, was put out to usury, with extortion. Thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbours by violence and wrong. For neighbours to gain by one another in a way of fair trading is well, but those who are greedy of gain will not be held within the rules of equity.
5. Profanation of the sabbath and other holy things. This commonly goes along with the other sins for which they here stand indicted (v. 8): Thou hast despised my holy things, holy oracles, holy ordinances. The rites which God appointed were thought too plain, too ordinary; they despised them, and therefore were fond of the customs of the heathen. Note, Immorality and dishonesty are commonly attended with a contempt of religion and the worship of God. Thou hast profaned my sabbaths. There was not in Jerusalem that face of sabbath-sanctification that one would have expected in the holy city. Sabbath-breaking is an iniquity that is an inlet to all iniquity. Many have owned it to contribute as much to their ruin as any thing.
6. Uncleanness and all manner of seventh-commandment sins, fruits of those vile affections to which God in a way of righteous judgment gives men up, to punish them for their idolatry and profanation of holy things. Jerusalem had been famous for its purity, but now in the midst of thee they commit lewdness (v. 9); lewdness goes bare-faced, though in the most scandalous instances, as that of a man’s having his father’s wife, which is the discovery of the father’s nakedness (v. 10) and is a sin not to be named among Christians without the utmost detestation (1 Cor. v. 1), and was made a capital crime by the law of Moses, Lev. xx. 11. The time to refrain from embracing has not been observed (Eccles. iii. 6), for they have humbled her that was set apart for her pollution. They made nothing of committing lewdness with a neighbour’s wife, with a daughter-in-law, or a sister, v. 11. And shall not God visit for these things?
7. Unmindfulness of God was at the bottom of all this wickedness (v. 12): “Thou hast forgotten me, else thou wouldst not have done thus.” Note, Sinners do that which provokes God because they forget him; they forget their descent from him, dependence on him, and obligations to him; they forget how valuable his favour is, which they make themselves unfit for, and how formidable his wrath, which they make themselves obnoxious to. Those that pervert their ways forget the Lord their God, Jer. iii. 21.
II. He is to pass sentence upon Jerusalem for these crimes.
1. Let her know that she has filled up the measure of her iniquity, and that her sins are such as forbid delays and call for speedy vengeance. She has made her time to come (v. 3), her days to draw near; and she has come to her years of maturity for punishment (v. 4), as an heir that has come to age and is ready for his inheritance. God would have borne longer with them, but they had arrived at such a pitch of impudence in sin that God could not in honour give them a further day. Note, Abused patience will at last be weary of forbearing. And, when sinners (as Solomon speaks) grow overmuch wicked, they die before their time (Eccl. vii. 17) and shorten their reprieves.
2. Let her know that she has exposed herself, and therefore God has justly exposed her, to the contempt and scorn of all her neighbours (v. 4): I have made thee a reproach to the heathen, both those who are near, who are eye-witnesses of Jerusalem’s apostasy and degeneracy, and those afar off, who, though at a distance, will think it worth taking notice of (v. 5); they shall all mock thee. While they were reproached by their neighbours for their adherence to God it was their honour, and they might be sure that God would roll away their reproach. But, now that they are laughed at for their revolt from God, they must lie down in their shame, and must say, The Lord is righteous. They make a mock at Jerusalem, both because her sins had been very scandalous (she is infamous, polluted in name, and has quite lost her credit), and because her punishment is very grievous–she is much vexed and frets without measure at her troubles. Note, Those who fret most at their troubles have commonly those about them who will be so much the more apt to make a jest of them.
3. Let her know that God is displeased, highly displeased, at her wickedness, and does and will witness against it (v. 13): I have smitten my hand at thy dishonest gain. God, both by his prophets and by his providence, revealed his wrath from heaven against their ungodliness and unrighteousness, the oppressions they were guilty of, though they got by them, and their murders (the blood which has been in the midst of thee), and all their other sins. Note, God has sufficiently discovered how angry he is at the wicked courses of his people; and, that they may not say that they have not had fair warning, he smites his hand against the sin before he lays his hand upon the sinner. And this is a good reason why we should despise dishonest gain, even the gain of oppressions, and shake our hands from holding bribes, because these are sins against which God shakes his hands, Isa. xxxiii. 15.
4. Let her know that, proud and secure as she is, she is no match for God’s judgments, v. 14. (1.) She is assured that the destruction she has deserved will come: I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it. He that is true to his promises will be true to his threatenings too, for he is not a man that he should repent. (2.) It is supposed that she thinks herself able to contend with God, and so stand a siege against his judgments. She bade defiance to the day of the Lord, Isa. v. 19. But, (3.) She is convinced of her utter inability to make her part good with him: “Can thy heart endure, or can thy hand be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? Thou thinkest thou hast to do only with men like thyself, but shalt be made to know that thou fallest into the hands of a living God.” Observe here, [1.] There is a day coming when God will deal with sinners, a day of visitation. He deals with some to bring them to repentance, and there is no resisting the force of convictions when he sets them on; he deals with others to bring them to ruin. He deals with sinners in this life, when he brings upon them his sore judgments; but the days of eternity are especially the days in which God will deal with them, when the full vials of God’s wrath will be poured out without mixture. [2.] The wrath of God against sinners, when he comes to deal with them, will be found both intolerable and irresistible. There is no heart stout enough to endure it; it is none of the infirmities which the spirit of a man will sustain. Damned sinners can neither forget nor despise their torments, nor have they any thing wherewith to support themselves under their torments. There are no hands strong enough either to ward off the strokes of God’s wrath or to break the chains with which sinners are bound over to the day of wrath. Who knows the power of God’s anger?
5. Let her know that, since she has walked in the way of the heathen, and learned their works, she shall have enough of them (v. 15): “I will not only send thee among the heathen, out of thy own land, but I will scatter thee among them and disperse thee in the countries, to be abused and insulted over by strangers.” And since her filthiness and filthy ones continued in her, notwithstanding all the methods God had taken to refine her (she would not be made clean, Jer. xiii. 27), he will be his judgments consume her filthiness out of her; he will destroy those that are incurably bad and reform those that are inclined to be good.
6. Let her know that God has disowned her and cast her off. He had been her heritage and portion; but now (v. 16), “Thou shalt take thy inheritance in thyself, shift for thyself, make the best hand thou canst for thyself, for God will no longer undertake for thee.” Note, Those that give up themselves to be ruled by their lusts will justly be given up to be portioned by them. Those that resolve to be their own masters, let them expect no other comfort and happiness than what their own hands can furnish them with, and a miserable portion it will prove. Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward. Thou in thy life-time receivedst thy good things. These are the same with this, “Thou shalt take thy inheritance in thyself, and then, when it is too late, shalt own in the sight of the heathen that I am the Lord, who alone am a portion sufficient for my people.” Note, Those that have lost their interest in God will know how to value it.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
EZEKIEL – CHAPTER 22
SINS OF ISRAEL ENUMERATED
Verses 1-16:
Verse 1 states that “moreover,” or in addition to, the occasions for Divine judgments already pronounced on Israel and Jerusalem, the Lord commanded Ezekiel to state the following specific sins of which they were guilty.
Verse 2 addresses Ezekiel as “son of man,” or heir representative of man. He is asked if he will judge or really speak out concerning judgment that is to be poured out on the beloved city of Jerusalem, now a bloody city. In this mandate from the Lord he was directed specifically to show her “all her abominations,” or all kinds of abominable sins she had committed, and was committing, against God and His law covenant she had made with Him.
Verse 3 charges him directly what to say in bringing definitive legal charges against the “bloody city,” v. 2. First, she was charged with shedding blood (sanctioning murder) within the city, even rivaling Ninevah of the gentiles, in sacrificing her young children to Moloch, Nah 3:1. Her judgment hour was at hand for burning her children alive in the arms of this pagan god, Pro 8:36. Ezekiel was to tell it straight, Isa 13:22; Eze 30:3. Second, the city had, and was continuing to make (form, manufacture, produce, and distribute), idols within her walls. For such defilement, Divine judgment, without mercy, had to come to show the holiness and justice of God, Exo 20:1-5; Mic 6:16.
Verse 4 asserts that Jerusalem had herself caused the days of her judgment to draw near. Her people had chosen to defile themselves and their city, by their own carnal, covetous, and rebellious will. They had caused Divine mercy and patience to run out, for God’s Spirit “does not always strive with men,” Gen 6:3. The specifics of their enumerated sins were: 1) They shed innocent blood; 2) They defiled themselves in the idols that they had themselves made; 2Ki 21:16; Deu 27:15; Deuteronomy 3) They had themselves made; 2Ki 21:16; Deu 27:15; Deuteronomy 3) They had caused their own days and years of inevitable judgment to draw near, and could not make excuses for the fruit of their sins in judgment, Num 32:23; Rom 2:1; Gal 6:7-8. Because of their own chosen sins of uncleanness, idolatry, and defilement they forfeited a dwelling place in the holy city, by their own crimes. God made them to be an object of reproach, derision, and mocking among heathen nations, Eze 5:14; Deu 28:37; 1Ki 9:7; Dan 9:16; Lev 26:32.
Verse 5 personified the cities near and far about Jerusalem as mocking, scoffing, and deriding Jerusalem in her infamous fall, Eze 23:48; For in her vexation she would fall to the dust, Lam 1:1; Deu 29:24.
Verse 6, 7 charge that the princes, or rulers of the city of Jerusalem, acted with the strong arm of a despot, crushing any person that crossed their path, Isa 1:23; Mic 3:1-3; Zep 3:3. They put the innocent (who opposed their views) to death, as Jehoiakim, 2Ki 24:4; Manasseh, 2Ki 21:16. They “set light” (despised) their father and mother, to bring a curse, under the law, Deu 27:16; Mar 7:10-13. They oppressed the stranger and vexed the orphans and widows in the midst of the city, under their rule, defying the very law of God they were ordained to uphold, Deu 27:16.
Verse 8 asserts that they too had despised or taken lightly His holy things, Lev 19:10, concerning worship and behavior and profaned His sabbaths, Exo 20:8-9.
Verse 9-11 describe, in addition to slander, bloodshed, and idolatry of verses 6-8, the crimes of lewdness and incest as follows: Verse 9 charges that men were carrying tales to shed blood, peddlers who were informers against others for pay, hence the phrase talebearers, tattlers, or busybodies, Lev 19:16; 1Ti 5:13. They were also charged with “eating upon the mountains,” going out on mountains to eat to idols, and commit lewdness, engage in sexual orgies before the idol gods, Jer 3:6.
Verse 10 charges them with “uncovering their father’s nakedness,” or having promiscuous sex relations, with their mother or stepmother, or one of their father’s polygamous wives. They too humbled her who was set apart by their father for uncleanness or pollution; It was perhaps a sister their father had given or hired out for prostitution, a breach of God’s law, Eze 18:6; Lev 18:7-8; Lev 18:19; Lev 20:18.
Verse 11 continues to indict the rulers of Jerusalem for both practicing and condoning fornication and adultery with a neighbor’s wife, incest of a father with his daughter-in-law, and his father’s daughter, his own sister, all deeds of impurity and defilement under their own law, Lev 18:9; Lev 18:20; Deu 27:22. See also Lev 18:6-24; 2Sa 13:12.
Verse 12 charges that the princes or rulers of Jerusalem had taken gifts (bribes, pay off) to shed blood, forbidden Exo 23:8; Deu 16:19; Deu 27:25. They had taken usury and greedy gain, exorbitant profits from their neighbors, gained by extortion threats, and in all they had ignored and “forgotten God,” the root of all their evil deeds, Deu 32:18; Jer 3:21; Eze 23:35.
Verse 13 calls upon their princes, (rulers) of Israel, and the city of Jerusalem in particular, to recognize that He has smitten his hand in anger because of disappointment in their dishonest gain, and at the blood shed by murder in their midst, Eze 21:17. Covetousness and blood-guiltiness are the two sins that are described as exciting the wrath of God, Isa 1:23; Mic 3:1-3; Exo 20:17.
Verse 14 rhetorically asks the people and rulers in Jerusalem whether or not their heart can endure or their hands be strong in the days when He shall deal with them in judgment. The inference is that they can not, can they? For he should surely send it upon them, Isa 31:3; 1Co 10:22; Eze 17:24; Eze 21:7.
Verse 15 certifies that the Lord will scatter them among the nations and disperse them in the countries to consume their filthiness from them. The object of this dispersion was twofold: 1) First, to recover the Jews from idolatry and 2) Second, to remove them from the polluting influence that accompanied idolatry, Deu 4:27.
Verse 16 states that Israel should take her inheritance in herself in the sight of the heathen until she should know or recognize that their God was also their Lord. They of Jerusalem had desecrated their sanctuaries, v. 8, and forfeited thereby their right to worship any more until they had been judged. And they were to see it desecrated and destroyed as a requital for their sins; They were to loathe themselves there in the land of Chaldea for their former sins, Exo 8:23; 1Ki 20:13; 1Ki 20:28; Psa 9:16; Psa 83:18; Isa 37:20; Dan 4:25.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
THE SINS OF JERUSALEM AND ISRAEL: THE GENERAL CORRUPTION OF PROPHETS, PRIESTS, PRINCES, AND PEOPLE (Chap. 22)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.We have here another description of the sins of Jerusalem and Israel; and thus the judgments predicted in the last chapter are clearly justified. Three words of God are here closely connected together in their substance and design, viz.:
(1) The blood-guiltiness and idolatry of Jerusalem hastening the coming of the day of retribution, when the city will be an object of scorn to all nations (Eze. 22:1-16).
(2) The house of Israel has become dross, and is doomed to be melted in the fire of Gods righteous anger (Eze. 22:17-22).
(3) All ranks of the kingdomprophets, priests, princes and people have become utterly corrupt, and therefore the threatened judgments are inevitable.
This chapter may be considered as standing in contrast with Chap. 20. In this latter, the whole of Israels history was reviewed as revealing a growing corruption which must of necessity bring down Gods judgments upon the people. The present chapter describes the existing condition of Jerusalem. In one case the prophet was commanded to Make them to know the abominations of their fathers (Eze. 20:4); in the other, he is commanded concerning Jerusalem to Make her to know her abominations (Eze. 22:2).
Eze. 22:2. Wilt thou judge the bloody city? The same expression as in chap. Eze. 20:4, denoting that the prophets reproof still continues. The question implies the idea that judgment can wait no longer, and the prophet must be wakened up to realise fully the great iniquity of his nation.
Eze. 22:3. The city sheddeth blood in the midst of it. On account of the murders committed in Jerusalem and the offering of children in sacrifice to Moloch, she might well be denominated the bloody city. In this respect she rivalled Nineveh (Nah. 3:1), and might justly anticipate the same doom. Instead of deriving any advantage from their idolatries, they were only involved thereby in ruin (Henderson). That her time may come. The limit of her probationthe crisis of judgment (Isa. 13:22; Eze. 30:3). Maketh idols against herself to defile herself. By her persistence in iniquity still heaping upon herself moral defilement with all its consequences.
Eze. 22:4. Thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years. The full term of days and years when the limit of Divine patience shall be reached. The Jewish commentators distinguish between the days and the years here mentioned, interpreting the former of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, and the latter of the captivity in Babylon (Henderson). A reproach unto the heathen, and a mocking to all countries. Defiled, unclean with regard to the name, i.e. having forfeited the name of a holy city through capital crimes and other sinful abominations.(Keil.)
Eze. 22:5. Those that be near (Heb.). The women that be near. The cities of the nations are personified; as in Eze. 23:48. Infamous and much vexed (Heb.). Polluted in name, much in vexation. Her ancient renown had now descended to the dust. She that had been once great among nations (Lam. 1:1) had now only a pre-eminence in calamity and disgrace. Formerly Jerusalem had been renowned as the holy city. Now it had been defiled by every kind of crime. It was also tumultuous, great of confusion, from the seditions and violence which obtained among the inhabitants. To all, both far and near, the Jewish metropolis was to be an object of derision.(Henderson.)
Eze. 22:6. To their power. Heb. To his own arm. Each man adopted the principle that might was right. With each man the strength of his own arm was his god. Instead of reigning according to law and justice, the princes of Judah, in the most despotic manner, crushing by the strong arm of power all who were the objects of their personal displeasure.(Henderson). To shed blood. By the repetition of the refrain, to shed blood (Eze. 22:6; Eze. 22:9; Eze. 22:12), the enumeration is divided into three groups of sins, which are placed in the category of blood-guiltiness by the fact that they are preceded by this sentence and the repetition of it after the form of a refrain. The first group (Eze. 22:6-8) embraces sins which are committed in daring opposition to all the laws of morality. By the princes of Israel we are to understand primarily the profligate kings who caused innocent persons to be put to death, such for example, Jehoiakim (2Ki. 24:4), Manasseh (2Ki. 21:16), and others. In the second group (Eze. 22:9-11), in addition to slander and idolatry, the crimes of lewdness and incest are the principal sins for which the people are reproved, and here the allusion to Leviticus 18, 19 is very obvious. The third group (Eze. 22:12) is composed of sins of covetousness. For the first clause, compare the prohibition in Exo. 23:2; for the second, Eze. 18:8; Eze. 18:13. The reproof finishes with forgetfulness of God, which is closely allied to covetousness.(Keil).
Eze. 22:9. Men that carry tales to shed blood. Heb. Men of traffic. Describing those who travelled about for the purposes of trade, such as pedlars or wandering merchants. Men of this kind would be likely to become notorious for carrying reports from place to place. Hence the phrase came to be used in the sense of talebearers. In the present instance, the reference is plainly to a class of men whom, in the present day, we should call informers. They eat upon the mountains. See Exegetical Notes, (Eze. 18:6.)
Eze. 22:10. Discovered their fathers nakedness. Mother, or step-mother; (Comp. Lev. 18:7-8; Lev. 20:11; 1 Cor. Eze. 22:1.) Set apart for pollution. This suggests the idea of a female devoted to prostitution, whereas all that the Hebrew expresses is one that is unclean by reason of the menstrual discharge. The character of the Jews, as here described, is aptly given by Tacitus: projectissima ad libidinem gens, alienarum concubitu abstinent, inter se nihil illicitum (Hist. lib. v. cap. 5) (Henderson.)
Eze. 22:11. And one hath committed abomination with his neighbours wife: and another and another, &c. There were such cases! Impurity in every form. A specimen of the moral atmosphere as a whole (Eze. 18:6; Lev. 18:15; Lev. 20:12; 2Sa. 13:12.(Lange.)
Eze. 22:12. Taken gifts to shed blood. Gifts,the word is here used in the sense of bribes. Hast forgotten Me, saith the Lord God.The crowning sin with which the Jews are charged, and that which is strictly speaking the source of all sin, is forgetfulness of God. It is only as God is kept out of view as the omnipresent, omniscient, holy and righteous Governor of the world, that sin can be indulged in(Henderson.) Two of their prophets describe forgetfulness of God as the root of all their evil (Deu. 32:18; Jer. 3:21.
Eze. 22:13. I have smitten Mine hand at thy dishonest gain. A gesture figuratively describing Gods wrathful indignation. This verse is closely connected with the preceding. This serves to explain the fact that the only sins mentioned as exciting the wrath of God are coveteousness and blood-guiltiness (Keil).
Eze. 22:14. Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? The courage of sinners must fail when the judgment of God reckons with them.
Eze. 22:15. And will consume thy filthiness out of thee. The removal of the uncleanness of Jerusalem is effected by the extirpation of the sinful inhabitants (Hengstenberg). The object to be attained by the dispersion of the Jews was their recovery from idolatry and from the polluting influences which followed in its train.(Henderson).
Eze. 22:16. Thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the sight of the heathen. The only translation of these words, which suits the connection, is that given in the margin of the common version: and thou shalt be profaned in thyself. The meaning appears to be: thou shalt be inwardly conscious of thy polluted condition, and shalt loathe thyself on account of thy sins. There, among the heathen, thou shalt learn to appreciate my character as a God of holiness, righteousness, and truth (Henderson). Jerusalem has desecrated the sanctuaries of the Lord (Eze. 22:8); therefore shall it also be desecrated for a requital (Eze. 22:16). It has wickedly insulted the dignity of God; for this it must suffer the loss of its own dignity. In thee, so that thou must experience in thyself the desecration; whereas before thou didst send it forth from thee. Such things always return to him from whom they proceed.(Hengstenberg).
HOMILETICS
THE CATALOGUE OF JERUSALEMS SINS
I. Consider the sins in detail. The prophet is not now speaking of the sins of their forefathers, but of those of his own day. They were all abominations in the sight of God (Eze. 22:2), corrupting and daring sins which bring down Gods judgment swiftly upon nations.
1. Blood guiltiness. Jerusalem is called The bloody city (Eze. 22:3-4; Eze. 22:6; Eze. 22:9; Eze. 22:12). To be guilty of anothers blood is the highest offence which a man can commit against his fellow. When this crime becomes the characteristic of a nation, that nation sinks into a savage and degraded condition.
2. Idolatry. Maketh idols against herself to defile herself (Eze. 22:3). In forsaking the worship of the true God they taxed their own powers of invention, and this was a greater wickedness than merely adopting the errors and superstitions which had been handed down to them.
3. Destruction of the fundamental idea of justice. To their power to shed blood (Eze. 22:6). As the Heb. has it, to his own arm, i.e., each man made his own strength the rule of right, made of his arm a god. The notion that might is right destroys the very foundations of justice.
3. Disregard of parental authority (Eze. 22:7). The Family is the oldest institution, the most changeless, and it will outlast all others. When the essential laws of the Family are disregarded, the Nation must decay and perish.
4. Oppression of the suffering and defenceless. The stranger, the fatherless, and the widow (Eze. 22:7).
5. Profanation of Gods ordinances. They profaned the sanctuary and the Sabbath (Eze. 22:8).
6. Bearing false witness. Men that carry tales to shed blood (Eze. 22:9). Base informers and slanderers who scrupled not for their own wicked ends to swear mens lives away. The fact that there were such men in considerable numbers suggests that there must also have been wicked rulers and judges who encouraged such men.
7. Impurity (Eze. 22:10-11). The individual was corrupted, then the family, and, last of all, the state. God sees such sins when man sees them not. Vices of this kind impair the physical energy of nations, and if unchecked must bring them to destruction.
8. Covetousness. This spirit of covetousness led them to take bribes, to become usurers, and extortioners. Thus those in authority became corrupted, and the evil spread fast throughout the whole nation. Jewish tradition ascribes the destruction of Jerusalem to covetousness that being regarded as the root of all evil.
II. Consider these sins in their root-principles.
1. Forgetfulness of God. And hast forgotten Me, saith the Lord God (Eze. 22:12). Former prophets had reminded them that this forgetfulness of God was the bitter root out of which all their evils grew (Deu. 32:18; Jer. 3:21). Whatever was good or great in this people arose from their connection with God, so that by forsaking His worship and service they cut themselves off from a glorious past. They who forsake God are bound to follow evil. The morality of a nation cannot be preserved, even by the best rules and resolutions, if the truths of God and immortality are rejected.
Truth for truth and good for good! Be good. The true, the pure, the just
Take the charm for ever from them and they crumble into dust.
(Tennyson: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.)
2. Selfishness. Having cast off God, each man made himself the centre of all interest, the rule of all duty. Hence covetousness, leading to extortion, oppression, and the taking of bribes, the consequent perversion of justice to the injury of the poor and defenceless. Hence the deification of forcethe doctrine that might was right. In such a condition of things each man will regard that which is a benefit to himself as right and good. Whatever a man could get by force would be his, and he would have no right to it longer than he had strength to defend it. Such a doctrine as this would destroy the foundations of morality.
3. Sensuality. This was another root-principle of the nations evil. The animal nature was let loose without restraint, and sins were committed which sank men lower than the beast. These sins are described (Eze. 22:10) by such words as abomination, lewdness, defiling and humbling those whose chastity they were bound in honour to respect.
III. Consider these sins in their punishment. I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries (Eze. 22:15). This punishment included many afflictions.
1. The sorrows and dangers of exile. They had to leave their beautiful country with all its hallowed asssociations, their homes, their kindred, their religious privileges which had made them great. They would learn to realize the worth of these when once they had lost them.
2. Abandonment of their own evil principles. They were permitted to carry out their own evil principles. They had acted like the heathen, and now they shall learn what heathenism means, in its own proper home. God allows men to work out such experiments for themselves; if haply they may come, at length, to the knowledge of their own helplessness. The discipline of failure prepares the way for the glory of Gods salvation. The prodigal in the parable thought that he could better himself elsewhere. He is allowed to make the trial, he gets his portion and departs. By the smart of the experiment he is brought to a better mind. Hard experience taught him those lessons which the sober convictions of duty failed to teach. Those who refuse to learn by Gods precepts shall learn by His judgments,
3. They would be a reproach among the heathen. The heathen could only despise them for their folly and inconsistency. They would be a mocking to all countries (Eze. 22:4.) They would witness how great her fall from ancient renown, and point at her the finger of scorn when she had now only the pre-eminence in calamity.
3. The judgments would be severe and effectual. And will consume thy filthiness out of thee (Eze. 22:15). The trial by fire is the hardest and most searching of all trials. We can, therefore, only understand this threatening to mean the extinction of Jerusalems polluted inhabitants. The ungodly are to be separated from the righteous. What a suggestion of the final judgment!
4. No human power could avert the judgment, or courage resist it. Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? (Eze. 22:14). When sin is committed men imagine themselves strong and full of courage, but how different their bearing when the time of judgment comes! When God once rises up in judgment against sinners, heart and hand, courage and strength fail. There was now no way of escape for the guilty. He against whom they had sinned had uttered His word, and it must be fulfilled to the utmost in dire judgment; I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it (Eze. 22:14).
5. The agency of man in the judgment. Son of man, wilt thou judge the bloody city? (Eze. 22:2). The prophets of old judged the world through the word of the Lord, the apostles through the Holy Spirit convincing the world of sin. St. Paul tells us that the saints shall judge the world (1Co. 6:2); by which we are to understand, not that they shall sit upon the judgment seat, but rather that they by their righteousness shall condemn those who having the same opportunities yet resisted the grace of God.
(Eze. 22:14-16)
1. Sinners are apt to confide in their wisdom, strength, power, riches, or friends. Jerusalem thought that she had wherewith to keep off all judgments or sufficient to enable her to wrestle with them if they came. Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong? Jerusalem thought so, had confidence that way, else the Lord would not have put these questions to her. Thou didst trust in thy beauty (Eze. 16:15); in thy wealth, in thy walls, in thy soldiers, in thy counsellors, in thy temple, in thy mountains, which were thy beauty. In Jeremiahs days it is evident that the wise, the rich, and strong men in Jerusalem did too much confide and glory in their wisdom, their riches, and strength (Jer. 9:23). Her confidence was in falsehood (Jer. 13:25); that was in things which proved false and deceitful: one of this kind was the Egyptian strength (Isa. 30:2; Eze. 17:17). It is not good to lean on our own wisdom, to rest upon our own strength, or strength of others; whoever makes flesh within, or flesh without, his arm, lies under a curse (Jer. 17:5); but he that trusts in the Lord, and in Him only, he hath the blessing (Jer. 17:7).
2. God hath His times to reckon with sinners. To make them smart for their evil doings. In the days that I shall deal with thee. God had His day to deal with Egypt (Eze. 30:9), with the Midianites (Isa. 9:4). Ahab had his day to do wickedly, and God had His day to deal with him (1Ki. 22:34-35). Men sin, and think to hear no more of their sins, but God remembers them, and hath His days to visit for them (Rom. 2:6; Rom. 2:9).
3. Gods judgments discover the vanity and rottenness of human confidences Can thine heart endure? can thine hands be strong? In the days when I shall deal with thee, when I shall bring the sword, plague and famine, thy heart will be faint and thy hands feeble. Gods judgments are fires which consume mans confidences, and make them see their own weakness. If footmen, horsemen, and the swellings of Jordan weary and sink men, what will the Lord of Hosts do (Jer. 12:5)? If they cannot bear the lesser judgments, how will they bear the greater? If briars and thorns conceit themselves to be oaks and cedars, can they endure the fire? They will be burnt to ashes (Isa. 27:4).
4. The word of the Lord shall take place, whatever mens thoughts are. They thought Nebuchadnezzar would not come, or if he did, that they and the Egyptians should be able to deal with them, and prevent those evils which were threatened by the prophets; but I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it. Neither will the Lord revoke what He hath said, and so prevent judgments intended: He is wise, and will bring evil, and will not call back His words (Isa. 31:2). Men often speak, threaten, and then after eat their words, call back their threatenings, saying they were uttered in passion, inconsiderately, and so show their folly; but God when He speaks, it is in wisdom, His words shall stand, and not be removed or called back (Amo. 6:11). Hence it is that the Lord saith, They shall know whose word shall stand, mine or theirs (Jer. 44:28).
5. The Lord by His judgment doth purge out of cities and nations the wicked, and makes them and their wickedness to cease. I will consume thy filthiness out of thee, i. e., thy filthy ones. God brought the sword, famine, and pestilence upon Jerusalem, and by these did cut off and consume, the filthy ones there (Jer. 14:15; Jer. 16:4; Eze. 8:14). By His judgments the Lord consumes the filthy out of the city and land, and filthiness out of the saints.
6. The wickedness of Gods people doth disinterest them in God; it makes God disown them, and leave them to themselves. They might think and say they were still the people, the inheritance of God, that they had an interest in Him; but thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself; I disclaim thee, I cast thee off as profane, and look upon thee no otherwise than I do upon heathens. Israel had cast off the thing that was good, viz., the worship of God (Hos. 8:3); and, therefore, the prophet said, Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off (Hos. 8:5); that is, thy false worship hath made Me to cast thee off, to declare thee to be none of my city, and thy people to be none of mine. The prophet Jeremiah tells us, that the Jews were once very dear to God, even as dear as a wife can be to a husband; but because, like lions, they carried it stoutly against God, and cried out against Him and His prophets, therefore He forsook them, and gave them into the hands of the Babylonians; and because Jerusalem was as a speckled bird in the eye of God, through her variety of gods, altars, superstitions and idolatries, therefore God caused the birds of all the nations to hoot at and hate her, even as birds do a speckled bird, inviting them and all the beasts of the field to come and devour her. And all this because they dealt treacherously, they were hypocritical, they were wicked (Jer. 12:1-2; Jer. 12:4; Jer. 12:7-9). The Jews had been a people precious in the sight of God, and honourable (Isa. 43:4); Jerusalem His habitation, and the people of it His inheritance and His glory, whom He protected (Isa. 4:5); yet, by their sins they provoked God, so that He gave His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemys hand (Psa. 78:61).
7. That Gods judgments bring people to the knowledge of God. God would scatter them, consume them, cast them off, leave them to themselves, and they should know that he is the Lord. The Lord is known by executing judgments (Psa. 9:16); His power, His justice, and sovereignty are known thereby, and so men are made to fear and stand in awe of Him. When God is silent, and speaks not by His judgments, men think He is like themselves (Psa. 50:21); and are emboldened to sin (Ecc. 8:11); but when God thunders by His judgments, they have other apprehensions of Him (1Sa. 6:19-20).(Greenhill).
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Chapter Eleven
THE DEFILEMENT OF ISRAEL
22:1-24:27
Chapters 2224 form the conclusion of a lengthy section of the Book of Ezekiel which began back in chapter 12. In these chapters Ezekiel has been answering all objections articulated and unarticulated which could be raised against his thesis that God must destroy Jerusalem. By means of three oracles, two parables and a symbolic action the prophet here underscores the defilement of the land of Israel in the past and in the present. Each chapter in this section forms a distinct unit which may be titled as follows: (1) A Sinful Nation (Eze. 22:1-31); (2) A Sad History (Eze. 23:1-49); (3) A Significant Date (Eze. 24:1-27).
1. A SINFUL NATION 22:131
Chapter 22 contains three separate oracles each of which begins with the phrase, The word of the LORD came to me (Eze. 22:1; Eze. 22:17; Eze. 22:23). These messages originally may have been uttered on separate occasions. However, there is logic in the grouping of these three messages here, for they share the common theme of the defilement of Israel. One might suggest the following titles for these three sermons: (1) The Bloody City (Eze. 22:1-16); (2) The Smelting Furnace (Eze. 22:17-31); (3) The Corrupt Land (Eze. 22:23-31).
A. The Bloody City 22:116
TRANSLATION
(1) And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, (2) And as for you, son of man, will you judge, will you judge the bloody city? Then make known to her all her abominations. (3) And say: Thus says the Lord GOD: O city that sheds blood in her midst, that her time may come, and that makes idols unto her to defile herself; (4) you are guilty in the blood that you have shed, and you are defiled by the idols which you have made; and you have caused your days to draw near, and you have come unto your years; therefore I have made you a reproach to the nations, and a mockery to all lands! (5) Those that are near and those that are far from you shall mock you, you defiled of name and great of tumult. (6) Behold, the princes of Israel, each according to his strength, they have been in you in order to shed blood. (7) In you they have made light of father and mother; in the midst of you they have dealt with the stranger by oppression; in you they have wronged the orphan and widow. (8) You have despised My holy things, and you have profaned My sabbaths. (9) Talebearers have been in you to shed blood; and in you they have eaten upon the mountains; in the midst of you they have committed lewdness. (10) In you a fathers nakedness has been uncovered; in you they have humbled the woman who was unclean in her impurity. (11) And one has committed an abomination with the wife of his neighbor, while another has defiled his daughter-in-law with lewdness; and still another in you has humbled his sister, his fathers daughter. (12) In you they have taken gifts in order to shed blood; interest and increase you hate taken and you have gotten illicit gain from your neighbor by oppression, and you have forgotten Me (oracle of the Lord GOD). (13) Behold I have smitten My hand at your illicit gain which you have made, and against your blood which exists in your midst. (14) Can your heart endure, or can your hands be strong for the days when I will deal with you? I the LORD have spoken, and will do it. (15) And I will scatter you among the nations, and spread you in the lands; and I will consume your uncleanness from you. (16) And you shall be profaned in yourself in the sight of the nations; and you shall know that I am the LORD.
COMMENTS
Again Ezekiel is asked if he would judge Jerusalem (cf. Eze. 20:4). Before he can pronounce such judgment, Ezekiel must inform the inhabitants of the charges against them (Eze. 22:2). He therefore lists for them their crimes:
1. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were guilty of bloodshed openly practiced in the midst of the city. This brazen disregard for life indicates the terrible moral debasement of the place.
2. The Jerusalemites had made idols for themselves which had resulted in ritual and moral defilement (Eze. 22:3).
The bloodshed and idolatry had caused Jerusalems time (Eze. 22:3) and days to draw near, i.e., had hastened the retribution. The years of dispersion and exile were just around the corner. In the eternal counsels of God Jerusalem had already been made a reproach and an object of mockery to all neighboring lands (Eze. 22:4). The people of God would be known far and near. They would be defiled of name, i.e., have a bad reputation derived from the fact that their land was full of tumult, i.e., turmoil and confusion caused by war and natural calamity (Eze. 22:5). After this brief aside on the nearness of judgment, Ezekiel continues the catalog of crimes committed by his countrymen.
3. The princes or leaders of Judah had abused their power even to the point of bloodshed (Eze. 22:6).
4. In open defiance of the fifth commandment the people of Judah had ridiculed and mocked their elderly fathers and mothers (Eze. 22:7 a).
5. Oppression of the helpless the strangers or sojourners, the orphans and widows was common throughout the land (Eze. 22:7 b).
6. They had despised the holy things of God by the dis respectful way in which they conducted themselves in the Temple (Eze. 22:8 a).
7. The weekly sabbath and the special festival days designated as sabbaths had been profaned by the hypocritical conduct of the worshipers (Eze. 22:8 b).
8. Talebearers or slanderers had sent many innocent persons to face the death penalty (Eze. 22:9 a).
9. Participation in the idolatrous worship exercises upon the hills was common (Eze. 22:9 b).
10. Lewdness or unchastity was an integral part of those pagan rituals (Eze. 22:9 c). Unlike his contemporary Jeremiah who says virtually nothing about sexual sins, Ezekiel expands the general charge of lewdness in sickening detail in Eze. 22:10-11. He accuses the Jews of uncovering the nakedness of their fathers, an expression which refers to incestuous relation ships especially with a stepmother (cf. Lev. 18:7 f.).[355] They had also committed rape, and that of a menstruous woman whose condition rendered intercourse forbidden (cf. Lev. 18:19; Lev. 20:18). Adultery which is an abomination in the sight of God, had been committed. Their lust even drove them to defiling their daughters-in-law and raping their half-sisters (cf. Lev. 18:9; Lev. 18:15).
[355] According to a Rabblnic tradition this verse refers to King Amon who is said to have had intercourse with his mother.
11. Bribery of judicial officials leading to the execution of innocent men was common (Eze. 22:12 a).
12. In violation of the laws against usury (cf. Lev. 25:36 f.), the wealthy had taken undue interest and thus had enhanced their personal wealth through greed and oppression (Eze. 22:12 b).
13. All of the above sins grew out of one fundamental transgression: Judah forgot God.
Such crimes must be punished! In a gesture of anger God is said to smite His hands, i.e., to clap His hands, to summon the agents of judgment (Eze. 22:13). By means of a rhetorical question Ezekiel drives home the point that the Jews would not have the fortitude nor the physical strength to stand against the enemies by which God would bring judgment upon them. With God the very pronouncement of judgment is tantamount to the act of judgment, for what He decrees He will surely bring to pass (Eze. 22:14).
As far as Judah was concerned, that judgment involved ultimately exile to foreign lands. However, this exile would have a positive benefit. The people of God would be purged of their uncleanness, i.e., their Sin and iniquity (Eze. 22:15), and they would realize that Yahweh who knows the end from the beginning had brought this calamity to pass. But however beneficial the ultimate result, the exile would not be a pleasant experience. In the sight of the nations Judah would be profaned, i.e., humiliated and debased, and this would generate feelings of shame and remorse (Eze. 22:16).
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
Jerusalem, the City of Blood.
‘Moreover the word of Yahweh came to me saying, “And you, son of man, will you judge, will you judge, the bloody city? Then cause her to know all her abominations.” ’
Ezekiel continues in his silent vigil, speaking only when the word of Yahweh comes to him. God asks him whether he is prepared to pass act as prosecutor to a city filled with the spilling of blood. For the double rendering which intensifies the question compare Eze 20:4.
‘The bloody city.’ This section repeats the word blood a number of times (Eze 22:2-4; Eze 22:6; Eze 22:9; Eze 22:12-13). Its streets were stained with blood. ‘Blood’ often indicates physical violence and deliberate harm, and vileness, as well as death.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Eze 22:1-31 God Reveals to Ezekiel the Bloody City of Jerusalem – The leaders of God’s children (prophets, priests, princes in this passage of Scripture) are held in heavy responsibility for not fulfilling their offices.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Weight of Jerusalem’s Guilt
v. 1. Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, v. 2. Now, thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge, the bloody city? v. 3. Then say thou, Thus saith the Lord God, v. 4. Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed, v. 5. Those that be near and those that be far from thee, v. 6. Behold, the princes of Israel, every one, were in thee to their power, v. 7. In thee have they set light by father and mother, v. 8. Thou hast despised Mine holy things, v. 9. In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood, v. 10. In thee have they discovered their fathers’ nakedness, v. 11. And one hath committed abomination with his neighbor’s wife, in base adultery, and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter-in-law, v. 12. In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood, v. 13. Behold, therefore I have smitten Mine hand, v. 14. Can thine heart endure, v. 15. And I will scatter thee among the heathen, v. 16. And thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the sight of the heathen,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Eze 22:1, Eze 22:2
Moreover, etc. The word connects what follows with the word of the Lord which began in Eze 20:2. That connection is, indeed, sufficiently indicated by the recurrence of the formula, “Wilt thou judge?” (see note on Eze 20:4). In obedience to the commands which that question implied, Ezekiel has once more to go through the catalogue of the sins of Judah and Jerusalem. It is not without significance that he applies the very epithet of bloody city (Hebrew, city of bloods) which Nahum (Nah 3:1) had applied to Nineveh.
Eze 22:3
The city sheddeth blood, etc. As in the great indictment of Isaiah (Isa 1:15, Isa 1:21; Isa 4:4), the sins of murder and idolatry are grouped together. She sins as if with the purpose “that her time” (i.e. the time of her punishment) “may come.”
Eze 22:4
Thou hast caused thy days to draw near, etc. As in Eze 22:3, the days and the years are those of God’s judgments. The people had made no effort to avert their doom by repentance. They had, as it were, rushed upon their appointed fate. So, though in another sense, the righteous lives of the faithful are said, in 2Pe 3:12, to “hasten the coming of the day of God.” Exceptional evil and exceptional good alike hasten the approach of the day which is to decide between the two.
Eze 22:5
Those that be near, etc. The Hebrew words are both feminine, and refer to the neighboring and distant cities which took up their proverbs of reproach against the city, once holy and faithful, now infamous (Hebrew, defiled in name) and much vexed. The last words point to another form of punishment. Jerusalem is described as in a state of moral tumult and disorder as the consequence of its guilt (comp. Amo 3:9; Deu 7:23; Zec 14:13, where the same word is rendered by “tumults” and “destruction”).
Eze 22:6
Behold, the princes of Judah, etc. For the “bloodshed,” which was conspicuous among the sins, comp. Eze 9:9; Eze 16:38; Eze 23:37, Eze 23:45; and for special instances of that sin among its princes, those of Manasseh (2Ki 21:16) and Jehoiakim (2Ki 24:4). To their power; Hebrew, each man according to his arm, i.e. his strength. There was no restraint upon the doer of evil other than the limitation of his capacity.
Eze 22:7
We pass to sins of another kind. The fifth commandment was trampled underfoot as well as the sixth, and the blessing of continued national existence (Exo 20:12) was thereby forfeited. The widow and the orphan and the stranger (we note in that last word the width of Ezekiel’s sympathies) were oppressed (compare the same grouping in Deu 27:16, Deu 27:19).
Eze 22:8
Mine holy things, etc. The words take in the whole range of Divine ordinances as affecting both things and persons. (For “profaning sabbaths,” see Eze 20:16.)
Eze 22:9
Men that carry tales, etc. Hebrew, men of slanders (comp. Exo 23:1; Le Exo 19:16). The sin of the informers, ever ready to lend themselves to plots against the life or character of the innocent, was then, as at all times, the besetting evil of corrupt government in the East. Compare the story of Naboth (1Ki 21:10) and of Jeremiah (Jer 37:13). (For eating on the mountains, see note on Eze 18:6; and for lewdness, that on Eze 16:43.) What the lewdness consisted in is stated in the following verses.
Eze 22:10
This, well-nigh the vilest of all forms of incest, against which the horror naturalis of the heathen, as in the story of Hippolytus, uttered its protest, would seem to have been common among the corruptions of Israel. (For the sin described in the second clause, see notes on Eze 18:6.)
Eze 22:11, Eze 22:12
The list of sins follows on the lines of Le Eze 18:9, Eze 18:15. (For those in Eze 18:12, see notes on Eze 18:12.) It is to be remarked, however, that the prophet does not confine himself to the mere enumeration of specific sins. These are traced to their source in that “forgetting God” which was at once the starting-point and the consummation of all forms of evil (comp. Rom 1:28).
Eze 22:13
I have smitten my hand. The gesture, as in Eze 21:14, Eze 21:17, was one of indignant, and, as it were, impatient command.
Eze 22:14
Can thine heart endure, etc.? The question implies an answer in the negative. Heart would fail and hands wax feeble in the day of the Lord’s judgment. The doom of exile and dispersion must come, with all its horrors; but even here, Judah was not, like Ammon to be forgotten (Eze 21:32). Her punishment was to do its work, and to consume her filthiness out of her.
Eze 22:16
Thou shalt take thine inheritance, etc.; better, with the Revised Version, Keil, and most other commentators, shalt be profaned in thyself, etc. The prophet is still speaking of punishment, not of restoration.
Eze 22:18
The house of Israel is to me become dross, etc. A new parable, based upon Isa 1:22, Isa 1:23 and Jer 6:1-30 :80, begins, and is carried out with considerable fullness. In Mal 3:2, Mal 3:3 we have the same imagery. Baser metals have been mingled with the silver, and must be burnt out, but there is hope, as well as terror, in the parable. Men throw the mixed metals into the smelting-pot in order that the silver may be separated from the dross and come out pure. And this was to be the issue of the “fiery trial” through which Jerusalem and its inhabitants were to pass.
Eze 22:23, Eze 22:24
A fresh section opens, and the prophet addresses himself, not to Jerusalem only, but to the whole land. A land that is not cleansed. The words admit of the rendering, not shined upon, and this is adopted by Keil. The land is deprived at once of the sunshine and the rain. which are the conditions of fertility. The LXX. gives “not mined upon,” and so the two clauses are parallel and state the same fact. So Ewald. The Vulgate gives immunda, and this is followed both by the Authorized Version and the Revised Version (comp. Isa 5:6; Amo 4:7).
Eze 22:25
A conspiracy of prophets. The prophet’s thoughts go back to Eze 13:1-16, from which, in Verse 28, he actually quotes It is probable that, in the interval, fresh tidings had reached him of the evil work which they were doing at Jerusalem. The LXX. (equivalent to “princes”) suggests that they followed a different text, and this is adopted by Keil and Hitzig. Like a roaring lion (comp. Eze 19:2, Eze 19:3; 1Pe 5:8). The word probably points to the loud declamations of the false prophets (compare, as a striking parallel, Zep 3:3, Zep 3:4).
Eze 22:26
The sins of the prophets are followed by these of the priests. Their guilt was that they blurred over the distinction between the holy and the profane (Revised Version, “common”), between the clean and the unclean (comp. Eze 44:23; Le Eze 10:10, where the same terms are used), in what we have learnt to call the positive and ceremonial ordinances of the Law, and so blunted their keenness of perception in regard to analogous moral distinctions. Extremes meet, and in our Lord’s time the same result was brought about by an exaggerated scrupulosity about the very things the neglect of which was, in Ezekiel’s time, the root of the evils which he condemns. This was true generally, conspicuously true in the case of the sabbath. Its neglect was a crying evil in Ezekiel’s time, just as its exaggeration was in the later development of Judaism. Though in itself positive rather than moral, to hide the eyes from its holiness was, for these to whom the commandment had been given, an act of immorality.
Eze 22:27
Wolves (comp. Hab 1:8; Zep 3:3; Mat 7:15; Act 20:29).
Eze 22:28
(See Eze 13:10.) The fact that the prophets are addressed here gives some force to the idea that “chiefs” or “judges” were addressed in Eze 22:27.
Eze 22:29
From the classes, the prophet turns to the masses. The people of the land, the common people (2Ki 25:3, 2Ki 25:19), come under the same condemnation. Greed of gain, the oppression of the poor and the stranger, were seem everywhere.
Eze 22:30
And I sought for a man, etc. (For the imagery that follows, see Eze 13:5 : Psa 106:23.) The fact stated, as in Jer 5:1, is that there was no one in all Jerusalem righteous enough to be either a defender or an intercessor, none to be a “repairer of the breach” (Isa 58:12). Nothing was left but the righteous punishment proclaimed in Jer 5:31.
HOMILETICS
Eze 22:7
Social sins.
The wickedness of Jerusalem was not confined to what might be called sins of religionidolatry, sabbath-breaking, profanation of sacred things, etc. It was witnessed in gross outrages of social rights. Failure in religion leads to failure in society. Social wrongs are sins in the sight of Heaven which God observes, condemns, and punishes.
I. LOSS OF FILIAL REVERENCE. “They have set light by father and mother,” The Hebrew Law attached great weight to the duty children owe to their parents (Exo 20:12). The requirement to honor father and mother was “the first commandment with promise” (Eph 6:2). The breach of this law was a sin in the sight of God; so the prodigal son confessed that he had sinned against Heaven (Luk 15:21). Christ condemned the mean devices by which some Jews in his day endeavored to escape from their filial duty (Mat 15:4 6). In this respect, the East, which we often despise for its supposed corruption and barbarism, is in advance of the West. One of the most ominous portents among us is a growing levity in the treatment of parental claims. No doubt it is well that the old stiffness of the family relationship has broken down, and that there is more mutual confidence between parents and children than there was in the olden times. Parental tyranny is no more admirable than filial rebellion. The formal manners which separated the older generation from the younger were hurtful to both. But with a fuller recognition of the rights of the young, and a greater freedom of intercourse between the older and the younger members of a family, we are in danger of losing filial reverenceone of the most sacred of duties. Well might King Lear exclaim
“Sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!”
II. OPPRESSION OF THE STRANGER. Many and merciful were the regulations of the Jewish Law in favor of “the stranger that is within thy gates.” In spite of the supposed Jewish exclusivenessa trait of late Judaism rather than of ancient Israelite mannersthe foreigner had a higher status in Jerusalem than was accorded by the liberal-minded Greeks at Athens to the Xenoi. Oppression of foreign residents was a sign of peculiar wickedness. The Jews were reminded that because they had been received as guests in Egypt and then betrayed by their hosts, they should feel peculiar sympathy with aliens. Let us Beware of selfish national exclusiveness. This is not patriotism; it is narrow-minded, selfish injustice and inhumanity. Observe some of the eases in which the sin of oppressing strangers may be committed.
1. Unkindness to foreign immigrants. England is the boasted shelter of the world’s refugees. May she never forfeit her good name from greedy jealousy! Missions to Italian peddlers, lodging-houses for Lascars, etc; claim Christian attention for the saving of the poor and friendless from cruel wrong.
2. Cruelty to foreigners abroad. England has vast relations with feeble inferior races. The great empire of India is entrusted to our care. In Africa we have peculiar influence. The abominations of the treatment of women in the former ease, and the evil of the traffic in drink and firearms in the latter case, are instances of gross oppression of strangers.
III. VEXING THE FATHERLESS AND THE WIDOW. In the absence of a poor law, special attention was given to the provision for orphans and widows by private charity under the Jewish economy. But the rough justice of the East often failed to secure to the helpless even their own rights. Times of lawlessness were times when those poor persons suffered grievously. There is always a danger that the helpless should be trodden down in the fierce race of life. We cannot excuse such cruelty by quoting Adam Smith and Mill, as though the laws of political economy were sacred mandates or decrees of fate, instead of being simply generalizations of conduct prompted by self-interest. We are called to higher almsto sympathy and mutual helpfulness.
Eze 22:13
Dishonest gain.
I. DISHONEST GAIN IS A COMMON SOURCE OF WEALTH. We set before our children, in their copy-books, the motto, “Honesty is the best policy;” but in the experience of life it is found that dishonesty is often a more successful worldly policy. Thieves fatten on their booty, and swindlers live in lordly palaces. There is not only the vulgar dishonesty that steals by direct robbery. We have our civilized and refined dishonestya dishonesty which contrives to keep on the near side of the law, and yet is not the less real theft. The “sweater” is a thief. The promoter of bubble companies is a robber on a colossal scale. The breadth of the area embraced, the number of the dupes victimized, and the amount of the gain realized, do not destroy the guilt of the robbery; they heighten it. There was a certain frank daring about the old highwaymen which entitled them to the respect of those who condemned their lawlessness, in comparison with which the sneaking dishonesty of those who steal without risking their lives or liberties is a despicable cowardice.
II. DISHONEST GAIN IS GOT BY MURDEROUS CRUELTY. In our text Ezekiel associates dishonest gain with blood-guiltiness. The thief is near to becoming a murderer; the burglar carries firearms. The immense growth of the custom of insuring the lives of young babies, together with the frightful extent of infant mortality, forces us to the conclusion that, either by neglectthe crudest kind of murderor by the more merciful means of direct suffocation, numbers of children are yearly slaughtered by their parents for the sake of the paltry gain obtained from the insurance. We cannot say much of the old pagan habit of exposing children while this more vile, because more cunning and mercenary, crime is commonly committed in Christian England. It is the duty of all good citizens to be on the watch for cases of cruelty to children among their neighborsoften practiced in the decent homes of thrifty folk. In other ways theft may mean murderslow murder of the most painful kind. The customer helps to murder the shopkeeper when he takes an unjust advantage of competition. He who steals a man’s livelihood virtually steals his life, for it is no credit to the thief that his victim may be saved from starvation by the charity of others.
III. DISHONEST GAIN CALLS DOWN THE VENGEANCE OF HEAVEN. God has smitten his hand at it. Dishonesty can only appear the best policy for a season. In the long run the old proverb is certain to justify itself.
1. National dishonesty will bring vengeance on a nation. The English cotton-trade has suffered materially through the cheating custom of adding weight to goods shipped to the East by sizing the fabric. If trade with lower races is corrupt, unjust, and cruel, the wrong will be avenged either by the loss of the trade or in the hatred earned by the traders. The oppression of the poor in our midst by those who make dishonest gains in grinding down their employees will be assuredly avenged by some awful social revolution, unless the injustice is speedily atoned for by more fair treatment.
2. Private dishonesty will bring vengeance on the sinner. God sees and judges the man who enjoys dishonest gain. If he does not suffer on earth from the enmity he has stirred, this Dives will certainly not be carried with the Lazarus he oppressed to Abraham’s bosom. His gold will scorch him like fire in some dread hell.
Eze 22:14
A total collapse.
I. DELUSIVE HOPE. Consider what it rests on.
1. A stout heart. The sinner believes in himself. He feels brave and confident. No doubt this temper of mind will help him over a number of difficulties. But will it stand in the awful day of Divine judgment?
2. Strong hands. The sinner is conscious of strength in himself and in his possessions, in his body and mind, and in the resources of his ill-gotten gain. The wicked king owns his army; the bad millionaire holds his money; the sinful man of humbler pretensions relies on his wits, his energy, or at worst on his luck.
3. Present prosperity. The text refers to future days, when God will deal with the sinner. Those days have not yet dawned, and all is fair at present. The natural tendency is to believe that the world will continue as it is now. “For as in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark” (Mat 24:38).
II. CERTAIN FAILURE. The text is in the form of a question, but it plainly suggests only one dismal answer. The delusive hope must fail. Note the grounds of the certain failure.
1. Human feebleness. It is a case of the strength of man matched against the might of God. Who can doubt the issue? In such a contest the stoutest heart must fail and the strongest arm go down. Man is the lord of creation; but he is a feeble insect before Omnipotence.
2. Divine constancy. “I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it.” God is true to his word. He does not mock his children with idle threats. He is too sure to fail.
3. Changed circumstances. “In the days that I shall deal with thee.” Those days have not yet arrived. Therefore we cannot comfort ourselves that we shall be safe in the future because we are comfortable enough at present. The coming days will wear a new aspect. We are not fortified against winter storms by the enjoyment of summer sunshine. The ease with which we glide down the stream is no guarantee that the thunder of the falls will never be reached. The delusive hope which shines fair in the old times of Divine waiting will be shattered to fragments in the new days of Divine judgment.
III. CONSEQUENT MISERY. The question of the text is not answered; but the doleful silence with which it is received suggests the misery that is to follow. If heart and hand fail, the ruin and wretchedness must be complete. While a good man fighting against adversity is said to be a sight for the admiration of gods as well as men, a bad man crushed by misery is only an object of horror. The stout heart of honest intentions can bear up against unmerited woes and find in its own fortitude a certain solace. But this solace will be wanting in the collapse of the false hope of the sinner. Then will follow the deepest misery, the sense of being confounded, the helplessness of being swept away in a flood of destruction. Pain is not the worst evil. The depth of hell is reached when heart and strength fail, and the sinner loses all power to withstand his fate. Hence the supreme need of a Savior (Rom 8:1).
Eze 22:18-22
Dross.
I. THE NATURE OF THE DROSS. Israel is compared to dross. The nation should have been God’s precious metal, pure white silver. By sin it has become base metal.
1. Dross is an inferior substance. Characters are deteriorated by sin. Wickedness lowers the very nature of a man. We cannot commit sin and still keep our persons in primitive worth and dignity. We are either exalted or degraded by our deeds; they react upon our very being and assimilate it to themselves. Thus silver becomes dross; the man made in the image of God becomes a child of the devil (Joh 8:44).
2. Dross may be of various kinds. There are brass, tin, iron, and lead in the furnace. Yet all are counted as dross. In human life there are various types of evil. Vice is more picturesque than virtue because it is more variegated. But one common stamp is on every evil cointhe same diabolical effigy.
3. Dross is in the place of good metal. It is mixed with silver (Eze 22:20). Moreover, it pretends to be the good metal. Brass would pass as gold, and tin as silver. Sin is generally hypocritical. It craves the honor of goodness. Wheat and tares grow together. Good and bad fishes come to land in one net. Society contains the good and the bad in close association.
II. THE EVIL OF THE DROSS.
1. It is directly hurtful. Brass is poisonous. Tin is soft, and the vessel made with it will stand neither the heat nor the wear which silver is capable of enduring. All the base metals readily corrode, while the precious metals can be kept bright. The dross of bad character is poisonous, and a source of weakness and corrosion to society.
2. It is deceptive. Passing itself off as better metal, it succeeds in taking the place of honor that does not belong to it. Deceitful men worm their way into posts of dignity which they degrade by their evil character.
3. It is injurious to the good metal. The choice silver is lost in the dross when the various metals are amalgamated into one lump. Good men are injured by bad companions. The presence of wicked characters hinders the work of the good who are joined with them in a common enterprise.
III. THE TREATMENT OF THE DROSS.
1. God deals with it. We cannot always detect its presence or distinguish between it and good metal. Both tares and wheat are to be let grow together until the harvest (Mat 13:30). God knows the secrets of all hearts. The great Assayer will not be deceived by the most specious forgery.
2. God tries it in the furnace. Israel was to go into the furnace of affliction, that the dross might be detected. In her prosperity and confidence she listened to the prophets of smooth things, who flattered her into the notion that she was a choice nation of rare qualitypure silver compared to the base metal of the Gentile world. The Captivity tried this beast. Not only was the land laid waste and the city of Jerusalem destroyed, but the mass of the Jewish nation proved itself unequal to cope with its difficulties, and, failing to retain its distinctive character, melted away into the neighboring nations, leaving only a remnantthe true silverto carry on the Hebrew tradition and earn the right of restoration. Persecution would show how much worldly dross there is in the Church (Mat 13:21). Trouble reveals the dross of individual souls.
Eze 22:26
Holy and profane.
I. THE TRUE DISTINCTION BETWEEN HOLY AND PROFANE. The Jewish Law made elaborate distinctions between the clean and the unclean, some of which were founded on moral differences, some on sanitary requirements, but others OH merely symbolical and ceremonial points. Many of these distinctions were only temporary, as that between certain foods, and that between Jews and Gentiles, the abolition of which was revealed to St. Peter in his vision at Joppa (Act 10:15). Christ denounced the folly of formal distinctions (Mat 15:11). St. Paul claimed large liberty in this respect, and pointed out the danger and delusion of the will-worship which was associated with too punctilious an observance of minute external distinctions (Col 2:23). Nevertheless, there remain true distinctions apart from the formal and ceremonial differences.
1. The distinction between holiness and sin. In this distinction we have -the root out of which the ceremonial notions of cleanness and uncleanness sprang. The formal notions may pass, the moral foundation is eternal.
2. The distinction between the service of God and the service of the world. We do not want to regard the temple as the only sacred place, so that the forum must be relegated to profanity. In the Christian age, “Holiness unto the Lord” is not only to be inscribed on the bells of the high priest; it is to be seen on the bells of the horses (Zec 14:20). But this means a dedication of all to the service of God. If we neglect that service and sink into secularism, we fail to observe the holiness; we then make all things profanetemple as well as forum.
II. THE SIN OF DESTROYING THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SACRED AND PROFANE. We have not now to do with definite Jewish offences against the Law of Moses, in which the finely drawn distinction between the clean and the unclean is disregarded. Sacred things of the temple were desecrated by the insolent heathen at Belshazzar’s feast, but they had been first desecrated by Jews in the house of God, while they were touched with sinful hands and used without holy motives. They who are most careful to keep up the ceremonial distinction may yet profane sacred things.
1. The sabbath is profaned, not only when the shops are open and when crowds throng the public resorts of amusement, but when the congregations at church play the part of ostentatious Pharisees, and mock God with pretentious prayers while their hearts and thoughts are far from him.
2. The Bible is profaned when it is quoted to prop up a private opinion in disregard to the royal rights of truth.
3. The gospel is profaned when it is preached for the sake of winning popularity or raising money, to the neglect of the claims of Christ and the needs of mankind.
4. The conscience, which should be a holy standard of right, is profaned when it is distorted by casuistry into excusing a lack of integrity.
5. The body is profaned when, instead of being a temple of the Holy Ghost, it is an instrument of sin (1Co 6:15).
6. The Church, which should be the bride of the Lamb, is profaned when she sinks into worldly living or is divided against herself in bitter uncharitableness.
Eze 22:30
A man to stand in the gap.
The nation of the Jews is in a desperate condition. Their defense is broken down, and God is ready to rush in through the breach with devastating vengeance. But he is loath to do so, and, though his is the threatening power, yet in a wonderful clemency God looks for some one to fill the gap and so to save the devoted nation. Unhappily, no such man is to be found.
I. THE REACH IS MADE. The Jews have been already beaten in the war with Babylon. In the corresponding experience of souls the same lamentable condition is observable. The sinner sets himself against God with a brazen face, and makes the stoutest fence of worldly precautions wherewith to protect himself. But alas! this is a feeble structure. We have not to wait long before we discover that it has been broken through. Trouble has come. Misfortune has fallen on the self-complacent sinner. Or it may be he has suffered from severe sickness, that has weakened the energies of his body. Possibly his mental faculties have begun to fail. He receives unpleasant warning of his mortality. There is a breach in his hedge.
II. GOD IS PREPARING TO COME THROUGH THE BREACH. He cannot disregard the sins of his people, for he is their King, and he must act justly. He might even make a breach at any moment, and in the awful crash of judgment sweep away the strongest fortifications of the soul as so much dust and rubbish. Much more, then, must the enfeebled soul, with ruined fences, stand open to the irresistible wrath of God! So long as we live in sin we are inviting God to come in vengeance through the ever-widening breaches in our paltry defenses.
III. GOD WISHES THE BREACH TO BE FILLED. Here is the wonderful part of our subject. Though we deserve God’s vengeance, he is reluctant to wreak it upon us. While he is necessarily preparing to smite the sinner, he longs to spare him. When the soul is indifferent to its own danger, God grieves over it and looks out for a way of escape. God now longs to save us before we think of seeking for our deliverance.
IV. A MAN IS NEEDED TO FILL THE BREACH. The Jews cannot do this for themselves. They do not see their danger, or they are too busily engaged upon the walls, or no one among them is strong and brave enough to take so perilous a position. We cannot mend the breach in our own lives. We cannot fortify our own souls against the wrath of God.
V. NO MAN IS FOUND TO FILL THE BREACH. Jeremiah might have seemed the most likely savior in this time of extreme need; but even that great prophet was not able to stand alone against the inrushing army of vengeance. No man can save his neighbor from sin and ruin. The evil of the world is too great for all the good men in it to resist. The case of man is hopeless if it is left only to his fellow-man to save him.
VI. GOD HAS SENT HIS SON TO FILL THE BREACH. God looked to see if there was any to save, and wondered that there was no man. Then his own arm brought salvation.
1. Christ came as a man. A man was wanted. God coming in wrath against mankind must be met by a representative man.
2. Christ came into the world. He stood in the breach and met the fury of the storm. He was “made sin for us,” and faced the curse of the cross.
3. Christ came in the might of God.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
Eze 22:1-12
The reproach of Jerusalem.
Patriot as he was, Ezekiel was not, like some sincere patriots, blind to his country’s faults. His conscience and judgment were enlightened, and his emotional nature was rendered especially sensitive, so that a just and deep impression was made upon his mind by the contemplation of his countrymen’s errors and iniquities. Leaders of public opinion, teachers of the time, are ever in danger of flattering those among whom their lot is cast, with whom their interests are identified. Yet Ezekiel proves himself to have the true spirit of the prophet, who rises superior to this temptation, and whose motto is, “Be just, and fear not!”
I. THE REASONS FOR REPROACH EXISTING IN THE MORAL CONDITION OF THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM. The catalogue of the people’s sins is both a long and an awful one. It suffices to mention these as boldly charged upon them by the faithful prophet of the Lord.
1. Idolatry.
2. Violence and murder.
3. Disregard of parents.
4. Oppression of strangers, of the widows and fatherless.
5. Profanation of the sabbath.
6. Lewdness and vile indulgence of lust.
7. Bribery.
8. Extortion.
Was ever such an indictment brought against a community? The marvel is, not that the threatened judgment came, but that it was so long delayed.
II. THE REPROACH AS BROUGHT BY MEN AGAINST THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM. It certainly seems strange, all but incredible, that the highly favored Jerusalem should be famed among the very heathen for degradation in iniquity and moral debasement. But the language of Ezekiel is explicit; and he would be more likely to soften than to exaggerate the charge. Jerusalem a reproach, a mocking, infamous, defiled, full of tumult! How are the mighty fallen! The city of the great King, the seat of the temple of Jehovah, the home of the consecrated priesthood,infamous among the surrounding idolaters for flagitious violation of those very moral laws which the city was consecrated to conserve!
III. THE REPROACH BROUGHT BY GOD AGAINST THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM. The simple dignity of the Divine reproach is beyond all rhetoric, all denunciation. “Thou hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God.” Here, indeed, was the real secret of the defection and rebellion, of the vices and crimes of the sons of Israel Had they kept Jehovah in memory, they would have kept themselves free from the errors and. the follies into which they fell. After all that the Lord had done for them, after all his forbearance and long-suffering, they nevertheless forgot him! There was but one hope for Jerusalem, but one way of recovery and restorationthat they should bring again to memory him whom they had not only forsaken, but forgotten.T.
Eze 22:13-22
The dross in the furnace.
God’s mercy and kindness scarcely anywhere appear more manifest than in his method of dealing with his erring people, whom he subjects to chastening and discipline with the view of purging away their faults. The figure employed by Ezekiel in this passage occurs in other of the prophetic writings. There is some obscurity in his expression; for it seems as if, to convey the fullness of his meaning, he represents the people first as dross, and then as the metal from which the dross is burnt away. Perhaps his meaning is that the ore which is smelted contains a very large proportion of dross compared with the genuine metal.
I. THE VALUE WHICH THE LORD ASSIGNS TO JUDAH. This is very qualified. There is, indeed, metal, whether more precious as silver or less so as iron. Yet there is much that is worthless; so that the Lord says, “Ye are all become dross.” The inference is that, however there may be latent some possibility of good, this can only become actual after the subjection of it to much discipline.
II. THE TREATMENT TO WHICH THE LORD SUBJECTS JUDAH. The ore is gathered, cast into the furnace, left there, to be blown upon by the blast of indignation, and subjected to the heat of the fire, until it be melted in the midst thereof. Through such a process must Judah pass before God could take pleasure therein. Siege, suffering, privation, pestilence, famine, decimation, captivity, reproach, mockery,such were the sufferings appointed for the people of Jerusalem. And, as a matter of fact and history, God did not spare Jerusalemfavored though the city had been. He poured out his fury upon it, and for a time and for a purpose withheld from it his clemency and compassion.
III. THE UTTER INCAPACITY AND HELPLESSNESS OF JUDAH TO RESIST OR TO ENDURE WHAT THE LORD APPOINTS. This is expressed very powerfully in Verse 14, “Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee?” We are reminded of the inquiry, “Who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire.” The discipline of God’s justice is enough to overcome and break down the hard and obdurate hearts of men. They cannot accept it with equanimity. They must profit by it or be consumed by it.
IV. THE PURPOSE OF THE LORD‘S SEVERE TREATMENT OF JUDAH. Ammon was cast into the fire, to be consumed into smoke and to vanish away; Judah, in order to refinement and purification. The intention of Eternal Wisdom and Goodness was and ever is that the dross may be consumed in the furnace of affliction and trial, and thus that the pure metal may be brought forth fit for the use and for the pleasure of the Most High.T.
Eze 22:23-31
Common corruption of all classes. To complete the picture of the debasement and moral deterioration of Jerusalem, the prophet reviews the several classes of which the population of a great city is composed. He finds in every class signs of departure from God, signs of abandonment to the vices and crimes which prevailed among the heathen around.
I. THE PROPHETS, WHO SHOULD SPEAK GOD‘S TRUTH, DECEIVE AND LIE, AND THUS MISLEAD THE PEOPLE. In what sense these worthless deceivers could have been called prophets, it is not easy to determine. Probably they were persons who pretended to this office, and who were deemed by their neighbors entitled to the appellation. But a prophet is one who speaks for God as his representative; and of all men deception on his part is reprehensible. Prophets are nothing if not true. Yet in how many cases have the multitude been misled by crafty, designing pretenders to Divine illumination! And not the multitude only, but even kings and commanders have too often given themselves over to the virtual dictation of men no better than soothsayers and diviners.
II. THE PRIESTS, WHO SHOULD KEEP AND REVERENCE THE DIVINE LAW, VIOLATE AND PROFANE IT. The priesthood must be regarded as part of a system, the object of which was to maintain right relations between the Almighty Ruler and his chosen people. Themselves divinely instituted, they were peculiarly bound to observe every ordinance and regulation of Heaven. Yet these are the men whom the inspired prophet of the Lord denounces as doing violence to God’s Law, profaning holy things, as breaking down the distinction between clean and uncleana distinction which it was especially their office to maintain. How should they be clean who bear the vessels of the Lord! “Like priest, like people.” The moral degradation of the priesthood promoted the degeneration of the nation.
III. THE PRINCES, WHO SHOULD PROTECT THEIR SUBJECTS AND PROMOTE THEIR WELFARE, RAVIN, SPOIL, AND DESTROY. Judah had been afflicted with a succession of monarchs who did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. The deeper the nation sank in poverty, humiliation, and despondency, the greater the opportunity for those in authority, by self-denial and sympathy, to improve the state of the nation. But the wretched rulers who found themselves in place and power appeared indifferent to everything except their own selfish interests, and did their worst to hasten and to complete the ruin which was manifestly so near.
IV. THE PEOPLE, WHO SHOULD LIVE IN THE EXERCISE OF JUSTICE, SYMPATHY, AND CONCORD, OPPRESS AND ROB THEIR NEIGHBORS. National life may be, and is in many cases, an opportunity for the display of civic and social virtues. But the abuse of the best of institutions may make them evil. It is the spirit in which the life of the nation is lived which determines the condition of the people. Differences in power, intelligence, and wealth always have existed, and always will exist, in every community. But superiority ought to be regarded as a trust to be employed for the public good. Where it is used for purposes of oppression, especially for the oppression of the poor and the stranger, such a state of things is a sure presage of national downfall. “When all men live like brothers,” a nation may defy a public enemy, a foreign foe. But suspicion and discord lay the axe at the root of the tree. Such being the state of Jerusalem and Judah, all classes striving together as it were for the nation’s ruin, no wonder that to the prophet the outlook appeared gloomy, and the day of retribution near at hand. “I sought,” says Jehovah, “for a man among them, that should make up the fence, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.”T.
HOMILIES BY J.D. DAVIES
Eze 22:1-16
The prophet on the judgment-seat.
As among men there occurs, now and again, a great assize, when flagitious deeds are examined and flagrant offenders judged, so God has his seasons when high-handed crime is arrested, and the offenders feel the reality of Divine justice. Penalties are not awarded in the dark. Good men see clearly the equity of the proceeding and the extreme patience of the Judge. God places his doings in the public light.
I. THE INDICTMENT. It is a long indictment, and embraces all classes of people.
1. Gross abuse of power. The princesi.e. heads of tribesused their power for the destruction of life, not to preserve it. The scepter was turned into a dagger. Even neglect to protect innocent life becomes murder.
2. Idolatry. “The city maketh idols against herself.” In Israel idolatry was treason. It was the rejection and humbling of their proper King.
3. Murder. “The city sheddeth blood.” He who begins to despise God soon learns to under-value human life. Their children were made to pass through the fire. Violence against property and life abounded.
4. Filial disobedience. “In thee have they set light by father and mother.” The slaughter of innocent children soon produced its natural fruit. Children grew up without natural affection. If the central sun be destroyed, the planets will soon rush headlong to mutual destruction.
5. Tyranny. “They have dealt by oppression with the stranger: they have vexed the fatherless and the widow.” All regard for humane virtues, for common morality, had vanished. It is the custom throughout the East to show hospitality to strangers. This is considered a virtue of the first order; yet even this ordinary virtue was trampled underfoot.
6. Profanity. “Thou hast despised mine holy things, and hast profaned my sabbaths.” In Israel this was a most flagrant sin. God had given them tokens of his presence and favor which he had not given unto others; therefore to profane these sacred tokens was to disgrace God in the eyes of the surrounding heathen. It was as if a soldier on the battle-field trailed his country’s flag in the mire. It was as if a married woman should fling her wedding ring into the fire.
7. Murderous intrigues. “Men carry tales to shed blood.” Untruthfulness is a common sin among the Orientals. Lying intrigues, to encompass a rival’s death, are plentiful as laws. This sin the Hebrews had copied from their neighbors.
8. Unchastity and adultery. “They commit lewdness.” The sanctity of the marriage-tie disappeared. Virtuous affection was strangled by animal lust. Incest and other abominations followed. The people gradually sank to the level of the beasts. All the special dignity and nobleness of manhood died out. Degradation of humanity spread.
9. Judicial bribery. “They have taken gifts to shed blood.” Not an upright judge remained. Wickedness, like an epidemic, spread and infected every office and every rank. The fountain of justice became a fountain of corruption and death.
10. Avarice. There were gains that were dishonest. Extortion was on every side. Avarice, like a cancer, had eaten out all the healthy flesh of honor and sincerity. Gold became to them a god.
11. Forgetfulness of God. This was the root and the crown of their sins. The very memory which God created refused to entertain him; as if a house which a man himself had built should shut its doors against him. When God is driven out, all his retinuepurity, strength, unity, peace, honorgo with him. This is a long and dismal catalogue of crimes.
II. THE ASSIZE–DAY. “Thou hast caused thy days to draw near.”
1. This assize is certain. “I the Lord have spoken it, and I will do it.” As surely as night succeeds to day, the reckoning-day of God’s justice comes. It has never yet failed. Neither the man nor the nation that has defied God has on any occasion escaped.
2. The proceeding will be strictly equitable. The people had made alliance with the gods of the heathen, therefore among the heathen shall they dwell.
3. The irresistibleness of God‘s judicial act. “Can thine hands be strong in the day that I shall deal with thee?” From his bar there is no appeal. Against his power it is vain to strive.
III. THE VERDICT. “Thou shall show her all her abominations.” Here is threatened:
1. Self-discovery. All sin has a subtle potency to blind the judgment. Men are prone to measure themselves only by others, or to look at their conduct only in the mirror of their neighbors’ conduct. But when the clear light of eternal truth flashes upon the soul, past sins start into gigantic magnitude; they are like mountains for their size.
2. Public shame. “Therefore I have made thee a reproach unto the heathen.” This is a stinging verdict. Even the heathen, so much more barbarous and degraded than were the Hebrews aforetime, shall now reproach them for their flagitious deeds. The fall is all the greater if we have first climbed to some stupendous height.
3. Overwhelming affliction. “Can thine heart endure in the days that I shall deal with thee?” When Cain felt the full stress of his sentence, he cried out,” My punishment is greater than I can bear!” The just wrath of the Creator: how can frail man endure it?
4. Banishment. “I will disperse thee in the countries.” In the same measure in which the Hebrews had been confident and boastful in their own land, was the gravamen of the sentence that scattered them among many nations. To be shut out from one’s own land and home is a heavy stroke.
5. Abandonment. “Thou shall take thine inheritance in thyself.” In other words, thou shalt shift for thyself: thou shall find no good beyond thyself. When men persist in saying to God, “Depart from me!” God will say to them, “Depart from me!” To be left to ourselves is heaviest doom.
IV. THE ULTIMATE DESIGN. “I will consume thy filthiness out of thee.”
1. Purification. This abandonment is only for a time. When penalty and suffering have accomplished their end, God promised to return to them in mercy. Meanwhile, alas! many would be cut off by death. Only a remnant would partake of the distant grace. So it came to pass. The seventy years’ banishment purged out effectually the spirit of idolatry. It was a severe, yet a successful, remedy!
2. Surrender. “Thou shall know that I am the Lord.” This knowledge would be not only intellectual, but practical. It was a knowledge of God as Supreme King and Judge. It was a knowledge that produced fruits of obedience. “A burnt child dreads the fire:” so the painful experiences through which that generation passed left wholesome effects upon their children, Full surrender is the only safety.D.
Eze 22:17-22
The smelting furnace.
For every material thing there is a test. We may know metals by their action under chemical agents, or by the furnace-flame. We can test gases by their power to sustain life or to sustain flame. We can test dynamical forces by electricity or by their power to create motion. So for human character there is a crucial test.
I. ADULTERATED METAL. The seed of Israel had sadly degenerated. They had been, compared with other people, as silver and gold. Now they were, in God’s esteem, only as dross, and “his judgment is according to truth.” What virgin gold is in a human kingdom, true righteousness is in the kingdom of God. Loyalty and love are the coins current in God’s empire. A good man is worth more than argosies of gold and rubies. Wisdom, righteousness, and love,these are the only durable riches. They exalt and enrich men for time and for eternity. Selfishness, disobedience, and rebellion are the dross and rust which eat out the very life of the soul. Real riches become part and parcel of the man.
II. THE FURNACE–FIRE. What the material flame of the furnace is to metals, God’s anger is to human character. It tests the qualities of mind and heart. As metals have no power to resist being cast into the furnace, neither has any man power to exempt himself from Divine chastisement. It comes upon all in some form or other. In some, humility, submission, resignation, appear. These are precious metalsthe gold and silver of moral excellence. In others, fretfulness, remorse, defiance, are the effect. These are base dross, destitute of any worth. A myriad of men know nothing about their characters until trial, in some sort, comes upon them. If milder forms of chastisement will not melt the hardened metal, the anger of Jehovah will wax hot. There shall be, sooner or later, self-revelationthe sooner the better.
III. SEPARATION. The furnace is not merely a test of metal and alloy; it further separates the one from the other. Among men this separation, resulting from God’s visitations, is twofold.
1. This separation is seen as one between man and man. The precious and the vile become more distinguishable one from the other.
2. The separation is internal. In those who turn the affliction to good account there follows self-inspection, self-denial, pruning. The idol is dethroned. The vice is abandoned. The evil is withstood and fought. Refinement goes on within. The darkness and the light separate. The man comes out of the process as gold that is purified.
IV. DESTRUCTION. The residuum of alloy is cast out as base and worthless. God will not tolerate falsehood, hypocrisy, or any iniquity in his kingdom. “Every liar shall have his portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.” The liar is not only the man who speaks with intention to deceive; he is the man who has preferred to deceive himself rather than face the truth. Unquestionably, separation, accomplished in the furnace, is with a view to refinement, but also with a view of destruction to the worthless dross. Every man has his face either toward purity or toward perdition. The processes of God’s furnace are going on among us every day. Are we getting better or worse?D.
Eze 22:23-31
Highest rank among men not sought.
The development of human civilization demands an organized system. Men require to be classified according to their ability and fitness to contribute to the welfare of the whole. For the public benefit there must be ruler and subject, master and servant, teacher and taught, commander and army. Each, according to his office, has duties and obligations, the neglect of which brings instant loss and distant ruin.
I. OFFICIAL RANK HAS DEFINITE RESPONSIBILITIES. We cannot hold any office nor possess any wealth without incurring corresponding obligation. There is force in the French proverb, “Noblesse oblige!” Although the sovereign may be above written law, it is only for expediency’s sake, and certainly he is under law, equally binding, though not expressed in words. Every person holding office of whatever sort or kind has undertaken a definite responsibility to protect or promote certain interests of the people. He may be responsible for social order, or for immunity against invaders, or for advancement of learning, or for development of wealth, or for the maintenance of religion. But some responsibility springs out of his office.
II. HIGH RANK DOES NOT SECURE HIGH CHARACTER. Character may and does qualify for office; but official position does not generate moral character. High rank has special temptations and special perils. Rank is only a change of situation; office is simply a change of occupation. They involve changes only outside the man; they do not touch or purify his real self. A man may be an apostle, and yet be harboring a demon in his heart. A man may be a prophet, yet need himself to be taught.
III. RANK HAS A CROWD OF IMITATORS AMONG INFERIOR ORDERS. Because the princes, priests, and prophets acted basely in Israel, therefore the “people of the land used oppression and exercised robbery” (Eze 22:29). Vice is more contagious than fever. Rank gives artificial importance to its possessor, and exerts extensive influence either for evil or for good. As a monument attracts the notice of human eyes in proportion to the elevation on which it is raised, so according to the station in society a man occupies he will have more or fewer imitators. Wide influence is a perilous possession.
IV. THE HIGHEST RANK IS NOT DESIRED AMONG MEN, “I sought for a man who should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.” Real and thorough reform is always unpopular. Men are often eager to reform their institutions or their laws, but always backward to reform themselves. A faithful prophet, who shall recall the people back to God, has always been a scarce man. Nor is this the only time in which God expressed his surprise that no intercessor for men could be found. Yet this is the noblest office any man can occupy. Its aim is the very loftiest. It brings man into companionship with God. Its fruits are permanent, yea, eternal. Alongside this order of service every other rank pales into insignificance. A mediator is a peerless man!
V. THE INFLUENCE OF ONE MAN MAY BE ENORMOUS, Had one real man been found to reprove the people, restore religious worship, and plead with God, Israel might have been spared its overthrow. One man may save a nation or plunge it into perdition. Paul, on board ship, obtained the lives of all the crew. The intercession of Moses brought a deed of pardon for the Hebrew host. For David’s sake God conferred large favors on the nation. Luther’s firm faith brought deliverance both spiritual and temporal to all Europe. What one man can do no language can portray, imagination can scarce conceive. A man of wisdom, piety, and faith may quietly revolutionize the world.D.
HOMILIES BY W. JONES
Eze 22:1-16
An appalling indictment and a just judgment.
“Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Now, thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city?” etc. “This chapter,” says Fairbaim, “stands closely related to the last chapter, and may fitly be regarded as supplementary to it; the former having presented a striking delineation of the Lord’s purpose to execute the severity of his displeasure upon the people of Jerusalem, while this returns to lay open the fearful mass of corruption on account of which such severity was to be inflicted. In what is written here there is nothing properly new; in its general purport it is a repetition of the charges which were urged in Eze 20:1-49.; and so the chapter begins much in the same waywith a call upon the prophet to judge the people, and set before them their iniquities. There, however, the charge took the form of an historical review for the purpose of connecting the present state of wickedness with the past, and showing how continuously the stream of corruption had flowed through all periods of their national existence. Here, on the other hand, the prophet looks exclusively to the present, and brings out in fearful array the many heinous and rampant sins which were crying in Heaven’s ear for vengeance.” We have in the text
I. AN APPALLING CATALOGUE OF THE PEOPLE‘S SINS.
1. The nature of these sins.
(1) Forgetfulness of God. “Thou hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God.” We mention this first, because it was the root-sin out of which all the others sprang. Men forget God’s holy authority, his constant and universal presence, and his great goodness, and thus the principal restraints from sin are removed. “Forgetfulness of God opens the window to every wicked action.”
(2) Blood-guiltiness. This charge is repeatedly and variously stated. “The bloody city A city that sheddeth blood in the midst of her Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed.” This may refer, as Schroder suggests, to murderous deeds generally; specially to judicial murders, consequently to the shedding of the innocent blood of righteous, God-tearing men, prophets, etc. (cf. Mat 23:37). The city which had its name from ‘peace’ has become a city of death to those who require true peace.” Even the princes were guilty of violence and bloodshed. “Behold, the princes of Israel, every one according to his power, have been in thee to shed blood” (Eze 20:6). They did not recognize the sacred duties or the solemn accountabilities of their exalted station. They ruled not in accordance with right, but according to their might; and that might they exercised barbarously and bloodily. And there were these who were guilty of bloodshedding by reason of their false witness. “Slanderous men have been in thee shed blood.” They were malignant slanderers of the innocent, who because of their slanders were adjudged to death. Moreover, mercenary and unjust judges condemned men to death for bribes. “In thee have they taken bribes to shed blood” (Eze 20:12). And it is probable that Schroder is correct in his opinion that both the false witnesses and the unrighteous judges were thus wickedly employed by the violent and murderous princes. Thus in Jerusalem, “the holy city,” human life was no longer regarded as a sacred thing. It was ruthlessly slaughtered in defiance of law, in defiance of the feelings of our common humanity, and in defiance of the Creator and Father of men.
(3) Idolatry. “A city that maketh idols against herself to defile her. Thou art defiled in thine idols which thou hast made . And in thee they have eaten upon the mountains.” The eating upon the mountains, the seats of idol-worship, refers to the eating of things sacrificed unto idols (cf. Eze 18:6, Eze 18:11).
(4) Disregard of the tenderest and most sacred obligations towards their fellow-men. “In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they wronged the fatherless and the widow.” Loving respect to parents is commanded and encouraged in the Law of the Lord (Exo 20:12; Le Exo 19:3; Deu 5:16). The New Testament enforces the same obligation (Mat 15:4; Mat 19:19; Eph 6:1-3); and the best feelings of the human heart plead for its observance. But in Jerusalem there were those who set at naught this obligation. God had made the cause of’ the stranger, the widow, and the fatherless in a special manner his own, and repeatedly enjoined righteousness and kindness in the treatment of them (Exo 22:21-24; Deu 10:18, Deu 10:19; Deu 27:19; Psa 10:14, Psa 10:18; Psa 68:5; Psa 146:9; Jer 7:6; Zec 7:9, Zec 7:10). Yet there were these in Jerusalem who opposed and wronged them.
(5) Profanation of Divine institutions. “Thou hast despised mine holy things, and hast profaned my sabbaths.” The holy things comprise “all that the Holy One has instituted, consecrated, and commanded” the priests, the temple, the sacred vessels, the sacrifices and sacraments, and all other religions ordinances of his appointment. These they had despised. And the sabbath they had profaned (cf. Eze 20:12, Eze 20:24). “He profanes the sabbath who does not celebrate it, who celebrates it ill, or who consecrates it to the service of sin” (Schroder).
(6) Unchastity in its most revolting forms (Eze 20:10, Eze 20:11). On the first clause of Eze 20:10, cf. Le Eze 18:8; Eze 20:11; 1Co 5:1; on the second, cf. Le 18:19; 20:18; on the first clause of 1Co 5:11, cf. Le 18:20; 20:10; on the second, cf. Le 18:15; 20:12; and on the third, cf. Le 18:9; 20:17.
(7) Covetousness in its worst manifestations. “In thee have they taken bribes to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by oppression” (1Co 5:12). Covetousness in their judges was so extreme that they accepted bribes to condemn the innocent to death. “Usury is the profit exacted for the loan of money, increase that which is taken for goods; both are alike forbidden (Le 25:36; Deu 23:19).” Yet in Jerusalem they bad taken both. And taking advantage of their neighbors’ distress and need, they had oppressed them by exacting exorbitant interest on any loan granted for their help. Such were the sins charged against the people of Judah at this time.
2. The scene of these sins. Jerusalem. In this paragraph we have the words, “in thee,” or “in the midst of thee,” not less than twelve times. This was a grievous aggravation of their sins that they were committed in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was spoken of as “the holy city;” it was the seat of the worship of the true and holy God; it was celebrated in sacred song as the dwelling-place of the Most High (Psa 76:2); and it was favored religiously above any other city in the world. But now it had become “the bloody city,” the “defiled” city, the home of the foulest crimes, “A Jerusalem may become a Sodom, a holy city a den of murderers.” And if it do so, its former privileges aggravate its guilt and augment its doom (cf. Mat 11:20-24; Luk 12:47, Luk 12:48).
3. The maturity of these sins. “Thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years” (1Co 5:4; cf. Eze 21:25, Eze 21:29). By reason of its sins Jerusalem had grown ripe for the sickle of the Divine judgment. By the extent and enormity of its transgressions it had hastened the time of its doom. In the history of persistent wickedness there comes a crisis when the evil-doers are ripe for judgment; and then the Divine executioners go forth against them.
II. THE DIVINE VISITATION ON ACCOUNT OF THE PEOPLE‘S SINS.
1. They become a reproach among the nations. “Therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the nations, and a mocking to all the countries. Those that be near, and those that be far from thee, shall mock thee, thou infamous one and full of tumult.” We noticed (on Eze 21:28) how the Ammonites reproached the people of Judah, and were to be punished for so doing. Yet although the people of Ammon had no right to reproach their suffering neighbors, the Jews deserved reproach. Jerusalem had made itself infamous by its wickedness before it became a reproach and a mocking unto the nations. “Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.”
2. They shall be dispersed among the nations. “And I will scatter thee among the nations, and disperse thee through the countries.” We have noticed this point in Eze 5:12; Eze 12:1-16; Eze 20:23 (cf. Deu 4:27; Deu 28:25, Deu 28:64).
3. They shall be dishonored in the sight of the nations. “And thou shalt be profaned in thyself, in the sight of the nations,” etc. (Eze 20:16). “Thou shalt by thine own fault forfeit the privileges of a holy nation.” Mark the retributiveness of this. “Jerusalem has desecrated the holy things of the Lord (Verse 8); therefore shall it also be desecrated for a requital (Verse 16). It has wickedly insulted the dignity of God; for this it must suffer the loss of its own dignity” (Hengstenberg).
4. They would be unable to withstand this visitation of judgment. “Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee?” (Verse 14). Says Greenhill, “O Jerusalem! be thine heart never so stout or strong, my judgments will be too heavy for thee to bear them; when they come, thine heart will fail thee, fail thee of counsel, that thou shalt not know what to do, and fail thee of strength, that thou shalt not be able to do what thou knowest.” When God in judgment visits any one, “heart and hand, courage and power, fail” (cf. Job 40:9; Psa 76:7; Nah 1:6).
CONCLUSION. Many are the lessons deducible from our subject. We mention three.
1. The fearful growth of sin. Forgetfulness of God may develop into idolatry, adultery, murder.
2. The essential ruinousness of sin. It is of its very nature to blight and destroy everything that is true and beautiful, wise and good, right and strong, both in individuals and communities. “Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death.”
3. The righteous judgment of God against sin. (Rom 2:2-11.)W.J.
Eze 22:17-22
Deplorable deterioration and deserved destruction.
“And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, the house of Israel is to me become dross,” etc. Notice
I. THE DEPLORABLE DETERIORATION OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL.
1. Here are several varieties of sinful character. We will notice them as they are here adduced.
(1) Dross. “The house of Israel is to me become dross; they are the dross of silver.” This does not mean ore, which contains silver, but dross which has been separated from the silverthe refuse of dirt and rubbish which is removed from the precious metal in the cleansing, melting, and refining of it. The people of Judah and Jerusalem had become “the ignoble dross of noble silver.” “The metaphor denotes the corruption of the people, who had become like base metal.”
(2) “Brass” probably indicates the hardihood of the people in sin; that they had become impudent in wickedness (cf. Isa 48:4).
(3) “Tin” is suggestive of hypocrisy, being brilliant in appearance, but inferior in substance and value. So there were those in Jerusalem who made great profession of true religion, but whose moral character and conduct were base.
(4) “Iron” may denote harshness and cruelty. That such was a characteristic of some of their great men and rulers is clear from Eze 22:27; Eze 34:2-4; and Zep 3:3.
(5) “Lead,” pliable, yet not precious as compared with silver and gold, indicates the moral dullness and stupidity of the house of Israel. They were pliable to evil, yet not available for any high or holy uses (cf. Jer 4:22). Thus in Jerusalem there were various types of evil character; and these types are reproduced in our own age and country.
2. Here is one characteristic which marks each of these varieties of sinful character. They were each and all marked by degeneracy. In every one of these classes of evil character there had been a lamentable deterioration. “Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water.” “How is the gold become dim! How is the most pure gold changed!” Thus the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah lamented this deterioration.
(1) There was degeneracy of moral character. Their affections were corrupted; their principles were degraded; their conscience, having been often set at naught, was debased. So in the sight of him to whom all hearts are open they had become as dross. “The house of Israel is become dross unto me.” Beware of the beginnings of sin, the initial stages of this degeneration of moral character.
(2) Degeneracy of religious services. This deterioration is forcibly set forth and sternly rebuked in Isa 1:11-17. Moreover, they had become idolaters: how, then, could their worship of the true God be genuine and acceptable? When personal character degenerates, the quality of the religious service rendered must decline.
(3) Degeneracy of national position and power. The might and majesty of their kingdom were almost entirely departed. Their national independence was quite gone. When moral deterioration once powerfully sets in amongst any people, deterioration in all other forms quickly follows. Says Robertson, “The destiny of a nation is decided by its morals.”
II. THE DETERMINED DESTRUCTION OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL.
1. The gathering of the doomed people for destruction. “Thus saith the Lord God; because ye are all become dross, behold, therefore I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem,” etc. (Isa 1:19, Isa 1:20). When pressed by their Chaldean enemies the people from far and wide took refuge in Jerusalem, trusting to its forces and fortifications for safety. So that city became as it were the furnace in which they were consumed by the triple fire of famine, pestilence, and sword. Mark, how naturally and easily God effects his purposes. He has not to build the furnace for their destruction: it is already built. He has not to force them into that furnace by supernatural means: in their approaching troubles they will hasten into it of their own accord. He controls all things for the execution of his deep and righteous designs.
2. The infliction of destruction upon the doomed people.
(1) It was by the hand of God. “Thus saith the Lord God I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem,” etc. The Chaldeans were the instruments by which he effected his purpose; but God himself was the great Agent in the work.
(2) It was an expression of the anger of God. “So will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury,” etc. (Verses 20, 21). The wrath of God burns with awful intensity against sin. “Our God is a consuming fire.”
(3) It leads to the recognition of the hand of God.
4. Ye shall know that I the Lord have poured out my fury upon you.” These words do not point to their reformation or purification As Hengstenberg observes “In the whole section the judgment is regarded, not in the light of purification, but in that of destruction; as Ezekiel usually considers the population of Jerusalem as an ungodly multitude doomed to be extirpated.” Moreover, dross cannot be benefited by fire. It cannot be purified. After all burnings it remains drossrefuse. The fire was not to purify, but to punish them; not to cleanse, but to consume them. And in its fierce heat they would recognize the dread power of the God whom they had forsaken for idols, and whose word they had set at naught.
CONCLUSION. Guard against the beginnings of the deterioration of character. Seek the growth and progress of character in the true and good.W.J.
Eze 22:23-31
The universal prevalence of wickedness, and the consequent certainty of judgment.
“And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto her, Thou art the land that is not cleansed,” etc.
I. THE UNIVERSAL PREVALENCE OF WICKEDNESS. This is exhibited by Ezekiel:
1. In the absence of any effective correction thereof. “Thou art the land that is not cleansed.” This refers to the moral condition of the people. The figure is viewed by some as a land that is not freed from noxious weeds, by others as not cleansed as metals are by the refiner’s fire. With either view the spiritual signification is the same. “Judaea had been oft cleansing,” says Greenhill, “but was never thoroughly cleansed. Hezekiah and Josiah made the greatest cleansings, but all the sin was not purged out in their days; they took away the objects and mediums of sin, viz. the idols, images, groves, and high places, but the people continued wicked; they did not cleanse their hands nor hearts and turn to the Lord, but returned to their former and worse abominations, when those good kings were gone. The Lord had sent them many prophets, who dealt with them several ways to draw them to repentance Besides these things, God oft sent sweeping and fierce judgments amongst them, famine, sword, pestilence; and notwithstanding all these, they returned not to the Lord, but the land, that is, the people of it, did remain uncleansed, they were like a land wherein was nothing but weeds, nettles, briars, and thorns.”
2. In its pernicious activity amongst all classes.
(1) The prophets. These should have been zealous by word and example in cleansing the land of its sins; but they were prominent in evil-doing. Several forms of this are mentioned by Ezekiel.
(a) Their guilty subservience to wicked rulers. “Her prophets have daubed for them [i.e. the princes] with untempered mortar,” etc. (Verse 28). The clauses of this verse have come under our notice already (Eze 13:10, Eze 16:7; Eze 21:29). The princes were insatiably covetous, grossly dishonest, and ruthlessly cruel; and these false prophets who should have rebuked their wicked ness, countenanced their procedure, encouraged their practices, and assured them that their ways were approved by God.
(b) Their scandalous cupidity. “They take treasure and precious things” (Verse 25). They extorted from the people their valued possessions as the price of their prophesying. They did not forcibly despoil them of their treasures, but they obtained them by arts and devices which disgraced the sacred office whose functions they bad assumed. “The dogs are greedy, they can never have enough; they have all turned to their own way, each one to his gain, from every quarter” (Isa 56:11).
(c) Their grievous cruelty. “Like a roaring lion ravening the prey: they have devoured souls; they have made her widows many in the midst thereof” (per. 25). “The false prophets,” says Hengstenberg, “rob the goods and devour the souls, in so far as they stand by to help forward the robbing and murdering acts of the great (Verse 27), and sharpen not, but rather soothe their con science by saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. Thus they are accomplices in the robbing and murdering course of the great, who have them in their ray. They deport themselves as smooth and peaceful men, and present themselves as men of tenderness, in contrast with the rough preachers of repentance, the true prophets; but when examined in the light they are thieves and murderers.”
(d) Their shameful combination. “There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof.” They were solemnly banded together for the accomplishment of their atrocious designs. They had entered into a compact to prophesy the same things, and “were careful not to contradict each other’s lies.”
(2) The priests. Two principal charges are brought against them.
(a) Misinterpretation of God’s Law. “Her priests have done violence to my Law.” “To violate the Law is to break itto offer violence to the Law is to misinterpret it.” The latter is the charge which is here preferred against the priests. They perverted the holy Law to make it harmonize with the inclinations of a sinful people, and with their own wicked practices.
(b) Profanation of God’s institutions. “And have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and the common,” etc. (Verse 26). We have noticed God’s holy things in dealing with Verse 8. “It was the special office of the priests to keep up the distinction between holy and unholy, clean and unclean,” consecrated and common things (cf. Le Eze 10:10; Eze 22:1-13). They “should have instructed the people what meats were lawful for them, what not; what sacrifices were fit to be brought to the Lord, and what not; who were worthy, and who not, to eat of the holy things and to approach unto the holy God” (Greenhill). But this they had not done. “The law of the sabbath,” as Hengstenberg remarks, “is given as an example. This they rob of its deep spiritual import, and limit it to the external rest, as if it were given for animals, and not for men who are to serve God in spirit” (cf. Verse 8). By these doings they profaned God himself. “And I am profaned among them.” The priests had degraded his infinitely holy and exalted character in the estimation of the people (cf. Mal 1:6, Mal 1:7).
(3) The princes are charged with:
(a) Cupidity. They sought “to get dishonest gain.” They had their own resources and revenues; but not content with these, they coveted other and larger resources, and resorted to oppression to obtain them, imposing burdensome taxes upon the people.
(b) Cruelty. “Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey; to shed blood,” etc. (Verse 27; and cf. Verses 6, 7; Zep 3:3). The covetousness of King Ahab led to the murder of Naboth the Jezreelite.
(4) The people. “The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery,” etc. (Verse 29). The prophet charges them with oppression by force and fraud. They deceived and cheated and robbed those whom they dared so to treat. And they thus injured those whom they should have protected, viz. “the poor and needy and the stronger.” Frequently these were specially commended to the care of the Israelites; and God had taken them under his own special guardianship (cf. Exo 22:21; Deu 10:18, Deu 10:19; Deu 27:19; Psa 10:14; Psa 41:1; Psa 140:12; Psa 146:9; Pro 14:21; Zec 7:9, Zec 7:10). Moreover, it is inexpressibly mean to wrong those who are unable to defend themselves and their rights. Yet it is not to be wondered at that these things were done by the common people; for in so doing they trod in the footsteps of their guides and rulers. Thus amongst all classes wickedness in some of its worst forms was terribly prevalent.
3. In the fact that no one was found to keep back the destruction which it was bringing upon the land. “And I sought for a man among them that should make up the fence,” etc. (Verse 30; of. Isa 59:4; Jer 5:1; and see our homily on Eze 13:5). The Lord represents himself as looking solicitously and diligently for such a man, but finding none. “Jeremiah,” says Hengstenberg, “by his powerful preaching of repentance, presented himself as such a public deliverer; but they despised him, and he could gain no position. The man alone is nothing. The position must be added, and the people must gather around him. One ‘against whom every man contends’ cannot avert the judgment of God; he can only accelerate it.”
II. THE CONSEQUENT CERTAINTY OF JUDGMENT. When wickedness has become so flagrant and universally prevalent, and there is no one to stand between the guilty people and the approaching judgment, the execution of judgment is inevitable. Notice:
1. The dread severity of this judgment. “Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath” (Verse 31). Words similar to these we have already noticed (Verse 22; Eze 21:31). The judgment is so certain that it is spoken of as already accomplished. And as to its severity, what a day is “the day of the indignation” of God! Who can even conceive the terrors of his indignation? or the dread intensity of his wrath?
2. The total absence of alleviations of this judgment. “Thou art a land that is not rained upon in the day of indignation” (Verse 24); that “is a land that in the outburst of the Divine judgment finds no grace; and simply, as the connection shows, because its impurity is not removed. The rain in the day of indignation would be a benefit. It would quench the flame of the Divine indignation (Hengstenberg). But such rain it will not have. The clause we are dealing with amounts to a declaration like this: “Thou shalt have no mercy when the fire of my wrath is kindled.”
3. The retributiveness of this judgment. “Their own way have I brought upon their heads, saith the Lord God.” This aspect of the Divine judgment has already engaged our attention more than once (on Eze 7:3, Eze 7:4; Eze 9:10; Eze 16:43).
CONCLUSION. The whole subject is charged with most solemn warnings to the wicked, both as individuals and as communities or nations (Psa 2:10-12; Isa 55:6, Isa 55:7).W.J.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
11. The Conviction of Ripeness for Judgment: (a) Of Jerusalems in particular (Ezekiel 22); (b) and of Judahs and Israels as a whole (Ezekiel 23).
(a) Jerusalem ripe for Judgment (Ezekiel 22.)
1, 2And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, And thou, son of man, wilt thou judge? Wilt thou judge the city of blood [blood-shedding]? Then make 3her to know all her abominations. And say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, A city that sheds blood in the midst of it, that her time may come, and has 4made idols for [over] herself that she may be defiled! In thy blood which thou hast shed thou hast become guilty, and in thine idols which thou hast made thou art defiled; and thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come to thy years: therefore have I given thee for a reproach to the heathen, 5and for a mocking to all lands. Those that are near, and those that are far from thee, shall mock at thee as one polluted in name, and full of confusion. 6Behold, the princes of Israel, every one according to his arm, were in thee in 7order to shed blood! Father and mother they lightly esteemed in thee; with [in relation to] the stranger they have acted unjustly in the midst of thee; 8the widow and the orphan they have oppressed in thee. My holy things 9thou hast despised, and hast profaned My sabbaths. Men of slander have been in thee to shed blood, and in thee they have eaten upon the mountains; 10they have committed lewdness in the midst of thee. In thee, one has uncovered a fathers nakedness; in thee they have humbled her that is unclean in 11her separation. And one has committed abomination with his neighbours wife; and another has lewdly defiled his daughter-in-law; and another has 12humbled [ravished] his sister, his fathers daughter, in thee. They have taken bribes in thee to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and hast overreached thy neighbour by extortion, and thou hast forgotten Me: sentence 13of the Lord Jehovah. And, behold, I have smitten My hand at thy gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood-shedding which was in thy 14midst. Will thy heart endure [be stedfast]? or will thy hands be strong for the days when I shall deal with thee? I, Jehovah, have spoken, and will do 15[have done]. And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume [make to cease] thy filthiness out of thee. 16And thou shalt be profaned in thee [through thee] before the eyes of the heathen, and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah. 17And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 18Son of man, the house of Israel has become to Me dross; the whole of them are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the 19furnace; they have become the dross of silver. Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because ye have all become dross, therefore, behold, I will gather 20you into the midst of Jerusalem, [As] a gathering together of silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it that it may be melted, so will I gather you in My anger and in 21My fury, and I will leave you and melt you. And I will collect you, and will blow upon you in the fire of My wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof. 22As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be melted in the midst of it; and ye shall know that I, Jehovah, have poured out My 23fury upon you. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 24Son of man, say to her, Thou art a land that is not cleansed, that has no rain in the day 25of indignation. The conspiracy of her prophets [is] in her midst; like a roaring lion ravening the prey they have devoured souls, taken treasure [property] and precious things [jewels]; her widows they have multiplied in the midst of her. 26Her priests have done violence to My law, and profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between holy and unholy, nor discerned between clean and unclean; and they have hidden their eyes from My sabbaths, and I 27am profaned among them. Her rulers [princes] in the midst of her were like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, to destroy souls, and to make gain. 28And her prophets have daubed for them with whitewash, seeing vanity and divining lies for them, saying, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, when Jehovah hath not spoken. 29The people of the land have practised oppression, and committed robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy, and oppressed the stranger against the right. 30And I sought for a man among them that might build up a wall, and might stand in the breach [step into the gap] before Me for 31the land, that I might not destroy it; and I found none. So I poured [pour] out upon them My indignation, in the fire of My wrath I consumed [consume] them; I have recompensed [recompense] their way upon their head: sentence of the Lord Jehovah.
Eze 22:3. Sept.: … Vulg.: contra semetipsam.
Eze 22:4. … . . (The Oriental Jews, etc. read: .) Many codices: .
Eze 22:5. … Vulg.: sordida, nobilis, grandis interitu.
Eze 22:6. …
Eze 22:9. …
Eze 22:11. …
Eze 22:12. … . ,
Eze 22:16. . Vulg.: possidebo te.
Eze 22:18. … .
Eze 22:19. …
Eze 22:24. … , Vulg.: immunda et non compluta
Eze 22:25. , Sept. and Arab. read: .
Eze 22:27. Sept.: ,
Eze 22:28. …
Eze 22:29.
Eze 22:30. … . , .
EXEGETICAL REMARKS
[This chapter stands closely related to the last chapter, and may fitly be regarded as supplementary to it; the former having presented a striking delineation of the Lords purpose to execute the severity of His displeasure upon the people of Jerusalem, while this returns to lay open the fearful mass of corruption on account of which such severity was to be inflicted. In what is written here there is nothing properly new; in its general purport, it is a repetition of the charges which were urged in Ezekiel 20; and so the chapter begins much in the same way,with a call upon the prophet to judge the people, and set before them their iniquities. There, however, the charge took the form of a historical review for the purpose of connecting the present state of wickedness with the past, and showing how continuously the stream of corruption had flowed through all periods of their national existence. Here, on the other hand, the prophet looks exclusively to the present, and brings out in fearful array the many heinous and rampant sins which were crying in heavens ear for vengeance.Fairbairns Ezekiel, p. 249.W. F.]
Jerusalem becomes especially prominent at the very beginning of the chapter; and to the close, the fundamental reference of the divine discourse is to Jerusalem, in its significance for Judah and the land.The oft-repeated: in the midst of, points significantly to Jerusalem as the place where sin had been, and in which punishment would be, concentrated. Jerusalem was the Paris of the land of Judah.The chapter comprises three sections.
Eze 22:1-16. Jerusalems Abominations, which had made it ripe for Judgment
Eze 22:2. Comp. at Eze 20:4.The plural, comp. at Eze 7:23), points to bloody acts, and tells of blood-guiltiness (Eze 22:4). The explanation of this title of Jerusalem follows in Eze 22:3 (Eze 9:9). To such a pitch of violence have the abominations reached. (Comp. at Eze 22:3.) Comp. Eze 5:11; Eze 16:2. A summary statement of her abominations is a judging of Jerusalem. Ch. 20 speaks especially of the abominations of their ancestors, this of the abominations of the existing generation, as facts visible to every one,proving their ripeness for judgment.
Eze 22:3 speaks of shedding blood, as Eze 22:22, on the other hand, of shedding (pouring out) fury. It may refer to murderous deeds generally; specially to judicial murders, consequently to the shedding of the innocent blood of righteous, God-fearing men, prophets, etc. Comp. Mat 23:37. The city which had its name from peace has become a city of death to those who require true peace., de eventu; it is the inevitable result; while it so acts, it also brings its time,the final day of judgment (Eze 21:30, 34). The making of idols (comp. at Eze 6:4) explains the abominations of Eze 22:2. simply means the lifting up of the idols over those who worship them. [Keil: as it were, covering the city therewith. Hv.: Jerusalem, as it were, laden with idols, as of an intolerable burden and debt. Hengst.: so that it heaps upon itself defilement with its consequences. Hitz.: For itself, in order to make the idols gracious. Others: Against itself, i.e. to its hurt, or: beside itself.]
Eze 22:4. The deeds of blood are Jerusalems blood-guiltiness; the abominations of the idols which have been made are its defilement. The one is rooted () in the other. But therewith and thereby the sinful city has herself brought near her days (comp. Eze 22:14; Eze 22:3), thus wantonly shortening the respite of grace; she is the more quickly ripened for judgment (Eze 9:1; Eze 12:23). Phillips.: As the punishment is first introduced by the therefore, it is intimated that Jerusalem has squandered all her days and years in bloodshed, etc. (?) According to Hengst., the days and years are those of decision, of the crisis which she brings on by her violent dealing. And art come to thy years, is evidently parallel to the previous sentence; at least the years cannot be those of chastisement and judgment (Keil); and Hitzig rightly opposes the idea that there is any parallelism with Jer 11:23 (Eze 23:12). The figure of a person ripe for death (not exactly aged) underlies the expression, as Hitzig puts it: that has arrived at () their full measure.Reproach; comp. Eze 21:33; so that what Ammon is there to be punished for, appears here as deserved. (Eze 5:14-15.)
Eze 22:5. Fuller explanation of mocking to all lands, which are more precisely described as the near and the far. The mock, since Jerusalem must seem to them sullied, so far as its name is concerned; which is not to be understood morally,of the sins of the holy city, but of its fate, which dooms the city of God to fall into the hands of the heathen. What they themselves have done by sin (Eze 22:3 sq.) is requited to them in a corresponding punishment. The confusion may be internal (through fear) and external overthrow and ruin (Deu 7:23; Deu 28:20); also tumult, like Eze 7:7. [Hitz.: Inward moral and religious confusion.]
Eze 22:6. Instances are now stated; and since violence was first of all referred to, the finger is, as it were, pointed to the example of the princes, as a something patent to the eyes of all. The arm alone was taken into account by them: not right, but might; neither equity nor dutynot even the responsibility of their position. Israels princes were princes according to the arm,each according to his own power, not ex gratia Dei. This connects princes with were. It has also been by some coupled with what follows: to be there with the intention, etc. Each, according to his power, strove; and then follows the , which is constantly repeated in relation to the city of blood-shedding (comp. Ezekiel 19).[Hv.: Directed towards his arm. Ewald: Each according to his own authority, i.e. arbitrarily. Hitz.: Were helpful the one to the other (Psa 83:8).]
Eze 22:7. To the disorder in the higher circles corresponded the complete dissolution of those bonds of subordination between children and their parents (Exo 20:12; Deu 27:16), which must underlie the obedience of subjects to their princes. At all events, as the princes carried it towards the people, so the people carried it towards those who were entitled rather to demand consideration and protection,as the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, Eze 18:18; Eze 18:7. Comp. Exo 22:20 sq.; Deu 24:14 sq.
Eze 22:8. And, finally, Jerusalem became towards God what it was towards men. Comp. farther, Eze 16:59; Eze 20:12; Eze 20:24.
Eze 22:9. A second group of sins. A comparison with Lev 19:16, to which it is parallel, leads one to think of false witnesses like those mentioned in 1Ki 21:10 sq., who acted as informers in subserviency to the princes. , properly: the slanderer, which fits in admirably with the foregoing. Hengst.: the slanderer as an ideal person. A clique of this nature had formed itself into a corporation in Jerusalem. Comp. also Eze 22:6.Eze 18:6. The relation to God is coupled therewith,the falsity of the worship of false gods, with lying against ones neighbour (in thee, to be understood of the inhabitants of Jerusalem), with which worship, lewdness (Eze 16:27) of every kind was naturally bound up.
Eze 22:10. Mother or step-mother; comp. Lev 18:7-8; Lev 20:11 (1Co 5:1). An is to be supplied as the subject of the verb.Eze 18:6. In consequence of child-bearing, as well as during the monthly period. Comp. at Lev 18:19; Lev 20:18.
Eze 22:11. . There were such cases! Impurity in every form. A specimen of the moral atmosphere as a whole.Eze 18:6.Lev 18:15; Lev 20:12.Lev 18:12 (2Sa 13:12). Tacitus, Hist. Eze 5:5.
Eze 22:12. Third group of sins. As false witnesses (Eze 22:9), so also unrighteous judges, served the princes. The corruption of the higher classes is emphasized,it proceeded from above downwards,so that the prominence of the rulers of Israel for the judgment of God (Eze 21:17) is justified; while in a sense so very different, all good should have come to Israel from those in authority, and especially through Gods representatives. Comp. Exo 23:8 (1Sa 8:3).Eze 18:8; Lev 25:36. The discourse now gathers itself for the direct form of address; hence the brevity and the energetic close. Self-seeking, which makes one ignore ones neighbour, finally abolishes the remembrance of God, which is the soul of all moral relations.
Eze 22:13 passes over to the subject of punishment for such conduct. As the guilt is apparent (Behold, Eze 22:6), so also is the judgment (Behold), when there is such ripeness for it.I have smitten My hand, is usually regarded (like Eze 21:22; Eze 21:19) as an indignant gesture at (on account of) thy gain, etc. (Ewald: as a signal that the last hour should come); which neither the words nor the connection can recommend. Hitzig, far more appropriately: Jehovah is in dignantly occupied with the matter of their gain; as being unrighteous, it is brittle, and He shall smite it with the hand, etc. means: to cut off, to plunder, also: to break; so that in the lightly come, there may already lie the lightly go.The avenging hand of retributive righteousness strikes the gain first, because this was mentioned first in Eze 22:12; but at once a return is made to the (collective) shed blood, very appropriately alternating with . [Hengst.: , a pluralis multitudinis: of which there is much in thy midst.]
Eze 22:14. The judgment is not yet come, hence the future; but the result is absolutely sure, therefore the interrogative forms, which are equivalent to negatives. Comp. therewith Eze 21:12; Eze 21:20; Eze 7:27; Eze 6:5-9; Eze 17:24.
Eze 22:15. Eze 12:15; Eze 20:23.The complete extinction of Jerusalems uncleanness can only be understood as the extinction of its polluted inhabitants, Eze 22:3 sq. Others compare it with Isa 4:4, and think of a purification of the people during the exile.
Eze 22:16. , if from , either=thou possessest thyself,while formerly thou wert My inheritance, the heathen shall see that thou art so no more (!); or=thou art possessed, either by the heathen who rule over thee; or = I inherit thee, take thee in possession, as all the heathen shall perceive. Altogether forced. Therefore the more recent interpreters derive it from ; comp. Eze 7:24.In thee. Hengst.: So that thou must experience in thyself the desecration as punishment for Eze 22:8. Hv.: Then Jerusalem stands out as an unholy city, which has profaned itself by its own conduct, and as such has received its recompense before the eyes of all peoples, Eze 22:4-5. [Hitz.: Through all those who belong to her, who through her mournful fate shall tend to her dishonour; thus is she her own spot, Deu 32:5.] Comp. at Eze 22:18.
Eze 22:17-22. The Judgment in Jerusalem a Melting in the Furnace
Eze 22:18. The figure (as to which see Introd. p. 18) in which the discourse clothes itself, in order to rouse and occupy the attention of the hearers all the more, takes its theme from the immediately preceding verses, 15 and 16. According to Eze 22:15, annihilation shall accomplish the cleansing of Jerusalem. Things have come to such a pass with the holy city, that there is for it no other purification. Those who think of any other purification, from what is spoken of in Eze 22:15, must regard it as taking place outside Jerusalem, to wit, in the exile. The house of Israel, as far as it comes into account, has become dross ( here only, elsewhere , refuse of metals). (the reverse order: , in Pro 26:23silver dross which is not yet purified) is not even ore containing silver, but means (Pro 25:4) dross which has been separated from the silver. The figure indeed employs a noble metal, but nothing of it save the ignoble (comp. at Eze 22:20; Eze 22:22) drossof which a clearer idea is presently given by: the whole of them are brass and tin and ironcontinues to exist in Jerusalem (Isa 1:22; Jer 6:27 sq.). Thuswould God saythus has Jerusalem, anticipating the impending judgment, shown itself as a smelting furnace. Light is hereby thrown on the peculiar phrase of Eze 22:16, : That which Jerusalem shall completely become, through divine punishment, it has already become in itself through its sins; it is already profaned in itself,according to the figure, it has become the ignoble dross of noble silver. It appears as nothing else to Jehovah (); it only remains that the fact of its guilt should become evident as a fact, to the eyes of the heathen, through the judgments of God. For this purpose Jerusalem, which had ministered to sin, now becomes the furnace which is employed for its punishment, and the ignoble dross-community is completely consumed; in other words, annihilated. If the text be viewed in this way, no objection can be made to the figure, and all the earlier and later misunderstandings of it may be corrected.
Eze 22:19 clearly expresses the thought underlying the figure employed. As the individual persons are to be thought of as scattered here and there, and as seeking protection in the fortified city on the approach of the enemy, the gathering together of all into Jerusalem by Jehovah is not to be understood in a merely figurative senseeven though in Eze 22:20 the expression is again employed in accordance with the figure of the furnace. The of comparison () is dropped for the sake of euphony. That silver is still spoken of in regard to the impending judicial process partly arises from the necessities of the figure, as Eze 22:22 shows still more plainly (as silver is melted), and partly from the fact that the word contains a significant and painful reminiscence of that which Israel had been, and of that which it could become in the crucible of God-sent tribulation! In the brass, etc. there is still some silver, interpreters say; but this idea is entirely excluded by the dross of Eze 22:18. The meaning of the comparison is rather this, that while in other cases there is also silver along with the brass, etc., or that which is cast into the furnace is only silver ore, from which art and skill then extract a noble metal (Mal 3:3, so here a similar process takes place in anger and fury, resulting no more in purification (Umbr. finds the purifying judgment of God prefigured in the complete melting)at least neither the text nor context points to such an issuebut in complete annihilation. Keil, like Hitzig, is obliged to admit that the melting is here regarded as punishment only, and the separation of the ignoble portions is not taken into consideration.
Eze 22:21. Ezekiel 21:36.
ADDITIONAL NOTE ON Eze 22:17-22
[In modern metallurgy lead is employed for the purpose of purifying silver from other mineral products. The alloy is mixed with lead exposed to fusion upon an earthen vessel, and submitted to a blast of air. By this means the dross is consumed. This process is called the cupelling operation, with which the description in Eze 22:18-22, in the opinion of Mr. Napier (Met. of Bible, pp. 2024), accurately coincides: The vessel containing the alloy is surrounded by the fire, or placed in the midst of it, and the blowing is not applied to the fire, but to the fused metals. And when this is done, nothing but the perfect metals, gold and silver, can resist the scorifying influence. And in support of his conclusion he quotes Jer 6:28-30, adding, This description is perfect. If we take silver having the impurities in it described in the text, namely, iron, copper, and tin, and mix it with lead, and place it in the fire upon a cupell, it soon melts; the lead will oxidize and form a thick, coarse crust upon the surface, and thus consume away, but effecting no purifying influence. The alloy remains, if anything, worse than before. The silver is not refined because the bellows were burned, there existed nothing to blow upon it, etc. (Smith, Dict. of the Bible, art. Lead.)W. F.]
Eze 22:23-31. Jerusalems Ripeness for Judgment extending to all Classes
This third section runs parallel with the first, Eze 22:1-16. Thus the end returns to the beginning, and the whole is rounded off. There the character of the prevailing corruption is described, here its extent, as one which has penetrated to all classes in Jerusalem.
Eze 22:24. Many interpreters unnecessarily refer to ; Hv.: The pronoun is placed before the noun to which it refers for the sake of emphasis. The whole land is named because the far-reaching extent of their sin is borne in mind. It will be quite sufficient if (as is the case throughout the chapter) be referred to Jerusalem. For Jerusalem is constantly taken for the whole land and people, so that this relation scarcely requires, at least here, to be made specially prominent. In that case is evidently a figurative form of address; Jerusalem=Judah, is likened to a land in the manner then following. Finally, it can be all the more regarded as a land from the fact that everything which is in the land is to be collected into Jerusalem. The land is called not cleansed, namely, from the weeds, briars, and thorns with which it is overgrown; comp. Heb 6:8. [Not, as Hvernick puts it: unclean, stained with sin, which lies outside the figure.] must contain a corresponding statement. That which best harmonizes with the context is: whose rain is not, i.e. appears not in the day of judgmentnamely, the rain belonging to it, and which should have made it fruitful (Heb 6:7). In the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews: found good for nothing, it is nigh unto cursing, and its end is to be burned. [Other interpretations:Hv.: Its rain shall not descend on the day of indignation, namely, that which, as a gracious pledge (Lev 26:4; Deu 11:14; Deu 28:12), was promised to the people. Comp. Joe 2:23; Hos 6:3; Jer 5:24; Zec 10:1; Eze 34:26; Rev 11:6, etc. Thus no trace of grace will appear in the judgment. Hengst.: that has no rain, etc., that finds no grace, because impurity is not removed. The rain could extinguish the flame of divine indignation. Or, with Kimchi, is taken as the 3 fem. pret. Pual: that is not rained upon. This reading Keil adopts, and (because rain is not a purifying medium according to Hebrew ideas) he makes = that is not shone on by light; so that, enjoying neither sunshine nor shower in the day of wrath, the land falls under the curse of barrenness. Ewald, again, thus gives the sense: While in other cases fire can be mitigated and extinguished, on the day when the land is overtaken, Eze 22:22 (31), by the fire of Gods indignation, it shall not be freed from its glowing heat nor made fruitful by rain from heaven.]
Eze 22:25. The conspiracy (Isa 8:12; Jer 11:9) of her (false, comp. at Ezekiel 13) prophets, indicates that they acted not merely as separate individuals, but as a corporation, made strong by combination and unity, so that they were careful not to contradict each others lies. They appear as a sort of inquisition, everywhere prepared to denounce the servants of God to the animosity of the great, and to hand them over to the sword of the princes. [Hitz.: As the prophets appear again in Eze 22:28 (but comp. there!), as Eze 22:27 says almost the same thing (as Eze 22:25) of civil dignitaries (which, however, is no reason for supposing the same class to be referred to!), while what is said of prophets and priests, Eze 22:26; Eze 22:28, is totally dissimilar (which, however, proves nothing),on these grounds Hitzig reads , conjecturing that Zep 3:3 is the original of our passage. He also lays stress on the fact that Eze 22:6 began with the princes, so that instead of the prophets he understands in our verse the royal family, together with the great officers of the crown.] The first section of the chapter, with which the last runs parallel, made prominent, violence on the one hand, and godlessness on the other. To this twofold division there corresponds a twofold class-personificationin Eze 22:25-26, prophets and priests; in Eze 22:27-28, civil officers and prophets. The significance of false prophecy (comp. at Ezekiel 13) is indicated by the fact that it is here referred to at the beginning and at the end. All which is swept away by Hitzigs unnecessary alteration of the text, to which even Keil assents, in opposition to old authorities. The portraiture of the prophets in regard to their violent dealing, as soul-devourers, is founded on the figure (Eze 19:7) of the roaring lion (collective, or each of them). With this compare 1Pe 5:8, and also Eze 13:18-19, which is not very foreign to the subject, and to which the ravening the prey (Eze 19:3) may also contain an allusion. They enrich themselves with the possessions of the pious, whom they surrender to death, thereby increasing the number of the widows of Jerusalem.
Eze 22:26. Her priests. The reference is to godlessness; the transition is made by the word violence. The law of God is violated by the priests in regard to those very things from which it was the duty of the priesthood to debar the people. Laxity in doctrine, as well as laxity in life, was a violation of Gods authority in Israel. (Zep 3:4; comp. also Mar 7:9.) Hitz.: Not content with making the law a sham, they went in the very teeth of it.The very comprehensive expression: holy things (Eze 22:8), is unfolded (a) with a retrospective reference to Lev 10:10-11; (b) with reference to the Sabbaths (Eze 20:12). In regard to the former, they should have watched lest the holy should become profane, as it was also their duty to teach how the unclean could be cleansed; with which latter the mention of the Sabbath is suggestively coupled. The two sets of opposites are not simply placed in contrast, and is not chosen without design; for, besides the matter of their differences, the change of the one into the other is in question, (discern) is to a certain extent a judicial expression, since, in relation to the clean and unclean, it points to their official determinations (Luk 17:14).From My Sabbaths, etc., not only means that they saw them desecrated by the people without offering any opposition, but that they did not wish to do so, since they themselves had forsworn, and lived in neglect of, the Sabbath law.
Eze 22:27. can also be: her princes, but in Eze 22:6 the word is the precise . Comp. at Eze 11:2. It means properly the heads of tribes, families, etc., on whom lay the obligation of administering the laws. [Hengst.: the political authorities and officials.] They are described in relation to their violence. Comp. Zep 3:3. As to the rest, comp. with Eze 22:12. The authorities of Jerusalem, the judges of the people (this follows from the similar conduct, Eze 22:25), act on the same principle as the false prophets. This is again expressly confirmed in Eze 22:28, where must be referred to what goes immediately before. The false prophets are here mentioned in relation to their godlessness. [Bunsen: They are depicted in Eze 22:25 principally on the side of their selfishness, and here as the responsible watchmen of the people (Eze 3:17 sq.), appointed by God to prevent them being lulled to sleep.] Comp. at Eze 13:10; Eze 13:9; Eze 13:7.
Eze 22:29. The common people resemble the dignitaries and authorities at Jerusalem. Comp. Eze 18:18; Eze 16:49. (Exo 22:20; Deu 24:17.)
Eze 22:30. According to the significance of false prophecy (comp. at Eze 22:25), among them is to be referred to the false prophets; Eze 13:5 makes this certain. [Hitz.; Not by intercession, but as a righteous man. But where, then, was Jeremiah! And how is this consistent with Eze 14:12 sq.?] As Jerusalem stands for the land, so one of its prophets ought to have been found, who would intercede for the land, and thus avert its destruction by Jehovah.
Eze 22:31. Eze 7:8; Eze 7:4; Eze 9:10, etc.
THEOLOGICAL REMARKS
1. Here, as in Ezekiel 18, Ezekiel shows an understanding of the law according to the spirit of the Messiah, who is in him, i.e. in Christs manner. See. the Sermon on the Mount. The connection between Gods obligations and human duty is treated quite according to Christs spirit and manner of apprehending it.
2. The distinction between religion and morality is a fiction opposed to experience (Hengst.).
3. The loosening of the bonds of filial obedience, disrespect to the rites of religious worship, a disordered condition of the relations between the sexes, open licentiousness, adultery, a social opinion which tolerates or recognises it, bribery, extortion, the arrogance of wealth, oppression of inferiors, and such like, are in all times the cloud-streaks presaging the gathering storm which will burst on a people.
4. False prophecy leans on civil authority, and therefore flatters and serves it. In God and His law, in human conscience and personal faith, it has neither root nor support. That is always the civil position of false theology, as of every court clergy, however orthodox it may otherwise be.
5. The dissolution of a nations life takes place when false doctrine comes into vogue. Going hand in hand with the passions, it banishes conscientiousness from official life. Priests become worldly courtiers, who aim at making a career for themselves; judges become dependent and open to influences, and take their cue from the reigning power and from public opinion. When the Church and the bench take their tone from party spirit, then, along with sound teaching and civil rights, the religious and moral foundations of national life are swept away. The ruling principle becomes mere caprice, which undermines the penal code with frivolous distinctions, shallow conceptions of law, alleviation of penalties, lax views as to responsibility, etc.
HOMILETIC HINTS
Eze 22:1 sq. Thus Gods complaint against His people is ever renewed; and our times are not unlike those. But one should not be weary of administering reproof (Stck.).
Eze 22:2. Comp. at Eze 20:4.The prophets are judges through Gods word, the apostles through the Spirit, who convinces the world of sin, Joh 16:9. The saints judge the whole world, 1Co 6:2 sq. The spiritual man judgeth all things, 1Co 2:15. This judgment-seat is better than a worldly one. This is the employment of the keys in binding andloosingthe power of the keys (H. H.).A Jerusalem may become a Sodom, a holy city a den of murderers. Let no one think himself so secure as to be in no danger of falling, Rom 11:20-21 (W.).
Eze 22:3. God has meted out to sinners the time of forbearance, the day of grace (Cocc.).The sinner imagines that he can go on without end, and so hastens on all the faster to the end.
Eze 22:4. He who wantonly wages war makes himself blood-guilty.They made idols for themselves, which is even worse than cherishing the ordinary superstition of the idolatry which has been handed down to us (L.).Whoever mocks God, is mocked by God in His own time, through men.
Eze 22:5. We bear the name of evangelical, we believe that we possess the pure doctrine; therefore we should be the more careful to keep the gospel before our eyes, and to remain far from pollution and false doctrine (L.).Every one shrinks from a polluted name, but not from a polluted life, which makes one dishonourable before God (B. B.).Sin brings the best order into confusion.
Eze 22:6. See how it is laid on the conscience of teachers and preachers to condemn the sins even of those who are high in station (Tb. Bib.).Since their example is so much taken notice of, princes should look more intently to Gods word and law than to their own authority.Civil power-should be for a terror to evil-doers, but should not minister to the gratification of the flesh.Blood-stains may be seen even upon the purple.Might goes before righteven an Old Testament experience.
Eze 22:7. Parents are themselves to blame for the disobedience of their children, but at last a whole people is required to bear the blame.God is assailed in the persons of the stranger, widow, and fatherless; they are Gods wards.A man should be most on his guard against, and especially sensitive to, that which most easily leads him astray.
Eze 22:8. Jehovahs holy, things were places, things, persons, times, etc.The idea of the sanctuary is as wide as that of the Jewish religion (Hengst.).Comp. at Eze 20:12.He profanes the Sabbath who does not celebrate it, who celebrates it ill or who consecrates it to the service of sin.
Eze 22:9. The slanderer is a thief (Stck.).Where the ruler is wicked, false tongues are plentiful.Where there are wicked judges, false witnesses are not wanting.False speech is base coin. Compare at Eze 18:16; Eze 16:16.Impurity and idolatry in their combination.
Eze 22:10 sq. Custom and morals go together.Impurity ruins the individual, the family, and the state, in body and soul.God sees when we suppose ourselves unseen.Though the ruler be still, God is not silent.There are sins which sink man, who was made in the image of God, lower than the beasts. Parents, watch over the members of your families from earliest years.
Eze 22:12. Every man has his price, for which he can be bought.Men in authority, counsellors of kings, take heed of covetousness, of gifts, of violence and misuse of your office, otherwise Gods vengeance will surely smite you and your houses! (Tb. Bib.)Jewish tradition ascribes the destruction of Jerusalem to covetousness, because it is the root of all evil.Not only he who demands more than is just, but he also who shows no forbearance, oppresses his neighbour, Mat 18:28 sq. (Stck.)Avarice spares neither friend nor foe, its rule is self-interest (Stck.).He who loves not his neighbour as himself has forgotten God.Forgetfulness of God opens the window to every wicked action (H. H.).
Eze 22:13. How Gods hand in the end strikes upon all the hands of men!
Eze 22:14. In sin and in the time of Gods judgment how different is the bearing of men !When God is against us, heart and hand, courage and power, fail.God speaks not in vain, and will do more than terrify (B. B.).
Eze 22:15. Awful cleansingthe extirpation of the ungodly!When we make no end, God makes it.
Eze 22:16. God hides His own from men, but here sinners are given up to the heathen.
Eze 22:17 sq. Threefold smelting furnace: Of sin, in which one can become dross;of trial, where the silver is tested;of judgment, where even the dross is consumed.The dross-communities.Oh that a salt may still continue among us, that we may be preserved from utter corruption! (Tb. Bib.)
Eze 22:18. The dross does not typify hypocrites; but where what one had, has been taken away, there the past may have been very noble.
Eze 22:19. The heaping up of sins, and the gathering of sinners for judgment.
Eze 22:20 sq. Gods anger and furysad smelters! Unsavoury salt is trodden under foot, Mat 5:13.
Eze 22:23 sq. The judgment-day considers whether cleansing has taken place and fruit been brought forth.Not merely the soil, but much more the heart of man, yields all manner of weeds. God has denied rain to no soul, His word has been richly bestowed on us.
Eze 22:25. It should not impose on godly men that false prophets keep together; falsity must be aided by falsity.Satan the great conspirator to the end of time.The avarice and worldliness of false theology.A hireling is never a soul-seeker (Stck.).
Eze 22:26. Not only by direct transgression, but also by false explanation and interpretation of the law of God, is violence done to it.The sacred boundary-guard between Christ and Belial.The teacher who does not make a marked difference between the godly and ungodly in applying saving truth, profanes the name of the Lord in the sanctuary (St.).
Eze 22:27. No one is placed so high as to be beyond the reach of divine punishment. The loss of a single soul over against the gaining of the whole world.
Eze 22:28. Comp. at Ezekiel 13.
Eze 22:29. Where prophecy does no good, a people must become a waste.
Eze 22:30 sq. The pious are the lightning-conductors of Gods judgments.The want of pious people is a terrible want, the premonition of judgment (Cocc.).
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
The Prophet is still prosecuting the sad subject of the sins of Jerusalem; and the Lord’s displeasure, and threatened punishment, added.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The opening of this chapter, in the words of the Lord, is put into the form of a question, not only of judging, but it seems as if the Lord condescended to ask His servant, whether he had ought to say in justification of the city of bloods, for so the original is; meaning much evil abounded in Jerusalem. And then, as if the Lord knew the Prophet could not say anything by way of the least apology, the Lord adds, Then say thou; that is, then pronounce both their guilt and their punishment; and all that follows in this paragraph is to this amount. Crimes upon crimes, and sins of the blackest nature. And all this found in the Jerusalem of the Lord! Tell it not in Gath; publish it not in the streets of Askelon.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Eze 22:14
What wisdom and philosophy, and perpetual experience, and revelation, and promises, and blessings cannot do, a mighty fear can; it can allay the confidences of bold lust and imperious sin, and soften our spirit into the lowness of a child, our revenge into charity of prayers, our impudence into the blushings of a chidden girl; and therefore God hath taken a cause proportionable.
Jeremy Taylor.
Bunyan twice uses this verse; once in The Pilgrim’s Progress, opposite the following passage: ‘I looked then, and saw a man named Evangelist coming to him, and asked wherefore didst thou cry? He answered, Sir, I perceive by the Book in my hand, that I am condemned to die, and after that to come to Judgment, and I find that I am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second.’ The other reference is in The Holy War, where Captain Judgment uses it to warn the ‘woeful town of Mansoul’ against impenitence.
Eze 22:26
The greater part of literature in the Middle Ages, at least from the twelfth century, may be considered as artillery levelled against the clergy I do not say against the Church, which might imply a doctrinal opposition by no means universal. But if there is one theme upon which the most serious as well as the lightest, the most orthodox as the most heretical writers are united, it is ecclesiastical corruption.
Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, part I. chap. ii.
Eze 22:28-29
Compare Mr. Morley’s famous description of modern Britain: ‘A community where the great aim of all classes and orders with power, is by dint of rigorous silence, fast shutting of the eyes, and stern stopping of the ears, to keep the social pyramid on its apex, with the fatal result of preserving for England its glorious fame as a paradise for the well-to-do, a purgatory for the able, and a hell for the poor.
Eze 22:30
The repeated political humiliations paralysed the national spirit, and the paralysis extended itself to the people’s religion ana even to its morals. The nationality was exhausted; it could no more put forth out of itself a saviour to retrieve its fortunes…. And the national exhaustion was accompanied by religious decay, for in all the history of Israel a full tide of national life and a high faith in Jehovah were always the counterparts of one another.
Prof. A. B. Davidson, The Exile and the Restoration, pp. 13, 14.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
XVI
PROPHECIES ON THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM (CONTINUED)
Ezekiel 15-24
We may ask ourselves at the outset, What purpose did Jeremiah serve in preaching forty years the downfall of the city, warning the people of their sins, though he knew that downfall was absolutely certain, yet all the time seeking to save the city? Why should God require a man to give forty years of his life to guard the people against the inevitable? Why should he require of a man like Ezekiel so many years of preaching to those already in exile concerning the fall of the city of Jerusalem? Why should he exert himself in the manner in which he did, to warn those in Babylon of the fall of Jerusalem?
Jeremiah’s preaching had this effect: It prepared the people in a measure for the downfall of their Temple and their capital and thus helped them to keep faith in God. Whereas, the fall of their capital and city without such a warning would have inevitably shattered their faith in God. Jeremiah’s prophecies of the restoration and the glorious future also helped the earnest heart to prepare for that future and for that restoration. Ezekiel’s preaching to the exiles in Babylon also prepared them for the fall of Jerusalem and also preserved their faith in God. It furnished them with truth to keep alive their faith during the period when their Temple was gone; it also served as a stay during the period of the exile and prepared them for the return. Though it seems that Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s long ministries were temporarily fruitless, yet they were the means of preparing the people for a possible future and their work abides.
Why did Ezekiel use all these symbols, figures and metaphors to those people who were already in exile in Babylon? It was to prepare their faith, so that when the shock came they might withstand it and be ready to return when God called them. As a result of Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s preaching, nearly 50,000 people were prepared to return as soon as the decree of Cyrus was sent forth. One may see no immediate result of his preaching, yet when he is preaching what God wants him to preach, the fruits may be all the greater because they are delayed.
In Eze 15 we have the parable of the vine tree and its interpretation. This is a parable in which Israel is likened to a vine tree among the trees of the forest. The vine tree is a very lowly tree. It is of comparatively little use. The wood thereof is not taken for fire, nor do people make pins or pegs from it. It is simply cast forth to be burned as rubbish. It is not profitable for anything. Then what does he mean? The Kingdom of Judah was among the great kingdoms of the world as the lowly vine tree was among the trees of the forest. It was of little use; it would not do for wood to burn; it would not do to make furniture or anything useful. It was simply cast off. All this we readily see would have its effect upon the people. It is a blow at their national pride. It goes to show that a mere vine of the forest that is cast away and burned as rubbish may be destroyed, while the lordly trees of the forest are still preserved. Judah is a lowly, contemptible kingdom beside the other kingdoms, and it is no great thing if she does perish. Notice, he makes no mention of the fruit of the vine. There was no fruit to this vine. In the case of the grape the vine is useless when there is no fruit; the vine is utterly valueless and fit only to be cast off. Thus he prophesied that Jerusalem should be burned with fire and its inhabitants destroyed.
In Eze 16 we have an allegory of the foundling child and its interpretation. This whole chapter is an allegory. Judah is described as a wretched outcast infant on the very day of its birth, thrown out into the field, a thing all too frequently done among Semitic and other Oriental peoples. There the infant lay, ready to perish. Jehovah comes along and sees the child thus in its neglected, wretched, forsaken condition; takes pity upon it; cares for it in the best way possible; rears it up until the child, a female child, becomes a young woman. She becomes of marriageable age, and then she is espoused to her husband, Jehovah. He adorns her with all the beauties with which a bride can possibly be adorned, and crowns her with a beautiful crown, and as Eze 16:14 says, “Thy renown went forth among the nations for thy beauty; for it was perfect, through my majesty which I had put upon thee.” All went well for a time, but the foundling child which had the disposition of the Amorite and of the Hittite, very soon became the faithless bride and then rapidly degenerated into a shameless and abandoned prostitute. She prostituted herself with Egypt, with Assyria, and with Babylonia and their gods; then went into the very extreme of wickedness and sank to the very lowest depths of shame.
As a result of this absolute abandonment to wickedness, this prostitution of herself to idol worship, the nation is doomed to destruction at the hands of the very people after whom she had gone, and whose gods she had sought and worshiped. They were to gather around her from every side and were to destroy and lay waste the very bride of Jehovah. This passage is doubtless the analogue of that famous passage in Rev 17 , where the apostate church is compared to the harlot sitting upon the beast. He goes on and compares Jerusalem with Samaria and with Sodom. Notice verse Eze 16:46 : “Thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters, that dwelleth at thy left hand; and thy younger sister that dwelleth at thy right hand is Sodom and her daughters.”
In Eze 16:48 he says that Jerusalem is worse and more shameless than even Sodom: “As I live, saith the Lord God, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters.” In Eze 16:49 he gives the sin of Sodom: “Pride, fulness of bread, and prosperous ease,” the besetting sins of the society women of every city of the land. Eze 16:51 says, “Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations,” and Eze 16:53 says, “I will turn again their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, and the captivity of thy captives in the midst of them.”
What does he mean by saying that Sodom shall return from her captivity? No Sodomite was preserved; everyone perished. I think it means that in a future age all the land shall be reclaimed and even the place of Sodom shall be repeopled and, when restored and repeopled, will be like unto the inhabitants of Samaria and Jerusalem; that they will be loyal and true with new hearts and right spirits. It cannot be taken literally, for it is impossible that a Sodomite could return from captivity. It is necessary to read carefully all this allegory at one sitting to get its effect, to see and feel its force. It is powerful. Israel was not the descendant of an Amorite nor a Hittite. She had the blood of Chaldea and of Aram, but what he means is that there was in Israel from the very first the seeds of idolatry that existed in those Amorites among whom she lived. Thus Ezekiel prophesies the return of Samaria, the return and restoration of Jerusalem as well as Sodom, the last no doubt in a figurative sense.
We have had symbols, symbolic actions, and parables; now we have a riddle. The riddle is this, Eze 17:3 f: “A great eagle with great wings and long pinions, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon, and took the top of the cedar; he cropped off the topmost of the young twigs thereof, and carried it into a land of traffic; he set it in a city of merchants.” And in Eze 17:5 it says, “He took also of the seed of the land, and planted it in a fruitful soil; he placed it beside many waters; he set it as a willow tree.” Verse Eze 17:6 : “And it grew, and became a spreading vine of low stature, whose branches turned toward him, and the roots thereof were under him: so it became a vine, and brought forth branches, and shot forth sprigs.” Then it began to send its roots in another direction as we see from verse Eze 17:7 : “There was also another great eagle with great wings and many feathers: and, behold, this vine did bend its roots toward him, and shot forth its branches toward him, that he might water it.”
What is the meaning of it? The first great eagle was Nebuchadnezzar who came from Babylon and lopped off the top of the cedar, Jehoiachin, the son of Josiah, and carried him away to Babylon with seven thousand of the best people. He then set Zedekiah upon the throne and made him a feeble, weak vassal, with the hope that Zedekiah would depend upon him, pay him tribute, seek strength and power from Babylon, i.e., send out his roots to Babylon. But instead of that, Zedekiah begins to plot with Pharaoh-Necho of Egypt and instead of sending roots toward Babylon, he sent them toward Egypt. This is the riddle and the explanation. The riddle found in Eze 17:1-10 and the explanation in Eze 17:11-21 .
In Eze 17:22-23 we have the promise of a universal kingdom. He uses the same figure, that of the lofty top of the cedar, the symbol of the lawful descendant, the legitimate heir to the throne of Israel. After the return, God is going to take the lofty top of the cedar and crop off a twig from the topmost limb and plant it in the top of a high mountain in Israel. The latter part of Eze 17:23 says, “And under it shall dwell all birds of every wing; in the shade of the branches thereof shall they dwell.” Here he means that from the royal family of David, a twig, the topmost twig, shall be taken by Almighty God, and shall be set upon a high and lofty throne and his kingdom shall become so large, so wide, so broad, that its dominion will be universal, and all the peoples of the world will come to lodge under its branches and enjoy its protection. This, of course, is the messianic kingdom.
In Eze 18 we have Ezekiel’s discussion on the moral freedom and responsibility of the individual before God. This is the most important theological contribution which Ezekiel made to the thought of his age. In this chapter he meets one of the most perplexing problems that ever troubled men. It was the great religious problem of his age. When Jeremiah prophesied the restoration of the people to their land, he said that the time would come when they would no longer say, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge,” but each one should bear and suffer for his own sins and sustain an individual, personal relationship to God. Individualism, liberty in religion, was a messianic principle with Jeremiah, but Ezekiel is already living in the new order of things, and he takes up the problem that confronted Jeremiah: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are on edge.”
What does he mean? It was a proverbial saying and there is implied in it a reproach against divine providence; a suggestion that God is unjust in his administration of the laws of the world; that the children are suffering wrongfully for sins they never committed, but which their fathers committed. All that is implied in it, but the real significance of the proverb is this: “The sins of which you accuse us were born in us; we can’t help them; we must sin; our fathers sinned and the evil has been transmitted to us; we can’t help ourselves.”
The proverb rose out of the fact that God dealt with nations as units, and the individual shared the effects of that dealing. That was the case with Israel all down through the ages until this period. But now when the greatest crisis in the history of the nation had come, the nation destroyed, the city burned, the Temple gone, the ceremonial and ritual at an end, the national religious life collapsed, what would be the effect? The only way in which religion could be preserved was for them to realize that each individual soul had an individual and personal relationship to God. This was something new in the history of religion, this idea of individual responsibility to and relationship with God.
Ezekiel meets this great problem and deals with it fairly and squarely. There are two principles brought out in this chapter, which are these:
1. “All souls [individual personalities] are mine, saith the Lord.”
2. “I have no pleasure in the death of any one of these persons. I do not wish any one of them to perish. It grieves me that they do. I have no pleasure in it.”
And then, arising from these two principles are two conclusions:
1. Each soul’s destiny depends upon its relation to God.
2. It is their privilege to repent and turn from sin.
The following is an analysis of the chapter:
1. The individual man is not involved in the sins and fate of his people or his forefathers (Eze 18:1-20 ). He says in Eze 18:5 , “If a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right,” and the latter part of Eze 18:9 , “he is just, he shall surely live.” Verse Eze 18:10 : “And if he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood he [the robber] shall surely die.” Verse Eze 18:13 : “But hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase shall he then live? He shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.” In the latter part of Eze 18:17 , he says, “The righteous man shall not die for the iniquity of his father, he shall surely live.” In other words, no man shall die because of his father’s sins, but because of his own, and no man shall be responsible for his son’s sins, but for his own. Each individual shall bear his own personal relationship to God and that alone.
2. The individual soul does not lie under the ban of its own past (Eze 18:21-23 ). Ezekiel means to say this: “If any man going on in sin, should turn from his sin and should repent and get right with God, he shall live. He is no slave to his moral environment, no victim of the sins of his ancestors, he is not compelled to go on in sin. He means to say also that if a man going on and doing right should fall into sin and do unrighteousness, then he shall die in his iniquity; he shall suffer its consequences; he shall not have attributed to him anything of his past righteousness; that would be completely nullified. He shall not have an average made of his righteousness and wickedness, but according to the condition of his heart at that time he shall either live or die. Now, that does not abrogate the law of heredity; it does not say that we do not inherit evil tendencies; it does not say that the result of our past lives will not continue with us, but it does say that everything depends upon the man’s personal and individual relationship to his sins and to his God; that the trend of his mind, the bent of his character, is that which fixes his destiny.
In other words, it is the doctrine of moral freedom which implies individual responsibility, with a possibility of repentance, a possibility of sin, a possibility of individual relationship to God, a possibility of life or death. This chapter is worthy of long and careful study.
There is a lamentation in Eze 19 , set forth in two parables. Here Ezekiel represents Jerusalem as a lioness. She brought up one of her cubs, or whelps, and he became a young lion; the nations came, caught him, bound him, and he was carried away to Egypt. That was Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah. When he was gone, the lioness brought up another one of her whelps and he grew up to be a young lion. The nations came against him and he was caught and carried away to Babylon that his voice should be no more heard on the mountains of Judah. That was Jehoiachin. He makes no mention of Jehoiakim for he was only a vassal set upon the throne by Pharaoh, not the chosen heir to the throne. He makes no mention of Zedekiah for he also was a vassal placed upon the throne by Nebuchadnezzar, not by the choice of the people, and he was not one of the lioness’s whelps.
Then, Eze 19:10-14 , he describes the mother as a vine, and shows how the vine is to be plucked up, burned, and destroyed, signifying the end of the reign of Zedekiah with the destruction of his capital.
The prophet reviews the past history of Israel in Eze 20:20 and emphasizes the principle that has saved Israel, viz: Jehovah’s regard for his own name. The elders came to inquire of Ezekiel about the law, or about the fate of the city. Ezekiel said that God would not be inquired of by them. He then goes on to review the history of Israel, and shows them the principle which actuated Jehovah in the saving of that nation. It is this: In Eze 20:9 he says, “I wrought for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, among whom they were, in whose sight I made myself known unto them, in bringing them forth out of the land of Egypt.” And in Eze 20:14 he refers to their salvation in the wilderness: “I wrought for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations” and in Eze 20:22 , referring to his dealing with them while in the wilderness, he says, “Nevertheless I withdrew my hand, and wrought for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations.” And from Eze 20:30-44 Ezekiel, in prophetic vision, sees that the return from captivity, the restoration from Babylon, the setting up of the glorious messianic kingdom in Jerusalem and Judah, will be done on this very same principle, viz: Jehovah’s regard for his own name.
The following is a summary of the contents of Eze 20:45-21:32 :
1. The fire in the forest of the South (Eze 20:35-49 ). The South refers to Judah and Jerusalem. Ezekiel sees from his situation in Babylon a fire raging in the South and burning the nation. It is a fire that shall not be quenched.
2. The sword of Jehovah shall be on Jerusalem (Eze 21:1-27 ). In substance, it is this: The sword of Jehovah is the sword of Nebuchadnezzar. It is coming against the city. When it is drawn it shall be sheathed no more. From Eze 21:8-17 we have Ezekiel’s “Song of the Sword,” a peculiar dirge picturing the sharpness of the sword and the anguish of the people. From Eze 21:18-27 the prophet represents the king of Babylon as undecided whether he should attack Ammon or Jerusalem first. He stands at the parting of the ways, and uses divination; he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver. He drew forth the arrow marked, “Jerusalem.” Hence he marches there first.
3. Threatening prophecy against Ammon (Eze 21:28-32 ). This contains very little that is different from the prophecy against Jerusalem and from what shall follow. The prophet repeats in Eze 21:22 , in new form, the same charge he has been making over and over again; the same that Jeremiah had made so repeatedly: the sins of Jerusalem are idolatry, bloodshed, open licentiousness, incest, and almost every other conceivable form of evil. Because of all this her destruction was certain and necessary, and all nations were involved in it.
We have the symbolism of two harlot women in Eze 23 . This is a history of two harlot women, Samaria and Jerusalem, under the names of Aholah and Aholibah. This is largely a repetition of Eze 16 . The chief thoughts are as follows:
1. The infidelities of Samaria with Assyria and Egypt (Eze 23:1-10 ).
2. The infidelities of Jerusalem with Assyria, Babylon and Egypt (Eze 23:11-21 ).
3. Therefore, her fate shall be like that of Samaria (Eze 23:22-35 ).
4. A new description of their immoralities and another that of punishment (Eze 23:36-49 ).
The date of the prophecy in Eze 24 is the very day upon which Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, August 10, 588 B.C. The prophet here performs a symbolic action just as the siege begins. He takes a caldron, a great iron pot. The Lord tells him to pour water into it, to gather pieces of flesh, good pieces, the thigh and shoulder and choice bones; to take from the choicest of the flock, and to pile the wood up under it and to make it boil well. “Let the bones thereof be boiled in the midst of it.” Thus the symbolic action is carried on by Ezekiel.
What does it mean? At the moment Nebuchadnezzar began to surround Jerusalem the prophet performs this action. Jerusalem was the caldron; the inhabitants were the flesh therein, Jehovah was kindling the fire; he was piling up the wood and setting it ablaze, so that the unfortunate city would be seething and boiling and roasting as the flesh in a caldron. It was made so hot that the very rust of the iron was purged out and left it clean. In other words, Jerusalem should be so cleansed by the captivity and destruction of its city, that there would be left only the pure and clean (Eze 24:1-14 ). (See the author’s sermon on this paragraph in The River of Life.)
Another symbolic action occurs on the death of Ezekiel’s wife (Eze 24:15-27 ). The prophet mourns not. There is a very remarkable statement in the Eze 24:16 . God says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet thou shalt neither mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down. Sigh, but not aloud, make no mourning for the dead; bind thy headtire upon thee, and put thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover thy lips, and eat not the bread of men.” Then he says, “So I spake unto the people in the morning; at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded.” This symbolic action actually happened.
He says in Eze 24:18 , “I spake unto the people in the morn under the overwhelming grief that had fallen upon him so suddenly, he showed no signs of grief, he shed no tears, and heaved not an audible sigh. The people were unable to understand his actions, verse Eze 24:19 : “And the people said unto me, Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us, that thou doest so?” He tells them: “And ye shall do as I have done: ye shall not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men.” He means that very soon, as by a single stroke, a swift and inevitable stroke of justice, their fair and beloved city, Jerusalem, shall be destroyed, and they will be so stunned, so bewildered, so dumbfounded, so paralyzed that they will be unable to eat bread or even to sigh. In that stunned and dazed condition they shall bear their almost unbearable burden. It was a striking symbol, very touching, and it must have bad great effect.
QUESTIONS
1. To what end were the ministries of Jeremiah and Ezekiel?
2. What the parable of the vine tree and its interpretation? (Eze 15 .)
3. Give the allegory of the foundling child and its interpretation (Eze 16 ).
4. What the riddle of Eze 17 , what is its explanation, and what is the great promise in the latter part of this chapter?
5. What is Ezekiel’s discussion on the moral freedom and responsibility of the individual before God? (Eze 18 .)
6. What the lamentation in Eze 19 , and bow is it act forth in two parables? Give their interpretation.
7. What the principle upon which Jehovah acted toward Israel discussed in Eze 20 , and what the details of the discussion?
8. Give a summary of the contents of Eze 20:45-21:32 .
9. What the renewed charge against Jerusalem? (Eze 22 )
10. Who the two harlot women of Eze 23 and what the chief thoughts of this chapter?
11. What the meaning and application of the boiling pot and the blood on a rock? (Eze 24:1-14 .)
12. Explain the prophet’s action at the death, of his wife.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Eze 22:1 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Ver. 1. Moreover the word. ] See on Eze 18:1 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Ezekiel Chapter 22
Next follows a withering exposure of Jerusalem, violence and corruption, idolatry in particular, being charged home. Therefore did Jehovah put the city to shame, a mockery to men far and near. “Moreover the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Now, thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city? yea, thou shalt show her all her abominations. Then say thou, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, the city sheddeth blood in the midst of it, that her time may come, and maketh idols against herself to defile herself. Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed; and hast defiled thyself in thine idols which thou hast made; and thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years; therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the heathen, and a mocking to all countries. Those that be near, and those that be far from thee, shall mock thee, which art infamous and much vexed.” (Ver. 1-5) Nay the dignitaries of law, who governed, set the example of iniquity in every form, degree and relation. Who can wonder that the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles when the Jews violated Godward as well as manward each command of the law which stood in their way? This is detailed in sufficiently humiliating terms in verses 7-12, closing with what is alike the cause and the consequence of all their other wickedness: Jews even had forgotten Jehovah.
“Therefore, behold, I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee. Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I Jehovah have spoken it, and will do it. And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee. And thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the sight of the heathen, and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah.” (Ver. 13-16) Such is the expression of divine displeasure. Stout of heart and hand as they might seem, where would it all be in the day of Jehovah’s dealing, whose word would as surely stand as the Jews would be scattered among the countries, that there if not in Jerusalem they might come to an end of their impurity, conscious of and confessing to others their inward pollution and knowing Jehovah as never before?
In the next section of the chapter is a denunciation, if possible, more tremendous. If the chapter before was the prophecy of the sword, this is no less of the furnace. “And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, the house of Israel is to me become dross: all they are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the furnace; they are even the dross of silver. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah; Because ye are all become dross, behold, therefore I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to melt it; so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury, and I will leave you there, and melt you. Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof. Its silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be melted in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I Jehovah have poured out my fury upon you.” (Ver. 17-22) Whatever may be the bloody horrors associated with the sword, the fire of divine indignation cannot but portend yet worse even for this world; and the prophecy of course goes no farther. But it was Jehovah’s doing because of Jerusalem’s sins, not the Gentiles’ merely because of their power. Faith seizes this and bows before Him.
The closing verses drop these images and speak out in the plainest terms. “And the word of Jehovah came unto me saying, Son of man, say unto her, thou art the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of indignation. There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof. Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things; they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, when Jehovah hath not spoken. The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy; yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none.” (Ver. 23-30) Guilty and now given up to judgment, Jerusalem resembled land without man’s culture or God’s natural supplies, a mere waste therefore morally. The conspiring prophets in its midst were like ravening and roaring lions; the priests not only perverted the law but profaned the sanctuary; the princes were no better than rapacious and bloodthirsty wolves, and this for unjust gain. Thus there was no distinction for the better, whether one looked higher or lower. The prophets glossed over men’s sins and presumptuously claimed Jehovah’s word for their misleading lies; while the people of the land, not preserved from evil in their lowliness, practised all sorts of violence and rapine. Not a man did Jehovah find to build up the wall or stand in the gap before Him on behalf of the land; alas! there was none. “Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord Jehovah.” (Ver. 31)
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Eze 22:1-5
1Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2And you, son of man, will you judge, will you judge the bloody city? Then cause her to know all her abominations. 3You shall say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, A city shedding blood in her midst, so that her time will come, and that makes idols, contrary to her interest, for defilement! 4You have become guilty by the blood which you have shed, and defiled by your idols which you have made. Thus you have brought your day near and have come to your years; therefore I have made you a reproach to the nations and a mocking to all the lands. 5Those who are near and those who are far from you will mock you, you of ill repute, full of turmoil.’
Eze 22:2 Then the word of the LORD came to me saying See note at Eze 21:1.
son of man See note at Eze 2:1.
will you judge, will you judge The repetition of the VERB (BDB 1047, KB 1622, Qal IMPERFECT) is for emphasis. Ezekiel acted as both prosecutor and judge on YHWH’s behalf. He lays out the charges and the consequences, then because of no intercessor or repentance (cf. Eze 22:30-31), they are implemented (i.e., 586 B.C.)!
bloody city This is the key construct (BDB 746, 196) used throughout this chapter (cf. Eze 22:2 [twice], 3,4,6,9,12,13). It is used of Nineveh in Nah 3:1. Some think it is used of Jerusalem because of (1) the worship of Molech (cf. Eze 16:21; Eze 20:26; Eze 20:31; Eze 23:37) or (2) the killing of the righteous (cf. Eze 22:25).
It is historically possible that Nebuchadnezzar’s initial raid in 588 B.C. caused the population of the area to seek refuge in the walled city of Jerusalem, but instead of refuge they found exploitation and death by their own countrymen!
In 586 B.C. the city and temple were destroyed by Babylon’s army and the populace who escaped the sword were exiled to Babylon.
cause her to know See Special Topic following.
SPECIAL TOPIC: KNOW (using mostly Deuteronomy as a paradigm)
abomination See Special Topic: Abomination .
Eze 22:3 for defilement This VERB (BDB 379, KB 375, Qal INFINITIVE CONSTRUCT) means to become unclean because of her creation of and association with foreign pagan idols (cf. Eze 22:4).
This defilement (Qal PERFECT in Eze 22:4, i.e., uncleanness) is also described in Eze 22:4.
1. I have made you a reproach (BDB 357) to the nations, cf. Eze 5:14-15; Eze 16:57
2. I have made you a mocking (BDB 887) to all lands, cf. VERB (Hithpael IMPERFECT) in Eze 22:5 (Hithpael only 3 times in the OT, 2Ki 2:23; Hab 1:10; and Piel only once, Eze 16:31).
3. you of ill repute, Eze 22:5
There is a parallelism among
1. the nations, Eze 22:4
2. all the lands, Eze 22:4
3. those who are near. . .far, Eze 22:5
All people will be affected by Judah’s sin (cf. Gen 12:3; Exo 19:5-6)! Judah’s actions affect the way the world understands YHWH. The same is true as to the way the church’s sin confuses the world about Jesus!
thus you have brought your day near YHWH asserts that their sin has hastened the day of their judgment (e.g., 2Pe 3:12)!
Eze 22:5 you of ill repute, full of turmoil These are two characterizations of Judah.
1. of ill repute is literally a Hebrew construct (BDB 379, 1027) polluted name. They are considered ceremonially unclean and thereby cannot approach YHWH.
2. full of turmoil is literally a Hebrew construct (BDB 912, 223), full of confusion, which is a Holy War term (cf. Exo 14:24; Exo 23:27; Deu 7:23). The tragedy is that now YHWH fights against His polluted people (cf. Deu 28:20)! Isa 22:5 describes an eschatological scene (cf. Eze 7:5-9, esp. Eze 22:7).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
the LORD Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4. Ih
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 22
Now, why would God do this? Chapter 22 he now tells us the things that were happening and the sins for which God’s judgment was coming.
Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Now, thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city? yea, thou shalt show her all her abominations. Then say thou, Thus saith the Lord GOD; The city is filled with murders in the midst of it, the shedding of blood, that her time may come, and maketh idols against herself to defile herself. Thou art become guilty in thy blood which thou hast shed; and thou hast defiled thyself with your idols which you have made; and thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years: therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the heathen, and a mocking to all countries ( Eze 22:1-4 ).
Because you have turned to idolatry and because the murders that are going on. And, of course, this was to their idols. They were sacrificing their own children as live sacrifices to these gods.
Those that be near, and those that be far from thee, shall mock thee, which art infamous and much vexed. Behold, the princes of Israel, every one were in thee to their power to shed blood ( Eze 22:5-6 ).
So the princes were polluted.
In thee have they set light by father and mother: in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow ( Eze 22:7 ).
The princes here, rather than dealing righteously, were dealing by oppression: oppressing the stranger, oppressing the orphan, the widow, taking advantage of the weak.
Thou hast despised my holy things, and you have profaned my sabbaths. In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood: and in thee they eat upon the mountains: in the midst of thee they commit lewdness. In thee have they discovered their fathers’ nakedness: in thee have they humbled her that were set apart for her pollution ( Eze 22:8-10 ).
They were not to have intercourse with a menstruous woman, but they were doing it.
And one hath committed abomination with his neighbor’s wife; and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter-in-law; and another in thee hath humbled his sister, his father’s daughter ( Eze 22:11 ).
So there was incest that was being practiced. Adultery, fornication, pornography, lewdness.
In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood ( Eze 22:12 );
So there was murder by hire.
thou hast taken usury and increase ( Eze 22:12 ),
Interest rates went up to twenty percent, crime.
and you have greedily gained of your neighbors by extortion, and you have forgotten me, saith the Lord ( Eze 22:12 ).
Of course, a person couldn’t do these things without forgetting God. You see, if you’re conscious of God you couldn’t be doing these things. You’ve got to put God out of your mind to be able to do these things.
Behold, therefore I have ( Eze 22:13 )
And that, of course, I might say, is the result of putting God out of the minds of people. Then what do you have as a guide? What do you have as a standard for morality? What do you have as a guide for right and wrong? If you put God out of the minds of the people, if you declare there is no God, or God is so removed from His creation that He has no concern, then the people are cut loose, there is nothing as a standard for morality. There are no codes to follow. If every man must just experience for himself life and the various aspects of life relating to them and interpreting them for himself and there is no God to answer to, then the door is open for all of these things, and who’s to say it is wrong? And so we have psychologists today written up in Time Magazine about three weeks ago who are advocating incest as a wholesome, healthy practice. Encouraging the parents to start sexual relations with their children when they are two or three years old so that they might understand a new dimension of love. But you see, if everything is relative, and if there is no God, then who is to say that is wrong? Who’s to say adultery is wrong, fornication is wrong? High interest rates are wrong. Contracting for someone’s murder is wrong, killing someone is wrong. Who says? What’s your standard? You’ve put God out of the picture. That opens the door for anything that a man wants to do.
And so the whole key is there: you have forgotten Me. And that is the danger of putting God aside, setting God aside out of our educational system, where you can’t talk about Jesus Christ. You can’t talk about a belief in God. You can’t advocate that they believe in God. So what are you doing? You’re just opening up this whole sordid mess that we see in the world around us. We have sown the wind, as the prophet Hosea said, and now we’re reaping the whirlwind. We are reaping the result of this whole secular humanism that was fostered upon our school systems by the Watsons and the Deweys and the Huxleys. And it’s probably too late to reverse it. The die has been cast. I don’t know how we can reverse it. Only God can reverse it, and that through the intercession of His people.
It is interesting as we read the things that were going on in Israel, they are the same things you read in your newspaper. Because they had forgotten God. If they had not forgotten God, if they had God in their minds and their hearts, in their consciousness, they couldn’t do these things.
Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at your dishonest gain which you have made, and at the blood which hath been in the midst of thee. Can your heart endure, or can your hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the LORD have spoken it, and I will do it. And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and I will consume the filthiness out of thee. And thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the sight of the heathen, and thou shalt know that I am the LORD ( Eze 22:13-16 ).
That oft repeated phrase, some sixty-one, sixty-two times in Ezekiel, “Thou shalt know that I am Jehovah.”
And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, the house of Israel is become as dross: all they are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the furnace; they are even the dross of silver. Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because ye are all become dross, behold, therefore I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to melt it; so will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury, and I will leave you there, and melt you. Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof. As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be melted in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I the LORD have poured out my fury upon you ( Eze 22:17-22 ).
Now it is interesting that when Moses was predicting the apostasy of the people in Deuteronomy, “When you’ve come into the land and you begin to pollute yourself in the land, and you turn from God and you forget God,” and so forth, and this apostasy takes place, that Moses wrote in Deuteronomy that they would be burned with hunger and devour with burning heat. Here God says, “I’m gonna melt you in this caldron as silver and tin and iron are melted.”
And the word of the LORD came unto me saying, Son of man, say unto her, You are in the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of indignation. There is a conspiracy of her prophets ( Eze 22:23-25 )
So the prophets were polluted. They were lying to the people.
in the midst thereof, they are like a roaring lion ravening on the prey: they have devoured souls; they have taken the treasure and precious things; they have made her many widows in the midst thereof ( Eze 22:25 ).
So these prophets were greedy. They were always emphasizing giving money. “Send in your money, your dollars, you know.” Greedy for gain. Representing to the people that God was always broke. His program was just out of funds, and you better rescue God this week, or next week it’s bankruptcy. God’s going out of business unless you come in and save Him from this terrible fate. The prophets were taking the treasure and the precious things from these little widows. Extorting their Social Security checks.
Her priests have violated my law, they have profaned my holy things: they don’t know the difference between that which is holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have hid their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them ( Eze 22:26 ).
Some recent survey showed that some eighty percent of the ministers in the United States do not believe in hell as a place of punishment for the wicked. Sixty percent don’t believe in heaven. Seventy-eight percent don’t believe in the virgin birth. And then you get to the resurrection and all and you find unbelievers among the ministry. Well no wonder the church is dead. If there’s nothing to be gained, why go? Nothing to be lost, why get involved?
The priests had violated the law of God; they’d turned against God. “I am profaned among them.”
Her princes [the rulers, the governors] in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain [bribery, Abscam]. Her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord GOD, when the LORD hath not spoken ( Eze 22:27-28 ).
Doing all of this in the name of God. All of this junky, fundraising stuff in the name of God. “The Lord hath spoken.” Oh, I get these letters all the time, computerized letters. “The Lord laid you on my heart today, and God gave me a special message for you. He wants you to sit down and write out a check and send it to me. Thus saith the Lord, you know. Support me so I can buy my new yacht.”
The people of the land have used oppression, they have exercised robbery, they have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. [And in all of this God said,] And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none ( Eze 22:29-30 ).
The Lord is merciful. The Lord is plenteous in mercy, slow to wrath and slow to anger. But He will not always try, nor will He keep His judgment forever. In other words, there can come a day when God must judge. Though He is reluctant, yet His hand is forced. Now here, in the midst of this whole perversity, God was still seeking an excuse to show mercy and to forgive.
Now, God puts a hedge around His people. Job had a hedge around him according to Satan complaining to God. “Have you considered My servant Job? Perfect man, upright, one who loves good and hates evil.” “Oh, yes, I know that fellow. I’ve seen him. You’ve put a hedge around him; I can’t get to him. You take down that hedge, you let me get to him and he’ll curse you to your face. You see, you’ve blessed the guy, you’ve prospered him. Who wouldn’t love you if you blessed and prospered? Anybody would serve you for that. Job’s a hireling, God. Serving You because of prosperity. Take down the hedge.”
God has a hedge around His people. But sin breaks down that hedge. Now God is looking for someone to stand and to build up that hedge. Man had become alienated from God. God was looking for some man to stand in the gap. Of course, Jesus is the one who came and stood in the gap for us. And has reconciled us to God through the blood of His cross. God said, “I sought for a man among them who would build up the hedge who would stand in the gap, but I found none.” A man who would stand before the Lord for the land, an intercessor so that God would not destroy the land. But there was no one to intercede. There was no man there.
Therefore have I poured out my indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way ( Eze 22:31 )
In other words, retribution, judgment has come.
their own way have I recompensed on their heads, saith the Lord GOD ( Eze 22:31 ).
No more mercy, but now judgment, retribution. Their own ways have been turned upon their heads.
Now as we see the conditions that brought upon the destruction of Israel, the things that were going on, we look around the land today we see the things that are happening here. History is repeating itself. The principles are still the same; God is still merciful, plenteous in mercy, and God is still looking for men to stand before God for the land. To build up the hedge, to stand in the gap lest He destroy. But God’s judgment, though it lingers of a long time, will surely come. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Eze 22:1-5
LIST OF JERUSALEM’S CURRENT SINS
Whereas the previous chapter gave a record of the historical apostasies of the nation of Israel, this one focuses upon the sins that Jerusalem was then in the act of committing when Ezekiel delivered this chapter, the tremendous implication being that there could no longer be any hope of God’s sparing the “bloody city.”
Also, the specific enumeration of so many transgressions, “Gives us a true picture of what Ezekiel means by `sins’.
The chapter naturally falls into three divisions, presenting three oracles, each of which begins with the solemn words: “The word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man …” (Eze 22:1; Eze 22:17 and Eze 22:23). Only the first of these is directed against Jerusalem, in the words, `the bloody city,’; and Keil objected to applying the last two oracles to Jerusalem only, because they appear to be addressed against “the house of Israel.” Nevertheless, Jerusalem as the capital and final remainder of the whole house of Israel would seem to have been the principal addressee of the whole chapter.
Eze 22:1-5
“Moreover the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, And thou, son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city? then cause her to know all her abominations. And thou shalt say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: A city that sheddeth blood in the midst of her, that her time may come, and that maketh idols against herself to defile her. Thou hast become guilty in the blood that thou hast shed, and art defiled in the idols which thou hast made; and thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years: therefore have I made thee a reproach among the nations, and a mocking to all the countries. Those that are near, and those that are far from thee, shall mock thee, thou infamous one, and full of tumult.”
“Wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge …?” (Eze 22:2). The repetition indicates the strong emphasis of the command. The word “judge” here is a reference to an arraignment with a statement of the charges, as in the case of a prosecutor in a law suit. God only, in the strictest sense, is the “judge” of all men.
“The bloody city …” (Eze 22:2). “This epithet applied here to Jerusalem equates the capital of the Once Chosen People with Nineveh, that infamous whore, the savage lion’s den, and corrupt center of heathen abominations,”[2] which God also designated with this same eloquent word of shameful guilt (Nah 3:1), “the bloody city.” Note that Jerusalem has already forfeited all of her glorious names, such as “faithful city, and beloved city.”
“That her time may come …” (Eze 22:3). “This means the time of her retribution, the time when God will judge and punish her.”[3] God did not punish either individuals or nations until their “iniquity was full,” The meaning of this seems to be that, as long as there was hope of a change, God was always willing to spare the punishment a while longer.
“Thou hast caused thy days to come near, and art come even unto thy years . …” (Eze 22:4). “Thy days” is a reference to the days of Jerusalem’s punishment, and “thy years,’ speaks of the years of her captivity.
“I have made thee a reproach among the nations …” (Eze 22:5). This is a prophecy of what will soon happen, as indicated in the future tense used in the next verse, “Those that are near, and those that are far from thee, shall mock thee.”
“Thou infamous one, and full of tumult …” (Eze 22:5). When any civilization reaches the condition in which the whole land is “full of tumult,” “violence,” and wholesale bloodshed, the end of it cannot be long delayed. It will be remembered that prior to the Great Deluge, the universal bloodshed and violence were cited as the reason for the destruction of the world in the flood. “And God said, The end of all flesh is before me; for the earth is filled with violence.” (Gen 6:13). The near-universal violence of our own times should be a reason for the most acute concern and apprehension on the part of the leaders of our world. Only God, of course, could know at what point the land “is filled” with violence; but when that point is reached, who can doubt that God will terminate it?
Jerusalem had certainly reached such a point, as indicated here. “Manasseh had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood (2Ki 21:2-15).
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The next movement described the utter evil of the city. Its fundamental sins of bloodshed and idolatry were named and denounced, and the resultant evils were described. These consisted of the oppression of the people by the princes, of despising holy things and of profanation of the Sabbath, of terrible and widespread impurity, and of active and iniquitous greed. On account of these things the judgment of Jehovah would be terrible, and the people were challenged whether they could endure Jehovah’s dealing with them. Again the truth was emphasized that the method of judgment was characterized by a procedure toward the fulfillment of purpose, by the figure of the refining of metals in the furnace of fire.
Again the prophet described the corruption of the inhabitants, first in a general statement under the figure of an unwatered land, that is, having no teaching, and the figure of the polluted springs, that is, having no prophets. He then proceeded to make particular charges against priests, princes, prophets, and people. The priests had failed to discriminate between things unclean and clean. The princes had cruelly oppressed for selfish ends. The prophets had uttered false words of hope. The people had been guilty of oppressing the poor, and needy, and the stranger. He then concluded by describing the utter hopelessness of the case. There was no man to stand in the gap, therefore the fire of wrath must proceed on its way.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Chapter Twenty-two
The Bloody And Defiled City
When God set His name at Jerusalem and appointed it to be the capital of Immanuels land, He called it the Holy City. Such it had been in former days when His people gathered there to worship in His sanctuary, and the voice of praise and thanksgiving ascended with the smoke of the incense to heaven. But alas, all this had been changed. By the wickedness of its people Jerusalem had become so utterly denied that God was now about to forsake it completely. Instead of being a city of truth and righteousness it was filled with falsehood and wickedness; instead of being a citadel of holiness it had become unclean with the blood of thousands of little children who had been offered in sacrifice to Moloch. Idolatry with its false priests reared its horrid head in the very place where once the priests of the Lord honored His name. Time after time God had sent His prophets to protest against the evils that were manifest among His people, but things had grown worse and worse until now the city was so wholly polluted that He was about to give it over to the cruel enemies who were besieging it.
Surely, there are lessons in all this for the professing Church today. In the beginning, as recorded in the book of Acts, and as we may gather from a careful reading of the Epistles and the messages to the seven churches of Asia in the book of The Revelation, the people of God of this age of grace delighted in His Word and loved His truth, clinging to the name of the Lord Jesus and seeking to honor Him; but little by little declension came in; the Church took up with the ways of the heathen, out of which she had been called; and finally, we find the Lord Himself declaring that He is about to spue her out of His mouth. Nevertheless, so long as the Saviour tarries, a remnant will abide to whom the things of God shall be precious; but when these are taken away at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him, all that is left of Christendom will be rejected by God, and finally fall under His judgment when the Lord Jesus appears in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those that know not God.
Moreover the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, And thou, son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city? then cause her to know all her abominations. And thou shalt say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: A city that sheddeth blood in the midst of her, that her time may come, and that maketh idols against herself to defile her! Thou art become guilty in thy blood that thou hast shed, and art defiled in thine idols which thou hast made; and thou hast caused thy days to draw near, and art come even unto thy years: therefore have I made thee a reproach unto the nations, and a mocking to all the countries. Those that are near, and those that are far from thee, shall mock thee, thou infamous one, and full of tumult-vers. 1-5.
Ezekiel was called upon to act as a judge in the name of the Lord, bringing to the inhabitants of Jerusalem the divine indictment of their manifold crimes and offenses against the law of the Lord which they had spurned. The city had become completely defiled by the blood shed in the midst of her; that is, primarily the blood of the poor innocents, which, in their fanaticism, the people had devoted in sacrifice to their vile demon gods. Then too, we may think of blood shed because of the miscarriage of justice, when those who protested against the sins of the people were hated and slain by their fellows. Because of all this Jerusalem had become a reproach and a mocking in the countries roundabout, even as we are told in the New Testament that through apostate Judaism the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles. They who should have ever witnessed to Jehovahs faithfulness and by holy lives have manifested their subjection to and appreciation of His Word, had sunk to so low a depth that their heathen neighbors looked on with amazement and ridiculed their pretensions of being the chosen people of the Lord.
Item after item follows, indicating the low level morally to which the leaders of Israel had sunk.
Behold, the princes of Israel, every one according to his power, have been in thee to shed blood. In thee have they set light by father and mother; in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the sojourner; in thee have they wronged the fatherless and the widow. Thou hast despised My holy things, and hast profaned My sabbaths. Slanderous men have been in thee to shed blood; and in thee they have eaten upon the mountains: in the midst of thee they have committed lewdness. In thee have they uncovered their fathers nakedness; in thee have they humbled her that was unclean in her impurity. And one hath committed abominations with his neighbors wife; and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter-in-law; and another in thee hath humbled his sister, his fathers daughter. In thee have they taken bribes to shed blood; thou hast taken interest and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by oppression, and hast forgotten Me, saith the Lord Jehovah-vers. 6-12.
The princes of Israel who should have led the people in devotion to the Lord, were the chief trespassers. In the guilty city the children spurned the guidance of their parents, setting light by father and mother; they oppressed the strangers who sojourned among them: they wronged the fatherless and the widow. Instead of reverently regarding the holy things of the Lord, they despised His sacrifices and profaned His sabbaths. By false accusation they caused the innocent to be put to death; and worshiped the gods of the heathen upon the high places. Abominable excesses of the vilest character were linked with all this heathen worship so that they behaved more like beasts than rational human beings.
We shrink from meditating upon or even reading the awful charges brought out in verses 10 and 11, but God draws aside the veil by which they attempted to cover their filthiness, and shows up their moral defilement in all its dreadfulness. All things are naked and open to His holy eyes, and He cannot but deal in judgment with those guilty of such sins as are here described. Bribery, and that of the worst type, was also common among them. Even the magistrates accepted gifts in order to bias their attitude toward those unjustly accused before them, so that they condemned to death the innocent that they themselves might be enriched. Extortion and covetousness were prevalent among all classes-all these evils were the result of their having forgotten God, the One who had delivered them from Egypt and had watched over them through all the years of their sojourn in Canaan.
Behold, therefore, I have smitten My hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee. Can thy heart endure, or can thy hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I, Jehovah, have spoken it, and will do it. And I will scatter thee among the nations, and disperse thee through the countries; and I will consume thy filthiness out of thee. And thou shalt be profaned in thyself, in the sight of the nations; and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah-vers. 13-16.
How could the Holy One of Israel do other than express His disapproval of those who were so guilty and who gave no evidence whatever of a desire to repent and get right with Him whom they had so dishonored.
The challenge of ver. 14 might well speak to any today who are bent upon taking their own way and have refused to heed the voice of God calling to repentance and to subjection to His Word: Can thy heart endure or can thy hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? Men may flaunt the will of God while in health and strength, and because sentence against their evil works is not immediately carried out they may think that God has forgotten, but the day is surely coming when He will arise in His wrath to visit upon the wilful and disobedient His indignation against sin and iniquity. What human heart can then bear up in that awful day, or whose hands will be strong enough to hold back or to resist the omnipotent power of the God they have defied? That which Jehovah has declared must come to pass; though judgment is His strange work, and He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, yet His very holiness demands that sin be punished.
How literally have verses 15 and 16 been fulfilled! For centuries, yes, for two millenniums, Israel has been scattered among the nations and dispersed throughout the countries. Eventually, as a result of the suffering they are called upon to endure, a remnant at least will face their sins, confess their iniquities, and look upon Him whom they have pierced: then their filthiness shall be consumed out of them, and they shall know that Jehovah is indeed their God. Until that day they remain among the nations as dross rather than the precious treasure they once were in the eyes of the Lord.
And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, the house of Israel is become dross unto Me: all of them are brass and tin and iron and lead, in the midst of the furnace; they are the dross of silver. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Because ye are all become dross, therefore, behold, I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. As they gather silver and brass and iron and lead and tin into the midst of the furnace, to blow the fire upon it, to melt it; so will I gather you in Mine anger and in My wrath, and I will lay you there, and melt you. Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you with the fire of My wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof. As silver is melted in the midst of the furnace, so shall ye be melted in the midst thereof; and ye shall know that I, Jehovah, have poured out My wrath upon you-vers. 17-22.
The figure used in this paragraph is that of the casting of various metals into the crucible and exposing them to furnace heat in order that they may be melted together, and then the different metals be separated, one from the other. Of silver, which reflects the face of the refiner, there was very little, for few indeed heeded the voice of the Lord. The great majority were like brass and iron and lead, base metals which God could only cast away in His wrath and indignation.
We know that when Messiah comes He shall sit as a Refiner of silver, and then there will be manifested a people to the praise of the Lord who shall reflect His image and glorify Him in the earth.
The last section is a somewhat lengthy one, including verses 23 to 31.
And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto her, Thou art a land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of indignation. There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey: they have devoured souls; they take treasure and precious things; they have made her widows many in the midst thereof. Her priests have done violence to My law, and have profaned My holy things: they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they caused men to discern between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from My sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, that they may get dishonest gain. And her prophets have daubed for them with untempered mortar, seeing false visions, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, when Jehovah hath not spoken. The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery; yea, they have vexed the poor and needy, and have oppressed the sojourner wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them, that should build up the wall, and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none. Therefore have I poured out Mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath: their own way have I brought upon their heads, saith the Lord Jehovah-vers. 23-31.
Here the Lord again emphasizes the defiled condition of the land of Israel and its barrenness because He had withdrawn the rains on account of His displeasure with His people. Moreover, there was, as it were, a conspiracy of her prophets-that is, those who professed to speak in the name of the Lord, who themselves being deceived sought to deceive the people by promising peace when there was no peace. Their soft words and false predictions proved the ruin of many souls and led to the loss of Israels treasure and precious things. Widows were multiplied because husbands went forth at the bidding of these prophets to defend the land when God Himself had declared He would not protect them against their enemies. The priests in the temple profaned the holy things of Jehovah as they carried on their hypocritical service. There was no longer a distinction made between the things that were of God and those that had to do with the common life of the people; neither did they discern between that which was clean and that which was unclean. The sabbaths of the Lord, which were given for their blessing, were no longer valued but rather profaned.
Again an indictment is brought against the princes because, instead of shepherding the flock, they were like fierce ravening wolves let loose upon the people, shedding the blood of the innocent and destroying souls in order that they might thereby enrich themselves. The prophets, like man-pleasing preachers today, sought to make the people comfortable in their sins, thus daubing with untempered mortar, seeing false visions and divining lies in the name of the Lord of truth. The people followed after their unreliable spiritual guides, giving themselves over to oppression and robbery and affliction, rather than aiding the poor and needy.
Under such conditions Jehovah looked for even one man among them who should act for Him, standing against the iniquities and building up the wall of the city and closing its gaps, but He found none. Ezekiel himself, we must remember, was no longer in Palestine but on the banks of the River Chebar in Chaldea. In the land itself and in the defiled city there was not one to plead for the people, save Jeremiah, whose message was spurned, and he himself cast into prison. Therefore, there was none to stand between the people and the judgment that their sins deserved; so God declared He was pouring out His indignation upon them and consuming them with the fire of His wrath-and all this because of their own wilfulness; they had taken their own way, and so brought down these calamities upon their guilty heads.
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Eze 22:1-31; Eze 23:1-49. Before the sharpened sword of justice and retribution does its dreadful work, the Lord uncovers the guilt and vileness of the city and lays bare the corruption of her prophets, priests, and princes, as well as of the people. The violence and abomination of Jerusalem are revealed in Eze 22:1-16; the smelting furnace in Eze 22:17-23 is the symbol of Jehovahs fiery indignation against Jerusalem and its inhabitants. The corruption of the prophets, priests, and princes is fully uncovered in the closing section of chapter 22 (Eze 22:23-31).
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Reciprocal: Psa 55:11 – Wickedness Pro 14:34 – but Isa 1:21 – become Jer 30:15 – for the Eze 35:1 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Eze 22:1-2. The prophet is again told to direct his writing against the bloody city which means Jerusalem which was still standing. He was to recall to her the many abominations of which she was guilty, both physical and spiritual.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Section 3 (Eze 22:1-31).
The corruption in Jerusalem manifest.
We return now to see once more in Jerusalem the manifest corruption which is bringing in the judgment. As has been said elsewhere, God does not judge until the corruption is fully manifest. Evil is allowed to come to its head before God smites upon it, for He will be justified in its judgment, and be clear when He is judged. What we have here, therefore, is no more history: it is not the sins of the fathers, even, as showing themselves in the children. It is the present condition of things -the causes which necessitated that which was at hand.
1. We need not spend many words upon interpretation of what is manifest. The evil speaks for itself, and what we have is an enumeration of crimes in high and in low; crimes of which the apostle says, with reference to them, that the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles through them. We need not wonder at this. It is according to the constant rule of perverted privileges, and that which is done in the darkness elsewhere, is now done in the full light. Along with this, and instead of the anticipation of a sure judgment coming, that there was hardening of the heart against it is in entire harmony with all the rest. Nothing but the actual infliction of wrath would now avail. Words merely were useless. They must be replaced by deeds.
2. Accordingly, Jerusalem has become a furnace which melts down the various things exposed to it into one mass of manifest dross. God surely has purification in mind, but what is here is the wrath itself -a wrath by which what cannot be changed may yet be limited and kept under. And such will be the fire of hell; corruption, at last, will be permitted no longer; none of the rioting will be there which has been in men’s shameful imaginations of what is to come; Satan, then, is the arch-tormentor no more, but himself the most tormented. Suited and necessitated penalty, carefully discriminated, will be God’s decisive repression of that which can be no more permitted to break out at all. Man’s ways come to an end then, and God comes to His own finally and fully.
3. The final word returns once again to the corruption itself. It is complete, among all classes, and especially are the prophets and priests brought into the dark catalogue here; for in their corruption hope is gone entirely. Among all these not a man was left (“and I sought for such,” says the Lord), that can make up a fence to keep out the incoming desolation, or stand in the breach before Him, that He might not destroy the land. Thus, then, the indignation, so long warned of, is at last to be poured out: “I will consume them in the fire of my wrath. Their own way will I recompense upon their head, saith the Lord Jehovah.”
Fuente: Grant’s Numerical Bible Notes and Commentary
Eze 22:8. Thou hast profaned my sabbaths, the sabbatical days and years. This is repeated in Eze 23:38, to show that the desecration of holy things filled up the measure of Judahs sin: Eze 20:12.
Eze 22:18. They are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the furnace: they are even the dross of silver. Both the Vatican and the Alexandrian versions of the Septuagint represent the house of Israel as gold and silver mixed with those baser metals in the midst of the furnace; for silver is mentioned at the twentieth verse.
Eze 22:25-27. There is a conspiracy of her prophets, even in the city and sanctuary. Alas, when the true faith is lost, when the anointed ones fall under an evil influence, the whole body must be depraved, and sickened with a mortal malady.
Eze 22:28. They have daubed with untempered mortar, as is stated in chap. 13:11.
Eze 22:30. I sought for a man among them that shouldstand in the gap. A days man, Psa 106:23, that should stand in the gap as Moses did; but I found none. When Moses prayed, the contrite worshipped at the door of their tents; but in Jerusalem they misused the messengers of the Lord.
2Ch 36:16-17.
REFLECTIONS.
What an impeachment of the bloody city. What can we expect but the severest sentences of justice to follow; but from such a God as the God of Israel, justice is attempered with mercy. The first and great charge is, a prodigal effusion of innocent blood. The firstborn of many families passed through the fire to Moloch. Next, the judges took bribes against the lives of innocent men. Now the history of providence, in a general view, will satisfy all candid enquirers, that God has soon or late become the avenger of innocent blood. The vengeance which pursued Cain for his brother, which pursued the Egyptians for the infants, and Amalek for smiting the hindmost of the Hebrews, has never slumbered in the execution of its functions. And where is the nation which has persecuted and martyred the saints, that did not soon drink of blood in return. Sometimes justice may slumber till the third and fourth generation, as in France, but it is sure to speak in the end. The priests and nobles paid back, in the great revolution of 1789, the blood of the protestants shed by their grandfathers. See Bp. Reynolds book, entitled Gods Revenge against Murder and Adultery.
We have here the awful consequences of the drunken and idolatrous feasts. Incest and unutterable mysteries of impurity followed. And if the brave and noble senate of Rome purged their country of the bacchanalians, and their orgies, and desired all families not to know their relatives who had been initiated into those mysteries, how much more would the Lord purge his people of crimes, which even polluted his holy place. Yes, he hasted to purge blood by blood, and to remove the oppressor by oppression.
In former times, the priests and princes had been compared to fine gold: but now, instead of being the precious sons of Zion, they were all but dross and dross of the basest metals. Hence, as there is a small proportion of metal in a mass of dross, the Lord resolved to find it by putting the mass in the hottest furnace of national disaster. And are these thy ways, oh Most Holy, when the crisis of affairs is come? Then may my soul never dare thy judgments, but humbly rejoice in thy mercy and forbearance.
The false prophets are in this, as in other sermons of Ezekiel, charged with misguiding the rulers and the public, and opposing the operation of the faithful warnings delivered by the Lords prophets. Horrible, and utterly inexcusable then are all ministers, who give the slightest countenance to vice. And when ministers are relax, and the faithful are persecuted, there is no man to stand in the gap. Alas, alas, when a Lot escapes from Sodom, when a Moses ceases to pray, when an Elijah seeks his safety in flight, and when the Saviour says of covenant blessings, now they are hid from thine eyes; the city and nation so circumstanced, are on the verge of hell and destruction. No way seems to be left, but to bring the little silver which remains through the crucible, and to leave all the dross in the furnace of unquenchable fire.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Ezekiel 22. The Sins of the Classes and the Masses.The doom which has just been described in such fiercely vivid terms contains only one allusion to the sins which justified it (Eze 21:23 f.). This chapter details those sins, and deals with the present as Eze 22:20 had dealt with the past, incidentally letting us see what Ezekiel means by sin.
Eze 22:1-16. The Sin.The evils denounced are largely social wrongs (cf. ch. 18), but it is significant that the low morality is traced to false religionidolatry (Eze 22:3 f.) and forgetfulness of God (Eze 22:12), cruelty, oppression of the poor and defenceless, immorality, abnormality in the marriage relationship, rapacitythese moral wrongs are associated here, as in ch. 18, with cultic misdemeanours, e.g. profanation of the Sabbath.
Eze 22:17-22. The Doom.In the day of doom, now so near, the people from the country will pour for protection into Jerusalem, which, under stress of siege, will become as a furnace in which they shall all be melted by the fierce heat of the Divine anger. No refining process this, for they are all dross, every one, high and low alike.
Eze 22:25-31. Classes and Masses.The princes (i.e. the court) are equally rapacious, the priests make no distinction between the holy and the common, the officials are rapacious and dishonest, the prophets whitewash defects which they ought to expose (cf. Eze 13:10 ff.). But the common people are as bad as their leaders: they, too, wrong wherever they can. Not a good man among them all to save the city from destruction. (The first seven words of Eze 22:25 should read simply whose princes.)
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Covenant unfaithfulness 22:1-16
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Another message came from the Lord instructing Ezekiel to remind the residents of the bloody city of Jerusalem about all their abominations (cf. Eze 20:4). A list of specific sins was necessary for him to pronounce judgment on them. Jerusalem was bloody because of all the blood its residents had shed, the blood of innocent people (cf. Nah 3:1).
Shedding blood was Jerusalem’s primary offense, according to this prophecy (cf. Eze 22:3-4; Eze 22:6; Eze 22:9; Eze 22:12-13), and it had its roots in idolatry. The pagan religious practices that God’s people had adopted did not curb their abuse of other people, much less encourage altruistic living. Idolatry even promoted the taking of other people’s lives through human sacrifice. Whenever people disregard the revealed will of God, crimes of violence and bloodshed follow.
"Seven times in this prophecy the word ’blood’ or ’bloodshed’ (Hebrew, dam and damim) occur as characterizing the crimes against God’s covenant that had been occurring routinely in Jerusalem. These words have a special idiomatic meaning in Hebrew that their usual translation does not entirely convey in English. They connote ’harm’ or ’hurt,’ and that is what much of Eze 22:1-16 is about: the harm or hurt done by people in power in Jerusalem (and by implication elsewhere in Judah) to those who have no power, such as the poor, the sick, the uneducated, etc. By extension, ’blood’ and bloodshed’ also come to mean in Hebrew anything ’violent’ or just simply ’vile,’ even if it does not actually involve causing physical harm to another person." [Note: Stuart, p. 209.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
FINAL ORACLES AGAINST JERUSALEM
Eze 22:1-31; Eze 24:1-27
THE close of the first period of Ezekiels work was marked by two dramatic incidents, which made the day memorable both in the private life of the prophet and in the history of the nation. In the first place it coincided exactly with the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem. The prophets mysterious knowledge of what was happening at a distance was duly recorded, in order that its subsequent confirmation through the ordinary channels of intelligence might prove the divine origin of his message. {Eze 24:1-2} That Ezekiel actually did this we have no reason to doubt. Then the sudden death of his wife on the evening of the same day, and his unusual behaviour under the bereavement, caused a sensation among the exiles which the prophet was instructed to utilise as a means of driving home the appeal just made to them. These transactions must have had a profound effect on Ezekiels fellow-captives. They made his personality the centre of absorbing interest to the Jews in Babylon; and the two years of silence on his part which ensued were to them years of anxious foreboding about the result of the siege.
At this juncture the prophets thoughts naturally are occupied with the subject which hitherto formed the principal burden of his prophecy. The first part of his career accordingly closes, as it had begun, with a symbol of the fall of Jerusalem. Before this, however, he had drawn out the solemn indictment against Jerusalem which is given in chapter 22, although the finishing touches were probably added after the destruction of the city. The substance of that chapter is so closely related to the symbolic representation in the first part of chapter 24 that it will be convenient to consider it here as an introduction to the concluding oracles addressed more directly to the exiles of Tel-abib.
I.
The purpose of this arraignment-the most stately of Ezekiels orations-is to exhibit Jerusalem in her true character as a city whose social condition is incurably corrupt. It begins with an enumeration of the prevalent sins of the capital (Eze 22:2-16); it ends with a denunciation of the various classes into which society was divided (Eze 22:23-31); while the short intervening passage is a figurative description of the judgment which is now inevitable (Eze 22:17-22).
1. The first part of the chapter, then, is a catalogue of the “abominations” which called down the vengeance of heaven upon the city of Jerusalem. The offences enumerated are nearly the same as those mentioned in the definitions of personal righteousness and wickedness given in chapter 18. It is not necessary to repeat what was there said about the characteristics of the moral ideal which had been formed in the mind of Ezekiel. Although he is dealing now with a society, his point of view is quite different from that represented by purely allegorical passages like chapters 16 and 23. The city is not idealised and treated as a moral individual, whose relations with Jehovah have to he set forth in symbolic and figurative language. It is conceived as an aggregate of individuals bound together in social relations; and the sins charged against it are the actual transgressions of the men who are members of the community. Hence the standard of public morality is precisely the same as that which is elsewhere applied to the individual in his personal relation to God; and the sins enumerated are attributed to the city merely because they are tolerated and encouraged in individuals by laxity of public opinion and the force of evil example. Jerusalem is a community in which these different crimes are perpetrated: “Father and mother are despised in thee; the stranger is oppressed in the midst of thee; orphan and widow are wronged in thee; slanderous men seeking blood have been in thee; flesh with the blood is eaten in thee; lewdness is committed in the midst of thee; the fathers shame is uncovered in thee; she that was unclean in her separation hath been humbled in thee.” So the grave and measured indictment runs on. It is because of these things that Jerusalem as a whole is “guilty” and “unclean” and has brought near her day of retribution (Eze 22:4). Such a conception of corporate guilt undoubtedly appeals more directly to our ordinary conscience of public morality than the more poetic representations where Jerusalem is compared to a faithless and treacherous woman. We have no difficulty in judging of any modern city in the very same way as Ezekiel here judges Jerusalem; and in this respect it is interesting to notice the social evils which he regards as marking out that city as ripe for destruction.
There are three features of the state of things in Jerusalem in which the prophet recognises the symptoms of an incurable social condition. The first is the loss of a true conception of God. In ancient Israel this defect necessarily assumed: the form of idolatry. Hence the multiplication. of idols appropriately finds a place among the marks of the “uncleanness” which made Jerusalem hateful in the eyes of Jehovah (Eze 22:3). But the root of idolatry in Israel was the incapacity or the unwillingness of the people to live up to the lofty conception of the Divine nature which was taught by the prophets. Throughout the ancient world religion was felt to be the indispensable bond of society, and the gods that were worshipped reflected more or less fully the ideals that swayed the life of the community. To Israel the religion of Jehovah represented the highest social ideal that was then known on earth. It meant righteousness, and purity, and brotherhood, and compassion for the poor and distressed. When these virtues decayed she forgot Jehovah (Eze 22:12)-forgot His character even if she remembered His name-and the service of false gods was the natural and obvious expression of the fact. There is therefore a profound truth in Ezekiels mind when he numbers the idols of Jerusalem amongst the indications of a degenerate society. They were the evidence that she had lost the sense of God as a holy and righteous spiritual presence in her midst, and that loss was at once the source and symptom of widespread moral declension. It is one of the chief lessons of the Old Testament that a religion which was neither the product of national genius. nor the embodiment of national aspiration, but was based on supernatural revelation, proved itself in the history of Israel to be the only possible safeguard against the tendencies which made for social disintegration.
A second mark of depravity which Ezekiel discovers in the capital is the perversion of certain moral instincts which are just as essential to the preservation of society as a true conception of God. For if society rests at one end on religion, it rests at the other on instinct. The closest and most fundamental of human relations depend on innate perceptions which may be easily destroyed, but which when destroyed can scarcely be recovered. The sanctities of marriage and the family will hardly bear the coarse scrutiny of utilitarian ethics; yet they are the foundation on which the whole social fabric is built. And there is no part of Ezekiels indictment of Jerusalem which conveys to our minds a more vivid sense of utter corruption than where he speaks of the loss of filial piety and; revolting forms of sexual impurity as prevalent sins in the city. Here at least he carries the conviction of every moralist with him. He instances no offence of this kind which would not be branded as unnatural by any system of ethics as heartily as it is by the Old Testament. It is possible, on the other hand, that he ranks on the same level with these sins ceremonial impurities appealing to feelings of a different order, to which no permanent moral value can be attached. When, for example, he instances eating with the blood as an “abomination,” he appeals to a law which is no longer binding on us. But even that regulation was not so worthless, from a moral point of view at that time as we are apt to suppose. The abhorrence of eating blood was connected with certain sacrificial ideas which attributed a mystic significance to the blood as the seat of animal life. So long as these ideas existed no man could commit this offence without injuring his moral nature and loosening the Divine sanctions of morality as a whole. It is a false illuminism which seeks to disparage the moral insight of the prophet on the ground that he did not teach an abstract system of ethics in which ceremonial precepts were sharply distinguished from duties which we consider moral.
The third feature of Jerusalems guilty condition is lawless violation of human rights. Neither life nor property was secure. Judicial murders were frequent in the city, and minor forms of oppression, such as usury, spoliation of the unprotected, and robbery, were of daily occurrence. The administration of justice was corrupted by systematic bribery and perjury, and the lives of innocent men were ruthlessly sacrificed under the forms of law. This after all is the aspect of things which bulks most largely in the prophets indictment. Jerusalem is addressed as a “city shedding blood in her midst,” and throughout the accusation the charge of bloodshed is that which constantly recurs. Misgovernment and party strife, and perhaps religious persecution, had converted the city into a vast human shambles, and the blood of the innocent slain cried aloud to heaven for vengeance. “Of what avail,” asks the prophet, “are the stores of wealth piled up in the hands of a few against this damning witness of blood? Jehovah smites His hand [in derision] against her gains that she has made, and against her blood which is in her midst. How can her heart stand or her hands be strong in the days when He deals with her?” (Eze 22:13-14). Drained of her best blood, given over to internecine strife, and stricken with the cowardice of conscious guilt, Jerusalem, already disgraced among the nations, must fall an easy victim to the Chaldaean invaders, who are the agents of Jehovahs judgments.
2. But the most serious aspect of the situation is that which is dealt with in the peroration of the chapter (Eze 22:23-31). Outbursts of vice and lawlessness such as has been described may occur in any society, but they are not necessarily fatal to a community so long as it possesses a conscience which can be roused to effective protest against them. Now the worst thing about Jerusalem was that she lacked this indispensable condition of recovery. No voice was raised on the side of righteousness, no man dared to stem the tide of wickedness that swept through her streets. Not merely that she harboured within her walls men guilty of incest and robbery and murder, but that her leading classes were demoralised, that public spirit had decayed among her citizens, marked her as incapable of reformation. She was “a land not watered,” “and not rained upon in a day of indignation” (Eze 22:24); the springs of her civic virtue were dried up, and a blight spread through all sections of her population. Ezekiels impeachment of different classes of society brings out this fact with great force. First of all the ancient institutions of social order, government, priesthood, and prophecy were in the hands of men who had lost the spirit of their office and abused their position for the advancement of private interests. Her princes have been, instead of humane rulers and examples of noble living, cruel and rapacious tyrants, enriching themselves at the cost of their subjects (Eze 22:25). The priests, whose function was to maintain the outward ordinances of religion and foster the spirit of reverence, have done their utmost, by falsification of the Torah, to bring religion into contempt and obliterate the distinction between the holy and the profane (Eze 22:26). The nobles had been a pack of ravening wolves, imitating the rapacity of the court, and hunting down prey which the royal lion would have disdained to touch (Eze 22:27). As for the professional prophets-those degenerate representatives of the old champions of truth and mercy-we have already seen what they were worth (chapter 13). They who should have been foremost to denounce civil wrong are fit for nothing but to stand by and bolster up with lying oracles in the name of Jehovah a constitution which sheltered crimes like these (Eze 22:28).
From the ruling classes the prophets glance turns for a moment to the “people of the land,” the dim common population, where virtue might have been expected to find its last retreat. It is characteristic of the age of Ezekiel that the prophets begin to deal more particularly with the sins of the masses as distinct from the classes. This was due partly perhaps to a real increase of ungodliness in the body of the people, but partly also to a deeper sense of the importance of the individual apart from his position in the state. These prophets seem to feel that there had been anywhere among rich or poor an honest response to the will of Jehovah it would have been a token that God had not altogether rejected Israel. Jeremiah puts this view very strongly when in the fifth chapter he says that if one man could be found in Jerusalem who did justice and sought truth the Lord would pardon her; and his vain search for that one man begins among the poor. It is this same motive that leads Ezekiel to include the humble citizen in his survey of the moral condition of Jerusalem. It is little wonder that under such leaders they had cast off the restraints of humanity, and oppressed those who were still more defenceless than themselves. But it showed nevertheless that real religion had no longer a foothold in the city. It proved that the greed of gain had eaten into the very heart of the people and destroyed the ties of kindred and mutual sympathy, through which alone the will of Jehovah could be realised. No matter although they were obscure householders, without political power or responsibility; if they had been good men in their private relations, Jerusalem would have been a better place to live in. Ezekiel indeed does not go so far as to say that a single good life would have saved the city. He expects of a good man that he be a man in the full sense-a man who speaks boldly on behalf of righteousness and resists the prevalent evils with all his strength: “I sought among them a man to build up a fence, and to stand in the breach before Me on behalf of the land, that it might not be destroyed; and I found none. So I poured out My indignation upon them; with the fire of My wrath I consumed them: I have returned their way upon their head, saith the Lord Jehovah” (Eze 22:30-31).
3. But we should misunderstand Ezekiels position if we supposed that his prediction of the speedy destruction of Jerusalem was merely an inference from his clear insight into the necessary conditions of social welfare which were being violated by her rulers and her citizens. That is one part of his message, but it could not stand alone. The purpose of the indictment we have considered is simply to explain the moral reasonableness of Jehovahs. action in the great act of judgment which the prophet knows to be approaching. It is no doubt a general law of history that moribund communities are not allowed to die a natural death. Their usual fate is to perish in the struggle for existence before some other and sounder nation. But no human sagacity can foresee how that law will be verified in any particular case. It may seem clear to us now that Israel must have fallen sooner or later before the advance of the great Eastern empires, but an ordinary observer could not have foretold with the confidence and precision which mark the predictions of Ezekiel in what manner and within what time the end would come. Of that aspect of the prophets mind no explanation can be given save that God revealed His secret to His servants the prophets.
Now this element of the prophecy seems to be brought out by the image of Jerusalems fate which occupies the middle verses of the chapter (Eze 22:17-22). The city is compared to the crucible in which all the refuse of Israels national life is to undergo its final trial by fire. The prophet sees in imagination the terror-stricken provincial population swept into the capital before the approach of the Chaldeans: and he says, “Thus doth Jehovah cast His ore into the furnace-the silver, the brass, the iron, the lead, and the tin; and He will kindle the fire with His anger, and blow upon it till He have consumed the impurities of the land.” The image of the smelting-pot had been used by Isaiah as an emblem of purifying judgment, the object of which was the removal of injustice and the restoration of the state to its former splendour: “I will again bring My hand upon thee, smelting out thy dross with lye and taking away all thine alloy; and I will make thy judges to be again as aforetime, and thy counsellors as at the beginning: thereafter thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city” (Isa 1:25-26). Ezekiel, however, can hardly have contemplated such a happy result of the operation. The whole house of Israel has become dross, from which no precious metal can be extracted; and the object of the smelting is only the demonstration of the utter worthlessness of the people for the ends of Gods kingdom. The more refractory the material to be dealt with the fiercer must be the fire that tests it; and the severity of the exterminating judgment is the only thing symbolised by the metaphor as used by Ezekiel. In this he follows Jeremiah, who applies the figure in precisely the same sense: “The bellows snort, the lead is consumed of the fire; in vain he smelts and smelts: but the wicked are not taken away. Refuse silver shall men call them, for the Lord hath rejected them.” {Jer 6:29-30} In this way the section supplements the teaching of the rest of the chapter. Jerusalem is full of dross-that has been proved by the enumeration of her crimes and the estimate of her social condition. But the fire which consumes the dross represents a special providential intervention bringing the history of the state to a summary and decisive conclusion. And the Refiner who superintends the process is Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, whose righteous will is executed by the march of conquering hosts, and revealed to men in His dealings with the people whom He had known of all the families of the earth.
II.
The chapter we have just studied was evidently not composed with a view to immediate publication. It records the view of Jerusalems guilt and punishment which was borne in upon the mind of the prophet in the solitude of his chamber, but it was not destined to see the light until the whole of his teaching could be submitted in its final form to a wider and more receptive audience. It is equally obvious that the scenes described in chapter 24 were really enacted in the full view of the exiled community. We have reached the crisis of Ezekiels ministry. For the last time until his warnings of doom shall be fulfilled he emerges from his partial seclusion, and in symbolism whose vivid force could not have failed to impress the most listless hearer he announces once more the destruction of the Hebrew nation. The burden of his message is that that day-the tenth day of the tenth month of the ninth year-marked the beginning of the end. “On that very day”-a day to be commemorated for seventy long years by a national fast (Zec 8:19; Zec 7:5)-Nebuchadnezzar was drawing his lines around Jerusalem. The bare announcement to men who knew what a Chaldaean siege meant must have sent a thrill of consternation through their minds. If this vision of what was happening in a distant land should prove true, they must have felt that all hope of deliverance was now cut off. Sceptical as they may have been of the moral principles that lay behind Ezekiels prediction, they could not deny that the issue he foresaw was only the natural sequel to the fact he so confidently announced.
The image here used of the fate of Jerusalem would recall to the minds of the exiles the ill-omened saying which expressed the reckless spirit prevalent in the city: “This city is the pot, and we are the flesh.” {Eze 11:3} It was well understood in Babylon that these men were playing a desperate game, and did not shrink from the horrors of a siege. “Set on the pot,” then, cries the prophet to his listeners, “set it on, and pour in water also, and gather the pieces into it, every good joint, leg, and shoulder; fill it with the choicest bones. Take them from the best of the flock, and then pile up the wood under it; let its pieces be boiled and its bones cooked within it” (Eze 24:3-5). This part of the parable required no explanation; it simply represents the terrible miseries endured by the population of Jerusalem during the siege now commencing. But then by a sudden transition the speaker turns the thoughts of his hearers to another aspect of the judgment (Eze 24:6-8). The city itself is like a rusty caldron, unfit for any useful purpose until by some means it has been cleansed from its impurity. It is as if the crimes that had been perpetrated in Jerusalem had stained her very stones with blood. She had not even taken steps to conceal the traces of her wickedness; they lie like blood on the bare rock, an open witness to her guilt. Often Jehovah had sought to purify her by more measured chastisements, but it has now been proved that “her much rust will not go from her except by fire” (Eze 24:12). Hence the end of the siege will be twofold. First of all the contents of the caldron will be indiscriminately thrown out-a figure for the dispersion and captivity of the inhabitants; and then the pot must be set empty on the glowing coals till its rust is thoroughly burned out-a symbol of the burning of the city and its subsequent desolation (Eze 24:11). The idea that the material world may contract defilement through the sins of those who live in it is one that is hard for us to realise, but it is in keeping with the view of sin presented by Ezekiel, and indeed by the Old Testament generally. There are certain natural emblems of sin, such as uncleanness or disease or uncovered blood, etc., which had to be largely used in order to educate mens moral perceptions. Partly these rest on the analogy between physical defect and moral evil; but partly, as here, they result from a strong sense of association between human deeds and their effects or circumstances. Jerusalem is unclean as a place where wicked deeds have been done, and even the destruction of the sinners cannot, in the mind of Ezekiel, clear her from the unhallowed associations of her history. She must lie empty and dreary for a generation, swept by the winds of heaven, before devout Israelites can again twine their affections round the hope of her glorious future.
Even while delivering this message of doom to the people the prophets heart was burdened by the presemiment of a great personal sorrow. He had received an intimation that his wife was to be taken from him by a sudden stroke, and along with the intimation a command to refrain from all the usual signs of mourning. “So I spake to the people” (as recorded in Eze 24:1-14) “in the morning, and my wife died in the evening” (Eze 24:18). Just one touch of tenderness escapes him in relating this mysterious occurrence. She was the “delight of his eyes”: that phrase alone reveals that there was a fountain of tears sealed up within the breast of this stern preacher. How the course of his life may have been influenced by a bereavement so strangely coincident with a change in his whole attitude to his people, we cannot even surmise. Nor is it possible to say how far he merely used the incident to convey a lesson to the exiles, or how far his private grief was really swallowed up in concern for the calamity of his country. All we are told is that “in the morning he did as he was commanded.” He neither uttered loud lamentations, nor disarranged his raiment, nor covered his head, nor ate the “bread of men,” nor adopted any of the customary signs of mourning for the dead. When the astonished neighbours inquire the meaning of his strange demeanour, he assures them that his conduct now is a sign of what theirs will be when his words have come true. When the tidings reach them that Jerusalem has actually fallen, when they realise how many interests dear to them have perished-the desolation of the sanctuary, the loss of their own sons and daughters-they will experience a sense of calamity which will instinctively discard all the conventional and even the natural expressions of grief. They shall neither mourn nor weep, but sit in dumb bewilderment, haunted by a dull consciousness of guilt which yet is far removed from genuine contrition of heart. They shall pine away in their iniquities. For while their sorrow will be too deep for words, it will not yet be the godly sorrow that worketh repentance. It will be the sullen despair and apathy of men disenchanted of the illusions on which their national life was based, of men left without hope and without God in the world.
Here the curtain falls on the first act of Ezekiels ministry. He appears to have retired for the space of two years into complete privacy, ceasing entirely his public appeals to the people, and waiting for the time of his vindication as a prophet. The sense of restraint under which he has hitherto exercised the function of a public teacher cannot be removed until the tidings have reached Babylon that the city has fallen. Meanwhile, with the delivery of this message, his contest with the unbelief of his fellow captives comes to an end. But when that day arrives “his mouth shall be open, and he shall be no more dumb.” A new career will open out before him, in which he can devote all his powers of mind and heart to the inspiring work of reviving faith in the promises of God, and so building up a new Israel out of the ruins of the old.