Part I. The Preparation And Call Of The Prophet.
Chapter I. Decline And Fall Of The Jewish State.
Ezekiel is a
prophet of the Exile. He was one of the priests who went into
captivity with King Jehoiachin in the year 597, and the whole of
his prophetic career falls after that event. Of his previous life
and circumstances we have no direct information, beyond the facts
that he was a priest and that his father's name was Buzi. One or
two inferences, however, may be regarded as reasonably certain. We
know that that first deportation of Judæans to Babylon was confined
to the nobility, the men of war, and the craftsmen (2 Kings xxiv.
14-16); and since Ezekiel was neither a soldier nor an artisan, his
place in the train of captives must have been due to his social
position. He must have belonged to the upper ranks of the
priesthood, who formed part of the aristocracy of Jerusalem. He was
thus a member of the house of Zadok; and his familiarity with the
details of the Temple ritual makes it probable that he had actually
officiated as a priest in the national sanctuary. Moreover, a
careful study of the book gives the impression that he was no
longer a young man at the time when he received his call to the
prophetic office. He appears as one whose views of life are already
matured, who has outlived the buoyancy and enthusiasm of youth, and
learned to estimate the moral possibilities of life with the
sobriety that comes through experience. This impression is
confirmed by the fact that he was married and had a house of his own from the commencement
of his work, and probably at the time of his captivity. But the
most important fact of all is that Ezekiel had lived through a
period of unprecedented public calamity, and one fraught with the
most momentous consequences for the future of religion. Moving in
the highest circles of society, in the centre of the national life,
he must have been fully cognisant of the grave events in which no
thoughtful observer could fail to recognise the tokens of the
approaching dissolution of the Hebrew state. Amongst the influences
that prepared him for his prophetic mission, a leading place must
therefore be assigned to the teaching of history; and we cannot
commence our study of his prophecies better than by a brief survey
of the course of events that led up to the turning-point of his own
career, and at the same time helped to form his conception of God's
providential dealings with His people Israel.
At the time of
the prophet's birth the kingdom of Judah was still a nominal
dependency of the great Assyrian empire. From about the middle of
the seventh century, however, the power of Nineveh had been on the
wane. Her energies had been exhausted in the suppression of a
determined revolt in Babylonia. Media and Egypt had recovered their
independence, and there were many signs that a new crisis in the
affairs of nations was at hand.
The first
historic event which has left discernible traces in the writings of
Ezekiel is an irruption of Scythian barbarians, which took place in
the reign of Josiah (c. 626). Strangely enough, the
historical books of the Old Testament contain no record of this
remarkable invasion, although its effects on the political
situation of Judah were important and far-reaching. According to
Herodotus, Assyria was already hard pressed by the Medes, when
suddenly the Scythians burst through the passes of the Caucasus, defeated the Medes, and
committed extensive ravages throughout Western Asia for a period of
twenty-eight years. They are said to have contemplated the invasion
of Egypt, and to have actually reached the Philistine territory,
when by some means they were induced to withdraw.Herodotus, i. 103-106.
Judah
therefore was in imminent danger, and the terror inspired by these
destructive hordes is reflected in the prophecies of Zephaniah and
Jeremiah, who saw in the northern invaders the heralds of the great
day of Jehovah. The force of the storm, however, was probably spent
before it reached Palestine, and it seems to have swept past along
the coast, leaving the mountain land of Israel untouched. Although
Ezekiel was not old enough to have remembered the panic caused by
these movements, the report of them would be one of the earliest
memories of his childhood, and it made a lasting impression on his
mind. One of his later prophecies, that against Gog, is coloured by
such reminiscences, the last judgment on the heathen being
represented under forms suggested by a Scythian invasion (chs.
xxxviii., xxxix.). We may note also that in ch. xxxii. the names of
Meshech and Tubal occur in the list of conquering nations who have
already gone down to the under-world. These northern peoples formed
the kernel of the army of Gog, and the only occasion on which they
can be supposed to have played the part of great conquerors in the
past is in connection with the Scythian devastations, in which they
probably had a share.
The withdrawal
of the Scythians from the neighbourhood of Palestine was followed
by the great reformation which made the eighteenth year of Josiah
an epoch in the history of Israel. The conscience of the nation had
been quickened by its escape from so great a peril, and the time
was favourable
for carrying out the changes which were necessary in order to bring
the religious practice of the country into conformity with the
requirements of the Law. The outstanding feature of the movement
was the discovery of the book of Deuteronomy in the Temple, and the
ratification of a solemn league and covenant, by which the king,
princes, and people pledged themselves to carry out its demands.
This took place in the year 621, somewhere near the time of
Ezekiel's birth.If the “thirtieth year” of ch. i. 1 could refer to the
prophet's age at the time of his call, his birth would fall in the
very year in which the Law Book was found. Although that
interpretation is extremely improbable, he can hardly have been
much more, or less, than thirty years old at the time.
The
prophet's youth was therefore spent in the wake of the reformation;
and although the first hopes cherished by its promoters may have
died away before he was able to appreciate its tendencies, we may
be sure that he received from it impulses which continued with him
to the end of his life. We may perhaps allow ourselves to
conjecture that his father belonged to that section of the
priesthood which, under Hilkiah its head, co-operated with the king
in the task of reform, and desired to see a pure worship
established in the Temple. If so, we can readily understand how the
reforming spirit passed into the very fibre of Ezekiel's mind. To
how great an extent his thinking was influenced by the ideas of
Deuteronomy appears from almost every page of his prophecies.
There was yet
another way in which the Scythian invasion influenced the prospects
of the Hebrew kingdom. Although the Scythians appear to have
rendered an immediate service to Assyria by saving Nineveh from the
first attack of the Medes, there is little doubt that their ravages
throughout the northern and western parts of the empire prepared
the way for its ultimate collapse, and weakened its hold on the
outlying provinces. Accordingly we find that Josiah, in pursuance of his scheme of
reformation, exercised a freedom of action beyond the boundaries of
his own land which would not have been tolerated if Assyria had
retained her old vigour. Patriotic visions of an independent Hebrew
monarchy seem to have combined with new-born zeal for a pure
national religion to make the latter part of Josiah's reign the
short “Indian summer” of Israel's
national existence.
The period of
partial independence was brought to an end about 607 by the fall of
Nineveh before the united forces of the Medes and the Babylonians.
In itself this event was of less consequence to the history of
Judah than might be supposed. The Assyrian empire vanished from the
earth with a completeness which is one of the surprises of history;
but its place was taken by the new Babylonian empire, which
inherited its policy, its administration, and the best part of its
provinces. The seat of empire was transferred from Nineveh to
Babylon; but any other change which was felt at Jerusalem was due
solely to the exceptional vigour and ability of its first monarch,
Nebuchadnezzar.
The real
turning-point in the destinies of Israel came a year or two earlier
with the defeat and death of Josiah at Megiddo. About the year 608,
while the fate of Nineveh still hung in the balance, Pharaoh Necho
prepared an expedition to the Euphrates, with the object of
securing himself in the possession of Syria. It was assuredly no
feeling of loyalty to his Assyrian suzerain which prompted Josiah
to throw himself across Necho's path. He acted as an independent
monarch, and his motives were no doubt the loftiest that ever urged
a king to a dangerous, not to say foolhardy, enterprise. The zeal
with which the crusade against idolatry and false worship had been
prosecuted seems to have begotten a confidence on the part of the
king's advisers that the hand of Jehovah was with them, and that His help might be
reckoned on in any undertaking entered upon in His name. One would
like to know what the prophet Jeremiah said about the venture; but
probably the defence of Jehovah's land seemed so obvious a duty of
the Davidic king that he was not even consulted. It was the
determination to maintain the inviolability of the land which was
Jehovah's sanctuary that encouraged Josiah in defiance of every
prudential consideration to endeavour by force to intercept the
passage of the Egyptian army. The disaster that followed gave the
death-blow to this illusion and the shallow optimism which sprang
from it. There was an end of idealism in politics; and the ruling
class in Jerusalem fell back on the old policy of vacillation
between Egypt and her eastern rival which had always been the snare
of Jewish statesmanship. And with Josiah's political ideal the
faith on which it was based also gave way. It seemed that the
experiment of exclusive reliance on Jehovah as the guardian of the
nation's interests had been tried and had failed, and so the death
of the last good king of Judah was a signal for a great outburst of
idolatry, in which every divine power was invoked and every form of
worship sedulously practised in order to sustain the courage of men
who were resolved to fight to the death for their national
existence.
By the time of
Josiah's death Ezekiel was able to take an intelligent interest in
public affairs. He lived through the troubled period that ensued in
the full consciousness of its disastrous import for the fortunes of
his people, and occasional references to it are to be found in his
writings. He remembers and commiserates the sad fate of Jehoahaz,
the king of the people's choice, who was dethroned and imprisoned
by Pharaoh Necho during the short interval of Egyptian supremacy.
The next king, Jehoiakim, received the throne as a vassal of Egypt,
on the condition of paying a heavy annual tribute. After the battle of
Carchemish, in which Necho was defeated by Nebuchadnezzar and
driven out of Syria, Jehoiakim transferred his allegiance to the
Babylonian monarch; but after three years' service he revolted,
encouraged no doubt by the usual promises of support from Egypt.
The incursions of marauding bands of Chaldæans, Syrians, Moabites,
and Ammonites, instigated doubtless from Babylon, kept him in play
until Nebuchadnezzar was free to devote his attention to the
western part of his empire. Before that time arrived, however,
Jehoiakim had died, and was followed by his son Jehoiachin. This
prince was hardly seated on the throne, when a Babylonian army,
with Nebuchadnezzar at its head, appeared before the gates of
Jerusalem. The siege ended in a capitulation, and the king, the
queen-mother, the army and nobility, a section of the priests and
the prophets, and all the skilled artisans were transported to
Babylonia (597).
With this event
the history of Ezekiel may be said to begin. But in order to
understand the conditions under which his ministry was exercised,
we must try to realise the situation created by this first removal
of Judæan captives. From this time to the final capture of
Jerusalem, a period of eleven years, the national life was broken
into two streams, which ran in parallel channels, one in Judah and
the other in Babylon. The object of the captivity was of course to
deprive the nation of its natural leaders, its head and its hands,
and leave it incapable of organised resistance to the Chaldæans. In
this respect Nebuchadnezzar simply adopted the traditional policy
of the later Assyrian kings, only he applied it with much less
rigour than they were accustomed to display. Instead of making
nearly a clean sweep of the conquered population, and filling the
gap by colonists from a distant part of his empire, as had been
done in the case of Samaria, he contented himself with removing the more
dangerous elements of the state, and making a native prince
responsible for the government of the country. The result showed
how greatly he had underrated the fierce and fanatical
determination which was already a part of the Jewish character.
Nothing in the whole story is more wonderful than the rapidity with
which the enfeebled remnant in Jerusalem recovered their military
efficiency, and prepared a more resolute defence than the unbroken
nation had been able to offer.
The exiles, on
the other hand, succeeded in preserving most of their national
peculiarities under the very eyes of their conquerors. Of their
temporal condition very little is known beyond the fact that they
found themselves in tolerably easy circumstances, with the
opportunity to acquire property and amass wealth. The advice which
Jeremiah sent them from Jerusalem, that they should identify
themselves with the interests of Babylon, and live settled and
orderly lives in peaceful industry and domestic happiness (Jer.
xxix. 5-7), shows that they were not treated as prisoners or as
slaves. They appear to have been distributed in villages in the
fertile territory of Babylon, and to have formed themselves into
separate communities under the elders, who were the natural
authorities in a simple Semitic society. The colony in which
Ezekiel lived was located in Tel Abib, near the Nahr
(river or canal) Kebar, but neither the river nor the settlement
can now be identified. The Kebar, if not the name of an arm of the
Euphrates itself, was probably one of the numerous irrigating
canals which intersected in all parts the great alluvial plain of
the Euphrates and Tigris.The opinion, once prevalent, that it
was the Chaboras in Northern Mesopotamia, where colonies of
Northern Israelites had been settled a century and a half before,
has nothing to justify it, and is now universally abandoned.
In this settlement
the prophet had his own house, where the people were free to visit
him, and social life in all probability differed little from that
in a small provincial town in Palestine. That, to be sure, was a
great change for the quondam aristocrats of Jerusalem, but it was
not a change to which they could not readily adapt themselves.
Of much greater
importance, however, is the state of mind which prevailed amongst
these exiles. And here again the remarkable thing is their intense
preoccupation with matters national and Israelitic. A lively
intercourse with the mother country was kept up, and the exiles
were perfectly informed of all that was going on in Jerusalem.
There were, no doubt, personal and selfish reasons for their keen
interest in the doings of their countrymen at home. The antipathy
which existed between the two branches of the Jewish people was
extreme. The exiles had left their children behind them (Ezek.
xxiv. 21, 25) to suffer under the reproach of their fathers'
misfortunes. They appear also to have been compelled to sell their
estates hurriedly on the eve of their departure, and such
transactions, necessarily turning to the advantage of the
purchasers, left a deep grudge in the breasts of the sellers. Those
who remained in the land exulted in the calamity which had brought
so much profit to themselves, and thought themselves perfectly
secure in so doing because they regarded their brethren as men
driven out for their sins from Jehovah's heritage. The exiles on
their part affected the utmost contempt for the pretensions of the
upstart plebeians who were carrying things with a high hand in
Jerusalem. Like the French Émigrés in the time of the
Revolution, they no doubt felt that their country was being ruined
for want of proper guidance and experienced statesmanship. Nor was
it altogether patrician prejudice that gave them this feeling of
their own superiority.
Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel regard the exiles as the better part of
the nation, and the nucleus of the Messianic community of the
future. For the present, indeed, there does not seem to have been
much to choose, in point of religious belief and practice, between
the two sections of the people. In both places the majority were
steeped in idolatrous and superstitious notions; some appear even
to have entertained the purpose of assimilating themselves to the
heathen around, and only a small minority were steadfast in their
allegiance to the national religion. Yet the exiles could not, any
more than the remnant in Judah, abandon the hope that Jehovah would
save His sanctuary from desecration. The Temple was “the excellency of their strength, the desire of their
eyes, and that which their soul pitied” (Ezek. xxiv. 21).
False prophets appeared in Babylon to prophesy smooth things, and
assure the exiles of a speedy restoration to their place in the
people of God. It was not till Jerusalem was laid in ruins, and the
Jewish state had disappeared from the earth, that the Israelites
were in a mood to understand the meaning of God's judgment, or to
learn the lessons which the prophecy of nearly two centuries had
vainly striven to inculcate.
We have now
reached the point at which the Book of Ezekiel opens, and what
remains to be told of the history of the time will be given in
connection with the prophecies on which it is fitted to throw
light. But before proceeding to consider his entrance on the
prophetic office, it will be useful to dwell for a little on what
was probably the most fruitful influence of Ezekiel's youth, the
personal influence of his contemporary and predecessor Jeremiah.
This will form the subject of the next chapter.
Chapter II. Jeremiah And
Ezekiel.
Each of the
communities described in the last chapter was the theatre of the
activity of a great prophet. When Ezekiel began to prophesy at Tel
Abib, Jeremiah was approaching the end of his great and tragic
career. For five-and-thirty years he had been known as a prophet,
and during the latter part of that time had been the most prominent
figure in Jerusalem. For the next five years their ministries were
contemporaneous, and it is somewhat remarkable that they ignore
each other in their writings so completely as they do. We would
give a good deal to have some reference by Ezekiel to Jeremiah or
by Jeremiah to Ezekiel, but we find none. Scripture does not often
favour us with those cross-lights which prove so instructive in the
hands of a modern historian. While Jeremiah knows of the rise of
false prophets in Babylonia, and Ezekiel denounces those he had
left behind in Jerusalem, neither of these great men betrays the
slightest consciousness of the existence of the other. This silence
is specially noticeable on Ezekiel's part, because his frequent
descriptions of the state of society in Jerusalem give him abundant
opportunity to express his sympathy with the position of Jeremiah.
When we read in the twenty-second chapter that there was not found
a man to make up the fence and stand in the breach before God, we
might be tempted to conclude that he really was not aware of
Jeremiah's noble stand for righteousness in the corrupt and doomed city. And yet the
points of contact between the two prophets are so numerous and so
obvious that they cannot fairly be explained by the common
operation of the Spirit of God on the minds of both. There is
nothing in the nature of prophecy to forbid the view that one
prophet learned from another, and built on the foundation which his
predecessors had laid; and when we find a parallelism so close as
that between Jeremiah and Ezekiel we are driven to the conclusion
that the influence was unusually direct, and that the whole
thinking of the younger writer had been moulded by the teaching and
example of the older.
In what way this
influence was communicated is a question on which some difference
of opinion may exist. Some writers, such as Kuenen, think that the
indebtedness of Ezekiel to Jeremiah was mainly literary. That is to
say, they hold that it must be accounted for by prolonged study on
Ezekiel's part of the written prophecies of him who was his
teacher. Kuenen surmises that this happened after the destruction
of Jerusalem, when some friends of Jeremiah arrived in Babylon,
bringing with them the completed volume of his prophecies. Before
Ezekiel proceeded to write his own prophecies, his mind is supposed
to have been so saturated with the ideas and language of Jeremiah
that every part of his book bears the impress and betrays the
influence of his predecessor. In this fact, of course, Kuenen finds
an argument for the view that Ezekiel's prophecies were written at
a comparatively late period of his life. It is difficult to speak
with confidence on some of the points raised by this hypothesis.
That the influence of Jeremiah can be traced in all parts of the
book of Ezekiel is undoubtedly true; but it is not so clear that it
can be assigned equally to all periods of Jeremiah's activity. Many
of the prophecies of Jeremiah cannot be referred to a definite
date; and we do not know what means Ezekiel had of obtaining copies of
those which belong to the period after the two prophets were
separated. We know, however, that a great part of the book of
Jeremiah was in writing several years before Ezekiel was carried
away to Babylon; and we may safely assume that amongst the
treasures which he took with him into exile was the roll written by
Baruch to the dictation of Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim
(Jer. xxxvi.). Even later oracles may have reached Ezekiel either
before or during his prophetic career through the active
correspondence maintained between the exiles and Jerusalem. It is
possible, therefore, that even the literary dependence of Ezekiel
on Jeremiah may belong to a much earlier time than the final issue
of the book of Ezekiel; and if it should be found that ideas in the
earlier part of the book suggest acquaintance with a later
utterance of Jeremiah, the fact need not surprise us. It is
certainly no sufficient reason for concluding that the whole
substance of Ezekiel's prophecy had been recast under the influence
of a late perusal of the work of Jeremiah.
But, setting
aside verbal coincidences and other phenomena which suggest
literary dependence, there remains an affinity of a much deeper
kind between the teaching of the two prophets, which can only be
explained, if it is to be explained at all, by the personal
influence of the older upon the younger. And it is these more
fundamental resemblances which are of most interest for our present
purpose, because they may enable us to understand something of the
settled convictions with which Ezekiel entered on the prophet's
calling. Moreover, a comparison of the two prophets will bring out
more clearly than anything else certain aspects of the character of
Ezekiel which it is important to bear in mind. Both are men of
strongly marked individuality, and no conception of the age in which they lived can
safely be formed from the writings of either, taken alone.
It has been
already remarked that Jeremiah was the most conspicuous public
character of his day. If it be the case that he threw his spell
over the youthful mind of Ezekiel, the fact is the most striking
tribute to his influence that could be conceived. No two men could
differ more widely in natural temperament and character. Jeremiah
is the prophet of a dying nation, and the agony of Judah's
prolonged death-struggle is reproduced with tenfold intensity in
the inward conflict which rends the heart of the prophet.
Inexorable in his prediction of the coming doom, he confesses that
this is because he is over-mastered by the Divine power which urges
him into a path from which his nature recoiled. He deplores the
isolation which is forced upon him, the alienation of friends and
kinsmen, and the constant strife of which he is the reluctant
cause. He feels as if he could gladly shake off the burden of
prophetic responsibility and become a man amongst common men. His
human sympathies go forth towards his unhappy country, and his
heart bleeds for the misery which he sees hanging over the
misguided people, for whom he is forbidden even to pray. The tragic
conflict of his life reaches its height in those expostulations
with Jehovah which are amongst the most remarkable passages of the
Old Testament. They express the shrinking of a sensitive nature
from the inward necessity in which he was compelled to recognise
the higher truth; and the wrestling of an earnest spirit for the
assurance of his personal standing with God, when all the outward
institutions of religion were being dissolved.
To such mental
conflicts Ezekiel was a stranger, or if he ever passed through them
the traces of them have almost vanished from his written words. He
can hardly be said to be more severe than Jeremiah; but his
severity
seems more a part of himself, and more in keeping with the bent of
his disposition. He is wholly on the side of the divine
sovereignty; there is no reaction of the human sympathies against
the imperative dictates of the prophetic inspiration; he is one in
whom every thought seems brought into captivity to the word of
Jehovah. It is possible that the completeness with which Ezekiel
surrendered himself to the judicial aspect of his message may be
partly due to the fact that he had been familiar with its leading
conceptions from the teaching of Jeremiah; but it must also be due
to a certain austerity natural to him. Less emotional than
Jeremiah, his mind was more readily taken possession of by the
convictions that formed the substance of his prophetic message. He
was evidently a man of profoundly ethical habits of thought, stern
and uncompromising in his judgments, both on himself and other men,
and gifted with a strong sense of human responsibility. As his
captivity cut him off from living contact with the national life,
and enabled him to survey his country's condition with something of
the dispassionate scrutiny of a spectator, so his natural
disposition enabled him to realise in his own person that breach
with the past which was essential to the purification of religion.
He had the qualities which marked him out for the prophet of the
new order that was to be, as clearly as Jeremiah had those which
fitted him to be the prophet of a nation's dissolution. In social
standing, also, and professional training, the men were far removed
from each other. Both were priests, but Ezekiel belonged to the
house of Zadok, who officiated in the central sanctuary, while
Jeremiah's family may have been attached to one of the provincial
sanctuaries.This, however, is not certain.
Although Jeremiah's property and residence were in Anathoth, his
official connection may have been with the Temple in
Jerusalem.
The
interests of the two classes of priests came into sharp collision as a consequence
of Josiah's reformation. The law provided that the rural priesthood
should be admitted to the service of the Temple on equal terms with
their brethren of the sons of Zadok; but we are expressly informed
that the Temple priests successfully resisted this encroachment on
their peculiar privileges. It has been adduced by several
expositors as a proof of Ezekiel's freedom from caste prejudice,
that he was willing to learn from a man who was socially his
inferior, and who belonged to an order which he himself was to
declare unworthy of full priestly rights in the restored theocracy.
But it must be said that there was little in Jeremiah's public work
to call attention to the fact that he was by birth a priest. In the
profound spiritual sense of the Epistle to the Hebrews we may
indeed say that he was at heart a priest, “having compassion on the ignorant and them that are
out of the way, forasmuch as he himself was compassed with
infirmity.” But this quality of spiritual sympathy sprang
from his calling as a prophet rather than from his priestly
training. One of the contrasts between him and Ezekiel lies just in
the respective estimates of the worth of ritual which underlie
their teaching. Jeremiah is distinguished even among the prophets
by his indifference to the outward institutions and symbols of
religion which it is the priest's function to conserve. He stands
in the succession of Amos and Isaiah as an upholder of the purely
ethical character of the service of God. Ritual forms no essential
element of Jehovah's covenant with Israel, and it is doubtful if
his prophecies of the future contain any reference to a priestly
class or priestly ordinances.The passage xxxiii. 14-26 is wanting
in the LXX., and may possibly be a later insertion. Even if genuine
it would hardly alter the general estimate of the prophet's
teaching expressed above.
In the
present he
repudiates the actual popular worship as offensive to Jehovah, and,
except in so far as he may have given his support to Josiah's
reforms, he does not concern himself to put anything better in its
place. To Ezekiel, on the contrary, a pure worship is a primary
condition of Israel's enjoyment of the fellowship of Jehovah. All
through his teaching we detect his deep sense of the religious
value of priestly ceremonies, and in the concluding vision that
underlying thought comes out clearly as a fundamental principle of
the new religious constitution. Here again we can see how each
prophet was providentially fitted for the special work assigned him
to do. To Jeremiah it was given, amidst the wreck of all the
material embodiments in which faith had clothed itself in the past,
to realise the essential truth of religion as personal communion
with God, and so to rise to the conception of a purely spiritual
religion, in which the will of God should be written in the heart
of every believer. To Ezekiel was committed the different, but not
less necessary, task of organising the religion of the immediate
future, and providing the forms which were to enshrine the truths
of revelation until the coming of Christ. And that task could not,
humanly speaking, have been performed but by one whose training and
inclination taught him to appreciate the value of those rules of
ceremonial sanctity which were the tradition of the Hebrew
priesthood.
Very closely
connected with this is the attitude of the two prophets to what we
may call the legal aspect of religion. Jeremiah seems to have
become convinced at a very early date of the insufficiency and
shallowness of the revival of religion which was expressed in the
establishment of the national covenant in the reign of Josiah. He
seems also to have discerned some of the evils which are
inseparable from a religion of the letter, in which the claims of
God are presented in the form of external laws and ordinances. And these convictions
led him to the conception of a far higher manifestation of God's
redeeming grace to be realised in the future, in the form of a new
covenant, based on God's forgiving love, and operative through a
personal knowledge of God, and the law written on the heart and
mind of each member of the covenant people. That is to say, the
living principle of religion must be implanted in the heart of each
true Israelite, and his obedience must be what we call evangelical
obedience, springing from the free impulse of a nature renewed by
the knowledge of God. Ezekiel is also impressed by the failure of
the Deuteronomic covenant and the need of a new heart before Israel
is able to comply with the high requirements of the holy law of
God. But he does not appear to have been led to connect the failure
of the past with the inherent imperfection of a legal dispensation
as such. Although his teaching is full of evangelical truths,
amongst which the doctrine of regeneration holds a conspicuous
place, we yet observe that with him a man's righteousness before
God consists in acts of obedience to the objective precepts of the
divine law. This of course does not mean that Ezekiel was concerned
only about the outward act and indifferent to the spirit in which
the law was observed. But it does mean that the end of God's
dealings with His people was to bring them into a condition for
fulfilling His law, and that the great aim of the new Israel was
the faithful observance of the law which expressed the conditions
on which they could remain in communion with God. Accordingly
Ezekiel's final ideal is on a lower plane, and therefore more
immediately practicable, than that of Jeremiah. Instead of a purely
spiritual anticipation expressing the essential nature of the
perfect relation between God and man, Ezekiel presents us with a
definite, clearly conceived vision of a new theocracy—a state which
is to be the
outward embodiment of Jehovah's will and in which life is minutely
regulated by His law.
If in spite of
such wide differences of temperament, of education, and of
religious experience, we find nevertheless a substantial agreement
in the teaching of the two prophets, we must certainly recognise in
this a striking evidence of the stability of that conception of God
and His providence which was in the main a product of Hebrew
prophecy. It is not necessary here to enumerate all the points of
coincidence between Jeremiah and Ezekiel; but it will be of
advantage to indicate a few salient features which they have in
common. Of these one of the most important is their conception of
the prophetic office. It can hardly be doubted that on this subject
Ezekiel had learned much both from observation of Jeremiah's career
and from the study of his writings. He knew something of what it
meant to be a prophet to Israel before he himself received the
prophet's commission; and after he had received it his experience
ran closely parallel with that of his master. The idea of the
prophet as a man standing alone for God amidst a hostile world,
surrounded on every side by threats and opposition, was impressed
on each of them from the outset of his ministry. To be a true
prophet one must know how to confront men with an inflexibility
equal to theirs, sustained only by a divine power which assures him
of ultimate victory. He is cut off, not only from the currents of
opinion which play around him, but from all share in common joys
and sorrows, living a solitary life in sympathy with a God justly
alienated from His people. This attitude of antagonism to the
people, as Jeremiah well knew, had been the common fate of all true
prophets. What is characteristic of him and Ezekiel is that they
both enter on their work in the full consciousness of the stern and
hopeless nature of their task. Isaiah knew from the day he became
a prophet that the
effect of his teaching would be to harden the people in unbelief;
but he says nothing of personal enmity and persecution to be faced
from the outset. But now the crisis of the people's fate has
arrived, and the relations between the prophet and his age become
more and more strained as the great controversy approaches its
decision.
Another point of
agreement which may be here mentioned is the estimate of Israel's
sin. Ezekiel goes further than Jeremiah in the way of condemnation,
regarding the whole history of Israel as an unbroken record of
apostasy and rebellion, while Jeremiah at least looks back to the
desert wandering as a time when the ideal relation between Israel
and Jehovah was maintained. But on the whole, and especially with
respect to the present state of the nation, their judgment is
substantially one. The source of all the religious and moral
disorders of the nation is infidelity to Jehovah, which is
manifested in the worship of false gods and reliance on the help of
foreign nations. Specially noteworthy is the frequent recurrence in
Jeremiah and Ezekiel of the figure of “whoredom,” an idea introduced into prophecy by
Hosea to describe these two sins. The extension of the figure to
the false worship of Jehovah by images and other idolatrous emblems
can also be traced to Hosea; and in Ezekiel it is sometimes
difficult to say which species of idolatry he has in view, whether
it be the actual worship of other gods or the unlawful worship of
the true God. His position is that an unspiritual worship implies
an unspiritual deity, and that such service as was performed at the
ordinary sanctuaries could by no possibility be regarded as
rendered to the true God who spoke through the prophets. From this
fountain-head of a corrupted religious sense proceed all those
immoral practices which both prophets stigmatise as “abominations” and as a defilement of the land
of Jehovah. Of these
the most startling is the prevalent sacrifice of children to which
they both bear witness, although, as we shall afterwards see, with
a characteristic difference in their point of view.
The whole
picture, indeed, which Jeremiah and Ezekiel present of contemporary
society is appalling in the extreme. Making all allowance for the
practical motive of the prophetic invective, which always aims at
conviction of sin, we cannot doubt that the state of things was
sufficiently serious to mark Judah as ripe for judgment. The very
foundations of society were sapped by the spread of licence and
high-handed violence through all classes of the community. The
restraints of religion had been loosened by the feeling that
Jehovah had forsaken the land, and nobles, priests, and prophets
plunged into a career of wickedness and oppression which made
salvation of the existing nation impossible. The guilt of Jerusalem
is symbolised to both prophets in the innocent blood which stains
her skirts and cries to heaven for vengeance. The tendencies which
are uppermost are the evil legacy of the days of Manasseh, when, in
the judgment of Jeremiah and the historian of the books of
Kings,Jer. xv. 4; 2 Kings xxiii. 26.
the
nation sinned beyond hope of mercy. In painting his lurid pictures
of social degeneracy Ezekiel is no doubt drawing on his own memory
and information; nevertheless the forms in which his indictment is
cast show that even in this matter he has learned to look on things
with the eyes of his great teacher.
It is scarcely
necessary to add that both prophets anticipate a speedy downfall of
the state and its restoration in a more glorious form after a short
interval, fixed by Jeremiah at seventy years and by Ezekiel at
forty years. The restoration is regarded as final, and as embracing
both branches of the
Hebrew nation, the kingdom of the ten tribes as well as the house
of Judah. The Messianic hope in Ezekiel appears in a form similar
to that in which it is presented by Jeremiah; in neither prophet is
the figure of the ideal King so prominent as in the prophecies of
Isaiah. The similarity between the two is all the more noteworthy
as an evidence of dependence, because Ezekiel's final outlook is
towards a state of things in which the Prince has a somewhat
subordinate position assigned to Him. Both prophets, again
following Hosea, regard the spiritual renewal of the people as the
effect of chastisement in exile. Those parts of the nation which go
first into banishment are the first to be brought under the
salutary influences of God's providential discipline; and hence we
find that Jeremiah adopts a more hopeful tone in speaking of
Samaria and the captives of 597 than in his utterances to those who
remained in the land. This conviction was shared by Ezekiel, in
spite of his daily contact with abominations from which his whole
nature revolted. It has been supposed that Ezekiel lived long
enough to see that no such spiritual transformation was to be
wrought by the mere fact of captivity, and that, despairing of a
general and spontaneous conversion, he put his hand to the work of
practical reform as if he would secure by legislation the results
which he had once expected as fruits of repentance. If the prophet
had ever expected that punishment of itself would work a change in
the religious condition of his countrymen, there might have been
room for such a disenchantment as is here assumed. But there is no
evidence that he ever looked for anything else than a regeneration
of the people in captivity by the supernatural working of the
divine Spirit; and that the final vision is meant to help out the
divine plan by human policy is a suggestion negatived by the whole
scope of the book. It may be true that his practical activity in
the present was directed to preparing individual men for
the coming
salvation; but that was no more than any spiritual teacher must
have done in a time recognised as a period of transition. The
vision of the restored theocracy presupposes a national
resurrection and a national repentance. And on the face of it it is
such that man can take no step towards its accomplishment until God
has prepared the way by creating the conditions of a perfect
religious community, both the moral conditions in the mind of the
people and the outward conditions in the miraculous transformation
of the land in which they are to dwell.
Most of the
points here touched upon will have to be more fully treated in the
course of our exposition, and other affinities between the two
great prophets will have to be noticed as we proceed. Enough has
perhaps been said to show that Ezekiel's thinking has been
profoundly influenced by Jeremiah, that the influence extends not
only to the form but also to the substance of his teaching, and can
therefore only be explained by early impressions received by the
younger prophet in the days before the word of the Lord had come to
him.
Chapter III. The Vision Of The Glory
Of God. Chapter i.
It might be
hazardous to attempt, from the general considerations advanced in
the last two chapters, to form a conception of Ezekiel's state of
mind during the first few years of his captivity. If, as we have
found reason to believe, he had already come under the influence of
Jeremiah, he must have been in some measure prepared for the blow
which had descended on him. Torn from the duties of the office
which he loved, and driven in upon himself, Ezekiel must no doubt
have meditated deeply on the sin and the prospects of his people.
From the first he must have stood aloof from his fellow-exiles,
who, led by their false prophets, began to dream of the fall of
Babylon and a speedy return to their own land. He knew that the
calamity which had befallen them was but the first instalment of a
sweeping judgment before which the old Israel must utterly perish.
Those who remained in Jerusalem were reserved for a worse fate than
those who had been carried away; but so long as the latter remained
impenitent there was no hope even for them of an alleviation of the
bitterness of their lot. Such thoughts, working in a mind naturally
severe in its judgments, may have already produced that attitude of
alienation from the whole life of his companions in misfortune
which dominates the first period of his prophetic career. But these
convictions did not make Ezekiel a prophet. He had as yet
no independent
message from God, no sure perception of the issue of events, or the
path which Israel must follow in order to reach the blessedness of
the future. It was not till the fifth year of his captivityIn the superscription of the book (ch.
i. 1-3) a double date is given for this occurrence. In ver. 1 it is
said to have taken place “in the thirtieth
year”; but this expression has never been satisfactorily
explained. The principal suggestions are: (1) that it is the year
of Ezekiel's life; (2) that the reckoning is from the year of
Josiah's reformation; and (3) that it is according to some
Babylonian era. But none of these has much probability, unless,
with Klostermann, we go further and assume that the explanation was
given in an earlier part of the prophet's autobiography now lost—a
view which is supported by no evidence and is contrary to all
analogy. Cornill proposes to omit ver. 1 entirely, chiefly on the
ground that the use of the first person before the writer's name
has been mentioned is unnatural. That the superscription does not
read smoothly as it stands has been felt by many critics; but the
rejection of the verse is perhaps a too facile solution.
that
the inward change took place which brought him into Jehovah's
counsel, and disclosed to him the outlines of all his future work,
and endowed him with the courage to stand forth amongst his people
as the spokesman of Jehovah.
Like other great
prophets whose personal experience is recorded, Ezekiel became
conscious of his prophetic vocation through a vision of God. The
form in which Jehovah first appeared to him is described with great
minuteness of detail in the first chapter of his book. It would
seem that in some hour of solitary meditation by the river Kebar
his attention was attracted to a storm-cloud forming in the north
and advancing toward him across the plain. The cloud may have been
an actual phenomenon, the natural basis of the theophany which
follows. Falling into a state of ecstasy, the prophet sees the
cloud grow luminous with an unearthly splendour. From the midst of
it there shines a brightness which he compares to the lustre of
electron.Not “amber,” but a natural alloy of silver and gold,
highly esteemed in antiquity.
Looking
more closely,
he discerns four living creatures, of strange composite form,—human
in general appearance, but winged; and each having four heads
combining the highest types of animal life—man, lion, ox, and
eagle. These are afterwards identified with the cherubim of the
Temple symbolism (ch. x. 20); but some features of the conception
may have been suggested by the composite animal figures of
Babylonian art, with which the prophet must have been already
familiar. The interior space is occupied by a hearth of glowing
coals, from which lightning-flashes constantly dart to and fro
between the cherubim. Beside each cherub is a wheel, formed
apparently of two wheels intersecting each other at right angles.
The appearance of the wheels is like “chrysolite,” and their rims are filled with
eyes, denoting the intelligence by which their motions are
directed. The wheels and the cherubim together embody the
spontaneous energy by which the throne of God is transported
whither He wills; although there is no mechanical connection
between them, they are represented as animated by a common spirit,
directing all their motions in perfect harmony. Over the heads and
out-stretched wings of the cherubim is a rigid pavement or
“firmament,” like crystal; and above
this a sapphire stoneCf. Exod. xxiv. 10: “like the very heavens for pureness.”
supporting the throne of Jehovah. The divine Being is seen in the
likeness of a man; and around Him, as if to temper the fierceness
of the light in which He dwells, is a radiance like that of the
rainbow. It will be noticed that while Ezekiel's imagination dwells
on what we must consider the accessories of the vision—the fire,
the cherubim, the wheels—he hardly dares to lift his eyes to the
person of Jehovah Himself. The full meaning of what he is passing
through only dawns on him when he realises that he is in the
presence of the Almighty. Then he falls on his face overpowered by the sense of
his own insignificance.
There is no
reason to doubt that what is thus described represents an actual
experience on the part of the prophet. It is not to be regarded
merely as a conscious clothing of spiritual truths in symbolic
imagery. The description of a vision is of
course a conscious exercise of literary faculty; and in all such
cases it must be difficult to distinguish what a prophet actually
saw and heard in the moment of inspiration from the details which
he was compelled to add in order to convey an intelligible picture
to the minds of his readers. It is probable that in the case of
Ezekiel the element of free invention has a larger range than in
the less elaborate descriptions which other prophets give of their
visions. But this does not detract from the force of the prophet's
own assertion that what he relates was based on a real and definite
experience when in a state of prophetic ecstasy. This is expressed
by the words “the hand of Jehovah was upon
him” (ver. 3)—a phrase which is invariably used throughout
the book to denote the prophet's peculiar mental condition when the
communication of divine truth was accompanied by experiences of a
visionary order. Moreover, the account given of the state in which
this vision left him shows that his natural consciousness had been
overpowered by the pressure of super-sensible realities on his
spirit. He tells us that he went “in
bitterness, in the heat of his spirit, the hand of the Lord being
heavy upon him; and came to the exiles at Tel-abib, ... and sat
there seven days stupefied in their midst” (ch. iii. 14,
15).
Now whatever be
the ultimate nature of the prophetic vision, its significance for
us would appear to lie in the untrammelled working of the prophet's
imagination under the influence of spiritual perceptions which are
too profound to be expressed as abstract ideas. The prophet's
consciousness
is not suspended, for he remembers his vision and reflects on its
meaning afterwards; but his intercourse with the outer world
through the senses is interrupted, so that his mind moves freely
amongst images stored in his memory, and new combinations are
formed which embody a truth not previously apprehended. The
tableau of the vision is therefore
always capable to some extent of a psychological explanation. The
elements of which it is composed must have been already present in
the mind of the prophet, and in so far as these can be traced to
their sources we are enabled to understand their symbolic import in
the novel combination in which they appear. But the real
significance of the vision lies in the immediate impression left on
the mind of the prophet by the divine realities which govern his
life, and this is especially true of the vision of God Himself
which accompanies the call to the prophetic office. Although no
vision can express the whole of a prophet's conception of God, yet
it represents to the imagination certain fundamental aspects of the
divine nature and of God's relation to the world and to men; and
through all his subsequent career the prophet will be influenced by
the form in which he once beheld the great Being whose words come
to him from time to time. To his later reflection the vision
becomes a symbol of certain truths about God, although in the first
instance the symbol was created for him by a mysterious operation
of the divine Spirit in a process over which he had no control. In
one respect Ezekiel's inaugural vision seems to possess a greater
importance for his theology than is the case with any other
prophet. With the other prophets the vision is a momentary
experience, of which the spiritual meaning passes into the thinking
of the prophet, but which does not recur again in the visionary
form. With Ezekiel, on the other hand, the vision becomes a fixed
and permanent symbol of Jehovah, appearing again and again in precisely the same form as
often as the reality of God's presence is impressed on his
mind.
The essential
question, then, with regard to Ezekiel's vision is, What revelation
of God or what ideas respecting God did it serve to impress on the
mind of the prophet? It may help us to answer that question if we
begin by considering certain affinities which it presents to the
great vision which opened the ministry of Isaiah. It must be
admitted that Ezekiel's experience is much less intelligible as
well as less impressive than Isaiah's. In Isaiah's delineation we
recognise the presence of qualities which belong to genius of the
highest order. The perfect balance of form and idea, the reticence
which suggests without exhausting the significance of what is seen,
the fine artistic sense which makes every touch in the picture
contribute to the rendering of the emotion which fills the
prophet's soul, combine to make the sixth chapter of Isaiah one of
the most sublime passages in literature. No sympathetic reader can
fail to catch the impression which the passage is intended to
convey of the awful majesty of the God of Israel, and the effect
produced on a frail and sinful mortal ushered into that holy
Presence. We are made to feel how inevitably such a vision gives
birth to the prophetic impulse, and how both vision and impulse
inform the mind of the seer with the clear and definite purpose
which rules all his subsequent work.
The point in
which Ezekiel's vision differs most strikingly from Isaiah's is the
almost entire suppression of his subjectivity. This is so complete
that it becomes difficult to apprehend the meaning of the vision in
relation to his thought and activity. Spiritual realities are so
overlaid with symbolism that the narrative almost fails to reflect
the mental state in which he was consecrated for the work of his
life. Isaiah's vision is a drama, Ezekiel's is a spectacle; in the
one religious truth is
expressed in a series of significant actions and words, in the
other it is embodied in forms and splendours that appeal only to
the eye. One fact may be noted in illustration of the diversity
between the two representations. The scenery of Isaiah's vision is
interpreted and spiritualised by the medium of language. The
seraphs' hymn of adoration strikes the note which is the central
thought of the vision, and the exclamation which breaks from the
prophet's lips reveals the impact of that great truth on a human
spirit. The whole scene is thus lifted out of the region of mere
symbolism into that of pure religious ideas. Ezekiel's, on the
other hand, is like a song without words. His cherubim are
speechless. While the rustling of their wings and the thunder of
the revolving wheels break on his ear like the sound of mighty
waters, no articulate voice bears home to the mind the inner
meaning of what he beholds. Probably he himself felt no need of it.
The pictorial character of his thinking appears in many features of
his work; and it is not surprising to find that the import of the
revelation is expressed mainly in visual images.
Now these
differences are in their own place very instructive, because they
show how intimately the vision is related to the individuality of
him who receives it, and how even in the most exalted moments of
inspiration the mind displays the same tendencies which
characterise its ordinary operations. Yet Ezekiel's vision
represents a spiritual experience not less real than Isaiah's. His
mental endowments are of a different order, of a lower order if you
will, than those of Isaiah; but the essential fact that he too saw
the glory of God and in that vision obtained the insight of the
true prophet is not to be explained away by analysis of his
literary talent or of the sources from which his images are
derived. It is allowable to write worse Greek than Plato; and it is
no disqualification for a Hebrew prophet to lack the grandeur
of imagination and
the mastery of style which are the notes of Isaiah's genius.
In spite of
their obvious dissimilarities the two visions have enough in common
to show that Ezekiel's thoughts concerning God had been largely
influenced by the study of Isaiah. Truths that had perhaps long
been latent in his mind now emerge into clear consciousness,
clothed in forms which bear the impress of the mind in which they
were first conceived. The fundamental idea is the same in each
vision: the absolute and universal sovereignty of God. “Mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of
hosts.” Jehovah appears in human form, seated on a throne
and attended by ministering creatures which serve to show forth
some part of His glory. In the one case they are seraphim, in the
other cherubim; and the functions imposed on them by the structure
of the vision are very diverse in the two cases. But the points in
which they agree are more significant than those in which they
differ. They are the agents through whom Jehovah exercises His
sovereign authority, beings full of life and intelligence and
moving in swift response to His will. Although free from earthly
imperfection they cover themselves with their wings before His
majesty, in token of the reverence which is due from the creature
in presence of the Creator. For the rest they are symbolic figures
embodying in themselves certain attributes of the Deity, or certain
aspects of His kingship. Nor can Ezekiel any more than Isaiah think
of Jehovah as the King apart from the emblems associated with the
worship of His earthly sanctuary. The cherubim themselves are
borrowed from the imagery of the Temple, although their forms are
different from those which stood in the Holy of holies. So again
the altar, which was naturally suggested to Isaiah by the scene of
his vision being laid in the Temple, appears in Ezekiel's vision in
the form of the hearth of
glowing coals which is under the divine throne. It is true that the
fire symbolises destructive might rather than purifying energy (see
ch. x. 2), but it can hardly be doubted that the origin of the
symbol is the altar-hearth of the sanctuary and of Isaiah's vision.
It is as if the essence of the Temple and its worship were
transferred to the sphere of heavenly realities where Jehovah's
glory is fully manifested. All this, therefore, is nothing more
than the embodiment of the fundamental truth of the Old Testament
religion—that Jehovah is the almighty King of heaven and earth,
that He executes His sovereign purposes with irresistible power,
and that it is the highest privilege of men on earth to render to
Him the homage and adoration which the sight of His glory draws
forth from heavenly beings.
The idea of
Jehovah's kingship, however, is presented in the Old Testament
under two aspects. On the one hand, it denotes the moral
sovereignty of God over the people whom He had chosen as His own
and to whom His will was continuously revealed as the guide of
their national and social life. On the other hand, it denotes God's
absolute dominion over the forces of nature and the events of
history, in virtue of which all things are the unconscious
instruments of His purposes. These two truths can never be
separated, although the emphasis is laid sometimes on the one and
sometimes on the other. Thus in Isaiah's vision the emphasis lies
perhaps more on the doctrine of Jehovah's kingship over Israel. It
is true that He is at the same time represented as One whose glory
is the “fulness of the whole earth,”
and who therefore manifests His power and presence in every part of
His world-wide dominions. But the fact that Jehovah's palace is the
idealised Temple of Jerusalem suggests at once, what all the
teaching of the prophet confirms, that the nation of Israel is the
special sphere within which His kingly authority is to obtain practical recognition.
While no man had a firmer grasp of the truth that God wields all
natural forces and overrules the actions of men in carrying out His
providential designs, yet the leading ideas of His ministry are
those which spring from the thought of Jehovah's presence in the
midst of His people and the obligation that lies on Israel to
recognise His sovereignty. He is, to use Isaiah's own expression,
the “Holy One of Israel.”
This aspect of
the divine kingship is undoubtedly represented in the vision of
Ezekiel. We have remarked that the imagery of the vision is to some
extent moulded on the idea of the sanctuary as the seat of
Jehovah's government, and we shall find later on that the final
resting-place of this emblem of His presence is a restored
sanctuary in the land of Canaan. But the circumstances under which
Ezekiel was called to be a prophet required that prominence should
be given to the complementary truth that the kingship of Jehovah
was independent of His special relation to Israel. For the present
the tie between Jehovah and His land was dissolved. Israel had
disowned her divine King, and was left to suffer the consequences
of her disloyalty. Hence it is that the vision appears, not from
the direction of Jerusalem, but “out of the
north,” in token that God has departed from His Temple and
abandoned it to its enemies. In this way the vision granted to the
exiled prophet on the plain of Babylonia embodied a truth opposed
to the religious prejudices of his time, but reassuring to
himself—that the fall of Israel leaves the essential sovereignty of
Jehovah untouched; that He still lives and reigns, although His
people are trodden underfoot by worshippers of other gods. But more
than this, we can see that on the whole the tendency of Ezekiel's
vision, as distinguished from that of Isaiah, is to emphasise the
universality of Jehovah's
relations to the world of nature and of mankind. His throne rests
here on a sapphire stone, the symbol of heavenly purity, to signify
that His true dwelling-place is above the firmament, in the
heavens, which are equally near to every region of the earth.
Moreover, it is mounted on a chariot, by which it is moved from
place to place with a velocity which suggests ubiquity, and the
chariot is borne by “living
creatures” whose forms unite all that is symbolical of power
and dignity in the living world. Further, the shape of the chariot,
which is foursquare, and the disposition of the wheels and
cherubim, which is such that there is no before or behind, but the
same front presented to each of the four quarters of the globe,
indicate that all parts of the universe are alike accessible to the
presence of God. Finally, the wheels and the cherubim are covered
with eyes, to denote that all things are open to the view of Him
who sits on the throne. The attributes of God here symbolised are
those which express His relations to created existence as a
whole—omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience. These ideas are
obviously incapable of adequate representation by any sensuous
image—they can only be suggested to the mind; and it is just the
effort to suggest such transcendental attributes that imparts to
the vision the character of obscurity which attaches to so many of
its details.
Another point of
comparison between Isaiah and Ezekiel is suggested by the name
which the latter constantly uses for the appearance which he sees,
or rather perhaps for that part of it which represents the personal
appearance of God. He calls it the “glory
of Jehovah,” or “glory of the God of
Israel.” The word for glory (kābôd) is used in a variety of
senses in the Old Testament. Etymologically it comes from a root
expressing the idea of heaviness. When used, as here, concretely,
it signifies that which is the outward manifestation of power or
worth or dignity. In
human affairs it may be used of a man's wealth, or the pomp and
circumstance of military array, or the splendour and pageantry of a
royal court, those things which oppress the minds of common men
with a sense of magnificence. In like manner, when applied to God,
it denotes some reflection in the outer world of His majesty,
something that at once reveals and conceals His essential Godhead.
Now we remember that the second line of the seraphs' hymn conveyed
to Isaiah's mind this thought, that “that
which fills the whole earth is His glory.” What is this
“filling of the whole earth” in
which the prophet sees the effulgence of the divine glory? Is his
feeling akin to Wordsworth's
“sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man”?
At least the
words must surely mean that all through nature Isaiah recognised
that which declares the glory of God, and therefore in some sense
reveals Him. Although they do not teach a doctrine of the divine
immanence, they contain all that is religiously valuable in that
doctrine. In Ezekiel, however, we find nothing that looks in this
direction. It is characteristic of his thoughts about God that the
very word “glory” which Isaiah uses
of something diffused through the earth is here employed to express
the concentration of all divine qualities in a single image of
dazzling splendour, but belonging to heaven rather than to earth.
Glory is here equivalent to brightness, as in the ancient
conception of the bright cloud which led the people through the
desert and that which filled the Temple with overpowering light
when Jehovah took possession of it (2 Chron. vii. 1-3). In a
striking passage of his last vision Ezekiel describes how this scene will
be repeated when Jehovah returns to take up His abode amongst His
people and the earth will be lighted up with His glory (ch. xliii.
2). But meanwhile it may seem to us that earth is left poorer by
the loss of that aspect of nature in which Isaiah discovered a
revelation of the divine.
Ezekiel is
conscious that what he has seen is after all but an imperfect
semblance of the essential glory of God on which no mortal eye can
gaze. All that he describes is expressly said to be an “appearance” and a “likeness.” When he comes to speak of the divine
form in which the whole revelation culminates he can say no more
than that it is the “appearance of the
likeness of the glory of Jehovah.” The prophet appears to
realise his inability to penetrate behind the appearance to the
reality which it shadows forth. The clearest vision of God which
the mind of man can receive is an after-look like that which was
vouchsafed to Moses when the divine presence had passed by (Exod.
xxxiii. 23). So it was with Ezekiel. The true revelation that came
to him was not in what he saw with his eyes in the moment of his
initiation, but in the intuitive knowledge of God which from that
hour he possessed, and which enabled him to interpret more fully
than he could have done at the time the significance of his first
memorable meeting with the God of Israel. What he retained in his
waking hours was first of all a vivid sense of the reality of God's
being, and then a mental picture suggesting those attributes which
lay at the foundation of his prophetic ministry.
It is easy to
see how this vision dominates all Ezekiel's thinking about the
divine nature. The God whom he saw was in the form of a man, and so
the God of his conscience is a moral person to whom he fearlessly
ascribes the parts
and even the passions of humanity. He speaks through the prophet in
the language of royal authority, as a king who will brook no rival
in the affections of his people. As King of Israel He asserts His
determination to reign over them with a mighty hand, and by mingled
goodness and severity to break their stubborn heart and bend them
to His purpose. There are perhaps other and more subtle affinities
between the symbol of the vision and the prophet's inner
consciousness of God. Just as the vision gathers up all in nature
that suggests divinity into one resplendent image, so it is also
with the moral action of God as conceived by Ezekiel. His
government of the world is self-centred; all the ends which He
pursues in His providence lie within Himself. His dealings with the
nations, and with Israel in particular, are dictated by regard for
His own glory, or, as Ezekiel expresses it, by pity for His great
name. “Not for your sake do I act, O house
of Israel, but for My holy name, which ye have profaned among the
heathen whither ye went” (ch. xxxvi. 22). The relations into
which He enters with men are all subordinate to the supreme purpose
of “sanctifying” Himself in the eyes
of the world or manifesting Himself as He truly is. It is no doubt
possible to exaggerate this feature of Ezekiel's theology in a way
that would be unjust to the prophet. After all, Jehovah's desire to
be known as He is implies a regard for His creatures which includes
the ultimate intention to bless them. It is but an extreme
expression in the form necessary for that time of the truth to
which all the prophets bear witness, that the knowledge of God is
the indispensable condition of true blessedness to men. Still, the
difference is marked between the “not for
your sake” of Ezekiel and the “human
bands, the cords of love” of which Hosea speaks, the
yearning and compassionate affection that binds Jehovah to His
erring people.
In another
respect the symbolism of the vision may be taken as an emblem of
the Hebrew conception of the universe. The Bible has no scientific
theory of God's relation to the world; but it is full of the
practical conviction that all nature responds to His behests, that
all occurrences are indications of His mind, the whole realm of
nature and history being governed by one Will which works for moral
ends. That conviction is as deeply rooted in the thinking of
Ezekiel as in that of any other prophet, and, consciously or
unconsciously, it is reflected in the structure of the merkābā, or heavenly chariot,
which has no mechanical connection between its different parts, and
yet is animated by one spirit and moves altogether at the impulse
of Jehovah's will.
It will be seen
that the general tendency of Ezekiel's conception of God is what
might be described in modern language as “transcendental.” In this, however, the prophet
does not stand alone, and the difference between him and earlier
prophets is not so great as is sometimes represented. Indeed, the
contrast between transcendent and immanent is hardly applicable in
the Old Testament religion. If by transcendence it is meant that
God is a being distinct from the world, not losing Himself in the
life of nature, but ruling over it and controlling it as His
instrument, then all the inspired writers of the Old Testament are
transcendentalists. But this does not mean that God is separated
from the human spirit by a dead, mechanical universe which owes
nothing to its Creator but its initial impulse and its governing
laws. The idea that a world could come between man and God is one
that would never have occurred to a prophet. Just because God is
above the world He can reveal Himself directly to the spirit of
man, speaking to His servants face to face as a man speaketh to his
friend.
But frequently
in the prophets the thought is expressed that Jehovah is “far
off” or “comes from far” in
the crises of His people's history. “Am I a
God at hand, saith Jehovah, and not a God afar off?” is
Jeremiah's question to the false prophets of his day; and the
answer is, “Do not I fill heaven and earth?
saith Jehovah.” On this subject we may quote the suggestive
remarks of a recent commentator on Isaiah: “The local deities, the gods of the tribal religions,
are near; Jehovah is far, but at the same time everywhere present.
The remoteness of Jehovah in space represented to the prophets
better than our transcendental abstractions Jehovah's absolute
ascendency. This ‘far off’ is spoken
with enthusiasm. Everywhere and nowhere, Jehovah comes when His
hour is come.”Duhm on Isa. xxx. 27.
That
is the idea of Ezekiel's vision. God comes to him “from far,” but He comes very near. Our
difficulty may be to realise the nearness of God. Scientific
discovery has so enlarged our view of the material universe that we
feel the need of every consideration that can bring home to us a
sense of the divine condescension and interest in man's earthly
history and his spiritual welfare. But the difficulty which beset
the ordinary Israelite even so late as the Exile was as nearly as
possible the opposite of ours. His temptation was to think of God
as only a God “at hand,” a local
deity, whose range of influence was limited to a particular spot,
and whose power was measured by the fortunes of His own people.
Above all things he needed to learn that God was “afar off,” filling heaven and earth, that His
power was exerted everywhere, and that there was no place where
either a man could hide himself from God or God was hidden from
man. When we bear in mind these circumstances we can see how
needful was the revelation of the divine omnipresence as a step
towards the perfect knowledge of God which comes to us through
Jesus Christ.
Chapter IV. Ezekiel's Prophetic
Commission. Chapters ii., iii.
The call of a
prophet and the vision of God which sometimes accompanied it are
the two sides of one complex experience. The man who has truly seen
God necessarily has a message to men. Not only are his spiritual
perceptions quickened and all the powers of his being stirred to
the highest activity, but there is laid on his conscience the
burden of a sacred duty and a lifelong vocation to the service of
God and man. The true prophet therefore is one who can say with
Paul, “I was not disobedient to the
heavenly vision,” for that cannot be a real vision of God
which does not demand obedience. And of the two elements the call
is the one that is indispensable to the idea of a prophet. We can
conceive a prophet without an ecstatic vision, but not without a
consciousness of being chosen by God for a special work or a sense
of moral responsibility for the faithful declaration of His truth.
Whether, as with Isaiah and Ezekiel, the call springs out of the
vision of God, or whether, as with Jeremiah, the call comes first
and is supplemented by experiences of a visionary kind, the
essential fact in the prophet's initiation always is the conviction
that from a certain period in his life the word of Jehovah came to
him, and along with it the feeling of personal obligation to God
for the discharge of a mission entrusted to him. While the vision
merely serves to
impress on the imagination by means of symbols a certain conception
of God's being, and may be dispensed with when symbols are no
longer the necessary vehicle of spiritual truth, the call, as
conveying a sense of one's true place in the kingdom of God, can
never be wanting to any man who has a prophetic work to do for God
amongst his fellow-men.
It has been
already hinted that in the case of Ezekiel the connection between
the call and the vision is less obvious than in that of Isaiah. The
character of the narrative undergoes a change at the beginning of
ch. ii. The first part is moulded, as we have seen, very largely on
the inaugural vision of Isaiah; the second betrays with equal
clearness the influence of Jeremiah. The appearance of a break
between the first chapter and the second is partly due to the
prophet's laborious manner of describing what he had passed
through. It is altogether unfair to represent him as having first
curiously inspected the mechanism of the merkābā, and then bethought
himself that it was a fitting thing to fall on his face before it.
The experience of an ecstasy is one thing, the relating of it is
another. In much less time than it takes us to master the details
of the picture, Ezekiel had seen and been overpowered by the glory
of Jehovah, and had become aware of the purpose for which it had
been revealed to him. He knew that God had come to him in order to
send him as a prophet to his fellow-exiles. And just as the
description of the vision draws out in detail those features which
were significant of God's nature and attributes, so in what follows
he becomes conscious step by step of certain aspects of the work to
which he is called. In the form of a series of addresses of the
Almighty there are presented to his mind the outlines of his
prophetic career—its conditions, its hardships, its encouragements,
and above all its binding and peremptory obligation. Some of the facts now set before
him, such as the spiritual condition of his audience, had long been
familiar to his thoughts—others were new; but now they all take
their proper place in the scheme of his life; he is made to know
their bearing on his work, and what attitude he is to adopt in face
of them. All this takes place in the prophetic trance; but the
ideas remain with him as the sustaining principles of his
subsequent work.
1. Of the truths
thus presented to the mind of Ezekiel the first, and the one that
directly arises out of the impression which the vision made on him,
is his personal insignificance. As he lies prostrate before the
glory of Jehovah he hears for the first time the name which ever
afterwards signalises his relation to the God who speaks through
him. It hardly needs to be said that the term “son of man” in the book of Ezekiel is no title
of honour or of distinction. It is precisely the opposite of this.
It denotes the absence of distinction in the person of the prophet.
It signifies no more than “member of the
human race”; its sense might almost be conveyed if we were
to render it by the word “mortal.”
It expresses the infinite contrast between the heavenly and the
earthly, between the glorious Being who speaks from the throne and
the frail creature who needs to be supernaturally strengthened
before he can stand upright in the attitude of service (ch. ii. 1).
He felt that there was no reason in himself for the choice which
God made of him to be a prophet. He is conscious only of the
attributes which he has in common with the race—of human weakness
and insignificance; all that distinguishes him from other men
belongs to his office, and is conferred on him by God in the act of
his consecration. There is no trace of the generous impulse that
prompted Isaiah to offer himself as a servant of the great King as
soon as he realised that there was work to be done. He is equally a
stranger
to the shrinking of Jeremiah's sensitive spirit from the
responsibilities of the prophet's charge. To Ezekiel the divine
Presence is so overpowering, the command is so definite and
exacting, that no room is left for the play of personal feeling;
the hand of the Lord is heavy on him, and he can do nothing but
stand still and hear.
2. The next
thought that occupies the attention of the prophet is the spiritual
condition of those to whom he is sent. It is to be noted that his
mission presents itself to him from the outset in two aspects. In
the first place, he is a prophet to the whole house of Israel,
including the lost kingdom of the ten tribes, as well as the two
sections of the kingdom of Judah, those now in exile and those
still remaining in their own land. This is his ideal audience; the
sweep of his prophecy is to embrace the destinies of the nation as
a whole, although but a small part be within the reach of his
spoken words. But in literal fact he is to be the prophet of the
exiles (ch. iii. 11); that is the sphere in which he has to make
proof of his ministry. These two audiences are for the most part
not distinguished in the mind of Ezekiel; he sees the ideal in the
real, regarding the little colony in which he lives as an epitome
of the national life. But in both aspects of his work the outlook
is equally dispiriting. If he looks forward to an active career
amongst his fellow-captives, he is given to know that “thorns and thistles” are with him and that his
dwelling is among scorpions (ch. ii. 6). Petty persecution and
rancorous opposition are the inevitable lot of a prophet there. And
if he extends his thoughts to the idealised nation he has to think
of a people whose character is revealed in a long history of
rebellion and apostasy: they are “the
rebels who have rebelled against Me, they and their fathers to this
very day” (ch. ii. 3). The greatest difficulty he will have
to contend with is the impenetrability of the minds of his hearers
to the truths of his
message. The barrier of a strange language suggests an illustration
of the impossibility of communicating spiritual ideas to such men
as he is sent to. But it is a far more hopeless barrier that
separates him from his people. “Not to a
people of deep speech and heavy tongue art thou sent; and not to
many peoples whose language thou canst not understand: if I had
sent thee to them, they
would hear thee. But the house of Israel will refuse to hear thee;
for they refuse to hear Me: for the whole house of Israel are hard
of forehead and stout of heart” (ch. iii. 5-7). The meaning
is that the incapacity of the people is not intellectual, but moral
and spiritual. They can understand the prophet's words, but they
will not hear them because they dislike the truth which he utters
and have rebelled against the God who sent him. The hardening of
the national conscience which Isaiah foresaw as the inevitable
result of his own ministry is already accomplished, and Ezekiel
traces it to its source in a defect of the will, an aversion to the
truths which express the character of Jehovah.
This fixed
judgment on his contemporaries with which Ezekiel enters on his
work is condensed into one of those stereotyped expressions which
abound in his writings: “house of
disobedience”Bêth mĕri, or simply mĕrî, occurring about fifteen
times in the first half of the book, but only once after ch.
xxiv.
—a
phrase which is afterwards amplified in more than one elaborate
review of the nation's past. It no doubt sums up the result of much
previous meditation on the state of Israel and the possibility of a
national reformation. If any hope had hitherto lingered in
Ezekiel's mind that the exiles might now respond to a true word
from Jehovah, it disappears in the clear insight which he obtains
into the state of their hearts. He sees that the time has not yet
come to win the people
back to God by assurances of His compassion and the nearness of His
salvation. The breach between Jehovah and Israel has not begun to
be healed, and the prophet who stands on the side of God must look
for no sympathy from men. In the very act of his consecration his
mind is thus set in the attitude of uncompromising severity towards
the obdurate house of Israel: “Behold, I
make thy face hard like their faces, and thy forehead hard like
theirs, like adamant harder than flint. Thou shalt not fear them
nor be dismayed at their countenance, for a disobedient house are
they” (ch. iii. 8, 9).
3. The
significance of the transaction in which he takes part is still
further impressed on the mind of the prophet by a symbolic act in
which he is made to signify his acceptance of the commission
entrusted to him (chs. ii. 8-iii. 3). He sees a hand extended to
him holding the roll of a book, and when the roll is spread out
before him it is found to be written on both sides with
“lamentations and mourning and woe.”
In obedience to the divine command he opens his mouth and eats the
scroll, and finds to his surprise that in spite of its contents its
taste is “like honey for
sweetness.”
The meaning of
this strange symbol appears to include two things. In the first
place it denotes the removal of the inward hindrance of which every
man must be conscious when he receives the call to be a prophet.
Something similar occurs in the inaugural vision of Isaiah and
Jeremiah. The impediment of which Isaiah was conscious was the
uncleanness of his lips; and this being removed by the touch of the
hot coal from the altar, he is filled with a new feeling of freedom
and eagerness to engage in the service of God. In the case of
Jeremiah the hindrance was a sense of his own weakness and
unfitness for the arduous duties which were imposed on him; and
this again was taken away
by the consecrating touch of Jehovah's hand on his lips. The part
of Ezekiel's experience with which we are dealing is obviously
parallel to these, although it is not possible to say what feeling
of incapacity was uppermost in his mind. Perhaps it was the dread
lest in him there should lurk something of that rebellious spirit
which was the characteristic of the race to which he belonged. He
who had been led to form so hard a judgment of his people could not
but look with a jealous eye on his own heart, and could not forget
that he shared the same sinful nature which made their rebellion
possible. Accordingly the book is presented to him in the first
instance as a test of his obedience. “But
thou, son of man, hear what I say
to thee; Be not disobedient like the disobedient house: open thy
mouth, and eat what I give thee” (ch. ii. 8). When the book
proves sweet to his taste, he has the assurance that he has been
endowed with such sympathy with the thoughts of God that things
which to the natural mind are unwelcome become the source of a
spiritual satisfaction. Jeremiah had expressed the same strange
delight in his work in a striking passage which was doubtless
familiar to Ezekiel: “When Thy words were
found I did eat them; and Thy word was to me the joy and rejoicing
of my heart: for I was called by Thy name, O Jehovah God of
hosts” (Jer. xv. 16). We have a still higher illustration of
the same fact in the life of our Lord, to whom it was meat and
drink to do the will of His Father, and who experienced a joy in
the doing of it which was peculiarly His own. It is the reward of
the true service of God that amidst all the hardships and
discouragements which have to be endured the heart is sustained by
an inward joy springing from the consciousness of working in
fellowship with God.
But in the
second place the eating of the book undoubtedly signifies the
bestowal on the prophet of the gift of inspiration—that is, the power to
speak the words of Jehovah. “Son of man,
eat this roll, and go speak to the children of Israel.... Go, get
thee to the house of Israel, and speak with My words to
them” (ch. iii. 1, 4). Now the call of a prophet does not
mean that his mind is charged with a certain body of doctrine,
which he is to deliver from time to time as circumstances require.
All that can safely be said about the prophetic inspiration is that
it implies the faculty of distinguishing the truth of God from the
thoughts that naturally arise in the prophet's own mind. Nor is
there anything in Ezekiel's experience which necessarily goes
beyond this conception; although the incident of the book has been
interpreted in ways that burden him with a very crude and
mechanical theory of inspiration. Some critics have believed that
the book which he swallowed is the book he was afterwards to write,
as if he had reproduced in instalments what was delivered to him at
this time. Others, without going so far as this, find it at least
significant that one who was to be pre-eminently a literary prophet
should conceive of the word of the Lord as communicated to him in
the form of a book. When one writer speaks of “eigenthümliche Empfindungen im Schlunde”Klostermann.
as the
basis of the figure, he seems to come perilously near to resolving
inspiration into a nervous disease. All these representations go
beyond a fair construction of the prophet's meaning. The act is
purely symbolic. The book has nothing to do with the subject-matter
of his prophecy, nor does the eating of it mean anything more than
the self-surrender of the prophet to his vocation as a vehicle of
the word of Jehovah. The idea that the word of God becomes a living
power in the inner being of the prophet is also expressed by
Jeremiah when he speaks of it as a “burning fire shut up
in his bones” (Jer. xx. 9); and Ezekiel's conception is
similar. Although he speaks as if he had once for all assimilated
the word of God, although he was conscious of a new power working
within him, there is no proof that he thought of the word of the
Lord as dwelling in him otherwise than as a spiritual impulse to
utter the truth revealed to him from time to time. That is the
inspiration which all the prophets possess: “Jehovah God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?”
(Amos iii. 8).
4. It was not to
be expected that a prophet so practical in his aims as Ezekiel
should be left altogether without some indication of the end to be
accomplished by his work. The ordinary incentives to an arduous
public career have indeed been denied to him. He knows that his
mission contains no promise of a striking or an immediate success,
that he will be misjudged and opposed by nearly all who hear him,
and that he will have to pursue his course without appreciation or
sympathy. It has been impressed on him that to declare God's
message is an end in itself, a duty to be discharged with no regard
to its issues, “whether men hear or whether
they forbear.” Like Paul he recognises that “necessity is laid upon him” to preach the word
of God. But there is one word which reveals to him the way in which
his ministry is to be made effective in the working out of
Jehovah's purpose with Israel. “Whether
they hear or whether they forbear, they shall know that a prophet
hath been among them” (ii. 5). The reference is mainly to
the destruction of the nation which Ezekiel well knew must form the
chief burden of any true prophetic message delivered at that time.
He will be approved as a prophet, and recognised as what he is,
when his words are verified by the event. Does it seem a poor
reward for years of incessant contention with prejudice and
unbelief? It was at all events the only reward that was possible,
but it was also to
be the beginning of better days. For these words have a wider
significance than their bearing on the prophet's personal
position.
It has been
truly said that the preservation of the true religion after the
downfall of the nation depended on the fact that the event had been
clearly foretold. Two religions and two conceptions of God were
then struggling for the mastery in Israel. One was the religion of
the prophets, who set the moral holiness of Jehovah above every
other consideration, and affirmed that His righteousness must be
vindicated even at the cost of His people's destruction. The other
was the popular religion which clung to the belief that Jehovah
could not for any reason abandon His people without ceasing to be
God. This conflict of principles reached its climax in the time of
Ezekiel, and it also found its solution. The destruction of
Jerusalem cleared the issues. It was then seen that the teaching of
the prophets afforded the only possible explanation of the course
of events. The Jehovah of the opposite religion was proved to be a
figment of the popular imagination; and there was no alternative
between accepting the prophetic interpretation of history and
resigning all faith in the destiny of Israel. Hence the recognition
of Ezekiel, the last of the old order of prophets, who had carried
their threatenings on to the eve of their accomplishment, was
really a great crisis of religion. It meant the triumph of the only
conception of God on which the hope of a better future could be
built. Although the people might still be far from the state of
heart in which Jehovah could remove His chastening hand, the first
condition of national repentance was given as soon as it was
perceived that there had been prophets among them who had declared
the purpose of Jehovah. The foundation was also laid for a more
fruitful development of Ezekiel's activity. The word of the Lord
had been in his hands a
power “to pluck up and to break down and to
destroy” the old Israel that would not know Jehovah;
henceforward it was destined to “build and
plant” a new Israel inspired by a new ideal of holiness and
a whole-hearted repugnance to every form of idolatry.
5. These then
are the chief elements which enter into the remarkable experience
that made Ezekiel a prophet. Further disclosures of the nature of
his office were, however, necessary before he could translate his
vocation into a conscious plan of work. The departure of the
theophany appears to have left him in a state of mental
prostration.In ch. iii. 12 read “As the glory of Jehovah arose from its place”
instead of “Blessed be the glory,”
etc. (ברום for ברוך).
In
“bitterness and heat of spirit” he
resumes his place amongst his fellow-captives at Tel-abib, and sits
among them like a man bewildered for seven days. At the end of that
time the effects of the ecstasy seem to pass away, and more light
breaks on him with regard to his mission. He realises that it is to
be largely a mission to individuals. He is appointed as a watchman
to the house of Israel, to warn the wicked from his way; and as
such he is held accountable for the fate of any soul that might
miss the way of life through failure of duty on his part.
It has been
supposed that this passage (ch. iii. 16-21) describes the character
of a short period of public activity, in which Ezekiel endeavoured
to act the part of a “reprover”
(ver. 26) among the exiles. This is considered to have been his
first attempt to act on his commission, and to have been continued
until the prophet was convinced of its hopelessness and in
obedience to the divine command shut himself up in his own house.
But this view does not seem to be sufficiently borne out by the
terms of the narrative. The words rather represent a point of view
from which his whole ministry is surveyed, or an aspect of it which possessed peculiar
importance from the circumstances in which he was placed. The idea
of his position as a watchman responsible for individuals may have
been present to the prophet's mind from the time of his call; but
the practical development of that idea was not possible until the
destruction of Jerusalem had prepared men's minds to give heed to
his admonitions. Accordingly the second period of Ezekiel's work
opens with a fuller statement of the principles indicated in this
section (ch. xxxiii.). We shall therefore defer the consideration
of these principles till we reach the stage of the prophet's
ministry at which their practical significance emerges.
6. The last six
verses of the third chapter may be regarded either as closing the
account of Ezekiel's consecration or as the introduction to the
first part of his ministry, that which preceded the fall of
Jerusalem. They contain the description of a second trance, which
appears to have happened seven days after the first. The prophet
seemed to himself to be carried out in spirit to a certain plain
near his residence in Tel-abib. There the glory of Jehovah appears
to him precisely as he had seen it in his former vision by the
river Kebar. He then receives the command to shut himself up within
his house. He is to be like a man bound with ropes, unable to move
about among his fellow-exiles. Moreover, the free use of speech is
to be interdicted; his tongue will be made to cleave to his palate,
so that he is as one “dumb.” But as
often as he receives a message from Jehovah his mouth will be
opened that he may declare it to the rebellious house of
Israel.
Now if we
compare ver. 26 with xxiv. 27 and xxxiii. 22, we find that this
state of intermittent dumbness continued till the day when the
siege of Jerusalem began, and was not finally removed till tidings
were brought of the capture of the city. The verses before us therefore
throw light on the prophet's demeanour during the first half of his
ministry. What they signify is his almost entire withdrawal from
public life. Instead of being like his great predecessors, a man
living full in the public view, and thrusting himself on men's
notice when they least desired him, he is to lead an isolated and a
solitary life, a sign to the people rather than a living
voice.A somewhat similar episode seems to
have occurred in the life of Isaiah. See the commentaries on Isa.
viii. 16-18.
From
the sequel we gather that he excited sufficient interest to induce
the elders and others to visit him in his house to inquire of
Jehovah. We must also suppose that from time to time he emerged
from his retirement with a message for the whole community. It
cannot, indeed, be assumed that the chs. iv.-xxiv. contain an exact
reproduction of the addresses delivered on these occasions. Few of
them profess to have been uttered in public, and for the most part
they give the impression of having been intended for patient study
on the written page rather than for immediate oratorical effect.
There is no reason to doubt that in the main they embody the
results of Ezekiel's prophetic experiences during the period to
which they are referred, although it may be impossible to determine
how far they were actually spoken at the time, and how far they are
merely written for the instruction of a wider audience.
The strong
figures used here to describe this state of seclusion appear to
reflect the prophet's consciousness of the restraints
providentially imposed on the exercise of his office. These
restraints, however, were moral, and not, as has sometimes been
maintained, physical. The chief element was the pronounced
hostility and incredulity of the people. This, combined with the
sense of doom hanging over the nation, seems to have weighed
on the spirit of
Ezekiel, and in the ecstatic state the incubus lying upon him and
paralysing his activity presents itself to his imagination as if he
were bound with ropes and afflicted with dumbness. The
representation finds a partial parallel in a later passage in the
prophet's history. From ch. xxix. 21 (which is the latest prophecy
in the whole book) we learn that the apparent non-fulfilment of his
predictions against Tyre had caused a similar hindrance to his
public work, depriving him of the boldness of speech characteristic
of a prophet. And the opening of the mouth given to him on that
occasion by the vindication of his words is clearly analogous to
the removal of his silence by the news that Jerusalem had
fallen.These verses (ch. iii. 22-27) furnish
one of the chief supports of Klostermann's peculiar theory of
Ezekiel's condition during the first period of his career. Taking
the word “dumb” in its literal
sense, he considers that the prophet was afflicted with the malady
known as alalia, that this was
intermittent down to the date of ch. xxiv., and then became chronic
till the fugitive arrived from Jerusalem (ch. xxxiii. 21), when it
finally disappeared. This is connected with the remarkable series
of symbolic actions related in ch. iv., which are regarded as
exhibiting all the symptoms of catalepsy and hemiplegia. These
facts, together with the prophet's liability to ecstatic visions,
justify, in Klostermann's view, the hypothesis that for seven years
Ezekiel laboured under serious nervous disorders. The partiality
shown by a few writers to this view probably springs from a desire
to maintain the literal accuracy of the prophet's descriptions. But
in that aspect the theory breaks down. Even Klostermann admits that
the binding with ropes had no existence save in Ezekiel's
imagination. But if we are obliged to take into account what
seemed to the prophet, it is
better to explain the whole phenomena on the same principle. There
can be no good grounds for taking the dumbness as real and the
ropes as imaginary. Besides, it is surely a questionable expedient
to vindicate a prophet's literalism at the expense of his sanity.
In the hands of Klostermann and Orelli the hypothesis assumes a
stupendous miracle; but it is obvious that a critic of another
school might readily “wear his rue with a
difference,” and treat the whole of Ezekiel's prophetic
experiences as hallucinations of a deranged intellect.
Part II. Prophecies Relating Mainly To
The Destruction Of Jerusalem.
Chapter V. The End Foretold. Chapters
iv.-vii.
With the fourth
chapter we enter on the exposition of the first great division of
Ezekiel's prophecies. The chs. iv.-xxiv. cover a period of about
four and a half years, extending from the time of the prophet's
call to the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem. During this
time Ezekiel's thoughts revolved round one great theme—the
approaching judgment on the city and the nation. Through
contemplation of this fact there was disclosed to him the outline
of a comprehensive theory of divine providence, in which the
destruction of Israel was seen to be the necessary consequence of
her past history and a necessary preliminary to her future
restoration. The prophecies may be classified roughly under three
heads. In the first class are those which exhibit the judgment
itself in ways fitted to impress the prophet and his hearers with a
conviction of its certainty; a second class is intended to demolish
the illusions and false ideals which possessed the minds of the
Israelites and made the announcement of disaster incredible; and a
third and very important class expounds the moral principles which
were illustrated by the judgment, and which show it to be a divine
necessity. In the passage which forms the subject of the present
lecture the bare fact and certainty of the judgment are set forth
in word
and symbol and with a minimum of commentary, although even here the
conception which Ezekiel had formed of the moral situation is
clearly discernible.
I
The certainty
of the national judgment seems to have been first impressed on
Ezekiel's mind in the form of a singular series of symbolic acts
which he conceived himself to be commanded to perform. The
peculiarity of these signs is that they represent simultaneously
two distinct aspects of the nation's fate—on the one hand the
horrors of the siege of Jerusalem, and on the other hand the
state of exile which was to follow.An ingenious attempt has been made by
Professor Cornill to rearrange the verses so as to bring out two
separate series of actions, one referring exclusively to the exile
and the other to the siege. But the proposed reading requires a
somewhat violent handling of the text, and does not seem to have
met with much acceptance. The blending of diverse elements in a
single image appears also in ch. xii. 3-16.
That the
destruction of Jerusalem should occupy the first place in the
prophet's picture of national calamity requires no explanation.
Jerusalem was the heart and brain of the nation, the centre of
its life and its religion, and in the eyes of the prophets the
fountain-head of its sin. The strength of her natural situation,
the patriotic and religious associations which had gathered round
her, and the smallness of her subject province gave to Jerusalem
a unique position among the mother-cities of antiquity. And
Ezekiel's hearers knew what he meant when he employed the picture
of a beleaguered city to set forth the judgment that was to
overtake them. That crowning horror of ancient warfare, the siege
of a fortified town, meant in this case something more appalling
to the imagination than the ravages of pestilence and famine and
sword. The fate of Jerusalem represented the disappearance
of everything that
had constituted the glory and excellence of Israel's national
existence. That the light of Israel should be extinguished amidst
the anguish and bloodshed which must accompany an unsuccessful
defence of the capital was the most terrible element in Ezekiel's
message, and here he sets it in the forefront of his
prophecy.
The manner in
which the prophet seeks to impress this fact on his countrymen
illustrates a peculiar vein of realism which runs through all his
thinking (ch. iv. 1-3). Being at a distance from Jerusalem, he
seems to feel the need of some visible emblem of the doomed city
before he can adequately represent the import of his prediction.
He is commanded to take a brick and portray upon it a walled
city, surrounded by the towers, mounds, and battering-rams which
marked the usual operations of a besieging army. Then he is to
erect a plate of iron between him and the city, and from behind
this, with menacing gestures, he is as it were to press on the
siege. The meaning of the symbols is obvious. As the engines of
destruction appear on Ezekiel's diagram, at the bidding of
Jehovah, so in due time the Chaldæan army will be seen from the
walls of Jerusalem, led by the same unseen Power which now
controls the acts of the prophet. In the last act Ezekiel
exhibits the attitude of Jehovah Himself, cut off from His people
by the iron wall of an inexorable purpose which no prayer could
penetrate.
Thus far the
prophet's actions, however strange they may appear to us, have
been simple and intelligible. But at this point a second sign is
as it were superimposed on the first, in order to symbolise an
entirely different set of facts—the hardship and duration of the
Exile (vv. 4-8). While still engaged in prosecuting the siege of
the city, the prophet is supposed to become at the same time the
representative of the guilty people and the victim of the divine judgment. He is
to “bear their iniquity”—that is,
the punishment due to their sin. This is represented by his lying
bound on his left side for a number of days equal to the years of
Ephraim's banishment, and then on his right side for a time
proportionate to the captivity of Judah. Now the time of Judah's
exile is fixed at forty years, dating of course from the fall of
the city. The captivity of North Israel exceeds that of Judah by
the interval between the destruction of Samaria (722) and the
fall of Jerusalem, a period which actually measured about a
hundred and thirty-five years. In the Hebrew text, however, the
length of Israel's captivity is given as three hundred and ninety
years—that is, it must have lasted for three hundred and fifty
years before that of Judah begins. This is obviously quite
irreconcilable with the facts of history, and also with the
prophet's intention. He cannot mean that the banishment of the
northern tribes was to be protracted for two centuries after that
of Judah had come to an end, for he uniformly speaks of the
restoration of the two branches of the nation as simultaneous.
The text of the Greek translation helps us past this difficulty.
The Hebrew manuscript from which that version was made had the
reading a “hundred and ninety”
instead of “three hundred and
ninety” in ver. 5. This alone yields a satisfactory sense,
and the reading of the Septuagint is now generally accepted as
representing what Ezekiel actually wrote. There is still a slight
discrepancy between the hundred and thirty-five years of the
actual history and the hundred and fifty years expressed by the
symbol; but we must remember that Ezekiel is using round numbers
throughout, and moreover he has not as yet fixed the precise date
of the capture of Jerusalem when the last forty years are to
commence.The correspondence would be almost
exact if we date the commencement of the northern captivity from
734, when Tiglath-pileser carried away the inhabitants of the
northern and eastern parts of the country. This is a possible view,
although hardly necessary.
In the third
symbol (vv. 9-17) the two aspects of the judgment are again
presented in the closest possible combination. The prophet's food
and drink during the days when he is imagined to be lying on his
side represents on the one hand, by its being small in quantity
and carefully weighed and measured, the rigours of famine in
Jerusalem during the siege—“Behold, I
will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat
bread by weight, and with anxiety; and drink water by measure,
and with horror” (ver. 16); on the other hand, by its
mixed ingredients and by the fuel used in its preparation, it
typifies the unclean religious condition of the people when in
exile—“Even so shall the children of
Israel eat their food unclean among the heathen” (ver.
13). The meaning of this threat is best explained by a passage in
the book of Hosea. Speaking of the Exile, Hosea says:
“They shall not remain in the land of
Jehovah; but the children of Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and
shall eat unclean food in Assyria. They shall pour out no wine to
Jehovah, nor shall they lay out their sacrifices for Him: like
the food of mourners shall their food be; all that eat thereof
shall be defiled: for their bread shall only satisfy their
hunger; it shall not come into the house of Jehovah” (Hos.
ix. 3, 4). The idea is that all food which has not been
consecrated by being presented to Jehovah in the sanctuary is
necessarily unclean, and those who eat of it contract ceremonial
defilement. In the very act of satisfying his natural appetite a
man forfeits his religious standing. This was the peculiar
hardship of the state of exile, that a man must become unclean,
he must eat unconsecrated food unless he renounced his religion
and served the gods of
the land in which he dwelt. Between the time of Hosea and Ezekiel
these ideas may have been somewhat modified by the introduction
of the Deuteronomic law, which expressly permits secular
slaughter at a distance from the sanctuary. But this did not
lessen the importance of a legal sanctuary for the common life of
an Israelite. The whole of a man's flocks and herds, the whole
produce of his fields, had to be sanctified by the presentation
of firstlings and firstfruits at the Temple before he could enjoy
the reward of his industry with the sense of standing in
Jehovah's favour. Hence the destruction of the sanctuary or the
permanent exclusion of the worshippers from it reduced the whole
life of the people to a condition of uncleanness which was felt
to be as great a calamity as was a papal interdict in the Middle
Ages. This is the fact which is expressed in the part of
Ezekiel's symbolism now before us. What it meant for his
fellow-exiles was that the religious disability under which they
laboured was to be continued for a generation. The whole life of
Israel was to become unclean until its inward state was made
worthy of the religious privileges now to be withdrawn. At the
same time no one could have felt the penalty more severely than
Ezekiel himself, in whom habits of ceremonial purity had become a
second nature. The repugnance which he feels at the loathsome
manner in which he was at first directed to prepare his food, and
the profession of his own practice in exile, as well as the
concession made to his scrupulous sense of propriety (vv. 14-16),
are all characteristic of one whose priestly training had made a
defect of ceremonial cleanness almost equivalent to a moral
delinquency.
The last of
the symbols (ch. v. 1-4) represents the fate of the population of
Jerusalem when the city is taken. The shaving of the prophet's
head and beard is a figure for the depopulation of the city and
country. By a further
series of acts, whose meaning is obvious, he shows how a third of
the inhabitants shall die of famine and pestilence during the
siege, a third shall be slain by the enemy when the city is
captured, while the remaining third shall be dispersed among the
nations. Even these shall be pursued by the sword of vengeance
until but a few numbered individuals survive, and of them again a
part passes through the fire. The passage reminds us of the last
verse of the sixth chapter of Isaiah, which was perhaps in
Ezekiel's mind when he wrote: “And if a
tenth still remain in it [the land], it shall again pass through
the fire: as a terebinth or an oak whose stump is left at their
felling: a holy seed shall be the stock thereof” (Isa. vi.
13). At least the conception of a succession of sifting
judgments, leaving only a remnant to inherit the promise of the
future, is common to both prophets, and the symbol in Ezekiel is
noteworthy as the first expression of his steadfast conviction
that further punishments were in store for the exiles after the
destruction of Jerusalem.
It is clear
that these signs could never have been enacted, either in view of
the people or in solitude, as they are here described. It may be
doubted whether the whole description is not purely ideal,
representing a process which passed through the prophet's mind,
or was suggested to him in the visionary state but never actually
performed. That will always remain a tenable view. An imaginary
symbolic act is as legitimate a literary device as an imaginary
conversation. It is absurd to mix up the question of the
prophet's truthfulness with the question whether he did or did
not actually do what he conceives himself as doing. The attempt
to explain his action by catalepsy would take us but a little
way, even if the arguments adduced in favour of it were stronger
than they are. Since even a cataleptic patient could not
have tied himself
down on his side or prepared and eaten his food in that posture,
it is necessary in any case to admit that there must be a
considerable, though indeterminate, element of literary
imagination in the account given of the symbols. It is not
impossible that some symbolic representation of the siege of
Jerusalem may have actually been the first act in Ezekiel's
ministry. In the interpretation of the vision which immediately
follows we shall find that no notice is taken of the features
which refer to exile, but only of those which announce the siege
of Jerusalem. It may therefore be the case that Ezekiel did some
such action as is here described, pointing to the fall of
Jerusalem, but that the whole was taken up afterwards in his
imagination and made into an ideal representation of the two
great facts which formed the burden of his earlier prophecy.
II
It is a relief
to turn from this somewhat fantastic, though for its own purpose
effective, exhibition of prophetic ideas to the impassioned
oracles in which the doom of the city and the nation is
pronounced. The first of these (ch. v. 5-17) is introduced here
as the explanation of the signs that have been described, in so
far as they bear on the fate of Jerusalem; but it has a unity of
its own, and is a characteristic specimen of Ezekiel's oratorical
style. It consists of two parts: the first (vv. 5-10) deals
chiefly with the reasons for the judgment on Jerusalem, and the
second (vv. 11-17) with the nature of the judgment itself. The
chief thought of the passage is the unexampled severity of the
punishment which is in store for Israel, as represented by the
fate of the capital. A calamity so unprecedented demands an
explanation as unique as itself. Ezekiel finds the ground of it
in the signal honour conferred on Jerusalem in her being set in
the midst of the nations, in the possession of a religion which expressed
the will of the one God, and in the fact that she had proved
herself unworthy of her distinction and privileges and tried to
live as the nations around. “This is
Jerusalem which I have set in the midst of the nations, with the
lands round about her. But she rebelled against My judgments
wickedlyOr, with a different pointing,
“She changed My judgments to
wickedness.”
more
than the nations, and My statutes more than [other] lands round
about her: for they rejected My judgments, and in My statutes
they did not walk.... Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah:
Behold, even I am against you; and I will execute in thy midst
judgments before the nations, and will do in thy case what I have
not done [heretofore], and what I shall not do the like of any
more, according to all thy abominations” (vv. 5-9). The
central position of Jerusalem is evidently no figure of speech in
the mouth of Ezekiel. It means that she is so situated as to
fulfil her destiny in the view of all the nations of the world,
who can read in her wonderful history the character of the God
who is above all gods. Nor can the prophet be fairly accused of
provincialism in thus speaking of Jerusalem's unrivalled physical
and moral advantages. The mountain ridge on which she stood lay
almost across the great highways of communication between the
East and the West, between the hoary seats of civilisation and
the lands whither the course of empire took its way. Ezekiel knew
that Tyre was the centre of the old world's commerce,See ch. xxvii.
but
he also knew that Jerusalem occupied a central situation in the
civilised world, and in that fact he rightly saw a providential
mark of the grandeur and universality of her religious mission.
Her calamities, too, were probably such as no other city
experienced. The terrible prediction of ver. 10, “Fathers shall eat sons in the midst of thee, and sons shall eat
fathers,” seems to have been literally fulfilled.
“The hands of the pitiful women have
sodden their own children: they were their meat in the
destruction of the daughter of My people” (Lam. iv. 10).
It is likely enough that the annals of Assyrian conquest cover
many a tale of woe which in point of mere physical suffering
paralleled the atrocities of the siege of Jerusalem. But no other
nation had a conscience so sensitive as Israel, or lost so much
by its political annihilation. The humanising influences of a
pure religion had made Israel susceptible of a kind of anguish
which ruder communities were spared.
The sin of
Jerusalem is represented after Ezekiel's manner as on the one
hand transgression of the divine commandments, and on the other
defilement of the Temple through false worship. These are ideas
which we shall frequently meet in the course of the book, and
they need not detain us here. The prophet proceeds (vv. 11-17) to
describe in detail the relentless punishment which the divine
vengeance is to inflict on the inhabitants and the city. The
jealousy, the wrath, the indignation of Jehovah, which are
represented as “satisfied” by the
complete destruction of the people, belong to the limitations of
the conception of God which Ezekiel had. It was impossible at
that time to interpret such an event as the fall of Jerusalem in
a religious sense otherwise than as a vehement outburst of
Jehovah's anger, expressing the reaction of His holy nature
against the sin of idolatry. There is indeed a great distance
between the attitude of Ezekiel towards the hapless city and the
yearning pity of Christ's lament over the sinful Jerusalem of His
time. Yet the first was a step towards the second. Ezekiel
realised intensely that part of God's character which it was
needful to enforce in order to beget in his countrymen the deep
horror at the sin of idolatry which characterised the later
Judaism.
The best commentary on the latter part of this chapter is found
in those parts of the book of Lamentations which speak of the
state of the city and the survivors after its overthrow. There we
see how quickly the stern judgment produced a more chastened and
beautiful type of piety than had ever been prevalent before.
Those pathetic utterances, in which patriotism and religion are
so finely blended, are like the timid and tentative advances of a
child's heart towards a parent who has ceased to punish but has
not begun to caress. This and much else that is true and
ennobling in the later religion of Israel is rooted in the
terrifying sense of the divine anger against sin so powerfully
represented in the preaching of Ezekiel.
III
The next two
chapters may be regarded as pendants to the theme which is dealt
with in this opening section of the book of Ezekiel. In the
fourth and fifth chapters the prophet had mainly the city in his
eye as the focus of the nation's life; in the sixth he turns his
eye to the land which had shared the sin, and must suffer the
punishment, of the capital. It is, in its first part (vv. 2-10),
an apostrophe to the mountain land of Israel, which seems to
stand out before the exile's mind with its mountains and hills,
its ravines and valleys, in contrast to the monotonous plain of
Babylonia which stretched around him. But these mountains were
familiar to the prophet as the seats of the rural idolatry in
Israel. The word bāmah, which means properly
“the height,” had come to be used
as the name of an idolatrous sanctuary. These sanctuaries were
probably Canaanitish in origin; and although by Israel they had
been consecrated to the worship of Jehovah, yet He was worshipped
there in ways which the prophets pronounced hateful to Him. They
had been destroyed by Josiah, but must have been restored to their former use
during the revival of heathenism which followed his death. It is
a lurid picture which rises before the prophet's imagination as
he contemplates the judgment of this provincial idolatry: the
altars laid waste, the “sun-pillars”Hammânim—a word of doubtful
meaning, however. The word for idols, gillûlîm, is all but peculiar to
Ezekiel. It is variously explained as block-gods or dung-gods—in any case an epithet
of contempt. The ashērah, or
sacred pole, is never referred to by Ezekiel.
broken, and the idols surrounded by the corpses of men who had
fled to their shrines for protection and perished at their feet.
This demonstration of the helplessness of the rustic divinities
to save their sanctuaries and their worshippers will be the means
of breaking the rebellious heart and the whorish eyes that had
led Israel so far astray from her true Lord, and will produce in
exile the self-loathing which Ezekiel always regards as the
beginning of penitence.
But the
prophet's passion rises to a higher pitch, and he hears the
command “Clap thy hands, and stamp with
thy foot, and say, Aha for the abominations of the house of
Israel!” These are gestures and exclamations, not of
indignation, but of contempt and triumphant scorn. The same
feeling and even the same gestures are ascribed to Jehovah
Himself in another passage of highly charged emotion (ch. xxi.
17). And it is only fair to remember that it is the anticipation
of the victory of Jehovah's cause that fills the mind of the
prophet at such moments and seems to deaden the sense of human
sympathy within him. At the same time the victory of Jehovah was
the victory of prophecy, and in so far Smend may be right in
regarding the words as throwing light on the intensity of the
antagonism in which prophecy and the popular religion then stood.
The devastation of the land is to be effected by the same
instruments as were at work in the destruction of the city: first the sword
of the Chaldæans, then famine and pestilence among those who
escape, until the whole of Israel's ancient territory lies
desolate from the southern steppes to Riblah in the north.In ver. 14 the true sense has been
lost by the corruption of the word Riblah into Diblah.
Ch. vii. is
one of those singled out by Ewald as preserving most faithfully
the spirit and language of Ezekiel's earlier utterances. Both in
thought and expression it exhibits a freedom and animation seldom
attained in Ezekiel's writings, and it is evident that it must
have been composed under keen emotion. It is comparatively free
from those stereotyped phrases which are elsewhere so common, and
the style falls at times into the rhythm which is characteristic
of Hebrew poetry. Ezekiel hardly perhaps attains to perfect
mastery of poetic form, and even here we may be sensible of a
lack of power to blend a series of impressions and images into an
artistic unity. The vehemence of his feeling hurries him from one
conception to another, without giving full expression to any, or
indicating clearly the connection that leads from one to the
other. This circumstance, and the corrupt condition of the text
together, make the chapter in some parts unintelligible, and as a
whole one of the most difficult in the book. In its present
position it forms a fitting conclusion to the opening section of
the book. All the elements of the judgment which have just been
foretold are gathered up in one outburst of emotion, producing a
song of triumph in which the prophet seems to stand in the uproar
of the final catastrophe and exult amid the crash and wreck of
the old order which is passing away.
The passage is
divided into five stanzas, which may originally have been
approximately equal in length, although the first is now nearly twice as
long as any of the others.The reason may be that two different
recensions of the text have been combined and mixed up. So Hitzig
and Cornill.
i. Vv.
2-9.—The first verse strikes the keynote of the whole poem; it is
the inevitableness and the finality of the approaching
dissolution. A striking phrase of AmosAmos viii. 2.
is
first taken up and expanded in accordance with the anticipations
with which the previous chapters have now familiarised us:
“An end is come, the end is come on the
four skirts of the land.” The poet already hears the
tumult and confusion of the battle; the vintage songs of the
Judæan peasant are silenced, and with the din and fury of war the
day of the Lord draws near.
ii. Vv.
10-13.—The prophet's thoughts here revert to the present, and he
notes the eager interest with which men both in Judah and Babylon
are pursuing the ordinary business of life and the vain dreams of
political greatness. “The diadem
flourishes, the sceptre blossoms, arrogance shoots up.”
These expressions must refer to the efforts of the new rulers of
Jerusalem to restore the fortunes of the nation and the glories
of the old kingdom which had been so greatly tarnished by the
recent captivity. Things are going bravely, they think; they are
surprised at their own success; they hope that the day of small
things will grow into the day of things greater than those which
are past. The following verse is untranslatable; probably the
original words, if we could recover them, would contain some
pointed and scornful antithesis to these futile and vain-glorious
anticipations. The allusion to “buyers
and sellers” (ver. 12) may possibly be quite general,
referring only to the absorbing interest which men continue to
take in their possessions, heedless of the impending
judgment.Cf. Luke xvii. 26-30.
But
the facts that the advantage is assumed to be on the side of the buyer and that the
seller expects to return to his heritage make it probable that
the prophet is thinking of the forced sales by the expatriated
nobles of their estates in Palestine, and to their deeply
cherished resolve to right themselves when the time of their
exile is over. All such ambitions, says the prophet, are
vain—“the seller shall not return to what
he sold, and a man shall not by wrong preserve his
living.” In any case Ezekiel evinces here, as elsewhere, a
certain sympathy with the exiled aristocracy, in opposition to
the pretensions of the new men who had succeeded to their
honours.
iii. Vv.
14-18.—The next scene that rises before the prophet's vision is
the collapse of Judah's military preparations in the hour of
danger. Their army exists but on paper. There is much blowing of
trumpets and much organising, but no men to go forth to battle. A
blight rests on all their efforts; their hands are paralysed and
their hearts unnerved by the sense that “wrath rests on all their pomp.” Sword,
famine, and pestilence, the ministers of Jehovah's vengeance,
shall devour the inhabitants of the city and the country, until
but a few survivors on the tops of the mountains remain to mourn
over the universal desolation.
iv. Vv.
19-22.—At present the inhabitants of Jerusalem are proud of the
ill-gotten and ill-used wealth stored up within her, and
doubtless the exiles cast covetous eyes on the luxury which may
still have prevailed amongst the upper classes in the capital.
But of what avail will all this treasure be in the evil day now
so near at hand? It will but add mockery to their sufferings to
be surrounded by gold and silver which can do nothing to allay
the pangs of hunger. It will be cast in the streets as refuse,
for it cannot save them in the day of Jehovah's anger. Nay, more,
it will become the prize of the most ruthless of the heathen (the Chaldæans);
and when in the eagerness of their lust for gold they ransack the
Temple treasury and so desecrate the Holy Place, Jehovah will
avert His face and suffer them to work their will. The curse of
Jehovah rests on the silver and gold of Jerusalem, which has been
used for the making of idolatrous images, and now is made to them
an unclean thing.
v. Vv.
23-27.—The closing strophe contains a powerful description of the
dismay and despair that will seize all classes in the state as
the day of wrath draws near. Calamity after calamity comes,
rumour follows hard on rumour, and the heads of the nation are
distracted and cease to exercise the functions of leadership. The
recognised guides of the people—the prophets, the priests, and
the wise men—have no word of counsel or direction to offer; the
prophet's vision, the priest's traditional lore, and the wise
man's sagacity are alike at fault. So the king and the grandees
are filled with stupefaction; and the common people, deprived of
their natural leaders, sit down in helpless dejection. Thus shall
Jerusalem be recompensed according to her doings. “The land is full of bloodshed, and the city of
violence”; and in the correspondence between desert and
retribution men shall be made to acknowledge the operation of the
divine righteousness. “They shall know
that I am Jehovah.”
IV
It may be
useful at this point to note certain theological principles which
already begin to appear in this earliest of Ezekiel's prophecies.
Reflection on the nature and purpose of the divine dealings we
have seen to be a characteristic of his work; and even those
passages which we have considered, although chiefly devoted to an
enforcement of the fact of judgment, present some features
of the conception
of Israel's history which had been formed in his mind.
1. We observe
in the first place that the prophet lays great stress on the
world-wide significance of the events which are to befall Israel.
This thought is not as yet developed, but it is clearly present.
The relation between Jehovah and Israel is so peculiar that He is
known to the nations in the first instance only as Israel's God,
and thus His being and character have to be learned from His
dealings with His own people. And since Jehovah is the only true
God and must be worshipped as such everywhere, the history of
Israel has an interest for the world such as that of no other
nation has. She was placed in the centre of the nations in order
that the knowledge of God might radiate from her through all the
world; and now that she has proved unfaithful to her mission,
Jehovah must manifest His power and His character by an
unexampled work of judgment. Even the destruction of Israel is a
demonstration to the universal conscience of mankind of what true
divinity is.
2. But the
judgment has of course a purpose and a meaning for Israel
herself, and both purposes are summed up in the recurring formula
“Ye [they] shall know that I am
Jehovah,” or “that I, Jehovah,
have spoken.” These two phrases express precisely the same
idea, although from slightly different starting-points. It is
assumed that Jehovah's personality is to be identified by His
word spoken through the prophets. He is known to men through the
revelation of Himself in the prophets' utterances. “Ye shall know that I, Jehovah, have spoken”
means therefore, Ye shall know that it is I, the God of Israel
and the Ruler of the universe, who speak these things. In other
words, the harmony between prophecy and providence guarantees the
source of the prophet's message. The shorter phrase “Ye shall know that I am Jehovah” may mean Ye shall know that
I who now speak am truly Jehovah, the God of Israel. The
prejudices of the people would have led them to deny that the
power which dictated Ezekiel's prophecy could be their God; but
this denial, together with the false idea of Jehovah on which it
rests, shall be destroyed for ever when the prophet's words come
true.
There is of
course no doubt that Ezekiel conceived Jehovah as endowed with
the plenitude of deity, or that in his view the name expressed
all that we mean by the word God. Nevertheless, historically the
name Jehovah is a proper name, denoting the God who is the God of
Israel. Renan has ventured on the assertion that a deity with a
proper name is necessarily a false god. The statement perhaps
measures the difference between the God of revealed religion and
the god who is an abstraction, an expression of the order of the
universe, who exists only in the mind of the man who names him.
The God of revelation is a living person, with a character and
will of His own, capable of being known by man. It is the
distinction of revelation that it dares to regard God as an
individual with an inner life and nature of His own, independent
of the conception men may form of Him. Applied to such a Being, a
personal name may be as true and significant as the name which
expresses the character and individuality of a man. Only thus can
we understand the historical process by which the God who was
first manifested as the deity of a particular nation preserves
His personal identity with the God who in Christ is at last
revealed as the God of the spirits of all flesh. The knowledge of
Jehovah of which Ezekiel speaks is therefore at once a knowledge
of the character of the God whom Israel professed to serve, and a
knowledge of that which constitutes true and essential
divinity.Ezekiel's use of the divine names
would hardly be satisfactory to Renan. Outside of the prophecies
addressed to heathen nations the generic name אלהים is never used
absolutely, except in the phrases “visions
of God” (three times) and “spirit of
God” (once, in ch. xi. 24, where the text may be doubtful).
Elsewhere it is used only of God in His relation to men, as,
e.g., in the expression
“be to you for a God.” אל שדי occurs
once (ch. x. 5) and אל alone three times in ch. xxviii. (addressed
to the prince of Tyre). The prophet's word, when he wishes to
express absolute divinity, is just the “proper” name יהוה, in accordance no doubt with
the interpretation given in Exod. iii. 13, 14.
3. The
prophet, in ch. vi. 8-10, proceeds one step further in
delineating the effect of the judgment on the minds of the
survivors. The fascination of idolatry for the Israelites is
conceived as produced by that radical perversion of the religious
sense which the prophets call “whoredom”—a sensuous delight in the blessings
of nature, and an indifference to the moral element which can
alone preserve either religion or human love from corruption. The
spell shall at last be broken in the new knowledge of Jehovah
which is produced by calamity; and the heart of the people,
purified from its delusions, shall turn to Him who has smitten
them, as the only true God. “When your
fugitives from the sword are among the nations, when they are
scattered through the lands, then shall your fugitives remember
Me amongst the nations whither they have been carried captive,
when I break their heart that goes awhoring from Me, and their
whorish eyes which went after their idols.” When the
idolatrous propensity is thus eradicated, the conscience of
Israel will turn inwards on itself, and in the light of its new
knowledge of God will for the first time read its own history
aright. The beginnings of a new spiritual life will be made in
the bitter self-condemnation which is one side of the national
repentance. “They shall loathe themselves
for all the evil that they have committed in all their
abominations.”
Chapter VI. Your House Is Left Unto
You Desolate. Chapters viii.-xi.
One of the most
instructive phases of religious belief among the Israelites of the
seventh century was the superstitious regard in which the Temple at
Jerusalem was held. Its prestige as the metropolitan sanctuary had
no doubt steadily increased from the time when it was built. But it
was in the crisis of the Assyrian invasion that the popular
sentiment in favour of its peculiar sanctity was transmuted into a
fanatical faith in its inherent inviolability. It is well known
that during the whole course of this invasion the prophet Isaiah
had consistently taught that the enemy should never set foot within
the precincts of the Holy City—that, on the contrary, the attempt
to seize it would prove to be the signal for his annihilation. The
striking fulfilment of this prediction in the sudden destruction of
Sennacherib's army had an immense effect on the religion of the
time. It restored the faith in Jehovah's omnipotence which was
already giving way, and it granted a new lease of life to the very
errors which it ought to have extinguished. For here, as in so many
other cases, what was a spiritual faith in one generation became a
superstition in the next. Indifferent to the divine truths which
gave meaning to Isaiah's prophecy, the people changed his sublime
faith in the living God working in history into a crass confidence
in the material symbol which had been the means of expressing
it to their minds.
Henceforth it became a fundamental tenet of the current creed that
the Temple and the city which guarded it could never fall into the
hands of an enemy; and any teaching which assailed that belief was
felt to undermine confidence in the national deity. In the time of
Jeremiah and Ezekiel this superstition existed in unabated vigour,
and formed one of the greatest hindrances to the acceptance of
their teaching. “The Temple of the Lord,
the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these!”
was the cry of the benighted worshippers as they thronged to its
courts to seek the favour of Jehovah (Jer. vii. 4). The same state
of feeling must have prevailed among Ezekiel's fellow-exiles. To
the prophet himself, attached as he was to the worship of the
Temple, it may have been a thought almost too hard to bear that
Jehovah should abandon the only place of His legitimate worship.
Amongst the rest of the captives the faith in its infallibility was
one of the illusions which must be overthrown before their minds
could perceive the true drift of his teaching. In his first
prophecy the fact had just been touched on, but merely as an
incident in the fall of Jerusalem. About a year later, however, he
received a new revelation, in which he learned that the destruction
of the Temple was no mere incidental consequence of the capture of
the city, but a main object of the calamity. The time was come when
judgment must begin at the house of God.
The weird vision
in which this truth was conveyed to the prophet is said to have
occurred during a visit of the elders to Ezekiel in his own house.
In their presence he fell into a trance, in which the events now to
be considered passed before him; and after the trance was removed
he recounted the substance of the vision to the exiles. This
statement has been somewhat needlessly called in question, on the
ground that after so protracted an ecstasy the prophet would not be likely to find his
visitors still in their places. But this matter-of-fact criticism
overreaches itself. We have no means of determining how long it
would take for this series of events to be realised. If we may
trust anything to the analogy of dreams—and of all conditions to
which ordinary men are subject the dream is surely the closest
analogy to the prophetic ecstasy—the whole may have passed in an
incredibly short space of time. If the statement were untrue, it is
difficult to see what Ezekiel would have gained by making it. If
the whole vision were a fiction, this must of course be fictitious
too; but even so it seems a very superfluous piece of
invention.
We prefer,
therefore, to regard the vision as real, and the assigned situation
as historical; and the fact that it is recorded suggests that there
must be some connection between the object of the visit and the
burden of the revelation which was then communicated. It is not
difficult to imagine points of contact between them. Ewald has
conjectured that the occasion of the visit may have been some
recent tidings from Jerusalem which had opened the eyes of the
“elders” to the real relation that
existed between them and their brethren at home. If they had ever
cherished any illusions on the point, they had certainly been
disabused of them before Ezekiel had this vision. They were aware,
whether the information was recent or not, that they were
absolutely disowned by the new authorities in Jerusalem, and that
it was impossible that they should ever come back peaceably to
their old place in the state. This created a problem which they
could not solve, and the fact that Ezekiel had announced the fall
of Jerusalem may have formed a bond of sympathy between him and his
brethren in exile which drew them to him in their perplexity. Some
such hypothesis gives at all events a fuller significance to the
closing
part of the vision, where the attitude of the men in Jerusalem is
described, and where the exiles are taught that the hope of
Israel's future lies with them. It is the first time that Ezekiel
has distinguished between the fates in store for the two sections
of the people, and it would almost appear as if the promotion of
the exiles to the first place in the true Israel was a new
revelation to him. Twice during this vision he is moved to
intercede for the “remnant of
Israel,” as if the only hope of a new people of God lay in
sparing at least some of those who were left in the land. But the
burden of the message that now comes to him is that in the
spiritual sense the true remnant of Israel is not in Judæa, but
among the exiles in Babylon. It was there that the new Israel was
to be formed, and the land was to be the heritage, not of those who
clung to it and exulted in the misfortunes of their banished
brethren, but of those who under the discipline of exile were first
prepared to use the land as Jehovah's holiness demanded.
The vision is
interesting, in the first place, on account of the glimpse it
affords of the state of mind prevailing in influential circles in
Jerusalem at this time. There is no reason whatever to doubt that
here in the form of a vision we have reliable information regarding
the actual state of matters when Ezekiel wrote. It has been
supposed by some critics that the description of the idolatries in
the Temple does not refer to contemporary practices, but to abuses
that had been rife in the days of Manasseh and had been put a stop
to by Josiah's reformation. But the vision loses half its meaning
if it is taken as merely an idealised representation of all the
sins that had polluted the Temple in the course of its history. The
names of those who are seen must be names of living men known to
Ezekiel and his contemporaries, and the sentiments put in their
mouth, especially in the latter part of the vision, are suitable only to the age in which
he lived. It is very probable that the description in its general
features would also apply to the days of
Manasseh; but the revival of idolatry which followed the death of
Josiah would naturally take the form of a restoration of the
illegal cults which had flourished unchecked under his grandfather.
Ezekiel's own experience before his captivity, and the steady
intercourse which had been maintained since, would supply him with
the material which in the ecstatic condition is wrought up into
this powerful picture.
The thing that
surprises us most is the prevailing conviction amongst the ruling
classes that “Jehovah had forsaken the
land.” These men seem to have partly emancipated themselves,
as politicians in Israel were apt to do, from the restraints and
narrowness of the popular religion. To them it was a conceivable
thing that Jehovah should abandon His people. And yet life was
worth living and fighting for apart from Jehovah. It was of course
a merely selfish life, not inspired by national ideals, but simply
a clinging to place and power. The wish was father to the thought;
men who so readily yielded to the belief in Jehovah's absence were
very willing to be persuaded of its truth. The religion of Jehovah
had always imposed a check on social and civic wrong, and men whose
power rested on violence and oppression could not but rejoice to be
rid of it. So they seem to have acquiesced readily enough in the
conclusion to which so many circumstances seemed to point, that
Jehovah had ceased to interest Himself either for good or evil in
them and their affairs. Still, the wide acceptance of a belief like
this, so repugnant to all the religious ideas of the ancient world,
seems to require for its explanation some fact of contemporary
history. It has been thought that it arose from the disappearance
of the ark of Jehovah from the Temple. It seems from the third
chapter of
Jeremiah that the ark was no longer in existence in Josiah's reign,
and that the want of it was felt as a grave religious loss. It is
not improbable that this circumstance, in connection with the
disasters which had marked the last days of the kingdom, led in
many minds to the fear and in some to the hope that along with His
most venerable symbol Jehovah Himself had vanished from their
midst.
It should be
noticed that the feeling described was only one of several currents
that ran in the divided society of Jerusalem. It is quite a
different point of view that is presented in the taunt quoted in
ch. xi. 15, that the exiles were far from Jehovah, and had
therefore lost their right to their possessions. But the religious
despair is not only the most startling fact that we have to look
at; it is also the one that is made most prominent in the vision.
And the divine answer to it given through Ezekiel is that the
conviction is true; Jehovah has forsaken the land. But in the
first place the cause of His departure is found in those very
practices for which it was made the excuse; and in the second,
although He has ceased to dwell in the midst of His people, He has
lost neither the power nor the will to punish their iniquities. To
impress these truths first on his fellow-exiles and then on the
whole nation is the chief object of the chapter before us.
Now we find that
the general sense of God-forsakenness expressed itself principally
in two directions. On the one hand it led to the multiplication of
false objects of worship to supply the place of Him who was
regarded as the proper tutelary Divinity of Israel; on the other
hand it produced a reckless, devil-may-care spirit of resistance
against any odds, such as was natural to men who had only material
interests to fight for, and nothing to trust in but their own right
hand. Syncretism in religion and fatalism in politics—these were
the twin symptoms
of the decay of faith among the upper classes in Jerusalem. But
these belong to two different parts of the vision which we must now
distinguish.
I
The first part
deals with the departure of Jehovah as caused by religious
offences perpetrated in the Temple, and with the return of
Jehovah to destroy the city on account of these offences. The
prophet is transported in “visions of
God” to Jerusalem, and placed in the outer court near the
northern gate, outside of which was the site where the
“image of Jealousy” had stood in
the time of Manasseh. Near him stands the appearance which he had
learned to recognise as the glory of Jehovah, signifying that
Jehovah has, for a purpose not yet disclosed, revisited His
Temple. But first Ezekiel must be made to see the state of things
which exists in this Temple which had once been the seat of God's
presence. Looking through the gate to the north, he discovers
that the image of JealousyOf what nature this idolatrous symbol
was we cannot certainly determine. The word used for “image” (semel)
occurs in only two other passages. The writer of the books of
Chronicles uses it of the asherah which was set up by
Manasseh in the Temple, and it is possible that he means thus to
identify that object with what Ezekiel saw (cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 7,
and 2 Kings xxi. 7). This interpretation is as satisfactory as any
that has been proposed.
has
been restored to its old place. This is the first and apparently
the least heinous of the abominations that defiled the
sanctuary.
The second
scene is the only one of the four which represents a secret cult.
Partly perhaps for that reason it strikes our minds as the most
repulsive of all; but that was obviously not Ezekiel's estimate
of it. There are greater abominations to follow. It is difficult
to understand the particulars of Ezekiel's description,
especially
in the Hebrew text (the LXX. is simpler); but it seems impossible
to escape the impression that there was something obscene in a
worship where idolatry appears as ashamed of itself. The
essential fact, however, is that the very highest and most
influential men in the land were addicted to a form of
heathenism, whose objects of worship were pictures of
“horrid creeping things, and cattle, and
all the gods of the house of Israel.” The name of one of
these men, the leader in this superstition, is given, and is
significant of the state of life in Jerusalem shortly before its
fall. Jaazaniah was the son of Shaphan, who is probably identical
with the chancellor of Josiah's reign whose sympathy with the
prophetic teaching was evinced by his zeal in the cause of
reform. We read of other members of the family who were faithful
to the national religion, such as his son Ahikam, also a zealous
reformer, and his grandson Gedaliah, Jeremiah's friend and
patron, and the governor appointed over Judah by Nebuchadnezzar
after the taking of the city. The family was thus divided both in
religion and politics. While one branch was devoted to the
worship of Jehovah and favoured submission to the king of
Babylon, Jaazaniah belonged to the opposite party and was the
ringleader in a peculiarly obnoxious form of idolatry.The nature of the cults is best
explained by Professor Robertson Smith, who supposes that they are
a survival of aboriginal totemistic superstitions which had been
preserved in secret circles till now, but suddenly assumed a new
importance with the collapse of the national religion and the
belief that Jehovah had left the land. Others, however, have
thought that it is Egyptian rites which are referred to. This view
might best explain its prevalence among the elders, but it has
little positive support.
The third
“abomination” is a form of
idolatry widely diffused over Western Asia—the annual mourning
for Tammuz. Tammuz was originally a Babylonian deity (Dumuzi), but his worship is
specially identified with Phœnicia, whence under the name Adonis
it was introduced into Greece. The mourning celebrates the death
of the god, which is an emblem of the decay of the earth's
productive powers, whether due to the scorching heat of the sun
or to the cold of winter. It seems to have been a comparatively
harmless rite of nature-religion, and its popularity among the
women of Jerusalem at this time may be due to the prevailing mood
of despondency which found vent in the sympathetic contemplation
of that aspect of nature which most suggests decay and death.
The last and
greatest of the abominations practised in and near the Temple is
the worship of the sun. The peculiar enormity of this species of
idolatry can hardly lie in the object of adoration; it is to be
sought rather in the place where it was practised, and in the
rank of those who took part in it, who were probably priests.
Standing between the porch and the altar, with their backs to the
Temple, these men unconsciously expressed the deliberate
rejection of Jehovah which was involved in their idolatry. The
worship of the heavenly bodies was probably imported into Israel
from Assyria and Babylon, and its prevalence in the later years
of the monarchy was due to political rather than religious
influences. The gods of these imperial nations were esteemed more
potent than those of the states which succumbed to their power,
and hence men who were losing confidence in their national deity
naturally sought to imitate the religions of the most powerful
peoples known to them.It has been supposed, however, that
the sun-worship referred to here is of Persian origin, chiefly
because of the obscure expression in ver. 17: “Behold they put the twig to their nose.” This
has been explained by a Persian custom of holding up a branch
before the face, lest the breath of the worshipper should
contaminate the purity of the deity. But Persia had not yet played
any great part in history, and it is hardly credible that a
distinctively Persian custom should have found its way into the
ritual of Jerusalem. Moreover, the words do not occur in the
description of the sun-worshippers, nor do they refer particularly
to them.
In the
arrangement of the four specimens of the religious practices which prevailed in
Jerusalem, Ezekiel seems to proceed from the most familiar and
explicable to the more outlandish defections from the purity of
the national faith. At the same time his description shows how
different classes of society were implicated in the sin of
idolatry—the elders, the women, and the priests. During all this
time the glory of Jehovah has stood in the court, and there is
something very impressive in the picture of these infatuated men
and women preoccupied with their unholy devotions and all
unconscious of the presence of Him whom they deemed to have
forsaken the land. To the open eye of the prophet the meaning of
the vision must be already clear, but the sentence comes from the
mouth of Jehovah Himself: “Hast thou
seen, Son of man? Is it too small a thing for the house of Judah
to practise the abominations which they have here practised, that
they must also fill the land with violence, and [so] provoke Me
again to anger? So will I act towards them in anger: My eye shall
not pity, nor will I spare” (ch. viii. 17, 18).
The last words
introduce the account of the punishment of Jerusalem, which is
given of course in the symbolic form suggested by the scenery of
the vision. Jehovah has meanwhile risen from His throne near the
cherubim, and stands on the threshold of the Temple. There He
summons to His side the destroyers who are to execute His
purpose—six angels, each with a weapon of destruction in his
hand. A seventh of higher rank clothed in linen appears with the
implements of a scribe in his girdle. These stand “beside the brazen altar,” and await the
commands of Jehovah. The first act of the judgment is a massacre
of the inhabitants of the city, without distinction of age or
rank or sex. But, in accordance with his strict view of the
divine righteousness, Ezekiel is led to conceive of this last
judgment as discriminating carefully between the righteous and
the wicked. All those who have inwardly separated themselves from
the guilt of the city by hearty detestation of the iniquities
perpetrated in its midst are distinguished by a mark on their
foreheads before the work of slaughter begins. What became of
this faithful remnant it does not belong to the vision to
declare. Beginning with the twenty men before the porch, the
destroying angels follow the man with the inkhorn through the
streets of the city, and slay all on whom he has not set his
mark. When the messengers have gone out on their dread errand,
Ezekiel, realising the full horror of a scene which he dare not
describe, falls prostrate before Jehovah, deprecating the
outbreak of indignation which threatened to extinguish
“the remnant of Israel.” He is
reassured by the declaration that the guilt of Judah and Israel
demands no less a punishment than this, because the notion that
Jehovah had forsaken the land had opened the floodgates of
iniquity, and filled the land with bloodshed and the city with
oppression. Then the man in the linen robes returns and
announces, “It is done as Thou hast
commanded.”
The second act
of the judgment is the destruction of Jerusalem by fire. This is
symbolised by the scattering over the city of burning coals taken
from the altar-hearth under the throne of God. The man with the
linen garments is directed to step between the wheels and take
out fire for this purpose. The description of the execution of
this order is again carried no further than what actually takes
place before the prophet's eyes: the man took the fire and went out. In the
place where we might have expected to have an account of the
destruction of the city, we have a second description of the
appearance and motions of the merkaba, the purpose of which
it is difficult to divine. Although it deviates slightly from the
account in ch. i., the differences appear to have no
significance, and indeed it is expressly said to be the same
phenomenon. The whole passage is certainly superfluous, and might
be omitted but for the difficulty of imagining any motive that
would have tempted a scribe to insert it. We must keep in mind
the possibility that this part of the book had been committed to
writing before the final redaction of Ezekiel's prophecies, and
the description in vv. 8-17 may have served a purpose there which
is superseded by the fuller narrative which we now possess in ch.
i.
In this way
Ezekiel penetrates more deeply into the inner meaning of the
judgment on city and people whose external form he had announced
in his earlier prophecy. It must be admitted that Jehovah's
strange work bears to our minds a more appalling aspect when thus
presented in symbols than the actual calamity would bear when
effected through the agency of second causes. Whether it had the
same effect on the mind of a Hebrew, who hardly believed in
second causes, is another question. In any case it gives no
ground for the charge made against Ezekiel of dwelling with a
malignant satisfaction on the most repulsive features of a
terrible picture. He is indeed capable of a rigorous logic in
exhibiting the incidence of the law of retribution which was to
him the necessary expression of the divine righteousness. That it
included the death of every sinner and the overthrow of a city
that had become a scene of violence and cruelty was to him a
self-evident truth, and more than this the vision does not teach.
On the contrary, it
contains traits which tend to moderate the inevitable harshness
of the truth conveyed. With great reticence it allows the
execution of the judgment to take place behind the scenes, giving
only those details which were necessary to suggest its nature.
Whilst it is being carried out the attention of the reader is
engaged in the presence of Jehovah, or his mind is occupied with
the principles which made the punishment a moral necessity. The
prophet's expostulations with Jehovah show that he was not
insensible to the miseries of his people, although he saw them to
be inevitable. Further, this vision shows as clearly as any
passage in his writings the injustice of the view which
represents him as more concerned for petty details of ceremonial
than for the great moral interests of a nation. If any feeling
expressed in the vision is to be regarded as Ezekiel's own, then
indignation against outrages on human life and liberty must be
allowed to weigh more with him than offences against ritual
purity. And, finally, it is clearly one object of the vision to
show that in the destruction of Jerusalem no individual shall be
involved who is not also implicated in the guilt which calls down
wrath upon her.
II
The second
part of the vision (ch. xi.) is but loosely connected with the
first. Here Jerusalem still exists, and men are alive who must
certainly have perished in the “visitation of the city” if the writer had
still kept himself within the limits of his previous conception.
But in truth the two have little in common, except the Temple,
which is the scene of both, and the cherubim, whose movements
mark the transition from the one to the other. The glory of
Jehovah is already departing from the house when it is stayed at
the entrance of the
east gate to give the prophet his special message to the
exiles.
Here we are
introduced to the more political aspect of the situation in
Jerusalem. The twenty-five men who are gathered in the east gate
of the Temple are clearly the leading statesmen in the city; and
two of them, whose names are given, are expressly designated as
“princes of the people.” They are
apparently met in conclave to deliberate on public matters, and a
word from Jehovah lays open to the prophet the nature of their
projects. “These are the men that plan
ruin, and hold evil counsel in this city.” The evil
counsel is undoubtedly the project of rebellion against the king
of Babylon which must have been hatched at this time and which
broke out into open revolt about three years later. The counsel
was evil because directly opposed to that which Jeremiah was
giving at the time in the name of Jehovah. But Ezekiel also
throws invaluable light on the mood of the men who were urging
the king along the path which led to ruin. “Are not the houses recently built?”Following the LXX.
they
say, congratulating themselves on their success in repairing the
damage done to the city in the time of Jehoiachin. The image of
the pot and the flesh is generally taken to express the feeling
of easy security in the fortifications of Jerusalem with which
these light-hearted politicians embarked on a contest with
Nebuchadnezzar. But their mood must be a gloomier one than that
if there is any appropriateness in the language they use. To stew
in their own juice, and over a fire of their own kindling, could
hardly seem a desirable policy to sane men, however strong the
pot might be. These councillors are well aware of the dangers
they incur, and of the misery which their purpose must
necessarily bring on the people. But they are determined to
hazard everything and endure everything on the chance
that the city may
prove strong enough to baffle the resources of the king of
Babylon. Once the fire is kindled, it will certainly be better to
be in the pot than in the fire; and so long as Jerusalem holds
out they will remain behind her walls. The answer which is put
into the prophet's mouth is that the issue will not be such as
they hope for. The only “flesh”
that will be left in the city will be the dead bodies of those
who have been slain within her walls by the very men who hope
that their lives will be given them for a prey. They themselves
shall be dragged forth to meet their fate far away from Jerusalem
on the “borders of Israel.” It is
not unlikely that these conspirators kept their word. Although
the king and all the men of war fled from the city as soon as a
breach was made, we read of certain high officials who allowed
themselves to be taken in the city (Jer. lii. 7). Ezekiel's
prophecy was in their case literally fulfilled; for these men and
many others were brought to the king of Babylon at Riblah,
“and he smote them and put them to death
at Riblah in the land of Hamath.”
While Ezekiel
was uttering this prophecy one of the councillors, named
Pelatiah, suddenly fell down dead. Whether a man of this name had
suddenly died in Jerusalem under circumstances that had deeply
impressed the prophet's mind, or whether the death belongs to the
vision, it is impossible for us to tell. To Ezekiel the
occurrence seemed an earnest of the complete destruction of the
remnant of Israel by the wrath of God, and, as before, he fell on
his face to intercede for them. It is then that he receives the
message which seems to form the divine answer to the perplexities
which haunted the minds of the exiles in Babylon.
In their
attitude towards the exiles the new leaders in Jerusalem took up
a position as highly privileged religious persons, quite at
variance with the scepticism which governed their conduct at home. When they
were following the bent of their natural inclinations by
practising idolatry and perpetrating judicial murders in the
city, their cry was, “Jehovah hath
forsaken the land; Jehovah seeth it not.” When they were
eager to justify their claim to the places and possessions left
vacant by their banished countrymen, they said, “They are far from Jehovah: to us the land is given
in possession.” They were probably equally sincere and
equally insincere in both professions. They had simply learned
the art which comes easily to men of the world of using religion
as a cloak for greed, and throwing it off when greed could be
best gratified without it. The idea which lay under their
religious attitude was that the exiles had gone into captivity
because their sins had incurred Jehovah's anger, and that now His
wrath was exhausted and the blessing of His favour would rest on
those who had been left in the land. There was sufficient
plausibility in the taunt to make it peculiarly galling to the
mind of the exiles, who had hoped to exercise some influence over
the government in Jerusalem, and to find their places kept for
them when they should be permitted to return. It may well have
been the resentment produced by tidings of this hostility towards
them in Jerusalem that brought their elders to the house of
Ezekiel to see if he had not some message from Jehovah to
reassure them.
In the mind of
Ezekiel, however, the problem took another form. To him a return
to the old Jerusalem had no meaning; neither buyer nor seller
should have cause to congratulate himself on his position. The
possession of the land of Israel belonged to those in whom
Jehovah's ideal of the new Israel was realised, and the only
question of religious importance was, Where is the germ of this
new Israel to be found? Amongst those who survive the judgment in
the old land, or amongst those who have experienced it in the form of banishment?
On this point the prophet receives an explicit revelation in
answer to his intercession for “the
remnant of Israel.” “Son of man,
thy brethren, thy brethren, thy fellow-captives, and the whole
house of Israel of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said,
They are far from Jehovah: to us it is given—the land for an
inheritance!... Because I have removed them far among the
nations, and have scattered them among the lands, and have been
to them but little of a sanctuary in the lands where they have
gone, therefore say, Thus saith Jehovah, so will I gather you
from the peoples, and bring you from the lands where ye have been
scattered, and will give you the land of Israel.” The
difficult expression “I have been but
little of a sanctuary” refers to the curtailment of
religious privileges and means of access to Jehovah which was a
necessary consequence of exile. It implies, however, that Israel
in banishment had learned in some measure to preserve that
separation from other peoples and that peculiar relation to
Jehovah which constituted its national holiness. Religion perhaps
perishes sooner from the overgrowth of ritual than from its
deficiency. It is an historical fact that the very meagreness of
the religion which could be practised in exile was the means of
strengthening the more spiritual and permanent elements which
constitute the essence of religion. The observances which could
be maintained apart from the Temple acquired an importance which
they never afterwards lost; and although some of these, such as
circumcision, the Passover, the abstinence from forbidden food,
were purely ceremonial, others, such as prayer, reading of the
Scriptures, and the common worship of the synagogue, represent
the purest and most indispensable forms in which communion with
God can find expression. That Jehovah Himself became even in
small measure what the word “sanctuary” denotes indicates an enrichment of the
religious consciousness of which perhaps Ezekiel himself did not
perceive the full import.
The great
lesson which Ezekiel's message seeks to impress on his hearers is
that the tenure of the land of Israel depends on religious
conditions. The land is Jehovah's, and He bestows it on those who
are prepared to use it as His holiness demands. A pure land
inhabited by a pure people is the ideal that underlies all
Ezekiel's visions of the future. It is evident that in such a
conception of the relation between God and His people ceremonial
conditions must occupy a conspicuous place. The sanctity of the
land is necessarily of a ceremonial order, and so the sanctity of
the people must consist partly in a scrupulous regard for
ceremonial requirements. But after all the condition of the land
with respect to purity or uncleanness only reflects the character
of the nation whose home it is. The things that defile a land are
such things as idols and other emblems of heathenism, innocent
blood unavenged, and unnatural crimes of various kinds. These
things derive their whole significance from the state of mind and
heart which they embody; they are the plain and palpable emblems
of human sin. It is conceivable that to some minds the outward
emblems may have seemed the true seat of evil, and their removal
an end in itself apart from the direction of the will by which it
was brought about. But it would be a mistake to charge Ezekiel
with any such obliquity of moral vision. Although he conceives
sin as a defilement that leaves its mark on the material world,
he clearly teaches that its essence lies in the opposition of the
human will to the will of God. The ceremonial purity required of
every Israelite is only the expression of certain aspects of
Jehovah's holy nature, the bearing of which on man's spiritual
life may have been obscure to the prophet, and is still more
obscure to us. And
the truly valuable element in compliance with such rules was the
obedience to Jehovah's expressed will which flowed from a nature
in sympathy with His. Hence in this chapter, while the first
thing that the restored exiles have to do is to cleanse the land
of its abominations, this act will be the expression of a nature
radically changed, doing the will of God from the heart. As the
emblems of idolatry that defile the land were the outcome of an
irresistible national tendency to evil, so the new and sensitive
spirit, taking on the impress of Jehovah's holiness through the
law, shall lead to the purification of the land from those things
that had provoked the eyes of His glory. “They shall come thither, and remove thence all its
detestable things and all its abominations. And I will give them
another heart, and put a new spirit within them. I will take away
the stony heart from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh:
that they may walk in My statutes, and keep My judgments, and do
them: and so shall they be My people, and I will be their
God” (ch. xi. 18-20).
Thus in the
mind of the prophet Jerusalem and its Temple are already
virtually destroyed. He seemed to linger in the Temple court
until he saw the chariot of Jehovah withdrawn from the city as a
token that the glory had departed from Israel. Then the ecstasy
passed away, and he found himself in the presence of the men to
whom the hope of the future had been offered, but who were as yet
unworthy to receive it.
Chapter VII. The End Of The Monarchy.
Chapters xii. 1-15, xvii., xix.
In spite of the
interest excited by Ezekiel's prophetic appearances, the exiles
still received his prediction of the fall of Jerusalem with the
most stolid incredulity. It proved to be an impossible task to
disabuse their minds of the prepossessions which made such an event
absolutely incredible. True to their character as a disobedient
house, they had “eyes to see, and saw not;
and ears to hear, but heard not” (ch. xii. 2). They were
intensely interested in the strange signs he performed, and
listened with pleasure to his fervid oratory; but the inner meaning
of it all never sank into their minds. Ezekiel was well aware that
the cause of this obtuseness lay in the false ideals which
nourished an overweening confidence in the destiny of their nation.
And these ideals were the more difficult to destroy because they
each contained an element of truth, so interwoven with the
falsehood that to the mind of the people the true and the false
stood and fell together. If the great vision of chs. viii.-xi. had
accomplished its purpose, it would doubtless have taken away the
main support of these delusive imaginations. But the belief in the
indestructibility of the Temple was only one of a number of roots
through which the vain confidence of the nation was fed; and so
long as any of these remained the people's sense of security was
likely
to remain. These spurious ideals, therefore, Ezekiel sets himself
with characteristic thoroughness to demolish one after another.
This appears to
be in the main the purpose of the third subdivision of his
prophecies on which we now enter. It extends from ch. xii. to ch.
xix.; and in so far as it can be taken to represent a phase of his
actual spoken ministry, it must be assigned to the fifth year
before the capture of Jerusalem (August 591-August 590 b.c.). But since the
passage is an exposition of ideas more than a narrative of
experiences we may expect to find that chronological consistency
has been even less observed than in the earlier part of the book.
Each idea is presented in the completeness which it finally
possessed in the prophet's mind, and his allusions may anticipate a
state of things which had not actually arisen till a somewhat later
date. Beginning with a description and interpretation of two
symbolic actions intended to impress more vividly on the people the
certainty of the impending catastrophe, the prophet proceeds in a
series of set discourses to expose the hollowness of the illusions
which his fellow-exiles cherished, such as disbelief in prophecies
of evil, faith in the destiny of Israel, veneration for the Davidic
kingdom, and reliance on the solidarity of the nation in sin and in
judgment. These are the principal topics which the course of
exposition will bring before us, and in dealing with them it will
be convenient to depart from the order in which they stand in the
book and adopt an arrangement according to subject. By so doing we
run the risk of missing the order of the ideas as it presented
itself to the prophet's mind, and of ignoring the remarkable skill
with which the transition from one theme to another is frequently
effected. But if we have rightly understood the scope of the
passage as a whole, this will not prevent us from grasping the
substance of
his teaching or its bearing on the final message which he had to
deliver. In the present chapter we shall accordingly group together
three passages which deal with the fate of the monarchy, and
especially of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah.
That reverence
for the royal house would form an obstacle to the acceptance of
such teaching as Ezekiel's was to be expected from all we know of
the popular feeling on this subject. The fact that the few royal
assassinations which stain the annals of Judah were sooner or later
avenged by the people shows that the monarchy was regarded as a
pillar of the state, and that great importance was attached to the
possession of a dynasty which perpetuated the glories of David's
reign. And there is one verse in the book of Lamentations which
expresses the anguish which the fall of the kingdom caused to godly
men in Israel, although its representative was so unworthy of his
office as Zedekiah: “The breath of our
nostrils, the anointed of Jehovah, was taken in their pits, of whom
we said, Under his shadow shall we live among the nations”
(Lam. iv. 20). So long therefore as a descendant of David sat on
the throne of Jerusalem it would seem the duty of every patriotic
Israelite to remain true to him. The continuance of the monarchy
would seem to guarantee the existence of the state; the prestige of
Zedekiah's position as the anointed of Jehovah, and the heir of
David's covenant, would warrant the hope that even yet Jehovah
would intervene to save an institution of His own creating. Indeed,
we can see from Ezekiel's own pages that the historic monarchy in
Israel was to him an object of the highest veneration and regard.
He speaks of its dignity in terms whose very exaggeration shows how
largely the fact bulked in his imagination. He compares it to the
noblest of the wild beasts of the earth and the most lordly tree of
the forest. But his contention is that this monarchy no longer exists. Except in
one doubtful passage, he never applies the title king (melek) to Zedekiah. The kingdom
came to an end with the deportation of Jehoiachin, the last king
who ascended the throne in legitimate succession. The present
holder of the office is in no sense king by divine right; he is a
creature and vassal of Nebuchadnezzar, and has no rights against
his suzerain.It is noteworthy that in the dirge of
ch. xix. Ezekiel ignores the reign of Jehoiakim. Is this because he
too owed his elevation to the intervention of a foreign power?
His
very name had been changed by the caprice of his master. As a
religious symbol, therefore, the royal power is defunct; the glory
has departed from it as surely as from the Temple. The makeshift
administration organised under Zedekiah had a peaceful if
inglorious future before it, if it were content to recognise facts
and adapt itself to its humble position. But if it should attempt
to raise its head and assert itself as an independent kingdom, it
would only seal its own doom. And for men in Chaldæa to transfer to
this shadow of kingly dignity the allegiance due to the heir of
David's house was a waste of devotion as little demanded by
patriotism as by prudence.
I
The first of
the passages in which the fate of the monarchy is foretold
requires little to be said by way of explanation. It is a
symbolic action of the kind with which we are now familiar,
exhibiting the certainty of the fate in store both for the people
and the king. The prophet again becomes a “sign” or portent to the people—this time in a
character which every one of his audience understood from recent
experience. He is seen by daylight collecting “articles of captivity”—i.e.,
such necessary
articles as a person going into exile would try to take with
him—and bringing them out to the door of his house. Then at dusk
he breaks through the wall with his goods on his shoulder; and,
with face muffled, he removes “to another
place.” In this sign we have again two different facts
indicated by a series of not entirely congruous actions. The mere
act of carrying out his most necessary furniture and removing
from one place to another suggests quite unambiguously the
captivity that awaits the inhabitants of Jerusalem. But the
accessories of the action, such as breaking through the wall, the
muffling of the face, and the doing of all this by night, point
to quite a different event—viz., Zedekiah's attempt to break
through the Chaldæan lines by night, his capture, his blindness,
and his imprisonment in Babylon. The most remarkable thing in the
sign is the circumstantial manner in which the details of the
king's flight and capture are anticipated so long before the
event. Zedekiah, as we read in the second book of Kings, as soon
as a breach was made in the walls by the Chaldæans, broke out
with a small party of horsemen, and succeeded in reaching the
plain of Jordan. There he was overtaken and caught, and sent
before Nebuchadnezzar's presence at Riblah. The Babylonian king
punished his perfidy with a cruelty common enough amongst the
Assyrian kings: he caused his eyes to be put out, and sent him
thus to end his days in prison at Babylon. All this is so clearly
hinted at in the signs that the whole representation is often set
aside as a prophecy after the event. That is hardly probable,
because the sign does not bear the marks of having been
originally conceived with the view of exhibiting the details of
Zedekiah's punishment. But since we know that the book was
written after the event, it is a perfectly fair question whether
in the interpretation of the symbols Ezekiel may not have read
into it a fuller meaning than was present to his own mind at the time.
Thus the covering of his head does not necessarily suggest
anything more than the king's attempt to disguise his
person.Especially if we read ver. 12, as in
LXX., “That he may not be seen by any eye,
and he shall not see the earth.”
Possibly this was all that Ezekiel originally meant by it. When
the event took place he perceived a further meaning in it as an
allusion to the blindness inflicted on the king, and introduced
this into the explanation given of the symbol. The point of it
lies in the degradation of the king through his being reduced to
such an ignominious method of securing his personal safety.
“The prince that is among them shall bear
upon his shoulder in the darkness, and shall go forth: they shall
dig through the wall to carry out thereby: he shall cover his
face, that he may not be seen by any eye, and he himself shall
not see the earth” (ch. xii. 12).
II
In ch. xvii.
the fate of the monarchy is dealt with at greater length under
the form of an allegory. The kingdom of Judah is represented as a
cedar in Lebanon—a comparison which shows how exalted were
Ezekiel's conceptions of the dignity of the old regime which had
now passed away. But the leading shoot of the tree has been
cropped off by a great, broad-winged, speckled eagle, the king of
Babylon, and carried away to a “land of
traffic, a city of merchants.”By this name for Chaldæa Ezekiel seems
to express his contempt for the commercial activity which formed so
large an element in the greatness of Babylon (ch. xvi. 29 R.V.),
perhaps also his sense of the uncongenial environment in which the
disinherited king and the nobility of Judah now found
themselves.
The
insignificance of Zedekiah's government is indicated by a harsh
contrast which
almost breaks the consistency of the figure. In place of the
cedar which he has spoiled the eagle plants a low vine trailing
on the ground, such as may be seen in Palestine at the present
day. His intention was that “its branches
should extend towards him and its roots be under
him”—i.e., that the new
principality should derive all its strength from Babylon and
yield all its produce to the power which nourished it. For a time
all went well. The vine answered the expectations of its owner,
and prospered under the favourable conditions which he had
provided for it. But another great eagle appeared on the scene,
the king of Egypt, and the ungrateful vine began to send out its
roots and turn its branches in his direction. The meaning is
obvious: Zedekiah had sent presents to Egypt and sought its help,
and by so doing had violated the conditions of his tenure of
royal power. Such a policy could not prosper. “The bed where it was planted” was in
possession of Nebuchadnezzar, and he could not tolerate there a
state, however feeble, which employed the resources with which he
had endowed it to further the interests of his rival, Hophra, the
king of Egypt. Its destruction shall come from the quarter whence
it derived its origin: “when the east
wind smites it, it shall wither in the furrow where it
grew.”
Throughout
this passage Ezekiel shows that he possessed in full measure that
penetration and detachment from local prejudices which all the
prophets exhibit when dealing with political affairs. The
interpretation of the riddle contains a statement of
Nebuchadnezzar's policy in his dealings with Judah, whose
impartial accuracy could not be improved on by the most
disinterested historian. The carrying away of the Judæan king and
aristocracy was a heavy blow to religious susceptibilities which
Ezekiel fully shared, and its severity was not mitigated by the
arrogant assumptions by which it was explained in Jerusalem. Yet here he
shows himself capable of contemplating it as a measure of
Babylonian statesmanship and of doing absolute justice to the
motives by which it was dictated. Nebuchadnezzar's purpose was to
establish a petty state unable to raise itself to independence,
and one on whose fidelity to his empire he could rely. Ezekiel
lays great stress on the solemn formalities by which the great
king had bound his vassal to his allegiance: “He took of the royal seed, and made a covenant with
him, and brought him under a curse; and the strong ones of the
land he took away: that it might be a lowly kingdom, not able to
lift itself up, to keep his covenant that it might stand”
(vv. 13, 14). In all this Nebuchadnezzar is conceived as acting
within his rights; and here lay the difference between the clear
vision of the prophet and the infatuated policy of his
contemporaries. The politicians of Jerusalem were incapable of
thus discerning the signs of the times. They fell back on the
time-honoured plan of checkmating Babylon by means of an Egyptian
alliance—a policy which had been disastrous when attempted
against the ruthless tyrants of Assyria, and which was doubly
imbecile when it brought down on them the wrath of a monarch who
showed every desire to deal fairly with his subject
provinces.
The period of
intrigue with Egypt had already begun when this prophecy was
written. We have no means of knowing how long the negotiations
went on before the overt act of rebellion; and hence we cannot
say with certainty that the appearance of the chapter in this
part of the book is an anachronism. It is possible that Ezekiel
may have known of a secret mission which was not discovered by
the spies of the Babylonian court; and there is no difficulty in
supposing that such a step may have been taken as early as two
and a half years before the outbreak of hostilities. At whatever
time it took place,
Ezekiel saw that it sealed the doom of the nation. He knew that
Nebuchadnezzar could not overlook such flagrant perfidy as
Zedekiah and his councillors had been guilty of; he knew also
that Egypt could render no effectual help to Jerusalem in her
death-struggle. “Not with a strong army
and a great host will Pharaoh act for him in the war, when mounds
are thrown up, and the towers are built, to cut off many
lives” (ver. 17). The writer of the Lamentations again
shows us how sadly the prophet's anticipation was verified:
“As for us, our eyes as yet failed for
our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that
could not save us” (Lam. iv. 17).
But Ezekiel
will not allow it to be supposed that the fate of Jerusalem is
merely the result of a mistaken forecast of political
probabilities. Such a mistake had been made by Zedekiah's
advisers when they trusted to Egypt to deliver them from Babylon,
and ordinary prudence might have warned them against it. But that
was the most excusable part of their folly. The thing that
branded their policy as infamous and put them absolutely in the
wrong before God and man alike was their violation of the solemn
oath by which they had bound themselves to serve the king of
Babylon. The prophet seizes on this act of perjury as the
determining fact of the situation, and charges it home on the
king as the cause of the ruin that is to overtake him:
“Thus saith Jehovah, As I live, surely
My oath which he hath despised,
and My covenant which he has broken,
I will return on his head; and I will spread My net over him, and
in My snare shall he be taken, ... and ye shall know that I
Jehovah have spoken it” (vv. 19-21).
In the last
three verses of the chapter the prophet returns to the allegory
with which he commenced, and completes his oracle with a
beautiful picture of the ideal monarchy of the future. The ideas
on which the picture
is framed are few and simple; but they are those which
distinguish the Messianic hope as cherished by the prophets from
the crude form which it assumed in the popular imagination. In
contrast to Zedekiah's kingdom, which was a human institution
without ideal significance, that of the Messianic age will be a
fresh creation of Jehovah's power. A tender shoot shall be
planted in the mountain land of Israel, where it shall flourish
and increase until it overshadow the whole earth. Further, this
shoot is taken from the “top of the
cedar”—that is, the section of the royal house which had
been carried away to Babylon—indicating that the hope of the
future lay not with the king de
facto Zedekiah, but with Jehoiachin and those who
shared his banishment. The passage leaves no doubt that Ezekiel
conceived the Israel of the future as a state with a monarch at
its head, although it may be doubtful whether the shoot refers to
a personal Messiah or to the aristocracy, who, along with the
king, formed the governing body in an Eastern kingdom. This
question, however, can be better considered when we have to deal
with Ezekiel's Messianic conceptions in their fully developed
form in ch. xxxiv.
III
Of the last
four kings of Judah there were two whose melancholy fate seems to
have excited a profound feeling of pity amongst their countrymen.
Jehoahaz or Shallum, according to the Chronicler the youngest of
Josiah's sons, appears to have been even during his father's
lifetime a popular favourite. It was he who after the fatal day
of Megiddo was raised to the throne by the “people of the land” at the age of
twenty-three years. He is said by the historian of the books of
Kings to have done “that which was evil
in the sight of the Lord”; but he had hardly time to display his
qualities as a ruler, when he was deposed and carried to Egypt by
Pharaoh Necho, having worn the crown for only three months (608
b.c.). The deep
attachment felt for him seems to have given rise to an
expectation that he would be restored to his kingdom, a delusion
against which the prophet Jeremiah found it necessary to protest
(Jer. xxii. 10-12). He was succeeded by his elder brother,
Eliakim,Jehoiakim.
the
headstrong and selfish tyrant, whose character stands revealed in
some passages of the books of Jeremiah and Habakkuk. His reign of
nine years gave little occasion to his subjects to cherish a
grateful memory of his administration. He died in the crisis of
the conflict he had provoked with the king of Babylon, leaving
his youthful son Jehoiachin to expiate the folly of his
rebellion. Jehoiachin is the second idol of the populace to whom
we have referred. He was only eighteen years old when he was
called to the throne, and within three months he was doomed to
exile in Babylon. In his room Nebuchadnezzar appointed a third
son of Josiah—Mattaniah—whose name he changed to Zedekiah. He was
apparently a man of weak and vacillating character; but he fell
ultimately into the hands of the Egyptian and anti-prophetic
party, and so was the means of involving his country in the
hopeless struggle in which it perished.
The fact that
two of their native princes were languishing, perhaps
simultaneously, in foreign confinement, one in Egypt and the
other in Babylon, was fitted to evoke in Judah a sympathy with
the misfortunes of royalty something like the feeling embalmed in
the Jacobite songs of Scotland. It seems to be an echo of this
sentiment that we find in the first part of the lament with which
Ezekiel closes his references to the fall of the monarchy (ch.
xix.). Many critics have indeed found it impossible to suppose
that Ezekiel should in any sense have yielded to sympathy with the fate of
two princes who are both branded in the historical books as
idolaters, and whose calamities on Ezekiel's own view of
individual retribution proved them to be sinners against Jehovah.
Yet it is certainly unnatural to read the dirge in any other
sense than as an expression of genuine pity for the woes that the
nation suffered in the fate of her two exiled kings. If Jeremiah,
in pronouncing the doom of Shallum or Jehoahaz, could say,
“Weep ye sore for him that goeth away;
for he shall not return any more, nor see his native
country,” there is no reason why Ezekiel should not have
given lyrical expression to the universal feeling of sadness
which the blighted career of these two youths naturally produced.
The whole passage is highly poetical, and represents a side of
Ezekiel's nature which we have not hitherto been led to study.
But it is too much to expect of even the most logical of prophets
that he should experience no personal emotion but what fitted
into his system, or that his poetic gift should be chained to the
wheels of his theological convictions. The dirge expresses no
moral judgment on the character or deserts of the two kings to
which it refers: it has but one theme—the sorrow and
disappointment of the “mother” who
nurtured and lost them, that is, the nation of Israel personified
according to a usual Hebrew figure of speech. All attempts to go
beyond this and to find in the poem an allegorical portrait of
Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin are irrelevant. The mother is a lioness,
the princes are young lions and behave as stalwart young lions
do, but whether their exploits are praiseworthy or the reverse is
a question that was not present to the writer's mind.
The chapter is
entitled “A Dirge on the Princes of
Israel,” and embraces not only the fate of Jehoahaz and
Jehoiachin, but also of Zedekiah, with whom the old monarchy
expired. Strictly speaking, however, the name qînah, or dirge, is applicable
only to the first part of the chapter (vv. 2-9), where the rhythm
characteristic of the Hebrew elegy is clearly traceable.The long line is divided into two
unequal parts by a cæsura over the end.
With
a few slight changes of the textMostly adopted from Cornill. The
English reader may refer to Dr. Davidson's commentary.
the
passage may be translated thus:—
i. Jehoahaz.
How was thy mother a lioness!—
Among the lions,
In the midst of young lions she couched—
She reared her cubs;
And she brought up one of her cubs—
A young lion he became,
And he learned to catch the prey—
He ate men.
And nations raised a cry against him—
In their pit he was caught;
And they brought him with hooks—
To the land of Egypt (vv. 2-4).
ii. Jehoiachin.
And when she saw that she was disappointedThis word is uncertain.
—
Her hope was lost.
She took another of her cubs—
A young lion she made him;
And he walked in the midst of lions—
A young lion he became;
And he learned to catch prey—
He ate men.
And he lurked in his lair—
The forests he ravaged;
Till the land was laid waste and its fulness—
With the noise of his roar.
The nations arrayed themselves against him—
From the countries around;
And spread over him their net—
In their pit he was caught.
And they brought him with hooks—
To the king of Babylon;
And he put him in a cage, ...
That his voice might no more be heard—
On the mountains of Israel (vv. 5-9).
The poetry
here is simple and sincere. The mournful cadence of the elegiac
measure, which is maintained throughout, is adapted to the tone
of melancholy which pervades the passage and culminates in the
last beautiful line. The dirge is a form of composition often
employed in songs of triumph over the calamities of enemies; but
there is no reason to doubt that here it is true to its original
purpose, and expresses genuine sorrow for the accumulated
misfortunes of the royal house of Israel.
The closing
part of the “dirge” dealing with
Zedekiah is of a somewhat different character. The theme is
similar, but the figure is abruptly changed, and the elegiac
rhythm is abandoned. The nation, the mother of the monarchy, is
here compared to a luxuriant vine planted beside great waters;
and the royal house is likened to a branch towering above the
rest and bearing rods which were kingly sceptres. But she has
been plucked up by the roots, withered, scorched by the fire, and
finally planted in an arid region where she cannot thrive. The
application of the metaphor to the ruin of the nation is very
obvious. Israel, once a prosperous nation, richly endowed with
all the conditions of a vigorous national life, and glorying in
her race of native kings, is now humbled to the dust. Misfortune
after misfortune has destroyed her power and blighted her
prospects, till at last she has been removed from her own land to
a place where national life cannot be maintained. But the point
of the passage lies in the closing words: fire went out from one
of her twigs and consumed her branches, so that she has no longer
a proud
rod to be a ruler's sceptre (ver. 14). The monarchy, once the
glory and strength of Israel, has in its last degenerate
representative involved the nation in ruin.
Such is
Ezekiel's final answer to those of his hearers who clung to the
old Davidic kingdom as their hope in the crisis of the people's
fate.
Chapter VIII. Prophecy And Its
Abuses. Chapters xii. 21-xiv. 11.
There is perhaps
nothing more perplexing to the student of Old Testament history
than the complicated phenomena which may be classed under the
general name of “prophecy.” In
Israel, as in every ancient state, there was a body of men who
sought to influence public opinion by prognostications of the
future. As a rule the repute of all kinds of divination declined
with the advance of civilisation and general intelligence, so that
in the more enlightened communities matters of importance came to
be decided on broad grounds of reason and political expediency. The
peculiarity in the case of Israel was that the very highest
direction in politics, as well as religion and morals, was given in
a form capable of being confounded with superstitious practices
which flourished alongside of it. The true prophets were not merely
profound moral thinkers, who announced a certain issue as the
probable result of a certain line of conduct. In many cases their
predictions are absolute, and their political programme is an
appeal to the nation to accept the situation which they foresee, as
the basis of its public action. For this reason prophecy was
readily brought into competition with practices with which it had
really nothing in common. The ordinary individual who cared little
for principles and only wished to know what was likely to happen might readily think that one
way of arriving at knowledge of the future was as good as another,
and when the spiritual prophet's anticipations displeased him he
was apt to try his luck with the sorcerer. It is not improbable
that in the last days of the monarchy spurious prophecy of various
kinds gained an additional vitality from its rivalry with the great
spiritual teachers who in the name of Jehovah foretold the ruin of
the state.
This is not the
place for an exhaustive account of the varied developments in
Israel of what may be broadly termed prophetic manifestations. For
the understanding of the section of Ezekiel now before us it will
be enough to distinguish three classes of phenomena. At the lowest
end of the scale there was a rank growth of pure magic or sorcery,
the ruling idea of which is the attempt to control or forecast the
future by occult arts which are believed to influence the
supernatural powers which govern human destiny. In the second place
we have prophecy in a stricter sense—that is, the supposed
revelation of the will of the deity in dreams or “visions” or half-articulate words uttered in a
state of frenzy. Last of all there is the true prophet, who, though
subject to extraordinary mental experiences, yet had always a clear
and conscious grasp of moral principles, and possessed an
incommunicable certainty that what he spoke was not his own word
but the word of Jehovah.
It is obvious
that a people subjected to such influences as these was exposed to
temptations both intellectual and moral from which modern life is
exempt. One thing is certain—the existence of prophecy did not tend
to simplify the problems of national life or individual conduct. We
are apt to think of the great prophets as men so signally marked
out by God as His witnesses that it must have been impossible for
any one with a shred of sincerity to question their authority. In
reality
it was quite otherwise. It was no more an easy thing then than now
to distinguish between truth and error, between the voice of God
and the speculations of men. Then, as now, divine truth had no
available credentials at the moment of its utterance except its
self-evidencing power on hearts that were sincere in their desire
to know it. The fact that truth came in the guise of prophecy only
stimulated the growth of counterfeit prophecy, so that only those
who were “of the truth” could
discern the spirits, whether they were of God.
The passage
which forms the subject of this chapter is one of the most
important passages of the Old Testament in its treatment of the
errors and abuses incident to a dispensation of prophecy. It
consists of three parts: the first deals with difficulties
occasioned by the apparent failure of prophecy (ch. xii. 21-28);
the second with the character and doom of the false prophets (ch.
xiii.); and the third with the state of mind which made a right use
of prophecy impossible (ch. xiv. 1-11).
I
It is one of
Ezekiel's peculiarities that he pays close attention to the
proverbial sayings which indicated the drift of the national
mind. Such sayings were like straws, showing how the stream
flowed, and had a special significance for Ezekiel, inasmuch as
he was not in the stream himself, but only observed its motions
from a distance. Here he quotes a current proverb, giving
expression to a sense of the futility of all prophetic warnings:
“The days are drawn out, and every vision
faileth” (ch. xii. 22). It is difficult to say what the
feeling is that lies behind it, whether it is one of
disappointment or of relief. If, as seems probable, ver. 27 is
the application of the general principle to the particular case
of Ezekiel, the
proverb need not indicate absolute disbelief in the truth of
prophecy. “The vision which he sees is
for many days, and remote times does he prophesy”—that is
to say, The prophet's words are no doubt perfectly true, and come
from God; but no man can ever tell when they are to be fulfilled:
all experience shows that they relate to a remote future which we
are not likely to see. For men whose concern was to find
direction in the present emergency, that was no doubt equivalent
to a renunciation of the guidance of prophecy.
There are
several things which may have tended to give currency to this
view and make it plausible. First of all, of course, the fact
that many of the “visions” that
were published had nothing in them; they were false in their
origin, and were bound to fail. Accordingly one thing necessary
to rescue prophecy from the discredit into which it had fallen
was the removal of those who uttered false predictions in the
name of Jehovah: “There shall no more be
any false vision or flattering divination in the midst of the
house of Israel” (ver. 24). But besides the prevalence of
false prophecy there were features of true prophecy which partly
explained the common misgiving as to its trustworthiness. Even in
true prophecy there is an element of idealism, the future being
depicted in forms derived from the prophet's circumstances, and
represented as the immediate continuation of the events of his
own time. In support of the proverb it might have been equally
apt to instance the Messianic oracles of Isaiah, or the confident
predictions of Hananiah, the opponent of Jeremiah. Further, there
is a contingent element in prophecy: the fulfilment of a threat
or promise is conditional on the moral effect of the prophecy
itself on the people. These things were perfectly understood by
thoughtful men in Israel. The principle of contingency is clearly
expounded in the eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah, and it was acted on by the
princes who on a memorable occasion saved him from the doom of a
false prophet (Jer. xxvi.). Those who used prophecy to determine
their practical attitude towards Jehovah's purposes found it to
be an unerring guide to right thinking and action. But those who
only took a curious interest in questions of external fulfilment
found much to disconcert them; and it is hardly surprising that
many of them became utterly sceptical of its divine origin. It
must have been to this turn of mind that the proverb with which
Ezekiel is dealing owed its origin.
It is not on
these lines, however, that Ezekiel vindicates the truth of the
prophetic word, but on lines adapted to the needs of his own
generation. After all, prophecy is not wholly contingent. The
bent of the popular character is one of the elements which it
takes into account, and it foresees an issue which is not
dependent on anything that Israel might do. The prophets rise to
a point of view from which the destruction of the sinful people
and the establishment of a perfect kingdom of God are seen to be
facts unalterably decreed by Jehovah. And the point of Ezekiel's
answer to his contemporaries seems to be that a final
demonstration of the truth of prophecy was at hand. As the
fulfilment drew near, prophecy would increase in distinctness and
precision, so that when the catastrophe came it would be
impossible for any man to deny the inspiration of those who had
announced it: “Thus saith Jehovah, I will
suppress this proverb, and it shall no more circulate in Israel;
but say unto them, The days are near, and the content [literally
word or matter] of every vision”
(ver. 23). After the extinction of every form of lying prophecy,
Jehovah's words shall still be heard, and the proclamation of
them shall be immediately followed by their accomplishment:
“For I Jehovah will speak My words; I
will speak and perform,
it shall not be deferred any more: in your days, O house of
rebellion, I will speak a word and perform it, saith
Jehovah” (ver. 25). The immediate reference is to the
destruction of Jerusalem which the prophet saw to be one of those
events which were unconditionally decreed, and an event which
must bulk more and more largely in the vision of the true prophet
until it was accomplished.
II
The thirteenth
chapter deals with what was undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to
the influence of prophecy—viz., the existence of a division in
the ranks of the prophets themselves. That division had been of
long standing. The earliest indication of it is the story of the
contest between Micaiah and four hundred prophets of Jehovah, in
presence of Ahab and Jehoshaphat (1 Kings xxii. 5-28). All the
canonical prophets show in their writings that they had to
contend against the mass of the prophetic order—men who claimed
an authority equal to theirs, but used it for diametrically
opposite interests. It is not, however, till we come to Jeremiah
and Ezekiel that we find a formal apologetic of true prophecy
against false. The problem was serious: where two sets of
prophets systematically and fundamentally contradicted each
other, both might be false, but both could not be true. The
prophet who was convinced of the truth of his own visions must be
prepared to account for the rise of false visions, and to lay
down some criterion by which men might discriminate between the
one and the other. Jeremiah's treatment of the question is of the
two perhaps the more profound and interesting. It is thus
summarised by Professor Davidson: “In his
encounters with the prophets of his day Jeremiah opposes them in
three spheres—that of policy, that of morals, and that of
personal experience.
In policy the genuine prophets had some fixed principles, all
arising out of the idea that the kingdom of the Lord was not a
kingdom of this world. Hence they opposed military preparation,
riding on horses, and building of fenced cities, and counselled
trust in Jehovah.... The false prophets, on the other hand,
desired their country to be a military power among the powers
around, they advocated alliance with the eastern empires and with
Egypt, and relied on their national strength. Again, the true
prophets had a stringent personal and state morality. In their
view the true cause of the destruction of the state was its
immoralities. But the false prophets had no such deep moral
convictions, and seeing nothing unwonted or alarming in the
condition of things prophesied of ‘peace.’ They were not necessarily irreligious
men; but their religion had no truer insight into the nature of
the God of Israel than that of the common people.... And finally
Jeremiah expresses his conviction that the prophets whom he
opposed did not stand in the same relation to the Lord as he did:
they had not his experiences of the word of the Lord, into whose
counsel they had not been admitted; and they were without that
fellowship of mind with the mind of Jehovah which was the true
source of prophecy. Hence he satirises their pretended
supernatural ‘dreams,’ and charges
them from conscious want of any true prophetic word with stealing
words from one another.”Ezekiel, p. 85.
The passages
in Jeremiah on which this statement is mainly founded may have
been known to Ezekiel, who in this matter, as in so many others,
follows the lines laid down by the elder prophet.
The first
thing, then, that deserves attention in Ezekiel's judgment on
false prophecy is his assertion of its purely subjective or human origin.
In the opening sentence he pronounces a woe upon the prophets
“who prophesy from their own
mind without having seen”Translating with LXX.
(ver. 3). The words put in italics sum up Ezekiel's theory of the
genesis of false prophecy. The visions these men see and the
oracles they utter simply reproduce the thoughts, the emotions,
the aspirations, natural to their own minds. That the ideas came
to them in a peculiar form, which was mistaken for the direct
action of Jehovah, Ezekiel does not deny. He admits that the men
were sincere in their professions, for he describes them as
“waiting for the fulfilment of the
word” (ver. 6). But in this belief they were the victims
of a delusion. Whatever there might be in their prophetic
experiences that resembled those of a true prophet, there was
nothing in their oracles that did not belong to the sphere of
worldly interests and human speculation.
If we ask how
Ezekiel knew this, the only possible answer is that he knew it
because he was sure of the source of his own inspiration. He
possessed an inward experience which certified to him the
genuineness of the communications which came to him, and he
necessarily inferred that those who held different beliefs about
God must lack that experience. Thus far his criticism of false
prophecy is purely subjective. The true prophet knew that he had
that within him which authenticated his inspiration, but the
false prophet could not know that he wanted it. The difficulty is
not peculiar to prophecy, but arises in connection with religious
belief as a whole. It is an interesting question whether the
assent to a truth is accompanied by a feeling of certitude
differing in quality from the confidence which a man may have in
giving his assent to a delusion. But it is not possible to
elevate this internal criterion to an objective test of truth. A man who is awake
may be quite sure he is not dreaming, but a man in a dream may
readily enough fancy himself awake.
But there were
other and more obvious tests which could be applied to the
professional prophets, and which at least showed them to be men
of a different spirit from the few who were “full of power by the spirit of the Lord, and of
judgment, and of might, to declare to Israel his sin”
(Mic. iii. 8). In two graphic figures Ezekiel sums up the
character and policy of these parasites who disgraced the order
to which they belonged. In the first place he compares them to
jackals burrowing in ruins and undermining the fabric which it
was their professed function to uphold (vv. 4, 5). The existence
of such a class of men is at once a symptom of advanced social
degeneration and a cause of greater ruin to follow. A true
prophet fearlessly speaking the words of God is a defence to the
state; he is like a man who stands in the breach or builds a wall
to ward off the danger which he foresees. Such were all genuine
prophets whose names were held in honour in Israel—men of moral
courage, never hesitating to incur personal risk for the welfare
of the nation they loved. If Israel now was like a heap of ruins,
the fault lay with the selfish crowd of hireling prophets who had
cared more to find a hole in which they could shelter themselves
than to build up a stable and righteous polity.
The prophet's
simile calls to mind the type of churchman represented by Bishop
Blougram in Browning's powerful satire. He is one who is content
if the corporation to which he belongs can provide him with a
comfortable and dignified position in which he can spend good
days; he is triumphant if, in addition to this, he can defy any
one to prove him more of a fool or a hypocrite than an average
man of the world. Such utter abnegation of intellectual sincerity
may not be common in any Church; but the temptation which leads to it is one
to which ecclesiastics are exposed in every age and every
communion. The tendency to shirk difficult problems, to shut
one's eyes to grave evils, to acquiesce in things as they are,
and calculate that the ruin will last one's own time, is what
Ezekiel calls playing the jackal; and it hardly needs a prophet
to tell us that there could not be a more fatal symptom of the
decay of religion than the prevalence of such a spirit in its
official representatives.
The second
image is equally suggestive. It exhibits the false prophets as
following where they pretended to lead, as aiding and abetting
the men into whose hands the reins of government had fallen. The
people build a wall and the prophets cover it with plaster (ver.
10)—that is to say, when any project or scheme of policy is being
promoted they stand by glozing it over with fine words,
flattering its promoters, and uttering profuse assurances of its
success. The uselessness of the whole activity of these prophets
could not be more vividly described. The white-washing of the
wall may hide its defects, but will not prevent its destruction;
and when the wall of Jerusalem's shaky prosperity tumbles down,
those who did so little to build and so much to deceive shall be
overwhelmed with confusion. “Behold, when
the wall is fallen, shall it not be said to them, Where is the
plaster which ye plastered?” (ver. 12).
This will be
the beginning of the judgment on false prophets in Israel. The
overthrow of their vaticinations, the collapse of the hopes they
fostered, and the demolition of the edifice in which they found a
refuge shall leave them no more a name or a place in the people
of God. “I will stretch out My hand
against the prophets that see vanity and divine falsely: in the
council of My people they shall not be, and in the register of
the house of Israel they shall not be written, and into the land
of Israel they shall not come” (ver. 9).
There was,
however, a still more degraded type of prophecy, practised
chiefly by women, which must have been exceedingly prevalent in
Ezekiel's time. The prophets spoken of in the first sixteen
verses were public functionaries who exerted their evil influence
in the arena of politics. The prophetesses spoken of in the
latter part of the chapter are private fortune-tellers who
practised on the credulity of individuals who consulted them.
Their art was evidently magical in the strict sense, a
trafficking with the dark powers which were supposed to enter
into alliance with men irrespective of moral considerations.
Then, as now, such courses were followed for gain, and doubtless
proved a lucrative means of livelihood. The “fillets” and “veils” mentioned in ver. 18 are either a
professional garb worn by the women, or else implements of
divination whose precise significance cannot now be ascertained.
To the imagination of the prophet they appear as the snares and
weapons with which these wretched creatures “hunted souls”; and the extent of the evil
which he attacks is indicated by his speaking of the whole people
as being entangled in their meshes. Ezekiel naturally bestows
special attention on a class of practitioners whose whole
influence tended to efface moral landmarks and to deal out to men
weal or woe without regard to character. “They slew souls that should not die, and saved alive
souls that should not live; they made sad the heart of the
righteous, and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he
should not return from his wicked way and be saved alive”
(ver. 22). That is to say, while Ezekiel and all true prophets
were exhorting men to live resolutely in the light of clear
ethical conceptions of providence, the votaries of occult
superstitions seduced the ignorant into making private compacts
with the powers of darkness in order to secure their personal
safety. If the prevalence of sorcery and witchcraft was at all times dangerous to
the religion and public order of the state, it was doubly so at a
time when, as Ezekiel perceived, everything depended on
maintaining the strict rectitude of God in His dealings with
individual men.
III
Having thus
disposed of the external manifestations of false prophecy,
Ezekiel proceeds in the fourteenth chapter to deal with the state
of mind amongst the people at large which rendered such a
condition of things possible. The general import of the passage
is clear, although the precise connection of ideas is somewhat
difficult to explain. The following observations may suffice to
bring out all that is essential to the understanding of the
section.
The oracle was
occasioned by a particular incident, undoubtedly
historical—namely, a visit, such as was perhaps now common, from
the elders to inquire of the Lord through Ezekiel. As they sit
before him it is revealed to the prophet that the minds of these
men are preoccupied with idolatry, and therefore it is not
fitting that any answer should be given to them by a prophet of
Jehovah. Apparently no answer was
given by Ezekiel to the particular question they had asked,
whatever it may have been. Generalising from the incident,
however, he is led to enunciate a principle regulating the
intercourse between Jehovah and Israel through the medium of a
prophet: “Whatever man of the house of
Israel sets his thoughts upon his idols, and puts his guilty
stumbling-block before him, and comes to the prophet, I Jehovah
will make Myself intelligible to him;The exact force of the reflexive form
used (na' ănêthi,
niphal) is doubtful. The translation given is that of Cornill,
which is certainly forcible.
that
I may take
the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all
estranged from Me by their idols” (vv. 4, 5). It seems
clear that one part of the threat here uttered is that the very
withholding of the answer will unmask the hypocrisy of men who
pretend to be worshippers of Jehovah, but in heart are unfaithful
to Him and servants of false gods. The moral principle involved
in the prophet's dictum is clear and of lasting value. It is that
for a false heart there can be no fellowship with Jehovah, and
therefore no true and sure knowledge of His will. The prophet
occupies the point of view of Jehovah, and when consulted by an
idolater he finds it impossible to enter into the point of view
from which the question is put, and therefore cannot answer
it.The same rule is applied to direct
communion with God in prayer in Psalm lxvi. 18: “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not
hear.”
Ezekiel assumes for the most part that the prophet consulted is a
true prophet of Jehovah like himself, who will give no answer to
such questions as he has before him. He must, however, allow for
the possibility that men of this stamp may receive answers in the
name of Jehovah from those reputed to be His true prophets. In
that case, says Ezekiel, the prophet is “deceived” by God; he is allowed to give a
response which is not a true response at all, but only confirms
the people in their delusions and unbelief. But this deception
does not take place until the prophet has incurred the guilt of
deceiving himself in the first instance. It is his fault that he
has not perceived the bent of his questioners' minds, that he has
accommodated himself to their ways of thought, has consented to
occupy their standpoint in order to be able to say something
coinciding with the drift of their wishes. Prophet and inquirers
are involved in a common guilt and share a common fate, both
being sentenced to exclusion from the commonwealth of
Israel.
The
purification of the institution of prophecy necessarily appeared
to Ezekiel as an indispensable feature in the restoration of the
theocracy. The ideal of Israel's relation to Jehovah is
“that they may be My people, and that I
may be their God” (ver. 11). That implies that Jehovah
shall be the source of infallible guidance in all things needful
for the religious life of the individual and the guidance of the
state. But it was impossible for Jehovah to be to Israel all that
a God should be, so long as the regular channels of communication
between Him and the nation were choked by false conceptions in
the minds of the people and false men in the position of
prophets. Hence the constitution of a new Israel demands such
special judgments on false prophecy and the false use of true
prophecy as have been denounced in these chapters. When these
judgments have been executed, the ideal will have become possible
which is described in the words of another prophet: “Thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears
shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye
in it” (Isa. xxx. 20, 21).
Chapter IX. Jerusalem—An Ideal
History. Chapter xvi.
In order to
understand the place which the sixteenth chapter occupies in this
sectionSee above, p. 97 f.
of the
book, we must remember that a chief source of the antagonism
between Ezekiel and his hearers was the proud national
consciousness which sustained the courage of the people through all
their humiliations. There were, perhaps, few nations of antiquity
in which the flame of patriotic feeling burned more brightly than
in Israel. No people with a past such as theirs could be
indifferent to the many elements of greatness embalmed in their
history. The beauty and fertility of their land, the martial
exploits and signal deliverances of the nation, the great kings and
heroes she had reared, her prophets and lawgivers—these and many
other stirring memories were witnesses to Jehovah's peculiar love
for Israel and His power to exalt and bless His people. To cherish
a deep sense of the unique privileges which Jehovah had conferred
on her in giving her a distinct place among the nations of the
earth was thus a religious duty often insisted on in the Old
Testament. But in order that this sense might work for good it was
necessary that it should take the form of grateful recognition of
Jehovah as the source of the nation's greatness, and be accompanied
by a true knowledge of His character. When allied with false
conceptions of Jehovah's
nature, or entirely divorced from religion, patriotism degenerated
into racial prejudice and became a serious moral and political
danger. That this had actually taken place is a common complaint of
the prophets. They feel that national vanity is a great obstacle to
the acceptance of their message, and pour forth bitter and scornful
words intended to humble the pride of Israel to the dust. No
prophet addresses himself to the task so remorselessly as Ezekiel.
The utter worthlessness of Israel, both absolutely in the eyes of
Jehovah and relatively in comparison with other nations, is
asserted by him with a boldness and emphasis which at first startle
us. From a different point of view prophecy and its results might
have been regarded as fruits of the national life, under the divine
education vouchsafed to that people. But that is not Ezekiel's
standpoint. He seizes on the fact that prophecy was in opposition
to the natural genius of the people, and was not to be regarded as
in any sense an expression of it. Accepting the final attitude of
Israel toward the word of Jehovah as the genuine outcome of her
natural proclivities, he reads her past as an unbroken record of
ingratitude and infidelity. All that was good in Israel was
Jehovah's gift, freely bestowed and justly withdrawn; all that was
Israel's own was her weakness and her sin. It was reserved for a
later prophet to reconcile the condemnation of Israel's actual
history with the recognition of the divine power working there and
moulding a spiritual kernel of the nation into a true “servant of the Lord” (Isa. xl. ff.).
In chs. xv. and
xvi., therefore, the prophet exposes the hollowness of Israel's
confidence in her national destiny. The first of these appears to
be directed against the vain hopes cherished in Jerusalem at the
time. It is not necessary to dwell on it at length. The image is
simple and its application to Jerusalem obvious. Earlier
prophets had
compared Israel to a vine, partly to set forth the exceptional
privileges she enjoyed, but chiefly to emphasise the degeneration
she had undergone, as shown by the bad moral fruits which she had
borne (cf. Isa. v. 1 ff.; Jer. ii. 21; Hos. x. 1). The popular
imagination had laid hold of the thought that Israel was the vine
of God's planting, ignoring the question of the fruit. But Ezekiel
reminds his hearers that apart from its fruit the vine is the most
worthless of trees. Even at the best its wood can be employed for
no useful purpose; it is fit only for fuel. Such was the people of
Israel, considered simply as a state among other states, without
regard to its religious vocation. Even in its pristine vigour, when
the national energies were fresh and unimpaired, it was but a weak
nation, incapable of attaining the dignity of a great power. But
now the strength of the nation has been worn away by a long
succession of disasters, until only a shadow of her former glory
remains. Israel is no longer like a green and living vine, but like
a branch burned at both ends and charred in the middle, and
therefore doubly unfit for any worthy function in the affairs of
the world. By the help of this illustration men may read in the
present state of the nation the irrevocable sentence of rejection
which Jehovah has passed on His people.
We now turn to
the striking allegory of ch. xvi., where the same subject is
treated with far greater penetration and depth of feeling. There is
no passage in the book of Ezekiel at once so powerful and so full
of religious significance as the picture of Jerusalem, the
foundling child, the unfaithful spouse, and the abandoned
prostitute, which is here presented. The general conception is one
that might have been presented in a form as beautiful as it is
spiritually true. But the features which offend our sense of
propriety are perhaps introduced with a stern purpose. It is the
deliberate intention of Ezekiel to present Jerusalem's wickedness in the most
repulsive light, in order that if possible he might startle men
into abhorrence of their national sin. In his own mind the feelings
of moral indignation and physical disgust were very close together,
and here he seems to work on the minds of his readers, so that the
feeling excited by the image may call forth the feeling appropriate
to the reality.
The allegory is
a highly idealised history of the city of Jerusalem from its origin
to its destruction, and then onward to its future restoration. It
falls naturally into four divisions:—
i. Vv. 1-14.—The
first emergence of Jerusalem into civic life is compared to a
new-born female infant, exposed to perish, after a cruel custom
which is known to have prevailed among some Semitic tribes. None of
the offices customary on the birth of a child were performed in her
case, whether those necessary to preserve life or those which had a
merely ceremonial significance. Unblessed and unpitied she lay in
the open field, weltering in blood, exciting only repugnance in all
who passed by, until Jehovah Himself passed by, and pronounced over
her the decree that she should live. Thus saved from death, she
grew up and reached maturity, but still “naked and bare,” destitute of wealth and the
refinements of civilisation. These were bestowed on her when a
second time Jehovah passed by and spread His skirt over her, and
claimed her for His own. Not till then had she been treated as a
human being, with the possibilities of honourable life before her.
But now she becomes the bride of her protector, and is provided for
as a high-born maiden might be, with all the ornaments and luxuries
befitting her new rank. Lifted from the lowest depth of
degradation, she is now transcendently beautiful, and has
“attained to royal estate.” The fame
of her loveliness went abroad among the nations: “for it was perfect through My glory, which I put upon
thee, saith Jehovah” (ver. 14).
It will be seen
that the points of contact with actual history are here extremely
few as well as vague. It is indeed doubtful whether the subject of
the allegory be the city of Jerusalem conceived as one through all
its changes of population, or the Hebrew nation of which Jerusalem
ultimately became the capital. The latter interpretation is
certainly favoured by ch. xxiii., where both Jerusalem and Samaria
are represented as having spent their youth in Egypt. That parallel
may not be decisive as to the meaning of ch. xvi.; and the
statement “thy father was the Amorite and
thy mother an Hittite” may be thought to support the other
alternative. Amorite and Hittite are general names for the
pre-Israelite population of Canaan, and it is a well-known fact
that Jerusalem was originally a Canaanitish city. It is not
necessary to suppose that the prophet has any information about the
early fortunes of Jerusalem when he describes the stages of the
process by which she was raised to royal magnificence. The chief
question is whether these details can be fairly applied to the
history of the nation before it had Jerusalem as its metropolis. It
is usually held that the first “passing
by” of Jehovah refers to the preservation of the people in
the patriarchal period, and the second to the events of the Exodus
and the Sinaitic covenant. Against this it may be urged that
Ezekiel would hardly have presented the patriarchal period in a
hateful light, although he does go further in discrediting
antiquity than any other prophet. Besides, the description of
Jerusalem's betrothal to Jehovah contains points which are more
naturally understood of the glories of the age of David and Solomon
than of the events of Sinai, which were not accompanied by an
access of material prosperity such as is suggested. It may be
necessary to leave the matter in the vagueness with which
the prophet has
surrounded it, and accept as the teaching of the allegory the
simple truth that Jerusalem in herself was nothing, but had been
preserved in existence by Jehovah's will, and owed all her
splendour to her association with His cause and His kingdom.
ii. Vv.
15-34.—The dainties and rich attire enjoyed by the highly favoured
bride become a snare to her. These represent blessings of a
material order bestowed by Jehovah on Jerusalem. Throughout the
chapter nothing is said of the imparting of spiritual privileges,
or of a moral change wrought in the heart of Jerusalem. The gifts
of Jehovah are conferred on one incapable of responding to the care
and affection that had been lavished on her. The inborn taint of
her nature, the hereditary immorality of her heathen ancestors,
breaks out in a career of licentiousness in which all the
advantages of her proud position are prostituted to the vilest
ends. “As is the mother, so is her
daughter” (ver. 44); and Jerusalem betrayed her true origin
by the readiness with which she took to evil courses as soon as she
had the opportunity. The “whoredom”
in which the prophet sums up his indictment against his people is
chiefly the sin of idolatry. The figure may have been suggested by
the fact that actual lewdness of the most flagrant kind was a
conspicuous element in the form of idolatry to which Israel first
succumbed—the worship of the Canaanite Baals. But in the hands of
the prophets it has a deeper and more spiritual import than this.
It signified the violation of all the sacred moral obligations
which are enshrined in human marriage, or, in other words, the
abandonment of an ethical religion for one in which the powers of
nature were regarded as the highest revelation of the divine. To
the mind of the prophet it made no difference whether the object of
worship was called by the name of Jehovah or of Baal: the character
of the worship determined the quality of the religion; and in the one case,
as in the other, it was idolatry, or “whoredom.”
Two stages in
the idolatry of Israel appear to be distinguished in this part of
the chapter. The first is the naïve, half-conscious heathenism
which crept in insensibly through contact with Phœnician and
Canaanite neighbours (vv. 15-25). The tokens of Jerusalem's
implication in this sin were everywhere. The “high places” with their tents and clothed
images (ver. 17), and the offerings set forth before these objects
of adoration, were undoubtedly of Canaanitish origin, and their
preservation to the fall of the kingdom was a standing witness to
the source to which Israel owed her earliest and dearest
“abominations.” We learn that this
phase of idolatry culminated in the atrocious rite of human
sacrifice (vv. 20, 21). The immolation of children to Baal or
Molech was a common practice amongst the nations surrounding
Israel, and when introduced there seems to have been regarded as
part of the worship of Jehovah.See below, pp. 179 f.
What
Ezekiel here asserts is that the practice came through Israel's
illicit commerce with the gods of Canaan, and there is no question
that this is historically true. The allegory exhibits the sin in
its unnatural heinousness. The idealised city is the mother of her
citizens, the children are Jehovah's children and her own, yet she
has taken them and offered them up to the false lovers she so madly
pursued. Such was her feverish passion for idolatry that the
dearest and most sacred ties of nature were ruthlessly severed at
the bidding of a perverted religious sense.
The second form
of idolatry in Israel was of a more deliberate and politic kind
(vv. 23-34). It consisted in the introduction of the deities and
religious practices of the great world-powers—Egypt, Assyria, and
Chaldæa. The attraction of these foreign rites did not lie in the
fascination of a sensuous type of religion, but rather in the
impression of power produced by the gods of the conquering peoples.
The foreign gods came in mostly in consequence of a political
alliance with the nations whose patrons they were; in other cases a
god was worshipped simply because he had shown himself able to do
great things for his servants. Jerusalem as Ezekiel knew it was
full of monuments of this comparatively recent type of idolatry. In
every street and at the head of every way there were erections
(here called “arches” or
“heights”) which, from the
connection in which they are mentioned, must have been shrines
devoted to the strange gods from abroad. It is characteristic of
the political idolatry here referred to that its monuments were
found in the capital, while the more ancient and rustic worship was
typified by the “high places”
throughout the provinces. It is probable that the description
applies mainly to the later period of the monarchy, when Israel,
and especially Judah, began to lean for support on one or other of
the great empires on either side of her. At the same time it must
be remembered that Ezekiel elsewhere teaches distinctly that the
influence of Egyptian religion had been continuous from the days of
the Exodus (ch. xxiii.). There may, however, have been a revival of
Egyptian influence, due to the political exigencies which arose in
the eighth century.
Thus Jerusalem
has “played the harlot”; nay, she
has done worse—“she has been as a wife that
committeth adultery, who though under her husband taketh
strangers.”Ver. 33 may, however, be an
interpolation (Cornill).
And
the result has been simply the impoverishment of the land. The
heavy exactions levied on the country by Egypt and Assyria were the hire she had paid
to her lovers to come to her. If false religion had resulted in an
increase of wealth or material prosperity, there might have been
some excuse for the eagerness with which she plunged into it. But
certainly Israel's history bore the lesson that false religion
means waste and ruin. Strangers had devoured her strength from her
youth, yet she never would heed the voice of her prophets when they
sought to guide her into the ways of peace. Her infatuation was
unnatural; it goes almost beyond the bounds of the allegory to
exhibit it: “The contrary is in thee from
other women, in that thou committest whoredoms, and none goeth
awhoring after thee: and in that thou givest hire, and no hire is
given to thee, therefore thou art contrary” (ver. 34).
iii. Vv.
35-58.—Having thus made Jerusalem to “know
her abominations” (ver. 2), the prophet proceeds to announce
the doom which must inevitably follow such a career of wickedness.
The figures under which the judgment is set forth appear to be
taken from the punishment meted out to profligate women in ancient
Israel. The public exposure of the adulteress and her death by
stoning in the presence of “many
women” supply images terribly appropriate of the fate in
store for Jerusalem.In ver. 41 the Syriac Version reads,
with a slight alteration of the text, “they
shall burn thee in the midst of the fire.” The reading has
something to recommend it. Death by burning was an ancient
punishment of harlotry (Gen. xxxviii. 24), although it is not
likely that it was still inflicted in the time of Ezekiel.
Her
punishment is to be a warning to all surrounding nations, and an
exhibition of the jealous wrath of Jehovah against her infidelity.
These nations, some of them hereditary enemies, others old allies,
are represented as assembled to witness and to execute the judgment
of the city. The remorseless realism of the prophet spares no
detail which
could enhance the horror of the situation. Abandoned to the
ruthless violence of her former lovers, Jerusalem is stripped of
her royal attire, the emblems of her idolatry are destroyed, and
so, left naked to her enemies, she suffers the ignominious death of
a city that has been false to her religion. The root of her sin had
been the forgetfulness of what she owed to the goodness of Jehovah,
and the essence of her punishment lies in the withdrawal of the
gifts He had lavished upon her and the protection which amid all
her apostasies she had never ceased to expect.
At this point
(ver. 44 ff.) the allegory takes a new turn through the
introduction of the sister cities of Samaria and Sodom. Samaria,
although as a city much younger than Jerusalem, is considered the
elder sister because she had once been the centre of a greater
political power than Jerusalem, and Sodom, which was probably older
than either, is treated as the youngest because of her relative
insignificance. The order, however, is of no importance. The point
of the comparison is that all three had manifested in different
degrees the same hereditary tendency to immorality (ver. 45). All
three were of heathen origin—their mother a Hittite and their
father an Amorite—a description which it is even more difficult to
understand in the case of Samaria than in that of Jerusalem. But
Ezekiel is not concerned about history. What is prominent in his
mind is the family likeness observed in their characters, which
gave point to the proverb “Like mother,
like daughter” when applied to Jerusalem. The prophet
affirms that the wickedness of Jerusalem had so far exceeded that
of Samaria and Sodom that she had “justified” her sisters—i.e.,
she had made their moral condition appear pardonable by comparison
with hers. He knows that he is saying a bold thing in ranking the
iniquity of Jerusalem as greater than that of Sodom, and so he
explains his
judgment on Sodom by an analysis of the cause of her notorious
corruptness. The name of Sodom lived in tradition as that of the
foulest city of the old world, a ne plus
ultra of wickedness. Yet Ezekiel dares to raise the
question, What was the sin of Sodom? “This was the sin of Sodom thy sister, pride,
superabundance of food, and careless ease was the lot of her and
her daughters, but they did not succour the poor and needy. But
they became proud, and committed abominations before Me: therefore
I took them away as thou hast seen” (vv. 49, 50). The
meaning seems to be that the corruptions of Sodom were the natural
outcome of the evil principle in the Canaanitish nature, favoured
by easy circumstances and unchecked by the saving influences of a
pure religion. Ezekiel's judgment is like an anticipation of the
more solemn sentence uttered by One who knew what was in man when
He said, “If the mighty works which have
been done in you had been done in Sodom and Gomorrha, they would
have remained until this day.”
It is remarkable
to observe how some of the profoundest ideas in this chapter attach
themselves to the strange conception of these two vanished cities
as still capable of being restored to their place in the world. In
the ideal future of the prophet's vision Sodom and Samaria shall
rise from their ruins through the same power which restores
Jerusalem to her ancient glory. The promise of a renewed existence
to Sodom and Samaria is perhaps connected with the fact that they
lay within the sacred territory of which Jerusalem is the centre.
Hence Sodom and Samaria are no longer sisters, but daughters of
Jerusalem, receiving through her the blessings of the true
religion. And it is her relation to these her sisters that opens
the eyes of Jerusalem to the true nature of her own relation to
Jehovah. Formerly she had been proud and self-sufficient, and counted her exceptional
prerogatives the natural reward of some excellence to which she
could lay claim. The name of Sodom, the disgraced sister of the
family, was not heard in her mouth in the days of her pride, when
her wickedness had not been disclosed as it is now (ver. 57). But
when she realises that her conduct has justified and comforted her
sister, and when she has to take guilty Sodom to her heart as a
daughter, she will understand that she owes all her greatness to
the same sovereign grace of Jehovah which is manifested in the
restoration of the most abandoned community known to history. And
out of this new consciousness of grace will spring the chastened
and penitent temper of mind which makes possible the continuance of
the bond which unites her to Jehovah.
iv. Vv.
59-63.—The way is thus prepared for the final promise of
forgiveness with which the chapter closes. The reconciliation
between Jehovah and Jerusalem will be effected by an act of
recollection on both sides: “I will
remember My covenant with thee.... Thou
shalt remember thy ways” (vv. 60, 61). The mind of Jehovah
and the mind of Jerusalem both go back on the past; but while
Jehovah thinks only of the purpose of love which he had entertained
towards Jerusalem in the days of her youth and the indissoluble
bond between them, Jerusalem retains the memory of her own sinful
history, and finds in the remembrance the source of abiding
contrition and shame. It does not fall within the scope of the
prophet's purpose to set forth in this place the blessed
consequences which flow from this renewal of loving intercourse
between Israel and her God. He has accomplished his object when he
has shown how the electing love of Jehovah reaches its end in spite
of human sin and rebellion, and how through the crushing power of
divine grace the failures and transgressions of the past are
made to issue in a
relation of perfect harmony between Jehovah and His people. The
permanence of that relation is expressed by an idea borrowed from
Jeremiah—the idea of an everlasting covenant, which cannot be
broken because based on the forgiveness of sin and a renewal of
heart. The prophet knows that when once the power of evil has been
broken by a full disclosure of redeeming love it cannot resume its
old ascendency in human life. So he leaves us on the threshold of
the new dispensation with the picture of Jerusalem humbled and
bearing her shame, yet in the abjectness of her self-accusation
realising the end towards which the love of Jehovah had guided her
from the beginning: “I will establish My
covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah: that
thou mayest remember, and be ashamed, and not open thy mouth any
more for very shame, when I expiate for thee all that thou hast
done, saith the Lord Jehovah” (vv. 62, 63).
Throughout this
chapter we see that the prophet moves in the region of national
religious ideas which are distinctive of the Old Testament. Of the
influences that formed his conceptions that of Hosea is perhaps
most discernible. The fundamental thoughts embodied in the allegory
are the same as those by which the older prophet learned to
interpret the nature of God and the sin of Israel through the
bitter experiences of his family life. These thoughts are developed
by Ezekiel with a fertility of imagination and a grasp of
theological principles which were adapted to the more complex
situation with which he had to deal. But the conception of Israel
as the unfaithful wife of Jehovah, of the false gods and the
world-powers as her lovers, of her conversion through affliction,
and her final restoration by a new betrothal which is eternal, are
all expressed in the first three chapters of Hosea. And the freedom
with which Ezekiel handles and expands these conceptions shows how thoroughly he was
at home in that national view of religion which he did much to
break through. In the next lecture we shall have occasion to
examine his treatment of the problem of the individual's relation
to God, and we cannot fail to be struck by the contrast. The
analysis of individual religion may seem meagre by the side of this
most profound and suggestive chapter. This arises from the fact
that the full meaning of religion could not then be expressed as an
experience of the individual soul. The subject of religion being
the nation of Israel, the human side of it could only be unfolded
in terms of what we should call the national consciousness. The
time was not yet come when the great truths which the prophets and
psalmists saw embodied in the history of their people could be
translated in terms of individual fellowship with God. Yet the God
who spake to the fathers by the prophets is the same who has spoken
to us in His Son; and when from the standpoint of a higher
revelation we turn back to the Old Testament, it is to find in the
form of a nation's history the very same truths which we realise as
matters of personal experience.
From this point
of view the chapter we have considered is one of the most
evangelical passages in the writings of Ezekiel. The prophet's
conception of sin, for example, is singularly profound and true. He
has been charged with a somewhat superficial conception of sin, as
if he saw nothing more in it than the transgression of a law
arbitrarily imposed by divine authority. There are aspects of
Ezekiel's teaching which give some plausibility to that charge,
especially those which deal with the duties of the individual. But
we see that to Ezekiel the real nature of sin could not possibly be
manifested except as a factor in the national life. Now in this
allegory it is obvious that he sees something far deeper in it than
the mere transgression of positive commandments. Behind all the
outward
offences of which Israel had been guilty there plainly lies the
spiritual fact of national selfishness, unfaithfulness to Jehovah,
insensibility to His love, and ingratitude for His benefits.
Moreover, the prophet, like Jeremiah before him, has a strong sense
of sin as a tendency in human life, a power which is ineradicable
save by the mingled severity and goodness of God. Through the whole
history of Israel it is one evil disposition which he sees
asserting itself, breaking out now in one form and then in another,
but continually gaining strength, until at last the spirit of
repentance is created by the experience of God's forgiveness. It is
not the case, therefore, that Ezekiel failed to comprehend the
nature of sin, or that in this respect he falls below the most
spiritual of the prophets who had gone before him.
In order that
this tendency to sin may be destroyed, Ezekiel sees that the
consciousness of guilt must take its place. In the same way the
apostle Paul teaches that “every mouth must
be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God.”
Whether the subject be a nation or an individual, the dominion of
sin is not broken till the sinner has taken home to himself the
full responsibility for his acts and felt himself to be
“without excuse.” But the most
striking thing in Ezekiel's representation of the process of
conversion is the thought that this saving sense of sin is produced
less by judgment than by free and undeserved forgiveness.
Punishment he conceives to be necessary, being demanded alike by
the righteousness of God and the good of the sinful people. But the
heart of Jerusalem is not changed till she finds herself restored
to her former relation to God, with all the sin of her past blotted
out and a new life before her. It is through the grace of
forgiveness that she is overwhelmed with shame and sorrow for sin,
and learns the humility which is the germ of a new hope towards
God. Here the
prophet strikes one of the deepest notes of evangelical doctrine.
All experience confirms the lesson that true repentance is not
produced by the terrors of the law, but by the view of God's love
in Christ going forth to meet the sinner and bring him back to the
Father's heart and home.
Another question
of great interest and difficulty is the attitude towards the
heathen world assumed by Ezekiel. The prophecy of the restoration
of Sodom is certainly one of the most remarkable things in the
book. It is true that Ezekiel as a rule concerns himself very
little with the religious state of the outlying world under the
Messianic dispensation. Where he speaks of foreign nations it is
only to announce the manifestation of Jehovah's glory in the
judgments He executes upon them. The effect of these judgments is
that “they shall know that I am
Jehovah”; but how much is included in the expression as
applied to the heathen it is impossible to say. This, however, may
be due to the peculiar limitation of view which leads him to
concentrate his attention on the Holy Land in his visions of the
perfect kingdom of God. We can hardly suppose that he conceived all
the rest of the world as a blank or filled with a seething mass of
humanity outside the government of the true God. It is rather to be
supposed that Canaan itself appeared to his mind as an epitome of
the world such as it must be when the latter-day glory was ushered
in. And in Canaan he finds room for Sodom, but Sodom turned to the
knowledge of the true God and sharing in the blessings bestowed on
Jerusalem. It is surely allowable to see in this the symptom of a
more hopeful view of the future of the world at large than we
should gather from the rest of the prophecy. If Ezekiel could think
of Sodom as raised from the dead and sharing the glories of the
people of God, the idea of the conversion of heathen nations
could not have been
altogether foreign to his mind. It is at all events significant
that when he meditates most profoundly on the nature of sin and
God's method of dealing with it, he is led to the thought of a
divine mercy which embraces in its sweep those communities which
had reached the lowest depths of moral corruption.
Chapter X. The Religion Of The
Individual. Chapter xviii.
In the sixteenth
chapter, as we have seen, Ezekiel has asserted in the most
unqualified terms the validity of the principle of national
retribution. The nation is dealt with as a moral unity, and the
catastrophe which closes its history is the punishment for the
accumulated guilt incurred by the past generations. In the
eighteenth chapter he teaches still more explicitly the freedom and
the independent responsibility of each individual before God. No
attempt is made to reconcile the two principles as methods of the
divine government; from the prophet's standpoint they do not
require to be reconciled. They belong to different dispensations.
So long as the Jewish state existed the principle of solidarity
remained in force. Men suffered for the sins of their ancestors;
individuals shared the punishment incurred by the nation as a
whole. But as soon as the nation is dead, when the bonds that unite
men in the organism of national life are dissolved, then the idea
of individual responsibility comes into immediate operation. Each
Israelite stands isolated before Jehovah, the burden of hereditary
guilt falls away from him, and he is free to determine his own
relation to God. He need not fear that the iniquity of his fathers
will be reckoned against him; he is held accountable only for his
own sins, and
these can be forgiven on the condition of his own repentance.
The doctrine of
this chapter is generally regarded as Ezekiel's most characteristic
contribution to theology. It might be nearer the truth to say that
he is dealing with one of the great religious problems of the age
in which he lived. The difficulty was perceived by Jeremiah, and
treated in a manner which shows that his thoughts were being led in
the same direction as those of Ezekiel (Jer. xxxi. 29, 30). If in
any respect the teaching of Ezekiel makes an advance on that of
Jeremiah, it is in his application of the new truth to the duty of
the present: and even here the difference is more apparent than
real. Jeremiah postpones the introduction of personal religion to
the future, regarding it as an ideal to be realised in the
Messianic age. His own life and that of his contemporaries was
bound up with the old dispensation which was passing away, and he
knew that he was destined to share the fate of his people. Ezekiel,
on the other hand, lives already under the powers of the world to
come. The one hindrance to the perfect manifestation of Jehovah's
righteousness has been removed by the destruction of Jerusalem, and
henceforward it will be made apparent in the correspondence between
the desert and the fate of each individual. The new Israel must be
organised on the basis of personal religion, and the time has
already come when the task of preparing the religious community of
the future must be earnestly taken up. Hence the doctrine of
individual responsibility has a peculiar and practical importance
in the mission of Ezekiel. The call to repentance, which is the
keynote of his ministry, is addressed to individual men, and in
order that it may take effect their minds must be disabused of all
fatalistic preconceptions which would induce paralysis of the moral
faculties. It was necessary to affirm in all their breadth and fulness the
two fundamental truths of personal religion—the absolute
righteousness of God's dealings with individual men, and His
readiness to welcome and pardon the penitent.
The eighteenth
chapter falls accordingly into two divisions. In the first the
prophet sets the individual's immediate relation to God against the
idea that guilt is transmitted from father to children (vv. 2-20).
In the second he tries to dispel the notion that a man's fate is so
determined by his own past life as to make a change of moral
condition impossible (vv. 21-32).
I
It is
noteworthy that both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in dealing with the
question of retribution, start from a popular proverb which had
gained currency in the later years of the kingdom of Judah:
“The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and
the children's teeth are set on edge.” In whatever spirit
this saying may have been first coined, there is no doubt that it
had come to be used as a witticism at the expense of Providence.
It indicates that influences were at work besides the word of
prophecy which tended to undermine men's faith in the current
conception of the divine government. The doctrine of transmitted
guilt was accepted as a fact of experience, but it no longer
satisfied the deeper moral instincts of men. In early Israel it
was otherwise. There the idea that the son should bear the
iniquity of the father was received without challenge and applied
without misgiving in judicial procedure. The whole family of
Achan perished for the sin of their father; the sons of Saul
expiated their father's crime long after he was dead. These are
indeed but isolated facts, yet they are sufficient to prove the
ascendency of the antique conception of the tribe or family as a
unity whose individual members are involved in the guilt of the
head. With the spread of purer ethical ideas among the people
there came a deeper sense of the value of the individual life,
and at a later time the principle of vicarious punishment was
banished from the administration of human justice (cf. 2 Kings
xiv. 6 with Deut. xxiv. 16). Within that sphere the principle was
firmly established that each man shall be put to death for his
own sin. But the motives which made this change intelligible and
necessary in purely human relations could not be brought to bear
immediately on the question of divine retribution. The
righteousness of God was thought to act on different lines from
the righteousness of man. The experience of the last generation
of the state seemed to furnish fresh evidence of the operation of
a law of providence by which men were made to inherit the
iniquity of their fathers. The literature of the period is filled
with the conviction that it was the sins of Manasseh that had
sealed the doom of the nation. These sins had never been
adequately punished, and subsequent events showed that they were
not forgiven. The reforming zeal of Josiah had postponed for a
time the final visitation of Jehovah's anger; but no reformation
and no repentance could avail to roll back the flood of judgment
that had been set in motion by the crimes of the reign of
Manasseh. “Notwithstanding Jehovah turned
not from the fierceness of His great wrath, wherewith His anger
was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that
Manasseh had provoked Him withal” (2 Kings xxiii. 26).
The proverb
about the sour grapes shows the effect of this interpretation of
providence on a large section of the people. It means no doubt
that there is an irrational element in God's method of dealing
with men, something not in harmony with natural laws. In the
natural sphere if a
man eats sour grapes his own teeth are blunted or set on edge;
the consequences are immediate, and they are transitory. But in
the moral sphere a man may eat sour grapes all his life and
suffer no evil consequences whatever; the consequences, however,
appear in his children who have committed no such indiscretion.
There is nothing there which answers to the ordinary sense of
justice. Yet the proverb appears to be less an arraignment of the
divine righteousness than a mode of self-exculpation on the part
of the people. It expresses the fatalism and despair which
settled down on the minds of that generation when they realised
the full extent of the calamity that had overtaken them:
“If our transgressions and our sins be
upon us, and we pine away in them, how then should we
live?” (ch. xxxiii. 10). So the exiles reasoned in
Babylon, where they were in no mood for quoting facetious
proverbs about the ways of Providence; but they accurately
expressed the sense of the adage that had been current in
Jerusalem before its fall. The sins for which they suffered were
not their own, and the judgment that lay on them was no summons
to repentance, for it was caused by sins of which they were not
guilty and for which they could not in any real sense repent.
Ezekiel
attacks this popular theory of retribution at what must have been
regarded as its strongest point—the relation between the father
and son. “Why should the son not
bear the iniquity of his father?” the people asked in
astonishment (ver. 19). “It is good
traditional theology, and it has been confirmed by our own
experience.” Now Ezekiel would probably not have admitted
that in any circumstances a son suffers because his father has
sinned. With that notion he appears to have absolutely broken. He
did not deny that the Exile was the punishment for all the sins
of the past as well as for those of the present; but that was
because the nation was treated as a moral unity, and not because of any
law of heredity which bound up the fate of the child with that of
the father. It was essential to his purpose to show that the
principle of social guilt or collective retribution came to an
end with the fall of the state; whereas in the form in which the
people held to it, it could never come to an end so long as there
are parents to sin and children to suffer. But the important
point in the prophet's teaching is that whether in one form or in
another the principle of solidarity is now superseded. God will
no longer deal with men in the mass, but as individuals; and
facts which gave plausibility and a relative justification to
cynical views of God's providence shall no more occur. There will
be no more occasion to use that objectionable proverb in Israel.
On the contrary, it will be manifest in the case of each separate
individual that God's righteousness is discriminating, and that
each man's destiny corresponds with his own character. And the
new principle is embodied in words which may be called the
charter of the individual soul—words whose significance is fully
revealed only in Christianity: “All souls
are Mine.... The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”
What is here
asserted is of course not a distinction between the soul or
spiritual part of man's being and another part of his being which
is subject to physical necessity, but one between the individual
and his moral environment. The former distinction is real, and it
may be necessary for us in our day to insist on it, but it was
certainly not thought of by Ezekiel or perhaps by any other Old
Testament writer. The word “soul”
denotes simply the principle of individual life. “All persons are Mine” expresses the whole
meaning which Ezekiel meant to convey. Consequently the death
threatened to the sinner is not what we call spiritual death, but
death in the literal sense—the death of the individual. The truth
taught
is the independence and freedom of the individual, or his moral
personality. And that truth involves two things. First, each
individual belongs to God, stands in immediate personal relation
to Him. In the old economy the individual belonged to the nation
or the family, and was related to God only as a member of a
larger whole. Now he has to deal with God directly—possesses
independent personal worth in the eye of God. Secondly, as a
result of this, each man is responsible for his own acts, and for
these alone. So long as his religious relations are determined by
circumstances outside of his own life his personality is
incomplete. The ideal relation to God must be one in which the
destiny of every man depends on his own free actions. These are
the fundamental postulates of personal religion as formulated by
Ezekiel.
The first part
of the chapter is nothing more than an illustration of the second
of these truths in a sufficient number of instances to show both
sides of its operation. There is first the case of a man
perfectly righteous, who as a matter of course lives by his
righteousness, the state of his father not being taken into
account. Then this good man is supposed to bear a son who is in
all respects the opposite of his father, who answers none of the
tests of a righteous man; he must die for his own sins, and his
father's righteousness avails him nothing. Lastly, if the son of
this wicked man takes warning by his father's fate and leads a
good life, he lives just as the first man did because of his own
righteousness, and suffers no diminution of his reward because
his father was a sinner. In all this argument there is a tacit
appeal to the conscience of the hearers, as if the case only
required to be put clearly before them to command their assent.
This is what shall be, the prophet says; and it is what ought to
be. It is contrary to the idea of perfect justice to conceive of
Jehovah as acting otherwise than as here represented.
To cling to the
idea of collective retribution as a permanent truth of religion,
as the exiles were disposed to do, destroys belief in the divine
righteousness by making it different from the righteousness which
expresses itself in the moral judgments of men.
Before we pass
from this part of the chapter we may take note of some
characteristics of the moral ideal by which Ezekiel tests the
conduct of the individual man. It is given in the form of a
catalogue of virtues, the presence or absence of which determines
a man's fitness or unfitness to enter the future kingdom of God.
Most of these virtues are defined negatively; the code specifies
sins to be avoided rather than duties to be performed or graces
to be cultivated. Nevertheless they are such as to cover a large
section of human life, and the arrangement of them embodies
distinctions of permanent ethical significance. They may be
classed under the three heads of piety, chastity, and
beneficence. Under the first head, that of directly religious
duties, two offences are mentioned which are closely connected
with each other, although to our minds they may seem to involve
different degrees of guilt (ver. 6). One is the acknowledgment of
other gods than Jehovah, and the other is participation in
ceremonies which denoted fellowship with idols.“To eat upon
the mountains” (if that reading can be retained) must mean
to take part in the sacrificial feasts which were held on the high
places in honour of idols. But if with W. R. Smith and others we
substitute the phrase “eat with the
blood,” assimilating the reading to that of ch. xxxiii. 25,
the offence is still of the same nature. In the time of Ezekiel to
eat with the blood probably meant not merely to eat that which had
not been sacrificed to Jehovah, but to engage in a rite of
distinctly heathenish character. Cf. Lev. xix. 20, and see the note
in Smith's Kinship and Marriage in Early
Arabia, p. 310.
To
us who “know that an idol is nothing in
the world” the mere act of eating with the blood has no
religious significance. But in Ezekiel's time it was impossible
to divest it of heathen
associations, and the man who performed it stood convicted of a
sin against Jehovah. Similarly the idea of sexual purity is
illustrated by two outstanding and prevalent offences (ver. 6).
The third head, which includes by far the greater number of
particulars, deals with the duties which we regard as moral in a
stricter sense. They are embodiments of the love which
“worketh no ill to his neighbour,”
and is therefore “the fulfilling of the
law.” It is manifest that the list is not meant to be an
exhaustive enumeration of all the virtues that a good man must
practise, or all the vices he must shun. The prophet has before
his mind two broad classes of men—those who feared God, and those
who did not; and what he does is to lay down outward marks which
were practically sufficient to discriminate between the one class
and the other.
The supreme
moral category is Righteousness, and this includes the two ideas
of right character and a right relation to God. The distinction
between an active righteousness manifested in the life and a
“righteousness which is by faith”
is not explicitly drawn in the Old Testament. Hence the passage
contains no teaching on the question whether a man's relation to
God is determined by his good works, or whether good works are
the fruit and outcome of a right relation to God. The essence of
morality, according to the Old Testament, is loyalty to God,
expressed by obedience to His will; and from that point of view
it is self-evident that the man who is loyal to Jehovah stands
accepted in His sight. In other connections Ezekiel makes it
abundantly clear that the state of grace does not depend on any
merit which man can have towards God.
The fact that
Ezekiel defines righteousness in terms of outward conduct has led
to his being accused of the error of legalism in his moral
conceptions. He has been charged with resolving righteousness into
“a sum of separate tzedāqôth,” or virtues.
But this view strains his language unduly, and seems moreover to
be negatived by the presuppositions of his argument. As a man
must either live or die at the day of judgment, so he must at any
moment be either righteous or wicked. The problematic case of a
man who should conscientiously observe some of these requirements
and deliberately violate others would have been dismissed by
Ezekiel as an idle speculation: “Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend
in one point, he is guilty of all” (James ii. 10). The
very fact that former good deeds are not remembered to a man in
the day when he turns from his righteousness shows that the state
of righteousness is something different from an average struck
from the statistics of his moral career. The bent of the
character towards or away from goodness is no doubt spoken of as
subject to sudden fluctuations, but for the time being each man
is conceived as dominated by the one tendency or the other; and
it is the bent of the whole nature towards the good that
constitutes the righteousness by which a man shall live. It is at
all events a mistake to suppose that the prophet is concerned
only about the external act and indifferent to the state of heart
from which it proceeds. It is true that he does not attempt to
penetrate beneath the surface of the outward life. He does not
analyse motives. But this is because he assumes that if a man
keeps God's law he does it from a sincere desire to please God
and with a sense of the rightness of the law to which he subjects
his life. When we recognise this the charge of externalism
amounts to very little. We can never get behind the principle
that “he that doeth righteousness is
righteous” (1 John iii. 7), and that principle covers all
that Ezekiel really teaches. Compared with the more spiritual
teaching of the New Testament his moral ideal is no doubt defective in many
directions, but his insistence on action as a test of character
is hardly one of them. We must remember that the New Testament
itself contains as many warnings against a false spirituality as
it does against the opposite error of reliance on good works.
II
The second
great truth of personal religion is the moral freedom of the
individual to determine his own destiny in the day of judgment.
This is illustrated in the latter part of the chapter by the two
opposite cases of a wicked man turning from his wickedness (vv.
21, 22) and a righteous man turning from his righteousness (ver.
24). And the teaching of the passage is that the effect of such a
change of mind, as regards a man's relation to God, is absolute.
The good life subsequent to conversion is not weighed against the
sins of past years; it is the index of a new state of heart in
which the guilt of former transgressions is entirely blotted out:
“All his transgressions that he hath
committed shall not be remembered in regard to him; in his
righteousness that he hath done he shall live.” But in
like manner the act of apostasy effaces the remembrance of good
deeds done in an earlier period of the man's life. The standing
of each soul before God, its righteousness or its wickedness, is
thus wholly determined by its final choice of good or evil, and
is revealed by the conduct which follows that great moral
decision. There can be no doubt that Ezekiel regards these two
possibilities as equally real, falling away from righteousness
being as much a fact of experience as repentance. In the light of
the New Testament we should perhaps interpret both cases somewhat
differently. In genuine conversion we must recognise the
imparting of a new spiritual principle which is ineradicable,
containing
the pledge of perseverance in the state of grace to the end. In
the case of final apostasy we are compelled to judge that the
righteousness which is renounced was only apparent, that it was
no true indication of the man's character or of his condition in
the sight of God. But these are not the questions with which the
prophet is directly dealing. The essential truth which he
inculcates is the emancipation of the individual, through
repentance, from his own past. In virtue of his immediate
personal relation to God each man has the power to accept the
offer of salvation, to break away from his sinful life and escape
the doom which hangs over the impenitent. To this one point the
whole argument of the chapter tends. It is a demonstration of the
possibility and efficacy of individual repentance, culminating in
the declaration which lies at the very foundation of evangelical
religion, that God has no pleasure in the death of him that
dieth, but will have all men to repent and live (ver. 32).
It is not easy
for us to conceive the effect of this revelation on the minds of
people so utterly unprepared for it as the generation in which
Ezekiel lived. Accustomed as they were to think of their
individual fate as bound up in that of their nation, they could
not at once adjust themselves to a doctrine which had never
previously been enunciated with such incisive clearness. And it
is not surprising that one effect of Ezekiel's teaching was to
create fresh doubts of the rectitude of the divine government.
“The way of the Lord is not
equal,” it was said (vv. 25, 29). So long as it was
admitted that men suffered for the sins of their ancestors or
that God dealt with them in the mass, there was at least an
appearance of consistency in the methods of Providence. The
justice of God might not be visible in the life of the
individual, but it could be roughly traced in the history of the
nation as a whole. But when that principle was discarded, then
the question of the
divine righteousness was raised in the case of each separate
Israelite, and there immediately appeared all those perplexities
about the lot of the individual which so sorely exercised the
faith of Old Testament believers. Experience did not show that
correspondence between a man's attitude towards God and his
earthly fortunes which the doctrine of individual freedom seemed
to imply; and even in Ezekiel's time it must have been evident
that the calamities which overtook the state fell
indiscriminately on the righteous and the wicked. The prophet's
purpose, however, is a practical one, and he does not attempt to
offer a theoretical solution of the difficulties which thus
arose. There were several considerations in his mind which turned
aside the edge of the people's complaint against the
righteousness of Jehovah. One was the imminence of the final
judgment, in which the absolute rectitude of the divine procedure
would be clearly manifested. Another seems to be the irresolute
and unstable attitude of the people themselves towards the great
moral issues which were set before them. While they professed to
be more righteous than their fathers, they showed no settled
purpose of amendment in their lives. A man might be apparently
righteous to-day and a sinner to-morrow; the “inequality” of which they complained was in
their own ways, and not in the way of the Lord (vv. 25, 29). But
the most important element in the case was the prophet's
conception of the character of God as one who, though strictly
just, yet desired that men should live. The Lord is
longsuffering, not willing that any should perish; and He
postpones the day of decision that His goodness may lead men to
repentance. “Have I any pleasure in the
death of the wicked? saith the Lord: and not that he should turn
from his ways, and live?” (ver. 23). And all these
considerations lead up to the urgent call to repentance with
which the chapter closes.
The importance
of the questions dealt with in this eighteenth chapter is shown
clearly enough by the hold which they have over the minds of men
in the present day. The very same difficulties which Ezekiel had
to encounter in his time confront us still in a somewhat altered
form, and are often keenly felt as obstacles to faith in God. The
scientific doctrine of heredity, for example, seems to be but a
more precise modern rendering of the old proverb about the eating
of sour grapes. The biological controversy over the possibility
of the transmission of acquired characteristics scarcely touches
the moral problem. In whatever way that controversy may be
ultimately settled, it is certain that in all cases a man's life
is affected both for good and evil by influences which descend
upon him from his ancestry. Similarly within the sphere of the
individual life the law of habit seems to exclude the possibility
of complete emancipation from the penalty due to past
transgressions. Hardly anything, in short, is better established
by experience than that the consequences of past actions persist
through all changes of spiritual condition, and, further, that
children do suffer from the consequences of their parents'
sin.
Do not these
facts, it may be asked, amount practically to a vindication of
the theory of retribution against which the prophet's argument is
directed? How can we reconcile them with the great principles
enunciated in this chapter? Dictates of morality, fundamental
truths of religion, these may be; but can we say in the face of
experience that they are true?
It must be
admitted that a complete answer to these questions is not given
in the chapter before us, nor perhaps anywhere in the Old
Testament. So long as God dealt with men mainly by temporal
rewards and punishments, it was impossible to realise fully the
separateness of the soul in its spiritual relations to God; the
fate of the individual
is necessarily merged in that of the community, and Ezekiel's
doctrine remains a prophecy of better things to be revealed. This
indeed is the light in which he himself teaches us to regard it;
although he applies it in all its strictness to the men of his
own generation, it is nevertheless essentially a feature of the
ideal kingdom of God, and is to be exhibited in the judgment by
which that kingdom is introduced. The great value of his teaching
therefore lies in his having formulated with unrivalled clearness
principles which are eternally true of the spiritual life,
although the perfect manifestation of these principles in the
experience of believers was reserved for the final revelation of
salvation in Christ.
The solution
of the contradiction referred to lies in the separation between
the natural and the penal consequences of sin. There is a sphere
within which natural laws have their course, modified, it may be,
but not wholly suspended by the law of the spirit of life in
Christ. The physical effects of vicious indulgence are not turned
aside by repentance, and a man may carry the scars of sin upon
him to the grave. But there is also a sphere into which natural
law does not enter. In his immediate personal relation to God a
believer is raised above the evil consequences which flow from
his past life, so that they have no power to separate him from
the love of God. And within that sphere his moral freedom and
independence are as much matter of experience as is his
subjection to law in another sphere. He knows that all things
work together for his good, and that tribulation itself is a
means of bringing him nearer to God. Amongst those tribulations
which work out his salvation there may be the evil conditions
imposed on him by the sin of others, or even the natural
consequences of his own former transgressions. But tribulations
no longer bear the aspect of penalty, and are no longer a token
of the wrath of God. They are transformed into chastisements by which the
Father of spirits makes His children perfect in holiness. The
hardest cross to bear will always be that which is the result of
one's own sin; but He who has borne the guilt of it can
strengthen us to bear even this and follow Him.In the striking passage ch. xiv. 12-23
the application of the doctrine of individual retribution to the
destruction of Jerusalem is discussed. It is treated as
“an exception to the rule”
(Smend)—perhaps the exception which proves the rule. The rule is
that in a national judgment the most eminent saints save neither
son nor daughter by their righteousness, but only their own lives
(vv. 13-20). At the fall of Jerusalem, however, a remnant escapes
and goes into captivity with sons and daughters, in order that
their corrupt lives may prove to the earlier exiles how necessary
the destruction of the city was (vv. 21-23). The argument is an
admission that the judgment on Israel was not carried out in
accordance with the strict principle laid down in ch. xviii. It is
difficult, indeed, to reconcile the various utterances of Ezekiel
on this subject. In ch. xxi. 3, 4 he expressly announces that in
the downfall of the state righteous and wicked shall perish
together. In the vision of ch. ix., on the other hand, the
righteous are marked for exemption from the fate of the city. The
truth appears to be that the prophet is conscious of standing
between two dispensations, and does not hold a consistent view
regarding the time when the law proper to the perfect dispensation
comes into operation. The point on which there is no ambiguity is
that in the final judgment which ushers in the Messianic age the
principle of individual retribution shall be fully manifested.
Chapter XI. The Sword Unsheathed.
Chapter xxi.
The date at the
beginning of ch. xx. introduces the fourth and last section of the
prophecies delivered before the destruction of Jerusalem. It also
divides the first period of Ezekiel's ministry into two equal
parts. The time is the month of August, 590 b.c., two years after his
prophetic inauguration and two years before the investment of
Jerusalem. It follows that if the book of Ezekiel presents anything
like a faithful picture of his actual work, by far his most
productive year was that which had just closed. It embraces the
long and varied series of discourses from ch. viii. to ch. xix.;
whereas five chapters are all that remain as a record of his
activity during the next two years. This result is not so
improbable as at first sight it might appear. From the character of
Ezekiel's prophecy, which consists largely of homiletic
amplifications of one great theme, it is quite intelligible that
the main lines of his teaching should have taken shape in his mind
at an early period of his ministry. The discourses in the earlier
part of the book may have been expanded in the act of committing
them to writing; but there is no reason to doubt that the ideas
they contain were present to the prophet's mind and were actually
delivered by him within the period to which they are assigned. We
may therefore suppose that Ezekiel's public exhortations became
less frequent during the two years that preceded the siege, just as we
know that for two years after that event they were altogether
discontinued.
In this last
division of the prophecies relating to the destruction of Jerusalem
we can easily distinguish two different classes of oracles. On the
one hand we have two chapters dealing with contemporary
incidents—the march of Nebuchadnezzar's army against Jerusalem (ch.
xxi.), and the commencement of the siege of the city (ch. xxiv.).
In spite of the confident opinion of some critics that these
prophecies could not have been composed till after the fall of
Jerusalem, they seem to me to bear the marks of having been written
under the immediate influence of the events they describe. It is
difficult otherwise to account for the excitement under which the
prophet labours, especially in ch. xxi., which stands by the side
of ch. vii. as the most agitated utterance in the whole book. On
the other hand we have three discourses of the nature of formal
indictments—one directed against the exiles (ch. xx.), one against
Jerusalem (ch. xxii.), and one against the whole nation of Israel
(ch. xxiii.). It is impossible in these chapters to discover any
advance in thought upon similar passages that have already been
before us. Two of them (chs. xx. and xxiii.) are historical
retrospects after the manner of ch. xvi., and there is no obvious
reason why they should be placed in a different section of the
book. The key to the unity of the section must therefore be sought
in the two historical prophecies and in the situation created by
the events they describe.This is true whether (as some
expositors think) the date in ch. xx. is merely an external mark
introducing a new division of the book, or whether (as seems more
natural) it is due to the fact that here Ezekiel recognised a
turning-point of his ministry. Such visits of the elders as that
here recorded must have been of frequent occurrence. Two others are
mentioned, and of these one is undated (ch. xiv. 1); the other at
least admits the supposition that it was connected with a very
definite change of opinion among the exiles (ch. viii. 1: see
above, p. 80). We may
therefore reasonably suppose that the precise note of time here
introduced marks this particular incident as having possessed a
peculiar significance in the relations between the prophet and his
fellow-exiles. What its significance may have been we shall
consider in the next lecture, see p. 174.
It
will therefore help to clear the ground if we commence with the
oracle
which throws most light on the historical background of this group
of prophecies—the oracle of Jehovah's sword against Jerusalem in
ch. xxi.The verses xx. 45-49 of the English
Version really belong to ch. xxi., and are so placed in the Hebrew.
In what follows the verses will be numbered according to the Hebrew
text.
The
long-projected rebellion has at length broken out. Zedekiah has
renounced his allegiance to the king of Babylon, and the army of
the Chaldæans is on its way to suppress the insurrection. The
precise date of these events is not known. For some reason the
conspiracy of the Palestinian states had hung fire; many years had
been allowed to slip away since the time when their envoys had met
in Jerusalem to concert measures of united resistance (Jer.
xxvii.). This procrastination was, as usual, a sure presage of
disaster. In the interval the league had dissolved. Some of its
members had made terms with Nebuchadnezzar; and it would appear
that only Tyre, Judah, and Ammon ventured on open defiance of his
power. The hope was cherished in Jerusalem, and probably also among
the Jews in Babylon, that the first assault of the Chaldæans would
be directed against the Ammonites, and that time would thus be
gained to complete the defences of Jerusalem. To dispel this
illusion is one obvious purpose of the prophecy before us. The
movements of Nebuchadnezzar's army are directed by a wisdom higher
than his own; he is the unconscious instrument by which Jehovah is
executing His own purpose. The real object of his expedition is not
to punish a few
refractory tribes for an act of disloyalty, but to vindicate the
righteousness of Jehovah in the destruction of the city which had
profaned His holiness. No human calculations will be allowed even
for a moment to turn aside the blow which is aimed directly at
Jerusalem's sins, or to obscure the lesson taught by its sure and
unerring aim.
We can imagine
the restless suspense and anxiety with which the final struggle for
the national cause was watched by the exiles in Babylon. In
imagination they would follow the long march of the Chaldæan hosts
by the Euphrates and their descent by the valleys of the Orontes
and Leontes upon the city. Eagerly would they wait for some tidings
of a reverse which would revive their drooping hope of a speedy
collapse of the great world-empire and a restoration of Israel to
its ancient freedom. And when at length they heard that Jerusalem
was enclosed in the iron grip of these victorious legions, from
which no human deliverance was possible, their mood would harden
into one in which fanatical hope and sullen despair contended for
the mastery. Into an atmosphere charged with such excitement
Ezekiel hurls the series of predictions comprised in chs. xxi. and
xxiv. With far other feelings than his fellows, but with as keen an
interest as theirs, he follows the development of what he knows to
be the last act in the long controversy between Jehovah and Israel.
It is his duty to repeat once more the irrevocable decree—the
divine delenda est against the guilty
Jerusalem. But he does so in this instance in language whose
vehemence betrays the agitation of his mind, and perhaps also the
restlessness of the society in which he lived. The twenty-first
chapter is a series of rhapsodies, the product of a state bordering
on ecstasy, where different aspects of the impending judgment are
set forth by the help of vivid images which pass in quick
succession through the prophet's mind.
I
The first
vision which the prophet sees of the approaching catastrophe (vv.
1-4) is that of a forest conflagration, an occurrence which must
have been as frequent in Palestine as a prairie fire in America.
He sees a fire break out in the “forest
of the south,” and rage with such fierceness that
“every green tree and every dry
tree” is burned up; the faces of all who are near it are
scorched, and all men are convinced that so terrible a calamity
must be the work of Jehovah Himself. This we may suppose to have
been the form in which the truth first laid hold of Ezekiel's
imagination; but he appears to have hesitated to proclaim his
message in this form. His figurative manner of speech had become
notorious among the exiles (ver. 5), and he was conscious that a
“parable” so vague and general as
this would be dismissed as an ingenious riddle which might mean
anything or nothing. What follows (vv. 7-10) gives the key to the
original vision. Although it is in form an independent oracle, it
is closely parallel to the preceding and elucidates each feature
in detail. The “forest of the
south” is explained to mean the land of Israel; and the
mention of the sword of Jehovah instead of the fire intimates
less obscurely that the instrument of the threatened calamity is
the Babylonian army. It is interesting to observe that Ezekiel
expressly admits that there were righteous men even in the doomed
Israel. Contrary to his conception of the normal methods of the
divine righteousness, he conceives of this
judgment as one which involves righteous and wicked in a common
ruin. Not that God is less than righteous in this crowning act of
vengeance, but His justice is not brought to bear on the fate of
individuals. He is dealing with the nation as a whole, and in the
exterminating judgment of the nation good men will no more be spared than
the green tree of the forest escapes the fate of the dry. It was
the fact that righteous men perished in the fall of Jerusalem;
and Ezekiel does not shut his eyes to it, firmly as he believed
that the time was come when God would reward every man according
to his own character. The indiscriminateness of the judgment in
its bearing on different classes of persons is obviously a
feature which Ezekiel here seeks to emphasise.
But the idea
of the sword of Jehovah drawn from its scabbard, to return no
more till it has accomplished its mission, is the one that has
fixed itself most deeply in the prophet's imagination, and forms
the connecting link between this vision and the other
amplifications of the same theme which follow.
II
Passing over
the symbolic action of vv. 11-13, representing the horror and
astonishment with which the dire tidings of Jerusalem's fall will
be received, we come to the point where the prophet breaks into
the wild strain of dithyrambic poetry, which has been called the
“Song of the Sword” (vv. 14-22).
The following translation, although necessarily imperfect and in
some places uncertain, may convey some idea both of the structure
and the rugged vigour of the original. It will be seen that there
is a clear division into four stanzas:At three places the meaning is
entirely lost, through corruption of the text.
—
(i) Vv.
14-16.
A sword, a sword! It is sharpened and burnished withal.
For a work of slaughter is it sharpened!
To gleam like lightning burnished!
And 'twas given to be smoothed for the grip of the hand,
—Sharpened is it, and furbished—
To put in the hand of the slayer.
(ii) Vv. 17,
18.
Cry and howl, son of man!
For it has come among my people;
Come among all the princes of Israel!
Victims of the sword are they, they and my people;
Therefore smite upon thy thigh!
It shall not
be, saith Jehovah the Lord.
(iii) Vv. 19,
20.
But, thou son of man, prophesy, and smite hand on hand;
Let the sword be doubled and tripled (?).
A sword of the slain is it, the great sword of the slain whirling around them,—
That hearts may fail, and many be the fallen in all their gates.
It is made
like lightning, furbished for slaughter!
(iv) Vv. 21,
22.
Gather thee together! Smite to the right, to the left,
Whithersoever thine edge is appointed!
And I also will smite hand on hand,
And appease My wrath:
I Jehovah have spoken it.
In spite of
its obscurity, its abrupt transitions, and its strange blending
of the divine with the human personality, the ode exhibits a
definite poetic form and a real progress of thought from the
beginning to the close. Throughout the passage we observe that
the prophet's gaze is fascinated by the glittering sword which
symbolised the instrument of Jehovah's vengeance. In the opening
stanza (i) he describes the preparation of the sword; he
notes the keenness of its edge and its glittering sheen with an
awful presentiment that an implement so elaborately fashioned is
destined for some terrible day of slaughter. Then (ii) he
announces the purpose for which the sword is
prepared, and breaks into loud lamentation as he realises that
its doomed victims are his own people and the princes of Israel.
In the next stanza
(iii) he sees the sword in action; wielded by an
invisible hand, it flashes hither and thither, circling round its
hapless victims as if two or three swords were at work instead of
one. All hearts are paralysed with fear, but the sword does not
cease its ravages until it has filled the ground with slain. Then
at length the sword is at rest (iv), having
accomplished its work. The divine Speaker calls on it in a
closing apostrophe “to gather itself
together” as if for a final sweep to right and left,
indicating the thoroughness with which the judgment has been
executed. In the last verse the vision of the sword fades away,
and the poem closes with an announcement, in the usual prophetic
manner, of Jehovah's fixed purpose to “assuage” His wrath against Israel by the
crowning act of retribution.
III
If any doubt
still remained as to what the sword of Jehovah meant, it is
removed in the next section (vv. 23-32), where the prophet
indicates the way by which the sword is to come on the kingdom of
Judah. The Chaldæan monarch is represented as pausing on his
march, perhaps at Riblah or some place to the north of Palestine,
and deliberating whether he shall advance first against Judah or
the Ammonites. He stands at the parting of the ways—on the left
hand is the road to Rabbath-ammon, on the right that to
Jerusalem. In his perplexity he invokes supernatural guidance,
resorting to various expedients then in use for ascertaining the
will of the gods and the path of good fortune. He “rattles the arrows” (two of them in some kind
of vessel, one for Jerusalem and the other for Riblah); he
consults the teraphim and inspects the entrails of a sacrificial
victim. This consulting of the omens was no doubt an invariable
preliminary to every
campaign, and was resorted to whenever an important military
decision had to be made. It might seem a matter of indifference
to a powerful monarch like Nebuchadnezzar which of two petty
opponents he determined to crush first. But the kings of Babylon
were religious men in their way, and never doubted that success
depended on their following the indications that were given by
the higher powers. In this case Nebuchadnezzar gets a true
answer, but not from the deities whose aid he had invoked. In his
right hand he finds the arrow marked “Jerusalem.” The die is cast, his resolution
is taken, but it is Jehovah's sentence sealing the fate of
Jerusalem that has been uttered.
Such is the
situation which Ezekiel in Babylon is directed to represent
through a piece of obvious symbolism. A road diverging into two
is drawn on the ground, and at the meeting-point a sign-post is
erected indicating that the one leads to Ammon and the other to
Judah. It is of course not necessary to suppose that the incident
so graphically described actually occurred. The divination scene
may only be imaginary, although it is certainly a true reflection
of Babylonian ideas and customs. The truth conveyed is that the
Babylonian army is moving under the immediate guidance of
Jehovah, and that not only the political projects of the king,
but his secret thoughts and even his superstitious reliance on
signs and omens, are all overruled for the furtherance of the one
purpose for which Jehovah has raised him up.
Meanwhile
Ezekiel is well aware that in Jerusalem a very different
interpretation is put on the course of events. When the news of
the great king's decision reaches the men at the head of affairs
they are not dismayed. They view the decision as the result of
“false divination”; they laugh to
scorn the superstitious rites which have determined the course of
the campaign,—not that they suppose the king will not act on his
omens, but they do not
believe they are an augury of success. They had hoped for a short
breathing space while Nebuchadnezzar was engaged on the east of
the Jordan, but they will not shrink from the conflict whether it
be to-day or to-morrow. Addressing himself to this state of mind,
Ezekiel once moreCf. ch. xvii.
reminds those who hear him that these men are fighting against
the moral laws of the universe. The existing kingdom of Judah
occupies a false position before God and in the eyes of just men.
It has no religious foundation; for the hope of the Messiah does
not lie with that wearer of a dishonoured crown, the king
Zedekiah, but with the legitimate heir of David now in exile. The
state has no right to be except as part of the Chaldæan empire,
and this right it has forfeited by renouncing its allegiance to
its earthly superior. These men forget that in this quarrel the
just cause is that of Nebuchadnezzar, whose enterprise only seems
to “call to mind their iniquity”
(ver. 28)—i.e., their political crime.
In provoking this conflict, therefore, they have put themselves
in the wrong; they shall be caught in the toils of their own
villainy.
The heaviest
censure is reserved for Zedekiah, the “wicked one, the prince of Israel, whose day is
coming in the time of final retribution.” This part of the
prophecy has a close resemblance to the latter part of ch. xvii.
The prophet's sympathies are still with the exiled king, or at
least with that branch of the royal family which he represents.
And the sentence of rejection on Zedekiah is again accompanied by
a promise of the restoration of the kingdom in the person of the
Messiah. The crown which has been dishonoured by the last king of
Judah shall be taken from his head; that which is low shall be
exalted (the exiled branch of the Davidic house), and that
which is high
shall be abased (the reigning king); the whole existing order of
things shall be overturned “until
He comes who has the
right.”The reference is to the Messiah, and
seems to be based on the ancient prophecy of Gen. xlix. 10, reading
there שֶׁלּה instead of שִׁלה.
IV
The last
oracle is directed against the children of Ammon. By
Nebuchadnezzar's decision to subdue Jerusalem first the Ammonites
had gained a short respite. They even exulted in the humiliation
of their former ally, and had apparently drawn the sword in order
to seize part of the land of Judah. Misled by false diviners,
they had dared to seek their own advantage in the calamities
which Jehovah had brought on His own people. The prophet
threatens the complete annihilation of Ammon, even in its own
land, and the blotting out of its remembrance among the nations.
That is the substance of the prophecy; but its form presents
several points of difficulty. It begins with what appears to be
an echo of the “Song of the Sword”
in the earlier part of the chapter:—
A sword! a sword!
It is drawn for slaughter; it is furbished to shine like lightning (ver. 33).
But as we
proceed we find that it is the sword of the Ammonites that is
meant, and they are ordered to return it to its sheath. If this
be so, the tone of the passage must be ironical. It is in mockery
that the prophet uses such magnificent language of the puny
pretensions of Ammon to take a share in the work for which
Jehovah has fashioned the mighty weapon of the Chaldæan army.
There are other reminiscences of the earlier part of the chapter,
such as the “lying divination” of
ver. 34, and the
“time of final retribution” in the
same verse. The allusion to the “reproach” of Ammon and its aggressive
attitude seems to point to the time after the destruction of
Jerusalem and the withdrawal of the army of Nebuchadnezzar.
Whether the Ammonites had previously made their submission or not
we cannot tell; but the fortieth and forty-first chapters of
Jeremiah show that Ammon was still a hotbed of conspiracy against
the Babylonian interest in the days after the fall of Jerusalem.
These appearances make it probable that this part of the chapter
is an appendix, added at a later time, and dealing with a
situation which was developed after the destruction of the city.
Its insertion in its present place is easily accounted for by the
circumstance that the fate of Ammon had been linked with that of
Jerusalem in the previous part of the chapter. The vindictive
little nationality had used its respite to gratify its hereditary
hatred of Israel, and now the judgment, suspended for a time,
shall return with redoubled fury and sweep it from the earth.
Looking back
over this series of prophecies, there seems reason to believe
that, with the exception of the last, they are really
contemporaneous with the events they deal with. It is true that
they do not illuminate the historical situation to the same
degree as those in which Isaiah depicts the advance of another
invader and the development of another crisis in the people's
history. This is due partly to the bent of Ezekiel's genius, but
partly also to the very peculiar circumstances in which he was
placed. The events which form the theme of his prophecy were
transacted on a distant stage; neither he nor his immediate
hearers were actors in the drama. He addresses himself to an
audience wrought to the highest pitch of excitement, but swayed
by hopes and rumours and vague surmises as to the probable issue
of events. It was inevitable in these circumstances that his
prophecy, even
in those passages which deal with contemporary facts, should
present but a pale reflection of the actual situation. In the
case before us the one historical event which stands out clearly
is the departure of Nebuchadnezzar with his army to Jerusalem.
But what we read is genuine prophecy; not the artifice of a man
using prophetic speech as a literary form, but the utterance of
one who discerns the finger of God in the present, and interprets
His purpose beforehand to the men of his day.
Chapter XII. Jehovah's Controversy
With Israel. Chapter xx.
By far the
hardest trial of Ezekiel's faith must have been the conduct of his
fellow-exiles. It was amongst them that he looked for the great
spiritual change which must precede the establishment of the
kingdom of God; and he had already addressed to them words of
consolation based on the knowledge that the hope of the future was
theirs (ch. xi. 18). Yet the time passed on without bringing any
indications that the promise was about to be fulfilled. There were
no symptoms of national repentance; there was nothing even to show
that the lessons of the Exile as interpreted by the prophet were
beginning to be laid to heart. For these men, among whom he lived,
were still inveterately addicted to idolatry. Strange as it must
seem to us, the very men who cherished a fanatical faith in
Jehovah's power to save His people were assiduously practising the
worship of other gods. It is too readily assumed by some writers
that the idolatry of the exiles was of the ambiguous kind which had
prevailed so long in the land of Israel, that it was the worship of
Jehovah under the form of images—a breach of the second
commandment, but not of the first. The people who carried Jeremiah
down to Egypt were as eager as Ezekiel's companions to hear a word
from Jehovah; yet they were devoted to the worship of the
“Queen of Heaven,” and dated all
their misfortunes from the time when their women had ceased to pay court to
her. There is no reason to believe that the Jews in Babylon were
less catholic in their superstitions than those of Judæa; and
indeed the whole drift of Ezekiel's expostulations goes to show
that he has the worship of false gods in view. The ancient belief
that the worship of Jehovah was specially associated with the land
of Canaan is not likely to have been without influence on the minds
of those who felt the fascination of idolatry, and must have
strengthened the tendency to seek the aid of foreign gods in a
foreign land.
The twentieth
chapter deals with this matter of idolatry; and the fact that this
important discourse was called forth by a visit from the elders of
Israel shows how heavily the subject weighed on the prophet's mind.
Whatever the purpose of the deputation may have been (and of that
we have no information), it was certainly not to consult Ezekiel
about the propriety of worshipping false gods. It is only because
this great question dominates all his thoughts concerning them and
their destiny that he connects the warning against idolatry with a
casual inquiry addressed to him by the elders. The circumstances
are so similar to those of ch. xiv. that Ewald was led to
conjecture that both oracles originated in one and the same
incident, and were separated from each other in writing because of
the difference of their subjects. Ch. xiv. on that view justifies
the refusal of an answer from a consideration of the true function
of prophecy, while ch. xx. expands the admonition of the sixth
verse of ch. xiv. into an elaborate review of the religious history
of Israel. But there is really no good reason for identifying the
two incidents. In neither passage does the prophet think it worth
while to record the object of the inquiry addressed to him, and
therefore conjecture is useless.
But the very
fact that a definite date is given for this visit leads us to
consider whether it had not some peculiar significance to lodge it
so firmly in Ezekiel's mind. Now the most suggestive hint which the
chapter affords is the idea put into the lips of the exiles in ver.
32: “And as for the thought which arises in
your mind, it shall not be, in that ye are thinking, We will become
like the heathen, like the families of the lands, in worshipping
wood and stone.” These words contain the key to the whole
discourse. It is difficult, no doubt, to decide how much exactly is
implied in them. They may mean no more than the determination to
keep up the external conformity to heathen customs which already
existed in matters of worship—as, for example, in the use of
images. But the form of expression used, “that which is coming up in your mind,” almost
suggests that the prophet was face to face with an incipient
tendency among the exiles, a deliberate resolve to apostatise and
assimilate themselves for all religious purposes to the surrounding
heathen. It is by no means improbable that, amidst the many
conflicting tendencies that distracted the exiled community, this
idea of a complete abandonment of the national religion should have
crystallised into a settled purpose in the event of their last hope
being disappointed. If this was the situation with which Ezekiel
had to deal, we should be able to understand how his denunciation
takes the precise form which it assumes in this chapter.
For what is, in
the main, the purport of the chapter? Briefly stated the argument
is as follows. The religion of Jehovah had never been the true
expression of the national genius of Israel. Not now for the first
time has the purpose of Israel come into conflict with the
immutable purpose of Jehovah; but from the very beginning the
history had been one long struggle between the natural inclinations
of the people and the destiny which was forced on it by the will of God. The love of
idols had been the distinguishing feature of the national character
from the beginning; and if it had been suffered to prevail, Israel
would never have been known as Jehovah's people. Why had it not
been suffered to prevail? Because of Jehovah's regard for the
honour of His name; because in the eyes of the heathen His glory
was identified with the fortunes of this particular people, to whom
He had once revealed Himself. And as it has been in the past, so it
will be in the future. The time has come for the age-long
controversy to be brought to an issue, and it cannot be doubtful
what the issue will be. “That which comes
up in their mind”—this new resolve to live like the
heathen—cannot turn aside the purpose of Jehovah to make of Israel
a people for His own glory. Whatever further judgments may be
necessary for that end, the land of Israel shall yet be the seat of
a pure and acceptable worship of the true God, and the people shall
recognise with shame and contrition that the goal of all its
history has been accomplished in spite of its perversity by the
“irresistible grace” of its divine
King.
I
The Lesson of
History (vv. 5-29).—It is a magnificent conception
of national election which the prophet here unfolds. It takes the
form of a parallel between two desert scenes, one at the
beginning and the other at the close of Israel's history. The
first part of the chapter deals with the religious significance
of the transactions in the wilderness of Sinai and the events in
Egypt which were introductory to them. It starts from Jehovah's
free choice of the people while they were still living as
idolaters in Egypt. Jehovah there revealed Himself to them as
their God, and entered into a covenantThe word “covenant” is not here used.
with
them; and
the covenant included on the one hand the promise of the land of
Canaan, and on the other hand a requirement that the people
should separate themselves from all forms of idolatry whether
native or Egyptian. “In the day that I
chose Israel, ... and made Myself known to them in the land of
Egypt, ... saying, I am Jehovah your God; in that day I lifted up
My hand to them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt, into a
land which I had sought out for them. And I said to them, Cast
away each man the abomination of his eyes, and defile not
yourselves with the block-gods of Egypt. I am Jehovah your
God” (vv. 5-7). The point which Ezekiel specially
emphasises is that this vocation to be the people of the true God
was thrust on Israel without its consent, and that the revelation
of Jehovah's purpose evoked no response in the heart of the
people. By persistence in idolatry they had virtually renounced
the kingship of Jehovah and forfeited their right to the
fulfilment of the promise He had given them. And only from regard
to His name, that it might not be profaned in the sight of the
nations, before whose eyes He had made Himself known to them, did
He turn from the purpose He had formed to destroy them in the
land of Egypt.
In several
respects this account of the occurrences in Egypt goes beyond
what we learn from any other source. The historical books contain
no reference to the prevalence of specifically Egyptian forms of
idolatry among the Hebrews, nor do they mention any threat to
exterminate the people for their rebellion. It is not to be
supposed, however, that Ezekiel possessed other records of the
period before the Exodus than those preserved in the Pentateuch.
The fundamental conceptions are those attested by the history,
that God first revealed Himself to Israel by the name Jehovah
through Moses, and that the revelation was accompanied by a
promise of deliverance
from Egypt. That the people in spite of this revelation continued
to worship idols is an inference from the whole of their
subsequent history. And the conflict in the mind of Jehovah
between anger against the people's sin and jealousy for His own
name is not a matter of history at all, but is an inspired
interpretation of the history in the light of the divine
holiness, which embraces both these elements.
In the
wilderness Israel entered on the second and decisive stage of its
probation which falls into two acts, and whose determining factor
was the legislation. To the generation of the Exodus Jehovah made
known the way of life in a code of law which on its own intrinsic
merits ought to have commended itself to their moral sense. The
statutes and judgments that were then given were such that
“if a man do them he shall live by
them” (ver. 11). This thought of the essential goodness of
the law as originally given reveals Ezekiel's view of God's
relation to men. It derives its significance no doubt from the
contrast with legislation of an opposite character afterwards
mentioned. Yet even that contrast expresses a conviction in the
prophet's mind that morality is not constituted by arbitrary
enactments on the part of God, but that there are eternal
conditions of ethical fellowship between God and man, and that
the law first offered for Israel's acceptance was the embodiment
of those ethical relations which flow from the nature of Jehovah.
It is probable that Ezekiel has in view the moral precepts of the
Decalogue. If so, it is instructive to notice that the Sabbath
law is separately mentioned, not as one of the laws by which a
man lives, but as a sign of the covenant between Jehovah and
Israel. The divine purpose was again defeated by the idolatrous
proclivities of the people: “They
despised My judgments, and they did not walk in My statutes, and
they profaned My Sabbaths, because their heart went after
their idols” (ver. 16).
To the second
generation in the wilderness the offer of the covenant was
renewed, with the same result (vv. 18-24). It should be observed
that in both cases the disobedience of the people is answered by
two distinct utterances of Jehovah's wrath. The first is a threat
of immediate extermination, which is expressed as a momentary
purpose of Jehovah, no sooner formed than withdrawn for the sake
of His honour (vv. 14, 21). The other is a judgment of a more
limited character, uttered in the form of an oath, and in the
first case at least actually carried out. For the threat of
exclusion from the Promised Land (ver. 15) was enforced so far as
the first generation was concerned. Now the parallelism between
the two sections leads us to expect that the similar threat of
dispersion in ver. 23 is meant to be understood of a judgment
actually inflicted. We may conclude, therefore, that ver. 23
refers to the Babylonian exile and the dispersion among the
nations, which hung like a doom over the nation during its whole
history in Canaan, and is represented as a direct consequence of
their transgressions in the wilderness. There seems reason to
believe that the particular allusion is to the twenty-eighth
chapter of Deuteronomy, where the threat of a dispersion among
the nations concludes the long list of curses which will follow
disobedience to the law (Deut. xxviii. 64-68). It is true that in
that chapter the threat is only conditional; but in the time of
Ezekiel it had already been fulfilled, and it is in accordance
with his whole conception of the history to read the final issue
back into the early period when the national character was
determined.
But in
addition to this, as if effectually to “conclude them under sin,” Jehovah met the
hardness of their hearts by imposing on them laws of an opposite
character to those first given, and laws which accorded only too
well with their baser inclinations: “And
I also gave
them statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they
should not live; and I rendered them unclean in their offerings,
by making over all that opened the womb, that I might horrify
them” (vv. 25, 26).
This division
of the wilderness legislation into two kinds, one good and
life-giving and the other not good, presents difficulties both
moral and critical which cannot perhaps be altogether removed.
The general direction in which the solution must be sought is
indeed tolerably clear. The reference is to the law which
required the consecration of the firstborn of all animals to
Jehovah. This was interpreted in the most rigorous sense as
dedication in sacrifice; and then the principle was extended to
the case of human beings. The divine purpose in appearing to
sanction this atrocious practice was to “horrify” the people—that is to say, the
punishment of their idolatry consisted in the shock to their
natural instincts and affections caused by the worst development
of the idolatrous spirit to which they were delivered. We are not
to infer from this that human sacrifice was an element of the
original Hebrew religion, and that it was actually based on
legislative enactment. The truth appears to be that the sacrifice
of children was originally a feature of Canaanitish worship,
particularly of the god Melek or Molech, and was only introduced
into the religion of Israel in the evil days which preceded the
fall of the state.Apart from the case of Jephthah, which
is entirely exceptional, the first historical instance is that of
Ahaz (2 Kings xvi. 3).
The
idea took hold of men's minds that this terrible rite alone
revealed the full potency of the sacrificial act; and when the
ordinary means of propitiation seemed to fail, it was resorted to
as the last desperate expedient for appeasing an offended deity.
All that Ezekiel's words warrant us in assuming is that when once
the practice
was established it was defended by an appeal to the ancient law
of the firstborn, the principle of which was held to cover the
case of human sacrifices. These laws, relating to the
consecration of firstborn animals, are therefore the statutes
referred to by Ezekiel; and their defect lies in their being open
to such an immoral misinterpretation. This view is in accordance
with the probabilities of the case. When we consider the tendency
of the Old Testament writers to refer all actual events
immediately to the will of God, we can partly understand the form
in which Ezekiel expresses the facts; and this is perhaps all
that can be said on the moral aspect of the difficulty. It is but
an application of the principle that sin is punished by moral
obliquity, and precepts which are accommodated to the hardness of
men's hearts are by that same hardness perverted to fatal issues.
It cannot even be said that there is a radical divergence of view
between Ezekiel and Jeremiah on this subject. For when the older
prophet, speaking of child-sacrifice, says that Jehovah
“commanded it not, neither came it into
His mind” (ch. vii. 31 and ch. xix. 5), he must have in
view men who justified the custom by an appeal to ancient
legislation. And although Jeremiah indignantly repudiates the
suggestion that such horrors were contemplated by the law of
Jehovah, he hardly in this goes beyond Ezekiel, who declares that
the ordinance in question does not represent the true mind of
Jehovah, but belongs to a part of the law which was intended to
punish sin by delusion.
There still
remain the critical difficulties. What are the ambiguous laws to
which the prophet refers? It is of course not to be assumed as
certain that they are to be found in the Pentateuch, at least in
the exact form which Ezekiel has in view. There may have been at
that time a considerable amount of uncodified legislative
material which passed vaguely as the law of Jehovah. The
“lying pen of the scribes” seems
to have been busy in the multiplication of such enactments (Jer.
viii. 8). Still, it is a legitimate inquiry whether any of the
extant laws of the Pentateuch are open to the interpretation
which Ezekiel seems to have in view. The parts of the Pentateuch
in which the regulation about the dedication of the firstborn
occurs are the so-called Book of the Covenant (Exod. xxii. 29,
30), the short code of Exod. xxxiv. 17-26 (vv. 19 f.), the
enactment connected with the institution of the Passover (Exod.
xiii. 12 f.), and the priestly ordinance (Numb. xviii. 15). Now,
in three of these four passages, the inference to which Ezekiel
refers is expressly excluded by the provision that the firstborn
of men shall be redeemed. The only one which bears the appearance
of ambiguity is that in the Book of the Covenant, where we read:
“The firstborn of thy sons shalt thou
give unto Me; likewise shalt thou do with thine oxen and thy
sheep: seven days it shall be with its dam, on the eighth day
thou shalt give it to Me.” Here the firstborn children and
the firstlings of animals are put on a level; and if any passage
in our present Pentateuch would lend itself to the false
construction which the later Israelites favoured, it would be
this. On the other hand this passage does not contain the
particular technical word (he'ebîr) used by Ezekiel. The
word probably means simply “dedicate,” although this was understood in
the sense of dedication by sacrifice. The only passage of the
four where the verb occurs is Exod. xiii. 12; and this
accordingly is the one generally fixed on by critics as having
sanctioned the abuse in question. But apart from its express
exemption of firstborn children from the rule, the passage fails
in another respect to meet the requirements of the case. The
prophet appears to speak here of legislation addressed to the
second generation in the wilderness, and this could not refer to
the Passover ordinance in its present setting. On the whole we
seem to be driven to the conclusion that Ezekiel is not thinking
of any part of our present Pentateuch, but to some other law
similar in its terms to that of Exod. xiii. 12 f., although
equivocal in the same way as Exod. xxii. 29 f.
In the text
above I have given what appears to me the most natural
interpretation of the passage, without referring to the numerous
other views which have been put forward. Van Hoonacker, in
Le
Museon (1893), subjects the various theories to a
searching criticism, and arrives himself at the nebulous
conclusion that the “statutes which were
not good” are not statutes at all, but providential
chastisements. That cuts the knot, it does not untie it.
In consequence
of these transactions in the desert Israel entered the land of
Canaan under the threat of eventual exile and under the curse of
a polluted worship. The subsequent history has little
significance from the
point of view occupied throughout this discourse; and accordingly
Ezekiel disposes of it in three verses (27-29). The entrance on
the Promised Land, he says, furnished the opportunity for a new
manifestation of disloyalty to Jehovah. He refers to the
multiplication of heathen or semi-heathen sanctuaries throughout
the land. Wherever they saw a high hill or a leafy tree, they
made it a place of sacrifice, and there they practised the impure
rites which were the outcome of their false conception of the
Deity. To the mind of Ezekiel the unity of Jehovah and the unity
of the sanctuary were inseparable ideas: the offence here alluded
to is therefore of the same kind as the abominations practised in
Egypt and the desert; it is a violation of the holiness of
Jehovah. The prophet condenses his scorn for the whole system of
religion which led to a multiplication of sanctuaries into a play
on the etymology of the word bāmah (high places), the point
of which, however, is obscure.None of the interpretations of ver. 29
gives a satisfactory sense. Cornill rejects it as “absonderlich und aus dem Tenor des ganzen Cap.
herausfallend.”
II
The
Application (vv. 30-44).—Having thus described the
origin of idolatry in Israel, and having shown that the destiny
of the nation had been determined neither by its deserts nor by
its inclinations, but by Jehovah's consistent regard for the
honour of His name, the prophet proceeds to bring the lesson of
the history to bear on his contemporaries. The Captivity has as
yet produced no change in their spiritual condition; in Babylon
they still defile themselves with the same abominations as their
ancestors, even to the crowning atrocity of child-sacrifice.
Their idolatry is if anything more conscious than before, for it
takes the shape of a deliberate intention to be as other
nations,
worshipping wood and stone. It is necessary therefore that once
for all Jehovah should assert His sovereignty over Israel, and
bend their stubborn will to the accomplishment of His purpose.
“As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah,
surely with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, and
wrath poured out, will I be king over you” (ver. 33). But
how was this to be done? A heavier chastisement than that which
had been inflicted on the exiles could hardly be conceived, yet
it had effected nothing for the regeneration of Israel. Surely
the time is come when the divine method must be changed, when
those who have hardened themselves against the severity of God
must be won by His goodness? Such, however, is not the thought
expressed in Ezekiel's delineation of the future. It is possible
that the description which follows (vv. 34-38) may only be meant
as an ideal picture of spiritual processes to be effected by
ordinary providential agencies. But certain it is that what
Ezekiel is chiefly convinced of is the necessity for further acts
of judgment—judgment which shall be decisive, because
discriminating, and issuing in the annihilation of all who cling
to the evil traditions of the past. This idea, indeed, of further
chastisement in store for the exiles is a fixed element of
Ezekiel's prophecy. It appears in his earliest public utterance
(ch. v.), although it is perhaps only in this chapter that we
perceive its full significance.
The scene of
God's final dealings with Israel's sin is to be the “desert of the nations.” That great barren
plateau which stretches between the Jordan and the Euphrates
valley, round which lay the nations chiefly concerned in Israel's
history, occupies a place in the restoration analogous to that of
the wilderness of Sinai (here called the “wilderness of Egypt”) at the time of the
Exodus. Into that vast solitude Jehovah will gather His people
from the lands of their exile, and there He will once more judge them face to
face. This judgment will be conducted on the principle laid down
in ch. xviii. Each individual shall be dealt with according to
his own character as a righteous man or a wicked. They shall be
made to “pass under the rod,” like
sheep when they are counted by the shepherd.See Dillmann's note on Lev. xxvii. 32,
quoted by Davidson.
The
rebels and transgressors shall perish in the wilderness; for
“out of the land of their sojournings
will I bring them, and into the land of Israel they shall not
come” (ver. 38). Those that emerge from the trial are the
righteous remnant, who are to be brought into the land by
number:Reading במספר for במסרת with the
LXX.
these constitute the new Israel, for whom is reserved the glory
of the latter days.
The idea that
the spiritual transformation of Israel was to be effected
during
a second sojourn in the wilderness, although a very
striking one, occurs only here in the book of Ezekiel, and it can
hardly be considered as one of the cardinal ideas of his
eschatology. It is in all probability derived from the prophecies
of Hosea, although it is modified in accordance with the very
different estimate of the nation's history represented by
Ezekiel. It is instructive to compare the teaching of these two
prophets on this point. To Hosea the idea of a return to the
desert presents itself naturally as an element of the process by
which Israel is to be brought back to its allegiance to Jehovah.
The return to the desert restores the conditions under which the
nation had first known and followed Jehovah. He looks back to the
sojourn in the wilderness of Sinai as the time of uninterrupted
communion between Jehovah and Israel—a time of youthful
innocence, when the sinful tendencies which may have been latent
in the nation had not developed into actual infidelity. The
decay of religion
and morality dates from the possession of the land of Canaan, and
is traced to the corrupting influence of Canaanitish idolatry and
civilisation. It was at Baal-peor that they first succumbed to
the attractions of a false religion and became contaminated with
the spirit of heathenism. Then the rich produce of the land came
to be regarded as the gift of the deities who were worshipped at
the local sanctuaries, and this worship with its sensuous
accompaniments was the means of estranging the people more and
more from the knowledge of Jehovah. Hence the first step towards
a renewal of the relation between God and Israel is the
withdrawal of the gifts of nature, the suppression of religious
ordinances and political institutions; and this is represented as
effected by a return to the primitive life of the desert. Then in
her desolation and affliction the heart of Israel shall respond
once more to the love of Jehovah, who has never ceased to yearn
after His unfaithful people. “I will
allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak to her
heart: ... and she shall make answer there, as in the days of her
youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of
Egypt” (Hos. ii. 14, 15). Here there may be a doubt
whether the wilderness is to be taken literally or as a figure
for exile, but in either case the image naturally arises out of
Hosea's profoundly simple conception of religion.
To Ezekiel, on
the other hand, the “wilderness”
is a synonym for contention and judgment. It is the scene where
the meanness and perversity of man stand out in unrelieved
contrast with the majesty and purity of God. He recognises no
glad springtime of promise and hope in the history of Israel, no
“kindness of her youth” or
“love of her espousals” when she
went after Jehovah in the land that was not sown (Jer. ii. 2).
The difference between Hosea's conception and Ezekiel's is that
in the view of the exilic prophet there never has been any true
response
on the part of Israel to the call of God. Hence a return to the
desert can only mean a repetition of the judgments that had
marked the first sojourn of the people in the wilderness of
Sinai, and the carrying of them to the point of a final decision
between the claims of Jehovah and the stubbornness of His
people.
If it be asked
which of these representations of the past is the true one, the
only answer possible is that from the standpoint from which the
prophets viewed history both are true. Israel did follow Jehovah
through the wilderness, and took possession of the land of Canaan
animated by an ardent faith in His power. It is equally true that
the religious condition of the people had its dark side, and that
they were far from understanding the nature of the God whose name
they bore. And a prophet might emphasise the one truth or the
other according to the idea of God which it was given him to
teach. Hosea, reading the religious symptoms of his own time,
sees in it a contrast to the happier period when life was simple
and religion comparatively pure, and finds in the desert sojourn
an image of the purifying process by which the national life must
be renewed. Ezekiel had to do with a more difficult problem. He
saw that there was a power of evil which could not be eradicated
merely by banishment from the land of Israel—a hard bed-rock of
unbelief and superstition in the national character which had
never yielded to the influence of revelation; and he dwells on
all the manifestations of this which he read in the past. His
hope for the future of the cause of God rests no longer on the
moral influence of the divine love on the heart of man, but on
the power of Jehovah to accomplish His purpose in spite of the
resistance of human sin. That was not the whole truth about God's
relation to Israel, but it was the truth that needed to be
impressed on the generation of the Exile.
Of the final
issue at all events Ezekiel is not doubtful. He is a man who is
“very sure of God” and sure of
nothing else. In man he finds nothing to inspire him with
confidence in the ultimate victory of the true religion over
polytheism and superstition. His own generation has shown itself
fit only to perpetuate the evils of the past—the love of sensuous
worship, the insensibility to the claims and nature of Jehovah,
which had marked the whole history of Israel. He is compelled for
the present to abandon them to their corrupt inclinations,The transition ver. 39 is, however,
very difficult. As it stands in the Hebrew text it contains an
ironical concession (a good-natured one, Smend thinks) to the
persistent advocates of idolatry, the only tolerable translation
being, “So serve ye every man his idols,
but hereafter ye shall surely hearken to Me, and My holy name ye
shall no longer profane with your gifts and your idols.” But
this sense is not in itself very natural, and the Hebrew
construction by which it is expressed would be somewhat strained.
The most satisfactory rendering is perhaps that given in the Syriac
Version, where two clauses of our Hebrew text are transposed:
“But as for you, O house of Israel, if ye
will not hearken to Me, go serve every man his idols! Yet hereafter
ye shall no more profane My holy name in you,” etc.
expecting no signs of amendment until his appeal is enforced by
signal acts of judgment.
But all this
does not shake his sublime faith in the fulfilment of Israel's
destiny. Despairing of men, he falls back on what St. Paul calls
the “purpose of God according to
election” (Rom. ix. 11). And with an insight akin to that
of the apostle of the Gentiles, he discerns through all Jehovah's
dealings with Israel a principle and an ideal which must in the
end prevail over the sin of men. The goal to which the history
points stands out clear before the mind of the prophet; and
already he sees in vision the restored Israel—a holy people in a
renovated land—rendering acceptable worship to the one God of
heaven and earth. “For in My holy
mountain, in the
mountain heights of Israel, saith the Lord Jehovah, there
shall serve Me the whole house of Israel: there will I be
gracious to them, and there will I require your oblations, and
the firstfruits of your offerings, in all your holy
things” (ver. 40).
There we have
the thought which is expanded in the vision of the purified
theocracy which occupies the closing chapters of the book. And it
is important to notice this indication that the idea of that
vision was present to Ezekiel during the earlier part of his
ministry.
Chapter XIII. Ohola And Oholibah.
Chapter xxiii.
The allegory of
ch. xxiii. adds hardly any new thought to those which have already
been expounded in connection with ch. xvi. and ch. xx. The ideas
which enter into it are all such as we are now familiar with. They
are: the idolatry of Israel, learned in Egypt and persisted in to
the end of her history; her fondness for alliances with the great
Oriental empires, which was the occasion of new developments of
idolatry; the corruption of religion by the introduction of human
sacrifice into the service of Jehovah; and, finally, the
destruction of Israel by the hands of the nations whose friendship
she had so eagerly courted. The figure under which these facts are
presented is the same as in ch. xvi., and many of the details of
the earlier prophecy are reproduced here with little variation. But
along with these resemblances we find certain characteristic
features in this chapter which require attention, and perhaps some
explanation.
In its treatment
of the history this passage is distinguished from the other two by
the recognition of the separate existence of the northern and
southern kingdoms. In the previous retrospects Israel has either
been treated as a unity (as in ch. xx.), or attention has been
wholly concentrated on the fortunes of Judah, Samaria being
regarded as on a level with a purely heathen city like Sodom (ch.
xvi.). Ezekiel may have felt that he has not yet done justice to the truth that the
history of Israel ran in two parallel lines, and that the full
significance of God's dealings with the nation can only be
understood when the fate of Samaria is placed alongside of that of
Jerusalem. He did not forget that he was sent as a prophet to the
“whole house of Israel,” and indeed
all the great pre-exilic prophets realised that their message
concerned “the whole family which Jehovah
had brought up out of Egypt” (Amos iii. 1). Besides this the
chapter affords in many ways an interesting illustration of the
workings of the prophet's mind in the effort to realise vividly the
nature of his people's sin and the meaning of its fate. In this
respect it is perhaps the most finished and comprehensive product
of his imagination, although it may not reveal the depth of
religious insight exhibited in the sixteenth chapter.
The main idea of
the allegory is no doubt borrowed from a prophecy of Jeremiah
belonging to the earlier part of his ministry (Jer. iii. 6-13). The
fall of Samaria was even then a somewhat distant memory, but the
use which Jeremiah makes of it seems to show that the lesson of it
had not altogether ceased to impress the mind of the southern
kingdom. In the third chapter he reproaches Judah the “treacherous” for not having taken warning from
the fate of her sister the “apostate” Israel, who has long since received
the reward of her infidelities. The same lesson is implied in the
representation of Ezekiel (ver. 11); but as is usual with our
prophet, the simple image suggested by Jeremiah is drawn out in an
elaborate allegory, into which as many details are crowded as it
will bear. In place of the epithets by which Jeremiah characterises
the moral condition of Israel and Judah, Ezekiel coins two new and
somewhat obscure names—Ohola for Samaria, and
Oholibah for Jerusalem.It is not certain what is the exact
meaning wrapped up in these designations. A very slight change in
the pointing of the Hebrew would give the sense “her tent” for Ohola and
“my tent in her” for
Oholibah. This is the interpretation adopted by most commentators,
the idea being that while the tent or temple of Jehovah was in
Judah, Samaria's “tent” (religious
system) was of her own making. It is not likely, however, that
Ezekiel has any such sharp contrast in his mind, since the whole of
the argument proceeds on the similarity of the course pursued by
the two kingdoms. It is simpler to take the word Ohola as meaning
“tent,” and Oholibah as “tent in her,” the signification of the names
being practically identical. The allusion is supposed to be to the
tents of the high places which formed a marked feature of the
idolatrous worship practised in both divisions of the country (cf.
ch. xvi. 16). This is better, though not entirely convincing, since
it does not explain how Ezekiel came to fix on this particular
emblem as a mark of the religious condition of Israel. It may be
worth noting that the word אהלה contains the same number of
consonants as שׂמרן (= Samaria, although the word is always written
שׂמרון in the Old Testament), and אהליבה the same number as ירושלם.
The Eastern custom of giving similar names to children of the same
family (like Hasan and Husein) is aptly instanced by Smend and
Davidson.
These women are
children of one mother, and afterwards become wives of one
husband—Jehovah. This need occasion no surprise in an allegorical
representation, although it is contrary to a law which Ezekiel
doubtless knew (Lev. xviii. 18). Nor is it strange, considering the
freedom with which he handles the facts of history, that the
division between Israel and Judah is carried back to the time of
the oppression in Egypt. We have indeed no certainty that this view
is not historical. The cleavage between the north and the south did
not originate with the revolt of Jeroboam. That great schism only
brought out elements of antagonism which were latent in the
relations of the tribe of Judah to the northern tribes. Of this
there are many indications in the earlier history, and for what we
know the separation might have existed among the Hebrews in Goshen.
Still, it is not probable that Ezekiel was thinking of any such
thing. He is bound by the limits of his allegory; and there was no
other way
by which he could combine the presentation of the two essential
elements of his conception—that Samaria and Jerusalem were branches
of the one people of Jehovah, and that the idolatry which marked
their history had been learned in the youth of the nation in the
land of Egypt.
That neither
Israel nor Judah ever shook off the spell of their adulterous
connection with Egypt, but returned to it again and again down to
the close of their history, is certainly one point which the
prophet means to impress on the minds of his readers (vv. 8, 19,
27). With this exception the earlier part of the chapter (to ver.
35) deals exclusively with the later developments of idolatry from
the eighth century and onwards. And one of the most remarkable
things in it is the description of the manner in which first Israel
and then Judah was entangled in political relations with the
Oriental empires. There seems to be a vein of sarcasm in the sketch
of the gallant Assyrian officers who turned the heads of the giddy
and frivolous sisters and seduced them from their allegiance to
Jehovah: “Ohola doted on her lovers, on the
Assyrian warriorsThis word is of doubtful meaning.
clad
in purple, governors and satraps, charming youths all of them,
horsemen riding on horses; and she lavished on them her
fornications, the élite of the sons of Asshur all
of them, and with all the idols of all on whom she doted she
defiled herself” (vv. 6, 7). The first intimate contact of
North Israel with Assyria was in the reign of Menahem (2 Kings xv.
19), and the explanation of it given in these words of Ezekiel must
be historically true. It was the magnificent equipment of the
Assyrian armies, the imposing display of military power which their
appearance suggested, that impressed the politicians of Samaria
with a sense of the value of their alliance. The passage
therefore throws
light on what Ezekiel and the prophets generally mean by the figure
of “whoredom.” What he chiefly
deplores is the introduction of Assyrian idolatry, which was the
inevitable sequel to a political union. But that was a secondary
consideration in the intention of those who were responsible for
the alliance. The real motive of their policy was undoubtedly the
desire of one party in the state to secure the powerful aid of the
king of Assyria against the rival party. None the less it was an
act of infidelity and rebellion against Jehovah.
Still more
striking is the account of the first approaches of the southern
kingdom to Babylon. After Samaria had been destroyed by the lovers
whom she had gathered to her side, Jerusalem still kept up the
illicit connection with the Assyrian empire. After Assyria had
vanished from the stage of history, she eagerly sought an
opportunity to enter into friendly relations with the new
Babylonian empire. She did not even wait till she had made their
acquaintance, but “when she saw men
portrayed on the wall, pictures of Chaldæans portrayed in
vermilion, girt with waist-cloths on their loins, with flowing
turbans on their heads, all of them champions to look upon, the
likeness of the sons of Babel whose native land is Chaldæa—then she
doted upon them when she saw them with her eyes, and sent
messengers to them to Chaldæa” (vv. 14-16). The brilliant
pictures referred to are those with which Ezekiel must have been
familiar on the walls of the temples and palaces of Babylon. The
representation, however, cannot be understood literally, since the
Jews could have had no opportunity of even seeing the Babylonian
pictures “on the wall” until they
had sent ambassadors there.Smend thinks that the illustration is
explained by the secluded life of females in the East, which makes
it quite intelligible that a woman might be captivated by the
picture of a man she had never seen, and try to induce him to visit
her.
The meaning of
the prophet is clear. The mere report of the greatness of Babylon
was sufficient to excite the passions of Oholibah, and she began
with blind infatuation to court the advances of the distant
strangers who were to be her ruin. The exact historic reference,
however, is uncertain. It cannot be to the compact between
Merodach-baladan and Hezekiah, since at that time the initiative
seems to have been taken by the rebel prince, whose sovereignty
over Babylon proved to be of short duration. It may rather be some
transaction about the time of the battle of Carchemish (604) that
Ezekiel is thinking of; but we have not as yet sufficient knowledge
of the circumstances to clear up the allusion.
Before the end
came the soul of Jerusalem was alienated from her latest
lovers—another touch of fidelity to the historical situation. But
it was now too late. The soul of Jehovah is alienated from Oholibah
(vv. 17, 18), and she is already handed over to the fate which had
overtaken her less guilty sister Ohola. The principal agents of her
punishment are the Babylonians and all the Chaldæans; but under
their banner marches a host of other nations—Pekod and Shoa and
Koa,On these names of nations see
Davidson's Commentary, p. 168, and the reference there to
Delitzsch.
and,
somewhat strangely, the sons of Asshur. In the pomp and
circumstance of war which had formerly fascinated her imagination,
they shall come against her, and after their cruel manner execute
upon her the judgment meted out to adulterous women: “Thou hast walked in the way of thy sister, and I will
put her cup into thy hand. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, The cup of
thy sister shalt thou drink,—deep and wide, and of large
content,—filled with drunkenness and anguish—the cup of horror and
desolation, the cup of thy sister Samaria. And thou shalt drink
it and drain it
out,The words rendered in E.V.,
“thou shalt be laughed to scorn and had in
derision” (ver. 32), “and pluck off
thy own breasts” (ver. 34), are wanting in the LXX. The
passage gains in force by the omission. The words translated
“break the sherds thereof” (ver. 34)
are unintelligible.
...
for I have spoken it, saith the Lord Jehovah” (vv.
31-34).
Up to this point
the allegory has closely followed the actual history of the two
kingdoms. The remainder of the chapter (vv. 36-49) forms a pendant
to the principal picture, and works out the central theme from a
different point of view. Here Samaria and Jerusalem are regarded as
still existent, and judgment is pronounced on both as if it were
still future. This is thoroughly in keeping with Ezekiel's ideal
delineations. The limitations of space and time are alike
transcended. The image, once clearly conceived, fixes itself in the
writer's mind, and must be allowed to exhaust its meaning before it
is finally dismissed. The distinctions of far and near, of past and
present and future, are apt to disappear in the intensity of his
reverie. It is so here. The figures of Ohola and Oholibah are so
real to the prophet that they are summoned once more to the
tribunal to hear the recital of their “abominations” and receive the sentence which
has in fact been already partly executed. Whether he is thinking at
all of the ten tribes then in exile and awaiting further punishment
it would be difficult to say. We see, however, that the picture is
enriched with many features for which there was no room in the more
historic form of the allegory, and perhaps the desire for
completeness was the chief motive for thus amplifying the figure.
The description of the conduct of the two harlots (vv. 40-44) is
exceedingly graphic,Although the text in parts of vv. 42,
43 is very imperfect.
and is
no doubt a piece of realism drawn from life. Otherwise the section
contains nothing that
calls for elucidation. The ideas are those which we have already
met with in other connections, and even the setting in which they
are placed presents no element of novelty.
Thus with words
of judgment, and without a ray of hope to lighten the darkness of
the picture, the prophet closes this last survey of his people's
history.
Chapter XIV. Final Oracles Against
Jerusalem. Chapters xxii., xxiv.
The close of the
first period of Ezekiel's 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 prophet's 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 (ch. xxiv. 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 Ezekiel's 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 prophet's 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 ch.
xxii., 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
ch. xxiv. 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 Ezekiel's 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 (vv. 2-16); it ends with a
denunciation of the various classes into which society was
divided (vv. 23-31); while the short intervening passage is a
figurative description of the judgment which is now inevitable
(vv. 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 ch. xviii. 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 chs. xvi. and xxiii. The city is not idealised and
treated as a moral individual, whose relations to Jehovah have to
be 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 father's 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 (ver. 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 (ver. 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 (ver. 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 Ezekiel's 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 the 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 Ezekiel's 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 bloodOn the reading here see above, p.
150.
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 eighth verse, referring to the
Sabbath and the sanctuary, is rejected by Cornill on internal
grounds, but for that there is no justification. If the verse is
retained, it will be seen that the enumeration of sins corresponds
pretty closely in substance, though not in arrangement, with the
precepts of the Decalogue.
The third
feature of Jerusalem's 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 prophet's
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?” (vv. 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
Chaldæan invaders, who are the agents of Jehovah's judgments.
2. But the
most serious aspect of the situation is that which is dealt with
in the peroration of the chapter (vv. 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,”Read with the LXX. מטּרה, instead of
מטהרה, “purified.”
“and not rained upon in a day of
indignation” (ver. 24); the springs of her civic virtue
were dried up, and a blight spread through all sections of her
population.This appears to be the meaning of the
simile in ver. 24; the judgment is conceived as a parching drought,
and the point of the comparison is that its severity is not
tempered by the fertilising streams which should have descended on
the people in the shape of sound political and religious
guidance.
Ezekiel's 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
princesFollowing the LXX. we should read
“whose princes” (אשר נשיאיה) for
“the conspiracy of her prophets”
(קשר נביאיה) in ver. 25.
have
been, instead of humane rulers and examples of noble living,
cruel and rapacious tyrants, enriching themselves at the cost of
their subjects (ver. 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 (ver. 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 (ver. 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 (ch. xiii.). 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 (ver. 28).
From the
ruling classes the prophet's 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 if 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 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” (vv. 30, 31).
3. But we
should misunderstand Ezekiel's 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 Jehovah's 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 prophet's 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
Jerusalem's fate which occupies the middle verses of the chapter
(vv. 17-22). The city is compared to the crucible in which all
the refuse of Israel's 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 Chaldæans; and he says, “Thus does 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. i. 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 God's 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. vi. 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 Jerusalem's 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 ch. xxiv. were really
enacted in the full view of the exiled community. We have reached
the crisis of Ezekiel's 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 (Zech. viii. 19; cf. vii. 5)—Nebuchadnezzar
was drawing his lines round Jerusalem. The bare announcement to
men who knew what a Chaldæan 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
Ezekiel's 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” (ch. xi. 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 woodRead עצים, “wood,” instead of עצמים, “bones” (Boettcher and others).
under it; let its pieces be boiled and its bones cooked within
it” (vv. 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 (vv. 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”The words “except by fire” represent an emendation
proposed by Cornill, which may be somewhat bold, but certainly
expresses an idea in the passage.
(ver. 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 (ver. 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 men's 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.Cf. Jer. xiii. 27: “Thou shalt not be pronounced clean, for how long a
time yet!”
Even while
delivering this message of doom to the people the prophet's heart
was burdened by the presentiment 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 vv.
1-14) “in the morning, and my wife died
in the evening” (ver. 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,”I.e., as generally explained,
bread brought by sympathising friends, to be shared with the
mourning household: cf. Jer. xvi. 7; 2 Sam. iii. 35. Wellhausen,
however, proposes to read “bread of
mourners” (אֲנִשֻׁים for אֲנָשִׁים).
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 Ezekiel's 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.
Part III. Prophecies Against Foreign
Nations.
Chapter XV. Ammon, Moab, Edom, And
Philistia. Chapter xxv.
The next eight
chapters (xxv.-xxxii.) form an intermezzo in the book of Ezekiel.
They are inserted in this place with the obvious intention of
separating the two sharply contrasted situations in which our
prophet found himself before and after the siege of Jerusalem. The
subject with which they deal is indeed an essential part of the
prophet's message to his time, but it is separate from the central
interest of the narrative, which lies in the conflict between the
word of Jehovah in the hands of Ezekiel and the unbelief of the
exiles among whom he lived. The perusal of this group of chapters
is intended to prepare the reader for the completely altered
conditions under which Ezekiel was to resume his public
ministrations. The cycle of prophecies on foreign peoples is thus a
sort of literary analogue of the period of suspense which
interrupted the continuity of Ezekiel's work in the way we have
seen. It marks the shifting of the scenes behind the curtain before
the principal actors again step on the stage.
It is natural
enough to suppose that the prophet's mind was really occupied
during this time with the fate of Israel's heathen neighbours; but
that alone does not account for the grouping of the oracles before
us in this particular section of the book. Not only do some of the
chronological notices carry us far past the limit of the time
of silence referred
to, but it will be found that nearly all these prophecies assume
that the fall of Jerusalem is already known to the nations
addressed. It is therefore a mistaken view which holds that in
these chapters we have simply the result of Ezekiel's meditations
during his period of enforced seclusion from public duty. Whatever
the nature of his activity at this time may have been, the
principle of arrangement here is not chronological, but literary;
and no better motive for it can be suggested than the writer's
sense of dramatic propriety in unfolding the significance of his
prophetic life.
In uttering a
series of oracles against heathen nations, Ezekiel follows the
example set by some of his greatest predecessors. The book of Amos,
for example, opens with an impressive chapter of judgments on the
peoples lying immediately round the borders of Palestine. The
thundercloud of Jehovah's anger is represented as moving over the
petty states of Syria before it finally breaks in all its fury over
the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Similarly the books of Isaiah
and Jeremiah contain continuous sections dealing with various
heathen powers, while the book of Nahum is wholly occupied with a
prediction of the ruin of the Assyrian empire. And these are but a
few of the more striking instances of a phenomenon which is apt to
cause perplexity to close and earnest students of the Old
Testament. We have here to do, therefore, with a standing theme of
Hebrew prophecy; and it may help us better to understand the
attitude of Ezekiel if we consider for a moment some of the
principles involved in this constant preoccupation of the prophets
with the affairs of the outer world.
At the outset it
must be understood that prophecies of this kind form part of
Jehovah's message to Israel. Although they are usually cast in the
form of direct address to foreign peoples, this must not lead us to
imagine that they
were intended for actual publication in the countries to which they
refer. A prophet's real audience always consisted of his own
countrymen, whether his discourse was about themselves or about
their neighbours. And it is easy to see that it was impossible to
declare the purpose of God concerning Israel in words that came
home to men's business and bosoms, without taking account of the
state and the destiny of other nations. Just as it would not be
possible nowadays to forecast the future of Egypt without alluding
to the fate of the Ottoman empire, so it was not possible then to
describe the future of Israel in the concrete manner characteristic
of the prophets without indicating the place reserved for those
peoples with whom it had close intercourse. Besides this, a large
part of the national consciousness of Israel was made up of
interests, friendly or the reverse, in neighbouring states. The
Hebrews had a keen eye for national idiosyncrasies, and the simple
international relations of those days were almost as vivid and
personal as of neighbours living in the same village. To be an
Israelite was to be something characteristically different from a
Moabite, and that again from an Edomite or a Philistine, and every
patriotic Israelite had a shrewd sense of what the difference was.
We cannot read the utterances of the prophets with regard to any of
these nationalities without seeing that they often appeal to
perceptions deeply lodged in the popular mind, which could be
utilised to convey the spiritual lessons which the prophets desired
to teach.
It must not be
supposed, however, that such prophecies are in any degree the
expression of national vanity or jealousy. What the prophets aim at
is to elevate the thoughts of Israel to the sphere of eternal
truths of the kingdom of God; and it is only in so far as these can
be made to touch the conscience of the nation at this point that
they appeal to what we may call its international sentiments. Now the question we have to
ask is, What spiritual purpose for Israel is served by the
announcements of the destiny of the outlying heathen populations?
There are of course special interests attaching to each particular
prophecy which it would be difficult to classify. But, speaking
generally, prophecies of this class had a moral value for two
reasons. In the first place they re-echo and confirm the sentence
of judgment passed on Israel herself. They do this in two ways:
they illustrate the principle on which Jehovah deals with His own
people, and His character as the righteous judge of men. Israel was
to be destroyed for her national sins, her contempt of Jehovah, and
her breaches of the moral law. But other nations, though more
excusable, were not less guilty than Israel. The same spirit of
ungodliness, in different forms, was manifested by Tyre, by Egypt,
by Assyria, and by the petty states of Syria. Hence, if Jehovah was
really the righteous ruler of the world, He must visit upon these
nations their iniquities. Wherever a “sinful kingdom” was found, whether in Israel or
elsewhere, that kingdom must be removed from its place among the
nations. This appears most clearly in the book of Amos, who, though
he enunciates the paradoxical truth that Israel's sin must be
punished just because it was the only people that Jehovah had
known, nevertheless, as we have seen, thundered forth similar
judgments on other nations for their flagrant violation of the
universal law written in the human heart. In this way therefore the
prophets enforced on their contemporaries the fundamental lesson of
their teaching that the disasters which were coming on them were
not the result of the caprice or impotence of their Deity, but the
execution of His moral purpose, to which all men everywhere are
subject. But again, not only was the principle of the judgment
emphasised, but the manner in which it was to be carried out was
more clearly exhibited. In all cases the pre-exilic prophets announce that the
overthrow of the Hebrew states was to be effected either by the
Assyrians or the Babylonians. These great world-powers were in
succession the instruments fashioned and used by Jehovah for the
performance of His great work in the earth. Now it was manifest
that if this anticipation was well founded it involved the
overthrow of all the nations in immediate contact with Israel. The
policy of the Mesopotamian monarchs was well understood; and if
their wonderful successes were the revelation of the divine
purpose, then Israel would not be judged alone. Accordingly we find
in most instances that the chastisement of the heathen is either
ascribed directly to the invaders or else to other agencies set in
motion by their approach. The people of Israel or Judah were thus
taught to look on their fate as involved in a great scheme of
divine providence, overturning all the existing relations which
gave them a place among the nations of the world and preparing for
a new development of the purpose of Jehovah in the future.
When we turn to
that ideal future we find a second and more suggestive aspect of
these prophecies against the heathen. All the prophets teach that
the destiny of Israel is inseparably bound up with the future of
God's kingdom on earth. The Old Testament never wholly shakes off
the idea that the preservation and ultimate victory of the true
religion demands the continued existence of the one people to whom
the revelation of the true God had been committed. The
indestructibility of Israel's national life depends on its unique
position in relation to the purposes of Jehovah, and it is for this
reason that the prophets look forward with unwavering confidence to
a time when the knowledge of Jehovah shall go forth from Israel to
all the nations of mankind. And this point of view we must try to
enter into if we are to understand the meaning of their
declarations concerning the fate of the surrounding nations. If we ask whether an
independent future is reserved in the new dispensation for the
peoples with whom Israel had dealings in the past, we find that
different and sometimes conflicting answers are given. Thus Isaiah
predicts a restoration of Tyre after the lapse of seventy years,
while Ezekiel announces its complete and final destruction. It is
only when we consider these utterances in the light of the
prophets' general conception of the kingdom of God that we discern
the spiritual truth that gives them an abiding significance for the
instruction of all ages. It was not a matter of supreme religious
importance to know whether Phœnicia or Egypt or Assyria would
retain their old place in the world, and share indirectly in the
blessings of the Messianic age. What men needed to be taught then,
and what we need to remember still, is that each nation holds its
position in subordination to the ends of God's government, that no
power or wisdom or refinement will save a state from destruction
when it ceases to serve the interests of His kingdom. The foreign
peoples that come under the survey of the prophets are as yet
strangers to the true God, and are therefore destitute of that
which could secure them a place in the reconstruction of political
relationships of which Israel is to be the religious centre.
Sometimes they are represented as having by their hostility to
Israel or their pride of heart so encroached on the sovereignty of
Jehovah that their doom is already sealed. At other times they are
conceived as converted to the knowledge of the true God, and as
gladly accepting the place assigned to them in the humanity of the
future by consecrating their wealth and power to the service of His
people Israel. In all cases it is their attitude to Israel and the
God of Israel that determines their destiny: that is the great
truth which the prophets design to impress on their countrymen. So
long as the cause of religion was identified with the fortunes
of the people of
Israel no higher conception of the redemption of mankind could be
formed than that of a willing subjection of the nations of the
earth to the word of Jehovah which went forth from Jerusalem (cf.
Isa. ii. 2-4). And whether any particular nation should survive to
participate in the glories of that latter day depends on the view
taken of its present condition and its fitness for incorporation in
the universal empire of Jehovah soon to be established.
We now know that
this was not the form in which Jehovah's purpose of salvation was
destined to be realised in the history of the world. Since the
coming of Christ the people of Israel has lost its distinctive and
central position as the bearer of the hopes and promises of the
true religion. In its place we have a spiritual kingdom of men
united by faith in Jesus Christ, and in the worship of one Father
in spirit and in truth—a kingdom which from its very nature can
have no local centre or political organisation. Hence the
conversion of the heathen can no longer be conceived as national
homage paid to the seat of Jehovah's sovereignty on Zion; nor is
the unfolding of the divine plan of universal salvation bound up
with the extinction of the nationalities which once symbolised the
hostility of the world to the kingdom of God. This fact has an
important bearing on the question of the fulfilment of the foreign
prophecies of the Old Testament. Literal fulfilment is not to be
looked for in this case any more than in the delineations of
Israel's future, which are after all the predominant element of
Messianic prediction. It is true that the nations passed under
review have now vanished from history, and in so far as their fall
was brought about by causes operating in the world in which the
prophets moved, it must be recognised as a partial but real
vindication of the truth of their words. But the details of the
prophecies have not been historically verified. All attempts to trace their
accomplishment in events that took place long afterwards and in
circumstances which the prophets themselves never contemplated only
lead us astray from the real interest which belongs to them. As
concrete embodiments of the eternal principles exhibited in the
rise and fall of nations they have an abiding significance for the
Church in all ages; but the actual working out of these principles
in history could not in the nature of things be complete within the
limits of the world known to the inhabitants of Judæa. If we are to
look for their ideal fulfilment, we shall only find it in the
progressive victory of Christianity over all forms of error and
superstition, and in the dedication of all the resources of human
civilisation—its wealth, its commercial enterprise, its political
power—to the advancement of the kingdom of our God and His
Christ.
It was natural
from the special circumstances in which he wrote, as well as from
the general character of his teaching, that Ezekiel, in his oracles
against the heathen powers, should present only the dark side of
God's providence. Except in the case of Egypt, the nations
addressed are threatened with annihilation, and even Egypt is to be
reduced to a condition of utter impotence and humiliation. Very
characteristic also is his representation of the purpose which
comes to light in this series of judgments. It is to be a great
demonstration to all the earth of the absolute sovereignty of
Jehovah. “Ye shall know that I am
Jehovah” is the formula that sums up the lesson of each
nation's fall. We observe that the prophet starts from the
situation created by the fall of Jerusalem. That great calamity
bore in the first instance the appearance of a triumph of
heathenism over Jehovah the God of Israel. It was, as the prophet
elsewhere expresses it, a profanation of His holy name in the eyes
of the nations. And
in this light it was undoubtedly regarded by the petty
principalities around Palestine, and perhaps also by the more
distant and powerful spectators, such as Tyre and Egypt. From the
standpoint of heathenism the downfall of Israel meant the defeat of
its tutelary Deity; and the neighbouring nations, in exulting over
the tidings of Jerusalem's fate, had in their minds the idea of the
prostrate Jehovah unable to save His people in their hour of need.
It is not necessary to suppose that Ezekiel attributes to them any
consciousness of Jehovah's claim to be the only living and true
God. It is the paradox of revelation that He who is the Eternal and
Infinite first revealed Himself to the world as the God of Israel;
and all the misconceptions that sprang out of that fact had to be
cleared away by His self-manifestation in historical acts that
appealed to the world at large. Amongst these acts the judgment of
the heathen nations holds the first place in the mind of Ezekiel. A
crisis has been reached at which it becomes necessary for Jehovah
to vindicate His divinity by the destruction of those who have
exalted themselves against Him. The world must learn once for all
that Jehovah is no mere tribal god, but the omnipotent ruler of the
universe. And this is the preparation for the final disclosure of
His power and Godhead in the restoration of Israel to its own land,
which will speedily follow the overthrow of its ancient foes. This
series of prophecies forms thus an appropriate introduction to the
third division of the book, which deals with the formation of the
new people of Jehovah.
It is somewhat
remarkable that Ezekiel's survey of the heathen nations is
restricted to those in the immediate vicinity of the land of
Canaan. Although he had unrivalled opportunities of becoming
acquainted with the remote countries of the East, he confines his
attention to the Mediterranean states which had long played a part
in Hebrew history. The
peoples dealt with are seven in number—Ammon, Moab, Edom, the
Philistines, Tyre, Sidon, and Egypt. The order of the enumeration
is geographical: first the inner circle of Israel's immediate
neighbours, from Ammon on the east round to Sidon in the extreme
north; then outside the circle the preponderating world-power of
Egypt. It is not altogether an accidental circumstance that five of
these nations are named in the twenty-seventh chapter of Jeremiah
as concerned in the project of rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar in
the early part of Zedekiah's reign. Egypt and Philistia are not
mentioned there, but we may surmise at least that Egyptian
diplomacy was secretly at work pulling the wires which set the
puppets in motion. This fact, together with the omission of Babylon
from the list of threatened nations, shows that Ezekiel regards the
judgment as falling within the period of Chaldæan supremacy, which
he appears to have estimated at forty years. What is to be the fate
of Babylon itself he nowhere intimates, a conflict between that
great world-power and Jehovah's purpose being no part of his
system. That Nebuchadnezzar is to be the agent of the overthrow of
Tyre and the humiliation of Egypt is expressly stated; and although
the crushing of the smaller states is ascribed to other agencies,
we can hardly doubt that these were conceived as indirect
consequences of the upheaval caused by the Babylonian invasion.
Ch. xxv., then,
consists of four brief prophecies addressed respectively to Ammon,
Moab, Edom, and the Philistines. A few words on the fate prefigured
for each of these countries will suffice for the explanation of the
chapter.
1. Ammon (vv. 2-7) lay on the
edge of the desert, between the upper waters of the Jabbok and the
Arnon, separated from the Jordan by a strip of Israelitish
territory from twenty to thirty miles wide. Its capital, Rabbah,
mentioned here (ver.
5), was situated on a southern tributary of the Jabbok, and its
ruins still bear amongst the Arabs the ancient national name
Ammân. Although their country
was pastoral (milk is referred to in ver. 4 as one of its chief
products), the Ammonites seem to have made some progress in
civilisation. Jeremiah (ch. xlix. 4) speaks of them as trusting in
their treasures; and in this chapter Ezekiel announces that they
shall be for a spoil to the nations (ver. 7). After the deportation
of the transjordanic tribes by Tiglath-pileser, Ammon seized the
country that had belonged to the tribe of Gad, its nearest
neighbour on the west. This encroachment is denounced by the
prophet Jeremiah in the opening words of his oracle against Ammon:
“Hath Israel no children? or has he no
heir? why doth Milcom [the national deity of the Ammonites] inherit
Gad, why hath his [Milcom's] folk settled in his [Gad's]
cities” (Jer. xlix. 1). We have already seen (ch. xxi.) that
the Ammonites took part in the rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar,
and stood out after the other members of the league had gone back
from their purpose. But this temporary union with Jerusalem did
nothing to abate the old national animosity, and the disaster of
Judah was the signal for an exhibition of malignant satisfaction on
the part of Ammon. “Because thou hast said,
Aha, against My sanctuary when it was profaned, and the land of
Israel when it was laid waste, and the house of Judah when it went
into captivity,” etc. (ver. 3)—for this crowning offence
against the majesty of Jehovah, Ezekiel denounces an exterminating
judgment on Ammon. The land shall be given up to the “children of the East”—i.e.,
the Bedouin Arabs—who shall pitch their tent encampments in it,
eating its fruits and drinking its milk, and turning the
“great city” Rabbah itself into a
resting-place for camels (vv. 4, 5). It is not quite clear (though
it is commonly assumed) that the children of the East are
regarded as the
actual conquerors of Ammon. Their possession of the country may be
the consequence rather than the cause of the destruction of
civilisation, the encroachment of the nomads being as inevitable
under these circumstances as the extension of the desert itself
where water fails.
2. MoabThe words “and
Seir” in ver. 8 are wanting in the true text of the LXX.,
and should probably be omitted.
(vv.
8-11) comes next in order. Its proper territory, since the
settlement of Israel in Canaan, was the elevated tableland south of
the Arnon, along the lower part of the Dead Sea. But the tribe of
Reuben, which bordered it on the north, was never able to hold its
ground against the superior strength of Moab, and hence the latter
nation is found in possession of the lower and more fertile
district stretching northwards from the Arnon, now called the
Belka. All the cities, indeed, which are mentioned in this chapter
as belonging to Moab—Beth-jeshimoth, Baal-meon, and Kirjathaim—were
situated in this northern and properly Israelite region. These were
the “glory of the land,” which were
now to be taken away from Moab (ver. 9). In Israel Moab appears to
have been regarded as the incarnation of a peculiarly offensive
form of national pride,Isa. xvi. 6, xxv. 11; Jer. xlviii. 29,
42.
of
which we happen to have a monument in the famous Moabite Stone,
which was erected by Mesha in the ninth century b.c. to commemorate the
victories of Chemosh over Jehovah and Israel. The inscription
shows, moreover, that in the arts of civilised life Moab was at
that early time no unworthy rival of Israel itself. It is for a
special manifestation of this haughty and arrogant spirit in the
day of Jerusalem's calamity that Ezekiel pronounces Jehovah's
judgment on Moab: “Because Moab hath said,
Behold, the house of Judah is like all the nations” (ver.
8). These words no
doubt reflect accurately the sentiment of Moab towards Israel, and
they presuppose a consciousness on the part of Moab of some unique
distinction pertaining to Israel in spite of all the humiliations
it had undergone since the time of David. And the thought of Moab
may have been more widely disseminated among the nations than we
are apt to suppose: “The kings of the earth
believed not, neither all the inhabitants of the world, that the
adversary and the enemy should enter into the gates of
Jerusalem” (Lam. iv. 12). The Moabites at all events
breathed a sigh of relief when Israel's pretensions to religious
ascendency seemed to be confuted, and thereby they sealed their own
doom. They share the fate of the Ammonites, their land being handed
over for a possession to the sons of the East (ver. 10).
Both these
nations, Ammon and Moab, were absorbed by the Arabs, as Ezekiel had
foretold; but Ammon at least preserved its separate name and
nationality through many changes of fortune down to the second
century after Christ.
3. Edom (vv. 12-14), famous
in the Old Testament for its wisdom (Jer. xlix. 7; Obad. 8),
occupied the country to the south of Moab from the Dead Sea to the
head of the Gulf of Akaba. In Old Testament times the centre of its
power was in the region to the east of the Arabah Valley, a
position of great commercial importance, as commanding the caravan
route from the Red Sea port of Elath to Northern Syria. From this
district the Edomites were afterwards driven (about 300
b.c.) by the Arabian tribe
of the Nabatæans, when they took up their abode in the south of
Judah. None of the surrounding nations were so closely akin to
Israel as Edom, and with none were its relations more embittered
and hostile. The Edomites had been subjugated and nearly
exterminated by David, had been again subdued by Amaziah and
Uzziah, but finally recovered their independence during the attack of the Syrians
and Ephraimites on Judah in the reign of Ahaz. The memory of this
long struggle produced in Edom a “perpetual
enmity,” an undying hereditary hatred towards the kingdom of
Judah. But that which made the name of Edom to be execrated by the
later Jews was its conduct after the fall of Jerusalem. The prophet
Obadiah represents it as sharing in the spoil of Jerusalem (ver.
10), and as “standing in the crossway to
cut off those that escaped” (ver. 14). Ezekiel also alludes
to this in the thirty-fifth chapter (ver. 5), and tells us further
that in the time of the captivity the Edomites seized part of the
territory of Israel (vv. 10-12), from which indeed the Jews were
never able altogether to dislodge them. For the guilt they thus
incurred by taking advantage of the humiliation of Jehovah's
people, Ezekiel here threatens them with extinction; and the
execution of the divine vengeance is in their case entrusted to the
children of Israel themselves (vv. 13, 14). They were, in fact,
finally subdued by John Hyrcanus in 126 b.c., and compelled to
adopt the Jewish religion. But long before then they had lost their
prestige and influence, their ancient seats having passed under the
dominion of the Arabs in common with all the neighbouring
countries.
4. The
Philistines (vv.
15-17)—the “immigrants” who had
settled along the Mediterranean coast, and who were destined to
leave their name to the whole country—had evidently played a part
very similar to the Edomites at the time of the destruction of
Jerusalem; but of this nothing is known beyond what is here said by
Ezekiel. They were at this time a mere “remnant” (ver. 16), having been exhausted by
the Assyrian and Egyptian wars. Their fate is not precisely
indicated in the prophecy. They were in point of fact gradually
extinguished by the revival of Jewish domination under the Asmonean
dynasty.
One other remark
may here be made, as showing the discrimination which Ezekiel brought to bear
in estimating the characteristics of each separate nation. He does
not ascribe to the greater powers, Tyre and Sidon and Egypt, the
same petty and vindictive jealousy of Israel which actuated the
diminutive nationalities dealt with in this chapter. These great
heathen states, which played so imposing a part in ancient
civilisation, had a wide outlook over the affairs of the world; and
the injuries they inflicted on Israel were due less to the blind
instinct of national hatred than to the pursuit of far-reaching
schemes of selfish interest and aggrandisement. If Tyre rejoices
over the fall of Jerusalem, it is because of the removal of an
obstacle to the expansion of her commercial enterprise. When Egypt
is described as having been an occasion of sin to the people of
God, what is meant is that she had drawn Israel into the net of her
ambitious foreign policy, and led her away from the path of safety
pointed out by Jehovah's will through the prophets. Ezekiel pays a
tribute to the grandeur of their position by the care he bestows on
the description of their fate. The smaller nations embodying
nothing of permanent value for the advancement of humanity, he
dismisses each with a short and pregnant oracle announcing its
doom. But when he comes to the fall of Tyre and of Egypt his
imagination is evidently impressed; he lingers over all the details
of the picture, he returns to it again and again, as if he would
penetrate the secret of their greatness and understand the potent
fascination which their names exercised throughout the world. It
would be entirely erroneous to suppose that he sympathises with
them in their calamity, but certainly he is conscious of the blank
which will be caused by their disappearance from history; he feels
that something will have vanished from the earth whose loss will be
mourned by the nations far and near. This is most apparent in the
prophecy on Tyre, to which we now proceed.
Chapter XVI. Tyre. Chapters xxvi.,
xxix. 17-21.
In the time of
Ezekiel Tyre was still at the height of her commercial prosperity.
Although not the oldest of the Phœnician cities, she held a
supremacy among them which dated from the thirteenth century
b.c.,Rawlinson, History of
Phœnicia.
and
she had long been regarded as the typical embodiment of the genius
of the remarkable race to which she belonged. The Phœnicians were
renowned in antiquity for a combination of all the qualities on
which commercial greatness depends. Their absorbing devotion to the
material interests of civilisation, their amazing industry and
perseverance, their resourcefulness in assimilating and improving
the inventions of other peoples, the technical skill of their
artists and craftsmen, but above all their adventurous and daring
seamanship, conspired to give them a position in the old world such
as has never been quite rivalled by any other nation of ancient or
modern times. In the grey dawn of European history we find them
acting as pioneers of art and culture along the shores of the
Mediterranean, although even then they had been displaced from
their earliest settlements in the Ægean and the coast of Asia Minor
by the rising commerce of Greece. Matthew Arnold has drawn a
brilliant imaginative picture of this collision between the two
races, and the effect it had on the dauntless and enterprising
spirit of Phœnicia:—
As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow
Lifting the cool-hair'd creepers stealthily,
The fringes of a southward-facing brow
Among the Ægæan isles;
And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,
Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steep'd in brine—
And knew the intruders on his ancient home,
The young light-hearted masters of the waves—
And snatch'd his rudder and shook out more sail;
And day and night held on indignantly
O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,
Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,
To where the Atlantic raves
Outside the western straits; and unbent sails
There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,
Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians, come;
And on the beach undid his corded bales.Closing stanzas of The Scholar
Gipsy.
It is that
spirit of masterful and untiring ambition kept up for so many
centuries that throws a halo of romance round the story of
Tyre.
In the oldest
Greek literature, however, Tyre is not mentioned, the place which
she afterwards held being then occupied by Sidon. But after the
decay of Sidon the rich harvest of her labours fell into the lap of
Tyre, which thenceforth stands out as the foremost city of
Phœnicia. She owed her pre-eminence partly to the wisdom and energy
with which her affairs were administered, but partly also to the
strength of her natural situation. The city was built both on the
mainland and on a row of islets about half a mile from the shore.
This latter portion contained the principal buildings (temples and
palaces), the open place where business was transacted, and the two
harbours. It was no doubt from it that the city derived its name
(צוֹר = Rock); and it always was looked on as the central part of
Tyre. There was something in the appearance of the island city—the Venice of
antiquity, rising from mid-ocean with her “tiara of proud towers”—which seemed to mark her
out as destined to be mistress of the sea. It also made a siege of
Tyre an arduous and a tedious undertaking, as many a conqueror
found to his cost. Favoured then by these advantages, Tyre speedily
gathered the traffic of Phœnicia into her own hands, and her wealth
and luxury were the wonder of the nations. She was known as
“the crowning city, whose merchants were
princes, and her traffickers the honourable of the earth”
(Isa. xxiii. 8). She became the great commercial emporium of the
world. Her colonies were planted all over the islands and coasts of
the Mediterranean, and the one most frequently mentioned in the
Bible, Tarshish, was in Spain, beyond Gibraltar. Her seamen had
ventured beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and undertook distant
Atlantic voyages to the Canary Islands on the south and the coasts
of Britain on the north. The most barbarous and inhospitable
regions were ransacked for the metals and other products needed to
supply the requirements of civilisation, and everywhere she found a
market for her own wares and manufactures. The carrying trade of
the Mediterranean was almost entirely conducted in her ships, while
her richly laden caravans traversed all the great routes that led
into the heart of Asia and Africa.
It so happens
that the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel is one of the best
sources of information we possess as to the varied and extensive
commercial relations of Tyre in the sixth century b.c.Both Movers and Rawlinson make it the
basis of their survey of Tyrian commerce.
It
will therefore be better to glance shortly at its contents here
rather than in its proper connection in the development of the
prophet's thought. It will easily be seen that the description is
somewhat
idealised; no details are given of the commodities which Tyre
sold to the nations—only as an
afterthought (ver. 33) is it intimated that by sending forth her
wares she has enriched and satisfied many nations. So the goods
which she bought of them are not represented
as given in exchange for anything else; Tyre is poetically
conceived as an empress ruling the peoples by the potent spell of
her influence, compelling them to drudge for her and bring to her
feet the gains they have acquired by their heavy labour. Nor can
the list of nationsBabylon and Egypt are probably omitted
because of the peculiar point of view assumed by the prophet. They
were too powerful to be represented as slaves of Tyre, even in
poetry.
or
their gifts be meant as exhaustive; it only includes such things as
served to exhibit the immense variety of useful and costly articles
which ministered to the wealth and luxury of Tyre. But making
allowance for this, and for the numerous difficulties which the
text presents, the passage has evidently been compiled with great
care; it shows a minuteness of detail and fulness of knowledge
which could not have been got from books, but displays a lively
personal interest in the affairs of the world which is surprising
in a man like Ezekiel.
The order
followed in the enumeration of nations is not quite clear, but is
on the whole geographical. Starting from Tarshish in the extreme
west (ver. 12), the prophet mentions in succession Javan (Ionia),
Tubal, and Meshech (two tribes to the south-east of the Black Sea),
and Togarmah (usually identified with Armenia) (vv. 13, 14). These
represent the northern limit of the Phœnician markets. The
reference in the next verse (v. 15) is doubtful, on account of a
difference between the Septuagint and the Hebrew text. If with the
former we read “Rhodes” instead of
“Dedan,” it embraces the nearer
coasts and islands of the Mediterranean, and this is perhaps on the
whole the more
natural sense. In this case it is possible that up to this point
the description has been confined to the sea trade of Phœnicia, if
we may suppose that the products of Armenia reached Tyre by way of
the Black Sea. At all events the overland traffic occupies a space
in the list out of proportion to its actual importance, a fact
which is easily explained from the prophet's standpoint. First, in
a line from south to north, we have the nearer neighbours of
Phœnicia—Edom, Judah, Israel, and Damascus (vv. 16-18). Then the
remoter tribes and districts of Arabia—UzalE.V., “going
to and fro.”
(the
chief city of Yemen), Dedan (on the eastern side of the Gulf of
Akaba), Arabia and Kedar (nomads of the eastern desert),
Havilah,So Cornill, חוילה for רכלי ( =
merchants).
Sheba,
and Raamah (in the extreme south of the Arabian peninsula) (vv.
19-22). Finally the countries tapped by the eastern caravan
route—Haran (the great trade centre in Mesopotamia), Canneh (?
Calneh, unknown), Eden (differently spelt from the garden of Eden,
also unknown), Assyria, and Chilmad (unknown) (ver. 23). These were
the “merchants” and “traders” of Tyre, who are represented as
thronging her market-place with the produce of their respective
countries.
The imports, so
far as we can follow the prophet's enumeration, are in nearly all
cases characteristic products of the regions to which they are
assigned. Spain is known to have furnished all the metals here
mentioned—silver, iron, lead, and tin. Greece and Asia Minor were
centres of the slave traffic (one of the darkest blots on the
commerce of Phœnicia), and also supplied hardware. Armenia was
famous as a horse-breeding country, and thence Tyre procured her
supply of horses and mules. The ebony and tusks of ivory must have
come from
Africa; and if the Septuagint is right in reading “Rhodes” in ver. 15, these articles can only
have been collected there for shipment to Tyre.See ch. xxvii. 6, where ivory is said
to come from Chittim or Cyprus.
Through Edom come pearls and precious stones.The Hebrew text adds “purple, embroidered work, and byssus”; but most
of these things are omitted in the LXX.
Judah
and Israel furnish Tyre with agricultural and natural produce, as
they had done from the days of David and Solomon—wheat and oil, wax
and honey, balm and spices. Damascus yields the famous “wine of Helbon”—said to be the only vintage
that the Persian kings would drink—perhaps also other choice
wines.The text of vv. 18, 19 is in
confusion, and Cornill, from a comparison with a contemporary
wine-list of Nebuchadnezzar, and also an Assyrian one from the
library of Asshurbanipal, makes it read thus: “Wine of Helbon and Zimin and Arnaban they furnished in
thy markets. From Uzal,” etc. Both lists are quoted in
Schrader's Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old
Testament, under this verse.
A rich
variety of miscellaneous articles, both natural and manufactured,
is contributed by Arabia,—wrought iron (perhaps sword-blades) from
Yemen; saddle-cloths from Dedan; sheep and goats from the Bedouin
tribes; gold, precious stones, and aromatic spices from the
caravans of Sheba. Lastly, the Mesopotamian countries provide the
costly textile fabrics from the looms of Babylon so highly prized
in antiquity—“costly garments, mantles of
blue, purple, and broidered work,” “many-coloured carpets,” and “cords twisted and durable.”The latter half of this verse,
however, is of very uncertain interpretation. For full explanation
of the archæological details in this chapter it will be necessary
to consult the commentaries and the lexicon. See also Rawlinson's
History
of Phœnicia, pp. 285 ff.
This survey of
the ramifications of Tyrian commerce will have served its purpose
if it enables us to realise in some measure the conception which
Ezekiel had formed of the power and prestige of the maritime city,
whose destruction he so
confidently announced. He knew, as did Isaiah before him, how
deeply Tyre had struck her roots in the life of the old world, how
indispensable her existence seemed to be to the whole fabric of
civilisation as then constituted. Both prophets represent the
nations as lamenting the downfall of the city which had so long
ministered to their material welfare. The overthrow of Tyre would
be felt as a world-wide calamity; it could hardly be contemplated
except as part of a radical subversion of the established order of
things. This is what Ezekiel has in view, and his attitude towards
Tyre is governed by his expectation of a great shaking of the
nations which is to usher in the perfect kingdom of God. In the new
world to which he looks forward no place will be found for Tyre,
not even the subordinate position of a handmaid to the people of
God which Isaiah's vision of the future had assigned to her.
Beneath all her opulence and refinement the prophet's eye detected
that which was opposed to the mind of Jehovah—the irreligious
spirit which is the temptation of a mercantile community,
manifesting itself in overweening pride and self-exaltation, and in
sordid devotion to gain as the highest end of a nation's
existence.
The twenty-sixth
chapter is in the main a literal prediction of the siege and
destruction of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. It is dated from the year in
which Jerusalem was captured, and was certainly written after that
event. The number of the month has accidentally dropped out of the
text, so that we cannot tell whether at the time of writing the
prophet had received actual intelligence of the fall of the city.
At all events it is assumed that the fate of Jerusalem is already
known in Tyre, and the manner in which the tidings were sure to
have been received there is the immediate occasion of the prophecy.
Like many other peoples, Tyre had rejoiced over the disaster which had befallen the Jewish
state; but her exultation had a peculiar note of selfish
calculation, which did not escape the notice of the prophet. Ever
mindful of her own interest, she sees that a barrier to the free
development of her commerce has been removed, and she congratulates
herself on the fortunate turn which events have taken: “Aha! the door of the peoples is broken, it is turned
towards me; she that was full hath been laid waste!”With a change of one letter in the
Hebrew text, המלאה for אמלאה, as in the LXX. and Targum.
(ver.
2). Although the relations of the two countries had often been
friendly and sometimes highly advantageous to Tyre, she had
evidently felt herself hampered by the existence of an independent
state on the mountain ridge of Palestine. The kingdom of Judah,
especially in days when it was strong enough to hold Edom in
subjection, commanded the caravan routes to the Red Sea, and
doubtless prevented the Phœnician merchants from reaping the full
profit of their ventures in that direction. It is probable that at
all times a certain proportion of the revenue of the kings of Judah
was derived from toll levied on the Tyrian merchandise that passed
through their territory; and what they thus gained represented so
much loss to Tyre. It was, to be sure, a small item in the mass of
business transacted on the exchange of Tyre. But nothing is too
trivial to enter into the calculations of a community given over to
the pursuit of gain; and the satisfaction with which the fall of
Jerusalem was regarded in Tyre showed how completely she was
debased by her selfish commercial policy, how oblivious she was to
the spiritual interests bound up with the future of Israel.
Having thus
exposed the sinful cupidity and insensibility of Tyre, the prophet
proceeds to describe in general terms the punishment that is to overtake her.
Many nations shall be brought up against her, irresistible as the
sea when it comes up with its waves; her walls and fortifications
shall be rased; the very dust shall be scraped from her site, so
that she is left “a naked rock”
rising out of the sea, a place where fishermen spread their nets to
dry, as in the days before the city was built.
Then follows
(vv. 7-14) a specific announcement of the manner in which judgment
shall be executed on Tyre. The recent political attitude of the
city left no doubt as to the quarter from which immediate danger
was to be apprehended. The Phœnician states had been the most
powerful members of the confederacy that was formed about 596 to
throw off the yoke of the Chaldæans, and they were in open revolt
at the time when Ezekiel wrote. They had apparently thrown in their
lot with Egypt, and a conflict with Nebuchadnezzar was therefore to
be expected. Tyre had every reason to avoid a war with a first-rate
power, which could not fail to be disastrous to her commercial
interests. But her inhabitants were not destitute of martial
spirit; they trusted in the strength of their position and their
command of the sea, and they were in the mood to risk everything
rather than again renounce their independence and their freedom.
But all this avails nothing against the purpose which Jehovah has
purposed concerning Tyre. It is He who brings Nebuchadnezzar, the
king of kings, from the north with his army and his siege-train,
and Tyre shall fall before his assault, as Jerusalem has already
fallen. First of all, the Phœnician cities on the mainland shall be
ravaged and laid waste, and then operations commence against the
mother-city herself. The description of the siege and capture of
the island fortress is given with an abundance of graphic details,
although, strangely enough, without calling attention to the
peculiar
method of attack that was necessary for the reduction of Tyre. The
great feature of the siege would be the construction of a huge mole
between the shore and the island; once the wall was reached the
attack would proceed precisely as in the case of an inland town, in
the manner depicted on Assyrian monuments. When the breach is made
in the fortifications the whole army pours into the city, and for
the first time in her history the walls of Tyre shake with the
rumbling of chariots in her streets. The conquered city is then
given up to slaughter and pillage, her songs and her music are
stilled for ever, her stones and timber and dust are cast into the
sea, and not a trace remains of the proud mistress of the
waves.
In the third
strophe (vv. 15-21) the prophet describes the dismay which will be
caused when the crash of the destruction of Tyre resounds along the
coasts of the sea. All the “princes of the
sea” (perhaps the rulers of the Phœnician colonies in the
Mediterranean) are represented as rising from their thrones, and
putting off their stately raiment, and sitting in the dust
bewailing the fate of the city. The dirge in which they lift up
their voices (vv. 17, 18) is given by the Septuagint in a form
which preserves more nearly than the Hebrew the structure as well
as the beauty which we should expect in the original:—
How is perished from the sea—
The city renowned!
She that laid her terror—
On all its inhabitants!
[Now] are the isles affrighted—
In the day of thy falling!
But this
beautiful image is not strong enough to express the prophet's sense
of the irretrievable ruin that hangs over Tyre. By a bold flight of
imagination he
turns from the mourners on earth to follow in thought the descent
of the city into the under-world (vv. 19-21). The idea that Tyre
might rise from her ruins after a temporary eclipse and recover her
old place in the world was one that would readily suggest itself to
any one who understood the real secret of her greatness. To the
mind of Ezekiel the impossibility of her restoration lies in the
fixed purpose of Jehovah, which includes, not only her destruction,
but her perpetual desolation. “When I make
thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when
I bring up against thee the deep, and the great waters cover thee;
then I will bring thee down with them that go down to the pit, with
the people of old time, and I will make thee dwell in the lowest
parts of the earth, like the immemorial waste places, with them
that go down to the pit, that thou be not inhabited nor establish
thyself in the land of the living.” The whole passage is
steeped in weird poetic imagery. The “deep”Hebrew, Tĕhôm; Babylonian, Tiamat.
suggests something more than the blue waters of the Mediterranean:
it is the name of the great primeval Ocean, out of which the
habitable world was fashioned, and which is used as an emblem of
the irresistible judgments of God.Psalm xxxvi. 6: cf. Gen. vii, 11.
The
“pit” is the realm of the dead,
Sheôl, conceived as situated under the earth, where the shades of
the departed drag out a feeble existence from which there is no
deliverance. The idea of Sheôl is a frequent subject of poetical
embellishment in the later books of the Old Testament; and of this
we have an example here when the prophet represents the once
populous and thriving city as now a denizen of that dreary place.
But the essential meaning he wishes to convey is that Tyre is
numbered among the things that were. She “shall be sought, and shall not be found any
more for
ever,” because she has entered the dismal abode of the dead,
whence there is no return to the joys and activities of the upper
world.
Such then is the
anticipation which Ezekiel in the year 586 had formed of the fate
of Tyre. No candid reader will suppose that the prophecy is
anything but what it professes to be—a bonâ-fide prediction of the
total destruction of the city in the immediate future and by the
hands of Nebuchadnezzar. When Ezekiel wrote, the siege of Tyre had
not begun; and however clear it may have been to observant men that
the next stage in the campaign would be the reduction of the
Phœnician cities, the prophet is at least free from the suspicion
of having prophesied after the event. The remarkable absence of
characteristic and special details from the account of the siege is
the best proof that he is dealing with the future from the true
prophetic standpoint and clothing a divinely imparted conviction in
images supplied by a definite historical situation. Nor is there
any reason to doubt that in some form the prophecy was actually
published among his fellow-exiles at the date to which it is
assigned. On these points critical opinion is fairly unanimous. But
when we come to the question of the fulfilment of the prediction we
find ourselves in the region of controversy, and, it must be
admitted, of uncertainty. Some expositors, determined at all
hazards to vindicate Ezekiel's prophetic authority, maintain that
Tyre was actually devastated by Nebuchadnezzar in the manner
described by the prophet, and seek for confirmations of their view
in the few historical notices we possess of this period of
Nebuchadnezzar's reign. Others, reading the history differently,
arrive at the conclusion that Ezekiel's calculations were entirely
at fault, that Tyre was not captured by the Babylonians at all, and
that his oracle against Tyre must be reckoned amongst the
unfulfilled prophecies of the Old Testament. Others again seek to reconcile an impartial
historical judgment with a high conception of the function of
prophecy, and find in the undoubted course of events a real though
not an exact verification of the words uttered by Ezekiel. It is
indeed almost by accident that we have any independent
corroboration of Ezekiel's anticipation with regard to the
immediate future of Tyre. Oriental discoveries have as yet brought
to light no important historical monuments of the reign of
Nebuchadnezzar; and outside of the book of Ezekiel itself we have
nothing to guide us except the statement of Josephus, based on
Phœnician and Greek authorities,Contra Ap., I. 21; Ant.,
X. xi. 1.
that
Tyre underwent a thirteen years' siege by the Babylonian conqueror.
There is no reason whatever to call in question the reliability of
this important information, although the accompanying statement
that the siege began in the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar is
certainly erroneous. But unfortunately we are not told how the
siege ended. Whether it was successful or unsuccessful, whether
Tyre was reduced or capitulated, or was evacuated or beat off her
assailants, is nowhere indicated. To argue from the silence of the
historians is impossible; for if one man argues that a catastrophe
that took place “before the eyes of all
Asia” would not have passed unrecorded in historical books,
another might urge with equal force that a repulse of
Nebuchadnezzar was too uncommon an event to be ignored in the
Phœnician annals.Cf. Hävernick against Hitzig and
Winer, Ezekiel, pp. 436 f.
On the
whole the most reasonable hypothesis is perhaps that after the
thirteen years the city surrendered on not unfavourable terms; but
this conclusion is based on other considerations than the data or
the silence of Josephus.
The chief reason
for believing that Nebuchadnezzar was not altogether successful in
his attack on Tyre is
found in a supplementary prophecy of Ezekiel's, given in the end of
the twenty-ninth chapter (vv. 17-21). It was evidently written
after the siege of Tyre was concluded, and so far as it goes it
confirms the accuracy of Josephus' sources. It is dated from the
year 570, sixteen years after the fall of Jerusalem; and it is, in
fact, the latest oracle in the whole book. The siege of Tyre
therefore, which had not commenced in 586, when ch. xxvi. was
written, was finished before 570; and between these terminal dates
there is just room for the thirteen years of Josephus. The invasion
of Phœnicia must have been the next great enterprise of the
Babylonian army in Western Asia after the destruction of Judah, and
it was only the extraordinary strength of Tyre that enabled it to
protract the struggle so long. Now what light does Ezekiel throw on
the issue of the siege? His words are: “Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has made his army to
serve a great service against Tyre; every head made bald and every
shoulder peeled, yet he and his army got no wages out of
Tyre for the service which he served against
her.” The prophet then goes on to announce that the spoils
of Egypt should be the recompense to the army for their unrequited
labour against Tyre, inasmuch as it was work done for Jehovah. Here
then, we have evidence first of all that the long siege of Tyre had
taxed the resources of the besiegers to the utmost. The
“peeled shoulders” and the
“heads made bald” is a graphic
detail which alludes not obscurely to the monotonous navvy work of
carrying loads of stones and earth to fill up the narrow channel
between the mainland and the island,The same engineering feat was
accomplished by Alexander the Great in seven months, but the Greek
general probably adopted more scientific methods (such as
pile-driving) than the Babylonians; and, besides, it is possible
that the remains of Nebuchadnezzar's embankment may have
facilitated the operation.
so as
to allow the
engines to be brought up to the walls. Ezekiel was well aware of
the arduous nature of the undertaking, the expenditure of human
effort and life which was involved, in the struggle with natural
obstacles; and his striking conception of these obscure and toiling
soldiers as unconscious servants of the Almighty shows how
steadfast was his faith in the word he proclaimed against Tyre. But
the important point is that they obtained from Tyre no reward—at
least no adequate reward—for their herculean labours. The
expression used is no doubt capable of various interpretations. It
might mean that the siege had to be abandoned, or that the city was
able to make extremely easy terms of capitulation, or, as Jerome
suggests, that the Tyrians had carried off their treasures by sea
and escaped to one of their colonies. In any case it shows that the
historical event was not in accordance with the details of the
earlier prophecy. That the wealth of Tyre would fall to the
conquerors is there assumed as a natural consequence of the capture
of the city. But whether the city was actually captured or not, the
victors were somehow disappointed in their expectation of plunder.
The rich spoil of Tyre, which was the legitimate reward of their
exhausting toil, had slipped from their eager grasp; to this extent
at least the reality fell short of the prediction, and
Nebuchadnezzar had to be compensated for his losses at Tyre by the
promise of an easy conquest of Egypt.
But if this had
been all it is not probable that Ezekiel would have deemed it
necessary to supplement his earlier prediction in the way we have
seen after an interval of sixteen years. The mere circumstance that
the sack of Tyre had failed to yield the booty that the besiegers
counted on was not of a nature to attract attention amongst the
prophet's auditors, or to throw doubt on the genuineness of his
inspiration. And we know that there was a much more serious difference between the
prophecy and the event than this. It is from what has just been
said extremely doubtful whether Nebuchadnezzar actually destroyed
Tyre, but even if he did she very quickly recovered much of her
former prosperity and glory. That her commerce was seriously
crippled during the struggle with Babylonia we may well believe,
and it is possible that she never again was what she had been
before this humiliation came upon her. But for all that the
enterprise and prosperity of Tyre continued for many ages to excite
the admiration of the most enlightened nations of antiquity. The
destruction of the city, therefore, if it took place, had not the
finality which Ezekiel had anticipated. Not till after the lapse of
eighteen centuries could it be said with approximate truth that she
was like “a bare rock in the midst of the
sea.”
The most
instructive fact for us, however, is that Ezekiel reissued his
original prophecy, knowing that it had not been literally
fulfilled. In the minds of his hearers the apparent falsification
of his predictions had revived old prejudices against him which
interfered with the prosecution of his work. They reasoned that a
prophecy so much out of joint with the reality was sufficient to
discredit his claim to be an authoritative exponent of the mind of
Jehovah; and so the prophet found himself embarrassed by a
recurrence of the old unbelieving attitude which had hindered his
public activity before the destruction of Jerusalem. He has not for
the present “an open mouth” amongst
them, and he feels that his words will not be fully received until
they are verified by the restoration of Israel to its own land. But
it is evident that he himself did not share the view of his
audience, otherwise he would certainly have suppressed a prophecy
which lacked the mark of authenticity. On the contrary he published
it for the perusal of a wider circle of readers, in the conviction that what he had spoken
was a true word of God, and that its essential truth did not depend
on its exact correspondence with the facts of history. In other
words, he believed in it as a true reading of the principles
revealed in God's moral government of the world—a reading which had
received a partial verification in the blow which had been dealt at
the pride of Tyre, and which would receive a still more signal
fulfilment in the final convulsions which were to introduce the day
of Israel's restoration and glory. Only we must remember that the
prophet's horizon was necessarily limited; and as he did not
contemplate the slow development and extension of the kingdom of
God through long ages, so he could not have taken into account the
secular operation of historic causes which eventually brought about
the ruin of Tyre.
Chapter XVII. Tyre (Continued):
Sidon. Chapters xxvii., xxviii.
The remaining
oracles on Tyre (chs. xxvii., xxviii. 1-19) are somewhat different
both in subject and mode of treatment from the chapter we have just
finished. Ch. xxvi. is in the main a direct announcement of the
fall of Tyre, delivered in the oratorical style which is the usual
vehicle of prophetic address. She is regarded as a state occupying
a definite place among the other states of the world, and sharing
the fate of other peoples who by their conduct towards Israel or
their ungodliness and arrogance have incurred the anger of Jehovah.
The two great odes which follow are purely ideal delineations of
what Tyre is in herself; her destruction is assumed as certain
rather than directly predicted, and the prophet gives free play to
his imagination in the effort to set forth the conception of the
city which was impressed on his mind. In ch. xxvii. he dwells on
the external greatness and magnificence of Tyre, her architectural
splendour, her political and military power, and above all her
amazing commercial enterprise. Ch. xxviii., on the other hand, is a
meditation on the peculiar genius of Tyre, her inner spirit of
pride and self-sufficiency, as embodied in the person of her king.
From a literary point of view the two chapters are amongst the most
beautiful in the whole book. In the twenty-seventh chapter the
fiery indignation of the prophet almost disappears, giving place to
the play of
poetic fancy, and a flow of lyric emotion more perfectly rendered
than in any other part of Ezekiel's writings. The distinctive
feature of each passage is the elegy pronounced over the fall of
Tyre; and although the elegy seems just on the point of passing
into the taunt-song, yet the accent of triumph is never suffered to
overwhelm the note of sadness to which these poems owe their
special charm.
I
Ch. xxvii. is
described as a dirge over Tyre. In the previous chapter the
nations were represented as bewailing her fall, but here the
prophet himself takes up a lamentation for her; and, as may have
been usual in real funereal dirges, he commences by celebrating
the might and riches of the doomed city. The fine image which is
maintained throughout the chapter was probably suggested to
Ezekiel by the picturesque situation of Tyre on her sea-girt rock
at “the entries of the sea.” He
compares her to a stately vessel riding at anchorFor the word גבוליך, rendered
“thy borders,” Cornill proposes to
read זבולך, which he thinks might mean “thine anchorage.” The translation is doubtful,
but the sense is certainly appropriate.
near
the shore, taking on board her cargo of precious merchandise, and
ready to start on the perilous voyage from which she is destined
never to return. Meanwhile the gallant ship sits proudly in the
water, tight and seaworthy and sumptuously furnished; and the
prophet's eye runs rapidly over the chief points of her elaborate
construction and equipment (vv. 3-11). Her timbers are fashioned
of cypress from Hermon,Senir was the Amorite name of Mount
Hermon, the Phœnician name being Sirion (Deut. iii. 9). Senir,
however, occurs on the Assyrian monuments, and was probably widely
known.
her
mast is a cedar of Lebanon, her oars are made of the oak of
Bashan, her deck of
sherbîn-woodTeasshur (read בִּחְאַשֻׁרִים
instead of בַּת-אַשׁוּרִים), a kind of tree mentioned several times
in the Old Testament, is generally identified with the sherbîn
tree.
(a
variety of cedar) inlaid with ivory imported from Cyprus. Her
canvas fittings are still more exquisite and costly. The sail is
of Egyptian byssus with embroidered work, and the awning over the
deck was of cloth resplendent in the two purple dyes procured
from the coasts of Elishah.Elishah is one of the sons of Javan
(Ionia) (Gen. x. 4), and must have been some part of the
Mediterranean coast, subject to the influence of Greece. Italy,
Sicily, and the Peloponnesus have been suggested.
The
ship is fitted up for pleasure and luxury as well as for traffic,
the fact symbolised being obviously the architectural and other
splendours which justified the city's boast that she was
“the perfection of beauty.”
But Tyre was
wise and powerful as well as beautiful; and so the prophet, still
keeping up the metaphor, proceeds to describe how the great ship
is manned. Her steersmen are the experienced statesmen whom she
herself has bred and raised to power; her rowers are the men of
Sidon and Aradus, who spend their strength in her service. The
elders and wise men of Gebal are her shipwrights (literally
“stoppers of leaks”); and so great
is her influence that all the naval resources of the world are
subject to her control. Besides this Tyre employs an army of
mercenaries drawn from the remotest quarters of the earth—from
Persia and North Africa, as well as the subordinate towns of
Phœnicia; and these, represented as hanging their shields and
helmets on her sides, make her beauty complete.The details of the description are
nearly all illustrated in pictures of Phœnician war-galleys found
on Assyrian monuments. They show the single mast with its square
sail, the double row of oars, the fighting men on the deck, and the
row of shields along the bulwarks. In an Egyptian picture we have a
representation of the embroidered sail
(ancient ships are said not to have carried a flag).
The canvas is richly ornamented with various devices over its whole
surface, and beneath the sail we see the cabin or awning of
coloured stuff mentioned in the text.
In
these verses the prophet pays a tribute of admiration to the
astuteness with which the rulers of Tyre used their resources to
strengthen her position as the head of the Phœnician confederacy.
Three
of the cities mentioned—Sidon, Aradus, and Gebal or Byblus—were
the most important in Phœnicia; two of them at least had a longer
history than herself, yet they are here truly represented as
performing the rough menial labour which brought wealth and
renown to Tyre. It required no ordinary statecraft to preserve
the balance of so many complex and conflicting interests, and
make them all co-operate for the advancement of the glory of
Tyre; but hitherto her “wise men”
had proved equal to the task.
The second
strophe (vv. 12-25) contains the survey of Tyrian commerce, which
has already been analysed in another connection.See above, pp. 232 ff.
At
first sight it appears as if the allegory were here abandoned,
and the impression is partly correct. In reality the city,
although personified, is regarded as the emporium of the world's
commerce, to which all the nations stream with their produce. But
at the end it appears that the various commodities enumerated
represent the cargo with which the ship is laden. Ships of
Tarshish—i.e., the largest class of
merchant vessels then afloat, used for the long Atlantic
voyage—wait upon her, and fill her with all sorts of precious
things (ver. 25). Then in the last strophe (vv. 26-36), which
speaks of the destruction of Tyre, the figure of the ship is
boldly resumed. The heavily freighted vessel is rowed into the
open sea; there she is struck by an east wind and founders in
deep water. The image suggests two ideas, which must not be
pressed, although they may have an element of historic truth in them:
one is that Tyre perished under the weight of her own commercial
greatness, and the other that her ruin was hastened through the
folly of her rulers. But the main idea is that the destruction of
the city was wrought by the power of God, which suddenly
overwhelmed her at the height of her prosperity and activity. As
the waves close over the doomed vessel the cry of anguish that
goes up from the drowning mariners and passengers strikes terror
into the hearts of all seafaring men. They forsake their ships,
and having reached the safety of the shore abandon themselves to
frantic demonstrations of grief, joining their voices in a
lamentation over the fate of the goodly ship which symbolised the
mistress of the sea (vv. 32-36)It is not clear whether the dirge is
continued to the end of the chapter, or whether vv. 33 ff. are
spoken by the prophet in explanation of the distress of the
nations. The proper elegiac measure cannot be made out without some
alteration of the text.
:—
Who was like Tyre [so glorious]—
In the midst of the sea?
When thy wares went forth from the seas—
Thou filledst the peoples;
With thy wealth and thy merchandise—
Thou enrichedst the earth.
Now art thou broken from the seas—
In depths of the waters;
Thy merchandise and all thy multitude—
Are fallen therein.
All the inhabitants of the islands—
Are shocked at thee,
And their kings shudder greatly—
With tearful countenances.
They that trade among the peoples ...—
Hiss over thee;
Thou art become a terror—
And art no more for ever.
Such is the
end of Tyre. She has vanished utterly from the earth; the
imposing fabric of her greatness is like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and
nothing remains to tell of her former glory but the mourning of
the nations who were once enriched by her commerce.
II
Ch. xxviii.
1-19.—Here the prophet turns to the prince of Tyre, who is
addressed throughout as the impersonation of the consciousness of
a great commercial community. We happen to know from Josephus
that the name of the reigning king at this time was Ithobaal or
Ethbaal II. But it is manifest that the terms of Ezekiel's
message have no reference to the individuality of this or any
other prince of Tyre. It is not likely that the king could have
exercised any great political influence in a city “whose merchants were all princes”; indeed, we
learn from Josephus that the monarchy was abolished in favour of
some sort of elective constitution not long after the death of
Ithobaal. Nor is there any reason to suppose that Ezekiel has in
view any special manifestation of arrogance on the part of the
royal house, such as a pretension to be descended from the gods.
The king here is simply the representative of the genius of the
community, the sins of heart charged against him are the
expression of the sinful principle which the prophet detected
beneath the refinement and luxury of Tyre, and his shameful death
only symbolises the downfall of the city. The prophecy consists
of two parts: first, an accusation against the prince of Tyre,
ending with a threat of destruction (vv. 2-10); and second, a
lament over his fall (vv. 11-19). The point of view is very
different in these two sections. In the first the prince is still
conceived as a man; and the language put into his mouth, although
extravagant, does not exceed the limits of purely human
arrogance. In the second, however, the king appears as an angelic
being, an inhabitant
of Eden and a companion of the cherub, sinless at first, and
falling from his high estate through his own transgression. It
almost seems as if the prophet had in his mind the idea of a
tutelary spirit or genius of Tyre, like the angelic princes in
the book of Daniel who preside over the destinies of different
nations.Dan. x. 20, 21, xii. 1.
But
in spite of its enhanced idealism, the passage only clothes in
forms drawn from Babylonian mythology the boundless
self-glorification of Tyre; and the expulsion of the prince from
paradise is merely the ideal counterpart of the overthrow of the
city which is his earthly abode.
The sin of
Tyre is an overweening pride, which culminated in an attitude of
self-deification on the part of its king. Surrounded on every
hand by the evidences of man's mastery over the world, by the
achievements of human art and industry and enterprise, the king
feels as if his throne on the sea-girt island were a veritable
seat of the gods, and as if he himself were a being truly divine.
His heart is lifted up; and, forgetful of the limits of his
mortality, he “sets his mind like the
mind of a god.” The godlike quality on which he specially
prides himself is the superhuman wisdom evinced by the
extraordinary prosperity of the city with which he identifies
himself. Wiser than Daniel! the prophet ironically exclaims;
“no secret thing is too dark for
thee!” “By thy wisdom and thine
insight thou hast gotten thee wealth, and hast gathered gold and
silver into thy treasuries: by thy great wisdom in thy commerce
thou hast multiplied thy wealth, and thy heart is lifted up
because of thy riches.” The prince sees in the vast
accumulation of material resources in Tyre nothing but the
reflection of the genius of her inhabitants; and being himself
the incarnation of the spirit of the city, he takes the glory of
it to himself
and esteems himself a god. Such impious self-exaltation must
inevitably call down the vengeance of Him who is the only living
God; and Ezekiel proceeds to announce the humiliation of the
prince by the “most ruthless of the
nations”—i.e., the Chaldæans. He shall
then know how much of divinity doth hedge a king. In face of them
that seek his life he shall learn that he is man and not God, and
that there are forces in the world against which the vaunted
wisdom of Tyre is of no avail. An ignominious death“The death of
the uncircumcised”—i.e., a death which involves
exclusion from the rites of honourable burial; like burial in
unconsecrated ground among Christian nations.
at
the hand of strangers is the fate reserved for the mortal who so
proudly exalted himself against all that is called God.
The thought
thus expressed, when disengaged from its peculiar setting, is one
of permanent importance. To Ezekiel, as to the prophets
generally, Tyre is the representative of commercial greatness,
and the truth which he here seeks to illustrate is that the
abnormal development of the mercantile spirit had in her case
destroyed the capacity of faith in that which is truly divine.
Tyre no doubt, like every other ancient state, still maintained a
public religion of the type common to Semitic paganism. She was
the sacred seat of a special cult, and the temple of Melkarth was
considered the chief glory of the city. But the public and
perfunctory worship which was there celebrated had long ceased to
express the highest consciousness of the community. The real god
of Tyre was not Baal nor Melkarth, but the king, or any other
object that might serve as a symbol of her civic greatness. Her
religion was one that embodied itself in no outward ritual; it
was the enthusiasm which was kindled in the heart of every
citizen of Tyre by the magnificence of the imperial city to which
he belonged. The state of mind which Ezekiel regards as characteristic of
Tyre was perhaps the inevitable outcome of a high civilisation
informed by no loftier religious conceptions than those common to
heathenism. It is the idea which afterwards found expression in
the deification of the Roman emperors—the idea that the state is
the only power higher than the individual to which he can look
for the furtherance of his material and spiritual interests, the
only power, therefore, which rightly claims his homage and his
reverence. None the less it is a state of mind which is
destructive of all that is essential to living religion; and Tyre
in her proud self-sufficiency was perhaps further from a true
knowledge of God than the barbarous tribes who in all sincerity
worshipped the rude idols which represented the invisible power
that ruled their destinies. And in exposing the irreligious
spirit which lay at the heart of the Tyrian civilisation the
prophet lays his finger on the spiritual danger which attends the
successful pursuit of the finite interests of human life. The
thought of God, the sense of an immediate relation of the spirit
of man to the Eternal and the Infinite, are easily displaced from
men's minds by undue admiration for the achievements of a culture
based on material progress, and supplying every need of human
nature except the very deepest, the need of God. “For that is truly a man's religion, the object of
which fills and holds captive his soul and heart and mind, in
which he trusts above all things, which above all things he longs
for and hopes for.”Dean Church, Cathedral and
University Sermons, p. 150.
The
commercial spirit is indeed but one of the forms in which men
devote themselves to the service of this present world; but in
any community where it reigns supreme we may confidently look for
the same signs of religious decay which Ezekiel detected in Tyre
in his own day. At all events his message is not superfluous in an age
and country where energies are well-nigh exhausted in the
accumulation of the means of living, and whose social problems
all run up into the great question of the distribution of wealth.
It is essentially the same truth which Ruskin, with something of
the power and insight of a Hebrew prophet, has so eloquently
enforced on the men who make modern England—that the true
religion of a community does not live in the venerable
institutions to which it yields a formal and conventional
deference, but in the objects which inspire its most eager
ambitions, the ideals which govern its standard of worth, in
those things wherein it finds the ultimate ground of its
confidence and the reward of its work.“We have,
indeed, a nominal religion, to which we pay tithes of property and
sevenths of time; but we have also a practical and earnest
religion, to which we devote nine-tenths of our property, and
six-sevenths of our time. And we dispute a great deal about the
nominal religion: but we are all unanimous about this practical
one; of which I think you will admit that the ruling goddess may be
best generally described as the ‘Goddess of
Getting-on,’ or ‘Britannia of the
Market.’ The Athenians had an ‘Athena Agoraia,’ or Athena of the Market; but
she was a subordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia
Agoraia is the principal type of ours. And all your great
architectural works are, of course, built to her. It is long since
you built a great cathedral; and how you would laugh at me if I
proposed building a cathedral on the top of one of these hills of
yours, to make it an Acropolis! But your railroad mounds, vaster
than the walls of Babylon; your railroad stations, vaster than the
temple of Ephesus, and innumerable; your chimneys, how much more
mighty and costly than cathedral spires! your harbour-piers; your
warehouses; your exchanges!—all these are built to your great
Goddess of ‘Getting-on;’ and she has
formed, and will continue to form, your architecture, as long as
you worship her; and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to
build to her; you know far better than
I.”—The Crown of Wild Olive.
The
lamentation over the fall of the prince of Tyre (vv. 11-19)
reiterates the same lesson with a boldness and freedom of
imagination not usual with this prophet. The passage is full of
obscurities and difficulties which cannot be adequately discussed
here, but the main lines of the conception are easily grasped. It
describes the original state of the prince as a semi-divine
being, and his fall from that state on account of sin that was
found in him. The picture is no doubt ironical; Ezekiel actually
means nothing more than that the soaring pride of Tyre enthroned
its king or its presiding genius in the seat of the gods, and
endowed him with attributes more than mortal. The prophet accepts
the idea, and shows that there was sin in Tyre enough to hurl the
most radiant of celestial creatures from heaven to hell. The
passage presents certain obvious affinities with the account of
the Fall in the second and third chapters of Genesis; but it also
contains reminiscences of a mythology the key to which is now
lost. It can hardly be supposed that the vivid details of the
imagery, such as the “mountain of
God,” the “stones of fire,”
“the precious gems,” are
altogether due to the prophet's imagination. The mountain of the
gods is now known to have been a prominent idea of the Babylonian
religion; and there appears to have been a widespread notion that
in the abode of the gods were treasures of gold and precious
stones, jealously guarded by griffins, of which small quantities
found their way into the possession of men. It is possible that
fragments of these mythical notions may have reached the
knowledge of Ezekiel during his sojourn in Babylon and been used
by him to fill up his picture of the glories which surrounded the
first estate of the king of Tyre. It should be observed, however,
that the prince is not to be identified with the cherub or one of
the cherubim. The words “Thou art the
anointed cherub that covereth, and I have set thee so”
(ver. 14) may be translated “With the ...
cherub I set thee”; and similarly the words of ver. 16,
“I will destroy thee, O covering
cherub,” should probably be rendered “And
the cherub hath destroyed thee.” The whole conception is
greatly simplified by these changes, and the principal features
of it, so far as they can be made out with clearness, are as
follows: The cherub is the warden of the “holy mountain of God,” and no doubt also (as
in ch. i.) the symbol and bearer of the divine glory. When it is
said that the prince of Tyre was placed with the cherub, the
meaning is that he had his place in the abode of God, or was
admitted to the presence of God, so long as he preserved the
perfection in which he was created (ver. 15). The other allusions
to his original glory, such as the “covering” of precious stones and the
“walking amidst fiery stones,”
cannot be explained with any degree of certainty.The “fiery
stones” may represent the thunderbolts, which were harmless
to the prince in virtue of his innocence. It may be noted that the
“precious stones” that were his
covering (ver. 13) correspond with nine out of the twelve jewels
that covered the high-priestly breastplate (Exod. xxviii. 17-19),
the stones of the third row being those not here represented. This
suggests that the allusion is rather to bejewelled garments than to
the plumage of the wings of the cherub with whom the prince has
been wrongly identified.
When iniquity is found in him so that he must be banished from
the presence of God, the cherub is said to destroy him from the
midst of the stones of fire—i.e., is the agent of the
divine judgment which descends on the prince. It is thus doubtful
whether the prince is conceived as a perfect human being, like
Adam before his fall, or as an angelic, superhuman creature; but
the point is of little importance in an ideal delineation such as
we have here. It will be seen that even on the first supposition
there is no very close correspondence with the story of Eden in
the book of Genesis, for there the cherubim are placed to guard
the way of the tree of life only after man has been expelled from
the garden.
But what is
the sin that tarnished the sanctity of this exalted personage and
cost him his place among the immortals? Ideally, it was an access of
pride that caused his ruin, a spiritual sin, such as might
originate in the heart of an angelic being.
By that sin fell the angels: how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
His heart was
lifted up because of his beauty, and he forfeited his godlike
wisdom over his brilliance (ver. 17). But really, this change
passing over the spirit of the prince in the seat of God is only
the reflection of what is done on earth in Tyre. As her commerce
increased, the proofs of her unjust and unscrupulous use of
wealth were accumulated against her, and her midst was filled
with violence (ver. 16). This is the only allusion in the three
chapters to the wrong and oppression and the outrages on humanity
which were the inevitable accompaniments of that greed of gain
which had taken possession of the Tyrian community. And these
sins are regarded as a demoralisation taking place in the nature
of the prince who is the representative of the city; by the
“iniquity of his traffic he has profaned
his holiness,” and is cast down from his lofty seat to the
earth, a spectacle of abject humiliation for kings to gloat over.
By a sudden change of metaphor the destruction of the city is
also represented as a fire breaking out in the vitals of the
prince and reducing his body to ashes—a conception which has not
unnaturally suggested to some commentators the fable of the
phœnix which was supposed periodically to immolate herself in a
fire of her own kindling.
III
A short oracle
on Sidon completes the series of prophecies dealing with the
future of Israel's immediate neighbours (vv. 20-23). Sidon lay
about twenty miles farther north than Tyre, and was, as we have
seen, at this
time subject to the authority of the younger and more vigorous
city. From the book of Jeremiah,Jer. xxv. 22, xxvii. 3.
however, we see that Sidon was an autonomous state, and preserved
a measure of independence even in matters of foreign policy.
There is therefore nothing arbitrary in assigning a separate
oracle to this most northerly of the states in immediate contact
with the people of Israel, although it must be admitted that
Ezekiel has nothing distinctive to say of Sidon. Phœnicia was in
truth so overshadowed by Tyre that all the characteristics of the
people have been amply illustrated in the chapters that have
dealt with the latter city. The prophecy is accordingly delivered
in the most general terms, and indicates rather the purpose and
effect of the judgment than the manner in which it is to come or
the character of the people against whom it is directed. It
passes insensibly into a prediction of the glorious future of
Israel, which is important as revealing the underlying motive of
all the preceding utterances against the heathen nations. The
restoration of Israel and the destruction of her old neighbours
are both parts of one comprehensive scheme of divine providence,
the ultimate object of which is a demonstration before the eyes
of the world of the holiness of Jehovah. That men might know that
He is Jehovah, God alone, is the end alike of His dealings with
the heathen and with His own people. And the two parts of God's
plan are in the mind of Ezekiel intimately related to each other;
the one is merely a condition of the realisation of the other.
The crowning proof of Jehovah's holiness will be seen in His
faithfulness to the promise made to the patriarchs of the
possession of the land of Canaan, and in the security and
prosperity enjoyed by Israel when brought back to their land a
purified nation. Now in the past Israel had been constantly interfered with,
crippled, humiliated, and seduced by the petty heathen powers
around her borders. These had been a pricking brier and a
stinging thorn (ver. 24), constantly annoying and harassing her
and impeding the free development of her national life. Hence the
judgments here denounced against them are no doubt in the first
instance a punishment for what they had been and done in the
past; but they are also a clearing of the stage that Israel might
be isolated from the rest of the world, and be free to mould her
national life and her religious institutions in accordance with
the will of her God. That is the substance of the last three
verses of the chapter; and while they exhibit the peculiar
limitations of the prophet's thinking, they enable us at the same
time to do justice to the singular unity and consistency of aim
which guided him in his great forecast of the future of the
kingdom of God. There remains now the case of Egypt to be dealt
with; but Egypt's relations to Israel and her position in the
world were so unique that Ezekiel reserves consideration of her
future for a separate group of oracles longer than those on all
the other nations put together.
Chapter XVIII. Egypt. Chapters
xxix.-xxxii.
Egypt figures in
the prophecies of Ezekiel as a great world-power cherishing
projects of universal dominion. Once more, as in the age of Isaiah,
the ruling factor in Asiatic politics was the duel for the mastery
of the world between the rival empires of the Nile and the
Euphrates. The influence of Egypt was perhaps even greater in the
beginning of the sixth century than it had been in the end of the
eighth, although in the interval it had suffered a signal eclipse.
Isaiah (ch. xix.) had predicted a subjugation of Egypt by the
Assyrians, and this prophecy had been fulfilled in the year 672,
when Esarhaddon invaded the country and incorporated it in the
Assyrian empire. He divided its territory into twenty petty
principalities governed by Assyrian or native rulers, and this
state of things had lasted with little change for a generation.
During the reign of Asshurbanipal Egypt was frequently overrun by
Assyrian armies, and the repeated attempts of the Ethiopian
monarchs, aided by revolts among the native princes, to reassert
their sovereignty over the Nile Valley were all foiled by the
energy of the Assyrian king or the vigilance of his generals. At
last, however, a new era of prosperity dawned for Egypt about the
year 645. Psammetichus, the ruler of Saïs, with the help of foreign
mercenaries, succeeded in uniting the whole land under his sway; he
expelled the Assyrian
garrison, and became the founder of the brilliant twenty-sixth
(Saïte) dynasty. From this time Egypt possessed in a strong central
administration the one indispensable condition of her material
prosperity. Her power was consolidated by a succession of vigorous
rulers, and she immediately began to play a leading part in the
affairs of Asia. The most distinguished king of the dynasty was
Necho II., the son and successor of Psammetichus. Two striking
facts mentioned by Herodotus are worthy of mention, as showing the
originality and vigour with which the Egyptian administration was
at this time conducted. One is the project of cutting a canal
between the Nile and the Red Sea, an undertaking which was
abandoned by Necho in consequence of an oracle warning him that he
was only working for the advantage of foreigners—meaning no doubt
the Phœnicians. Necho, however, knew how to turn the Phœnician
seamanship to good account, as is proved by the other great stroke
of genius with which he is credited—the circumnavigation of Africa.
It was a Phœnician fleet, despatched from Suez by his orders, which
first rounded the Cape of Good Hope, returning to Egypt by the
Straits of Gibraltar after a three years' voyage. And if Necho was
less successful in war than in the arts of peace, it was not from
want of activity. He was the Pharaoh who defeated Josiah in the
plain of Megiddo, and afterwards contested the lordship of Syria
with Nebuchadnezzar. His defeat at Carchemish in 604 compelled him
to retire to his own land; but the power of Egypt was still
unbroken, and the Chaldæan king knew that he would yet have to
reckon with her in his schemes for the conquest of Palestine.
At the time to
which these prophecies belong the king of Egypt was Pharaoh Hophra
(in Greek, Apries), the grandson of Necho II. Ascending the throne
in 588 b.c., he found it
necessary for the protection of his own interests to take an active part in the politics
of Syria. He is said to have attacked Phœnicia by sea and land,
capturing Sidon and defeating a Tyrian fleet in a naval engagement.
His object must have been to secure the ascendency of the Egyptian
party in the Phœnician cities; and the stubborn resistance which
Nebuchadnezzar encountered from Tyre was no doubt the result of the
political arrangements made by Hophra after his victory. No armed
intervention was needed to ensure a spirited defence of Jerusalem;
and it was only after the Babylonians were encamped around the city
that Hophra sent an Egyptian army to its relief. He was unable,
however, to effect more than a temporary suspension of the siege,
and returned to Egypt, leaving Judah to its fate, apparently
without venturing on a battle (Jer. xxxvii. 5-7). No further
hostilities between Egypt and Babylon are recorded during the
lifetime of Hophra. He continued to reign with vigour and success
till 571, when he was dethroned by Amasis, one of his own
generals.
These
circumstances show a remarkable parallel to the political situation
with which Isaiah had to deal at the time of Sennacherib's
invasion. Judah was again in the position of the “earthen pipkin between two iron pots.” It is
certain that neither Jehoiakim nor Zedekiah, any more than the
advisers of Hezekiah in the earlier period, would have embarked on
a conflict with the Mesopotamian empire but for delusive promises
of Egyptian support. There was the same vacillation and division of
counsels in Jerusalem, the same dilatoriness on the part of Egypt,
and the same futile effort to retrieve a desperate situation after
the favourable moment had been allowed to slip. In both cases the
conflict was precipitated by the triumph of an Egyptian party in
the Judæan court; and it is probable that in both cases the king
was coerced into a policy of which his judgment did not approve.
And the prophets
of the later period, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, adhere closely to the
lines laid down by Isaiah in the time of Sennacherib, warning the
people against putting their trust in the vain help of Egypt, and
counselling passive submission to the course of events which
expressed the unalterable judgment of the Almighty. Ezekiel indeed
borrows an image that had been current in the days of Isaiah in
order to set forth the utter untrustworthiness and dishonesty of
Egypt towards the nations who were induced to rely on her power. He
compares her to a staff of reed, which breaks when one grasps it,
piercing the hand and making the loins to totter when it is leant
upon.Ezek. xxix. 6, 7: cf. Isa. xxxvi. 6
(the words of Rabshakeh). In ver. 7 read כף, “hand,” for כתף, “shoulder,” and המעדת, “madest to totter,” for העמדת, “madest to stand.”
Such
had Egypt been to Israel through all her history, and such she will
again prove herself to be in her last attempt to use Israel as the
tool of her selfish designs. The great difference between Ezekiel
and Isaiah is that, whereas Isaiah had access to the councils of
Hezekiah and could bring his influence to bear on the inception of
schemes of state, not without hope of averting what he saw to be a
disastrous decision, Ezekiel could only watch the development of
events from afar, and throw his warnings into the form of
predictions of the fate in store for Egypt.
The oracles
against Egypt are seven in number: (i) ch. xxix. 1-16; (ii) 17-21;
(iii) xxx. 1-19; (iv) 20-26; (v) xxxi.; (vi) xxxii. 1-16; (vii)
17-32. They are all variations of one theme, the annihilation of
the power of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, and little progress of
thought can be traced from the first to the last. Excluding the
supplementary prophecy of ch. xxix. 17-21, which is a later
addition, the order appears to be strictly chronological.This is probable according to the
Hebrew text, which, however, omits the number of the month
in ch. xxxii. 17. The Septuagint reads “in
the first month”; if this is
accepted, it would be better to read the eleventh year instead of the
twelfth in ch. xxxii. 1, as is done by some ancient versions and
Hebrew codices. The change involves a difference of only one letter
in Hebrew.
The
series begins seven months before the capture of Jerusalem (ch. xxix. 1), and ends
about eight months after that event.Ch. xxxii. 17, following the LXX.
reading.
How
far the dates refer to actual occurrences coming to the knowledge
of the prophet it is impossible for us to say. It is clear that his
interest is centred on the fate of Jerusalem then hanging in the
balance; and it is possible that the first oracles (chs. xxix.
1-16, xxx. 1-19) may be called forth by the appearance of Hophra's
army on the scene, while the next (ch. xxx. 20-26) plainly alludes
to the repulse of the Egyptians by the Chaldæans. But no attempt
can be made to connect the prophecies with incidents of the
campaign; the prophet's thoughts are wholly occupied with the moral
and religious issues involved in the contest, the vindication of
Jehovah's holiness in the overthrow of the great world-power which
sought to thwart His purposes.
Ch. xxix. 1-16
is an introduction to all that follows, presenting a general
outline of the prophet's conceptions of the fate of Egypt. It
describes the sin of which she has been guilty, and indicates the
nature of the judgment that is to overtake her and her future place
among the nations of the world. The Pharaoh is compared to a
“great dragon,” wallowing in his
native waters, and deeming himself secure from molestation in his
reedy haunts. The crocodile was a natural symbol of Egypt, and the
image conveys accurately the impression of sluggish and unwieldy
strength which Egypt in the days of Ezekiel had long produced on
shrewd observers of her policy. Pharaoh is the incarnate genius of
the country; and as
the Nile was the strength and glory of Egypt, he is here
represented as arrogating to himself the ownership and even the
creation of the wonderful river. “My river
is mine, and I have made it” is the proud and blasphemous
thought which expresses his consciousness of a power that owns no
superior in earth or heaven. That the Nile was worshipped by the
Egyptians with divine honours did not alter the fact that beneath
all their ostentatious religious observances there was an immoral
sense of irresponsible power in the use of the natural resources to
which the land owed its prosperity. For this spirit of ungodly
self-exaltation the king and people of Egypt are to be visited with
a signal judgment, from which they shall learn who it is that is
God over all. The monster of the Nile shall be drawn from his
waters with hooks, with all his fishes sticking to his scales, and
left to perish ignominiously on the desert sands. The rest of the
prophecy (vv. 8-16) gives the explanation of the allegory in
literal, though still general, terms. The meaning is that Egypt
shall be laid waste by the sword, its teeming population led into
captivity, and the land shall lie desolate, untrodden by the foot
of man or beast for the space of forty years. “From Migdol to Syene”Migdol was on the north-east border of
Egypt, twelve miles south of Pelusium (Sin), at the mouth of the
eastern arm of the Nile. Syene is the modern Assouan, at the first
cataract of the Nile, and has always been the boundary between
Egypt proper and Ethiopia.
—the
extreme limits of the country—the rich valley of the Nile shall be
uncultivated and uninhabited for that period of time.
The most
interesting feature of the prophecy is the view which is given of
the final condition of the Egyptian empire (vv. 13-16). In all
cases the prophetic delineations of the future of different nations
are coloured by the present circumstances of those nations as known
to the writers. Ezekiel knew that the fertile soil of Egypt
would always be
capable of supporting an industrious peasantry, and that her
existence did not depend on her continuing to play the rôle of a great power. Tyre
depended on her commerce, and apart from that which was the root of
her sin could never be anything but the resort of poor fishermen,
who would not even make their dwelling on the barren rock in the
midst of the sea. But Egypt could still be a country, though shorn
of the glory and power which had made her a snare to the people of
God. On the other hand the geographical isolation of the land made
it impossible that she should lose her individuality amongst the
nations of the world. Unlike the small states, such as Edom and
Ammon, which were obviously doomed to be swallowed up by the
surrounding population as soon as their power was broken, Egypt
would retain her distinct and characteristic life as long as the
physical condition of the world remained what it was. Accordingly
the prophet does not contemplate an utter annihilation of Egypt,
but only a temporary chastisement succeeded by her permanent
degradation to the lowest rank among the kingdoms. The forty years
of her desolation represent in round numbers the period of Chaldæan
supremacy during which Jerusalem lies in ruins. Ezekiel at this
time expected the invasion of Egypt to follow soon after the
capture of Jerusalem, so that the restoration of the two peoples
would be simultaneous. At the end of forty years the whole world
will be reorganised on a new basis, Israel occupying the central
position as the people of God, and in that new world Egypt shall
have a separate but subordinate place. Jehovah will bring back the
Egyptians from their captivity, and cause them to return to
“Pathros,Pathros is the name of Upper Egypt,
the narrow valley of the Nile above the Delta. In the Egyptian
tradition it was regarded as the original home of the nation and
the seat of the oldest dynasties. Whether Ezekiel means that the
Egyptians shall recover only Pathros, while the Delta is allowed to
remain uncultivated, is a question that must be left
undecided.
the
land of their origin,” and there make them a “lowly state,” no longer an imperial power, but
humbler than the
surrounding kingdoms. The righteousness of Jehovah and the interest
of Israel alike demand that Egypt should be thus reduced from her
former greatness. In the old days her vast and imposing power had
been a constant temptation to the Israelites, “a confidence, a reminder of iniquity,” leading
them to put their trust in human power and luring them into paths
of danger by deceitful promises (vv. 6-7). In the final
dispensation of history this shall no longer be the case: Israel
shall then know Jehovah, and no form of human power shall be
suffered to lead their hearts astray from Him who is the rock of
their salvation.
Ch. xxx.
1-19.—The judgment on Egypt spreads terror and dismay among all the
neighbouring nations. It signalises the advent of the great day of
Jehovah, the day of His final reckoning with the powers of evil
everywhere. It is the “time of the
heathen” that has come (ver. 3). Egypt being the chief
embodiment of secular power on the basis of pagan religion, the
sudden collapse of her might is equivalent to a judgment on
heathenism in general, and the moral effect of it conveys to the
world a demonstration of the omnipotence of the one true God whom
she had ignored and defied. The nations immediately involved in the
fall of Egypt are the allies and mercenaries whom she has called to
her aid in the time of her calamity. Ethiopians, and Lydians, and
Libyans, and Arabs, and Cretans,Hebrew, “Cush,
and Put, and Lud, and all the mixed multitude, and Chub, and the
sons of the land of the covenant.” Cornill reads,
“Cush, and Put, and Lud, and Lub, and all
Arabia, and the sons of Crete.” The emendations are partly
based on somewhat intricate reasoning from the text of the Greek
and Ethiopic versions; but they have the advantage of yielding a
series of proper names, as the context seems to demand. Put and Lud
are tribes lying to the west of Egypt, and so also is Lub, which
may be safely substituted for the otherwise unknown Chub of the
Hebrew text.
the
“helpers of Egypt,” who have furnished contingents to her
motley army, fall by the sword along with her, and their countries
share the desolation that overtakes the land of Egypt. Swift
messengers are then seen speeding up the Nile in ships to convey to
the careless Ethiopians the alarming tidings of the overthrow of
Egypt (ver. 9). From this point the prophet confines his attention
to the fate of Egypt, which he describes with a fulness of detail
that implies a certain acquaintance both with the topography and
the social circumstances of the country. In ver. 10 Nebuchadnezzar
and the Chaldæans are for the first time mentioned by name as the
human instruments employed by Jehovah to execute His judgment on
Egypt. After the slaughter of the inhabitants, the next consequence
of the invasion is the destruction of the canals and reservoirs and
the decay of the system of irrigation on which the productiveness
of the country depended. “The rivers
[canals] are dried up, and the land is made waste, and the fulness
thereof, by the hand of strangers” (ver. 12). And with the
material fabric of her prosperity the complicated system of
religious and civil institutions which was entwined with the hoary
civilisation of Egypt vanishes for ever. “The idols are destroyed; the potentatesReading אלים, “strong ones,” instead of אלילים, “not-gods,” as in the LXX. The latter term is
common in Isaiah, but does not occur elsewhere in Ezekiel, although
he had constant occasion to use it.
are
made to cease from Memphis, and princes from the land of Egypt, so
that they shall be no more” (ver. 13). Faith in the native
gods shall be extinguished, and a trembling fear of Jehovah shall
fill the whole land. The passage ends with an enumeration of various centres of the
national life, which formed as it were the sensitive ganglia where
the universal calamity was most acutely felt. On these
cities,The cities are not mentioned in any
geographical order. Memphis (Noph) and Thebes (No) are the ancient
and populous capitals of Lower and Upper Egypt respectively; Tanis
(Zoan) was the city of the Hyksos, and subsequently a royal seat;
Pelusium (Sin), “the bulwark of
Egypt,” and Daphne (Tahpanhes) guarded the approach to the
Delta from the East; Heliopolis (On, wrongly pointed Aven) was the
famous centre of Egyptian wisdom, and the chief seat of the worship
of the sun-god Ra; and Bubastis (Pi-beseth), besides being a
celebrated religious centre, was one of the possessions of the
Egyptian military caste.
each
of which was identified with the worship of a particular deity,
Jehovah executes the judgments in which He makes known to the
Egyptians His sole divinity and destroys their confidence in false
gods. They also possessed some special military or political
importance, so that with their destruction the sceptres of Egypt
were broken and the pride of her strength was laid low (ver.
18).
Ch. xxx.
20-26.—A new oracle, dated three months later than the preceding.
Pharaoh is represented as a combatant, already disabled in one arm
and sore pressed by his powerful antagonist the king of Babylon.
Jehovah announces that the wounded arm cannot be healed, although
he has retired from the contest for that purpose. On the contrary,
both his arms shall be broken and the sword struck from his grasp,
while the arms of Nebuchadnezzar are strengthened by Jehovah, who
puts His own sword into his hand. The land of Egypt, thus rendered
defenceless, falls an easy prey to the Chaldæans, and its people
are dispersed among the nations. The occasion of the prophecy is
the repulse of Hophra's expedition for the relief of Jerusalem,
which is referred to as a past event. The date may either mark the
actual time of the occurrence (as in ch. xxiv. 1), or the time when
it came
to the knowledge of Ezekiel. The prophet at all events accepts this
reverse to the Egyptian arms as an earnest of the speedy
realisation of his predictions in the total submission of the proud
empire of the Nile.
Ch. xxxi.
occupies the same position in the prophecies against Egypt as the
allegory of the richly laden ship in those against Tyre (ch.
xxvii.). The incomparable majesty and overshadowing power of Egypt
are set forth under the image of a lordly cedar in Lebanon, whose
top reaches to the clouds and whose branches afford shelter to all
the beasts of the earth. The exact force of the allegory is
somewhat obscured by a slight error of the text, which must have
crept in at a very early period. As it stands in the Hebrew and in
all the ancient versions the whole chapter is a description of the
greatness not of Egypt but of Assyria. “To
whom art thou like in thy greatness?” asks the prophet (ver.
2); and the answer is, “Assyria was great
as thou art, yet Assyria fell and is no more.” There is thus
a double comparison: Assyria is compared to a cedar, and then Egypt
is tacitly compared to Assyria. This interpretation may not be
altogether indefensible. That the fate of Assyria contained a
warning against the pride of Pharaoh is a thought in itself
intelligible, and such as Ezekiel might very well have expressed.
But if he had wished to express it, he would not have done it so
awkwardly as this interpretation supposes. When we follow the
connection of ideas we cannot fail to see that Assyria is not in
the prophet's thoughts at all. The image is consistently pursued
without a break to the end of the chapter, and then we learn that
the subject of the description is “Pharaoh
and all his multitude” (ver. 18). But if the writer is
thinking of Egypt at the end, he must have been thinking of it from
the beginning, and the mention of Assyria is out of place and
misleading.
The confusion has been caused by the substitution of the word
Asshur (in ver. 3) for
T'asshur, the name of the
sherbîn tree, itself a species of cedar. We should therefore read,
“Behold a T'asshur, a cedar in
Lebanon,” etc.;It is only fair to say that the
construction “a T'asshur, a cedar,”
or, still more, “a T'asshur of a
cedar,” is somewhat harsh. It is not unlikely that the word
“cedar” may have been added after
the reading “Assyrian” had been
established, in order to complete the sense.
and
the answer to the question of ver. 2 is that the position of Egypt
is as unrivalled among the kingdoms of the world as this stately
tree among the trees of the forest.
With this
alteration the course of thought is perfectly clear, although
incongruous elements are combined in the representation. The
towering height of the cedar with its top in the clouds symbolises
the imposing might of Egypt and its ungodly pride (cf. vv. 10, 14).
The waters of the flood which nourish its roots are those of the
Nile, the source of Egypt's wealth and greatness. The birds that
build their nests in its branches and the beasts that bring forth
their young under its shadow are the smaller nations that looked to
Egypt for protection and support. Finally, the trees in the garden
of God who envy the luxuriant pride of this monarch of the forest
represent the other great empires of the earth who vainly aspired
to emulate the prosperity and magnificence of Egypt (vv. 3-9).
In the next
strophe (vv. 10-14) we see the great trunk lying prone across
mountain and valley, while its branches lie broken in all the
water-courses. A “mighty one of the
nations” (Nebuchadnezzar) has gone up against it, and felled
it to the earth. The nations have been scared from under its
shadow; and the tree which “but yesterday
might have stood against the world” now lies prostrate and
dishonoured—“none so poor as do it
reverence.”
And the fall of the cedar reveals a moral principle and conveys a
moral lesson to all other proud and stately trees. Its purpose is
to remind the other great empires that they too are mortal, and to
warn them against the soaring ambition and lifting up of the heart
which had brought about the humiliation of Egypt: “that none of the trees by the water should exalt
themselves in stature or shoot their tops between the clouds, and
that their mighty ones should not stand proudly in their loftiness
(all who are fed by water); for they are all delivered to death, to
the under-world with the children of men, to those that go down to
the pit.” In reality there is no more impressive intimation
of the vanity of earthly glory than the decay of those mighty
empires and civilisations which once stood in the van of human
progress; nor is there a fitter emblem of their fate than the
sudden crash of some great forest tree before the woodman's
axe.
The development
of the prophet's thought, however, here reaches a point where it
breaks through the allegory, which has been hitherto consistently
maintained. All nature shudders in sympathy with the fallen cedar:
the deep mourns and withholds her streams from the earth; Lebanon
is clothed with blackness, and all the trees languish. Egypt was so
much a part of the established order that the world does not know
itself when she has vanished. While this takes place on earth, the
cedar itself has gone down to Sheôl, where the other shades of
vanished dynasties are comforted because this mightiest of them all
has become like to the rest. This is the answer to the question
that introduced the allegory. To whom art thou like? None is fit to
be compared to thee; yet “thou shalt be
brought down with the trees of Eden to the lower parts of the
earth, thou shalt lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with them
that are slain of the sword.” It is needless to enlarge on this idea, which is
out of keeping here, and is more adequately treated in the next
chapter.
Ch. xxxii.
consists of two lamentations to be chanted over the fall of Egypt
by the prophet and the daughters of the nations (vv. 16, 18). The
first (vv. 1-16) describes the destruction of Pharaoh, and the
effect which is produced on earth; while the second (vv. 17-32)
follows his shade into the abode of the dead, and expatiates on the
welcome that awaits him there. Both express the spirit of
exultation over a fallen foe, which was one of the uses to which
elegiac poetry was turned amongst the Hebrews. The first passage,
however, can hardly be considered a dirge in any proper sense of
the word. It is essential to a true elegy that the subject of it
should be conceived as dead, and that whether serious or ironical
it should celebrate a glory that has passed away. In this case the
elegiac note (of the elegiac measure there is hardly a trace)
is just struck in the opening line: “O
young lion of the nations! [How] art thou undone!” But this
is not sustained: the passage immediately falls into the style of
direct prediction and threatening, and is indeed closely parallel
to the opening prophecy of the series (ch. xxix.). The fundamental
image is the same: that of a great Nile monster spouting from his
nostrils and fouling the waters with his feet (ver. 2). His capture
by many nations and his lingering death on the open field are
described with the realistic and ghastly details naturally
suggested by the figure (vv. 3-6). The image is then abruptly
changed in order to set forth the effect of so great a calamity on
the world of nature and of mankind. Pharaoh is compared to a
brilliant luminary, whose sudden extinction is followed by a
darkening of all the lights of heaven and by consternation amongst
the nations and kings of earth (vv. 7-10). It is thought
by some that the
violence of the transition is to be explained by the idea of the
heavenly constellation of the dragon, answering to the dragon of
the Nile, to which Egypt had just been likened.See Smend on the passage. Dr.
Davidson, however, doubts the possibility of this: see his
commentary.
Finally all metaphors are abandoned, and the desolation of Egypt is
announced in literal terms as accomplished by the sword of the king
of Babylon and the “most terrible of the
nations” (vv. 11-16).
But all the
foregoing oracles are surpassed in grandeur of conception by the
remarkable Vision of Hades which concludes the series—“one of the most weird passages in literature”
(Davidson). In form it is a dirge supposed to be sung at the burial
of Pharaoh and his host by the prophet along with the daughters of
famous nations (ver. 18). But the theme, as has been already
observed, is the entrance of the deceased warriors into the
under-world, and their reception by the shades that have gone down
thither before them. In order to understand it we must bear in mind
some features of the conception of the under-world, which it is
difficult for the modern mind to realise distinctly. First of all,
Sheôl or the “pit,” the realm of the
dead, is pictured to the imagination as an adumbration of the grave
or sepulchre, in which the body finds its last resting-place; or
rather it is the aggregate of all the burying-grounds scattered
over the earth's surface. There the shades are grouped according to
their clans and nationalities, just as on earth the members of the
same family would usually be interred in one burying-place. The
grave of the chief or king, the representative of the nation, is
surrounded by those of his vassals and subjects, earthly
distinctions being thus far preserved. The condition of the dead
appears to be one of rest or sleep; yet they retain some consciousness of
their state, and are visited at least by transient gleams of human
emotion, as when in this chapter the heroes rouse themselves to
address the Pharaoh when he comes among them. The most material
point is that the state of the soul in Hades reflects the fate of
the body after death. Those who have received the honour of decent
burial on earth enjoy a corresponding honour among the shades
below. They have as it were a definite status and individuality in
their eternal abode, whilst the spirits of the unburied slain are
laid in the lowest recesses of the pit, in the limbo of the
uncircumcised. On this distinction the whole significance of the
passage before us seems to depend. The dead are divided into two
great classes: on the one hand the “mighty
ones,” who lie in state with their weapons of war around
them; and on the other hand the multitude of “the uncircumcised,This use of the word “uncircumcised” is peculiar. The idea seems to
be that circumcision, among nations which like the Israelites
practised the rite, was an indispensable mark of membership in the
community; and those who lacked this mark were treated as social
outcasts, not entitled to honourable sepulture. Hence the word
could be used, as here, in the sense of unhallowed.
slain
by the sword”—i.e., those who have perished on
the field of battle and been buried promiscuously without due
funereal rites.Cf. Isa. xiv. 18-20: “All of the kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in
glory, every one in his own house. But thou art cast forth away
from thy sepulchre, like an abominable branch, clothed with the
slain, that are thrust through with the sword, that go down to the
stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden underfoot. Thou shalt not
be joined with them in burial,” etc.
There
is, however, no moral distinction between the two classes. The
heroes are not in a state of blessedness; nor is the condition of
the uncircumcised one of acute suffering. The whole of existence in
Sheôl is essentially of one character; it is on the whole a
pitiable existence, destitute of joy and of all that makes up the
fulness of life on
earth. Only there is “within that deep a
lower deep,” and it is reserved for those who in the manner
of their death have experienced the penalty of great wickedness.
The moral truth of Ezekiel's representation lies here. The real
judgment of Egypt was enacted in the historical scene of its final
overthrow; and it is the consciousness of this tremendous
visitation of divine justice, perpetuated amongst the shades to all
eternity, that gives ethical significance to the lot assigned to
the nation in the other world. At the same time it should not be
overlooked that the passage is in the highest degree poetical, and
cannot be taken as an exact statement of what was known or believed
about the state after death in Old Testament times. It deals only
with the fate of armies and nationalities and great warriors who
filled the earth with their renown. These, having vanished from
history, preserve through all time in the under-world the memory of
Jehovah's mighty acts of judgment; but it is impossible to
determine whether this sublime vision implies a real belief in the
persistence of national identities in the region of the dead.
These, then, are
the principal ideas on which the ode is based, and the course of
thought is as follows. Ver. 18 briefly announces the occasion for
which the dirge is composed; it is to celebrate the passage of
Pharaoh and his host to the lower world, and consign him to his
appointed place there. Then follows a scene which has a certain
resemblance to a well-known representation in the fourteenth
chapter of Isaiah (vv. 9-11). The heroes who occupy the place of
honour among the dead are supposed to rouse themselves at the
approach of this great multitude, and hailing them from the midst
of Sheôl, direct them to their proper place amongst the dishonoured
slain. “The mighty ones speak to him:
‘Be thou in the recesses of the pit: whom
dost thou
excel in beauty? Go down and be laid to rest with the
uncircumcised, in the midst of them that are slain with the
sword.’ ”The text of these verses (19-21) is in
some confusion. The above is a translation of the reading proposed
by Cornill, who in the main follows the LXX.
Thither Pharaoh has been preceded by other great conquerors who
once set their terror in the earth, but now bear their shame
amongst those that go down to the pit. For there is Asshur and all
his company: there too are Elam and Meshech and Tubal, each
occupying its own allotment amongst nations that have perished by
the sword (vv. 22-26). Not theirs is the enviable lot of the heroes
of old timeLXX. מעולם for מערלם = “of the uncircumcised.”
who
went down to Sheôl in their panoply of war, and rest with their
swords under their heads and their shields“Shields,” a conjecture of Cornill, seems to be
demanded by the parallelism.
covering their bones. And so Egypt, which has perished like these
other nations, must be banished with them into the bottom of the
pit (vv. 27, 28). The enumeration of the nations of the
uncircumcised is then resumed; Israel's immediate neighbours are
amongst them—Edom and the dynasties of the north (the Syrians), and
the Phœnicians, inferior states which played no great part as
conquerors, but nevertheless perished in battle and bear their
humiliation along with the others (vv. 29, 30). These are to be
Pharaoh's companions in his last resting-place, and at the sight of
them he will lay aside his presumptuous thoughts and comfort
himself over the loss of his mighty army (vv. 31 f.).
It is necessary
to say a few words in conclusion about the historical evidence for
the fulfilment of these prophecies on Egypt. The supplementary
oracle of ch. xxix. 17-21 shows us that the threatened invasion by
Nebuchadnezzar
had not taken place sixteen years after the fall of Jerusalem. Did
it ever take place at all? Ezekiel was at that time confident that
his words were on the point of being fulfilled, and indeed he seems
to stake his credit with his hearers on their verification. Can we
suppose that he was entirely mistaken? Is it likely that the
remarkably definite predictions uttered both by him and
JeremiahJer. xliii. 8-13; xliv. 12-14, 27-30;
xlvi. 13-26.
failed of even the partial fulfilment which that on Tyre received?
A number of critics have strongly maintained that we are shut up by
the historical evidence to this conclusion. They rely chiefly on
the silence of Herodotus, and on the unsatisfactory character of
the statement of Josephus. The latter writer is indeed sufficiently
explicit in his affirmations. He tells usAnt., X. ix. 7.
that
five years after the capture of Jerusalem Nebuchadnezzar invaded
Egypt, put to death the reigning king, appointed another in his
stead, and carried the Jewish refugees in Egypt captive to Babylon.
But it is pointed out that the date is impossible, being
inconsistent with Ezekiel's own testimony, that the account of the
death of Hophra is contradicted by what we know of the matter from
other sources (Herodotus and Diodorus), and that the whole passage
bears the appearance of a translation into history of the
prophecies of Jeremiah which it professes to substantiate. That is
vigorous criticism, but the vigour is perhaps not altogether
unwarrantable, especially as Josephus does not mention any
authority. Other allusions by secular writers hardly count for
much, and the state of the question is such that historians would
probably have been content to confess their ignorance if the credit
of a prophet had not been mixed up with it.
Within the last
seventeen years, however, a new turn has been given to the discussion through the
discovery of monumental evidence which was thought to have an
important bearing on the point in dispute. In the same volume of an
Egyptological magazineZeitschrift für Aegyptische
Sprache, 1878, pp. 2 ff. and pp. 87 ff.
Wiedemann directed the attention of scholars to two inscriptions,
one in the Louvre and the other in the British Museum, both of
which he considered to furnish proof of an occupation of Egypt by
Nebuchadnezzar. The first was an Egyptian inscription of the reign
of Hophra. It was written by an official of the highest rank, named
Nes-hor, to whom was entrusted
the responsible task of defending Egypt on its southern or
Ethiopian frontier. According to Wiedemann's translation, it
relates among other things an irruption of Asiatic bands (Syrians,
people of the north, Asiatics), which penetrated as far as the
first cataract, and did some damage to the temple of Chnum in
Elephantine. There they were checked by Nes-hor, and afterwards
they were crushed or expelled by Hophra himself. Now the most
natural explanation of this incident, in connection with the
circumstances of the time, would seem to be that Nebuchadnezzar,
finding himself fully occupied for the present with the siege of
Tyre, incited roving bands of Arabs and Syrians to plunder Egypt,
and that they succeeded so far as to penetrate to the extreme south
of the country. But a more recent examination of the text, by
Maspero and Brugsch,Ibid., 1884, pp. 87 ff., 93
ff.
reduces the incident to much smaller dimensions. They find that it
refers to a mutiny of Egyptian mercenaries (Syrians, Ionians, and
Bedouins) stationed on the southern frontier. The governor,
Nes-hor, congratulates himself on a successful stratagem by which
he got the rebels into a position where they were cut down by the
king's troops. In any case it is evident that it falls very far short of a
confirmation of Ezekiel's prophecy. Not only is there no mention of
Nebuchadnezzar or a regular Babylonian army, but the invaders or
mutineers are actually said to have been annihilated by Hophra. It
may be said, no doubt, that an Egyptian governor was likely to be
silent about an event which cast discredit on his country's arms,
and would be tempted to magnify some temporary success into a
decisive victory. But still the inscription must be taken for what
it is worth, and the story it tells is certainly not the story of a
Chaldæan supremacy in the valley of the Nile. The only thing that
suggests a connection between the two is the general probability
that a campaign against Egypt must have been contemplated by
Nebuchadnezzar about that time.
The second and
more important document is a cuneiform fragment of the annals of
Nebuchadnezzar. It is unfortunately in a very mutilated condition,
and all that the Assyriologists have made out is that in the
thirty-seventh year of his reign Nebuchadnezzar fought a battle
with the king of Egypt. As the words of the inscription are those
of Nebuchadnezzar himself, we may presume that the battle ended in
a victory for him, and a few disconnected words in the later part
are thought to refer to the tribute or booty which he
acquired.See Schrader, Keilinschriftliche
Bibliothek, III. ii., pp. 140 f.
The
thirty-seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar is the year 568 b.c., about two years
after the date of Ezekiel's last utterance against Egypt. The
Egyptian king at this time was Amasis, whose name (only the last
syllable of which is legible) is supposed to be that mentioned in
the inscription.The hypothesis of a joint reign of
Hophra and Amasis from 570 to 564 (Wiedemann) may or may not be
necessary to establish a connection between the Babylonian
inscription and that of Nes-hor; it is certain that Amasis began to
reign in 570, and that Hophra is not the
Pharaoh mentioned by Nebuchadnezzar.
What
the ulterior
consequences of this victory were on Egyptian history, or how long
the Babylonian domination lasted, we cannot at present say. These
are questions on which we may reasonably look for further light
from the researches of Assyriology. In the meantime it appears to
be established beyond reasonable doubt that Nebuchadnezzar did
attack Egypt, and the probable issue of his expedition was in
accordance with Ezekiel's latest prediction: “Behold, I give to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the
land of Egypt; and he shall spoil her spoil, and plunder her
plunder, and it shall be the wages for his army” (ch. xxix.
19). There can of course be no question of a fulfilment of the
earlier prophecies in their literal terms. History knows nothing of
a total captivity of the population of Egypt or a blank of forty
years in her annals when her land was untrodden by the foot of man
or of beast. These are details belonging to the dramatic form in
which the prophet clothed the spiritual lesson which it was
necessary to impress on his countrymen—the inherent weakness of the
Egyptian empire as a power based on material resources and rearing
itself in opposition to the great ends of God's kingdom. And it may
well have been that for the illustration of that truth the
humiliation that Egypt endured at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar was
as effective as her total destruction would have been.
Part IV. The Formation Of The New Israel.
Chapter XIX. The Prophet A Watchman.
Chapter xxxiii.
One day in
January of the year 586 the tidings circulated through the Jewish
colony at Tel-abib that “the city was
smitten.” The rapidity with which in the East intelligence
is transmitted through secret channels has often excited the
surprise of European observers. In this case there is no
extraordinary rapidity to note, for the fate of Jerusalem had been
decided nearly six months before it was known in Babylon.Jerusalem was taken in the fourth
month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah or of Ezekiel's captivity.
The announcement reached Ezekiel, according to the reading of the
Hebrew text, in the tenth month of the twelfth year (ch. xxxiii.
21)—that is, about eighteen months after the event. It is hardly
credible that the transmission of the news should have been delayed
so long as this; and therefore the reading “eleventh year,” found in some manuscripts and
in the Syriac Version, is now generally regarded as correct.
But
it is remarkable that the first intimation of the issue of the
siege was brought to the exiles by one of their own countrymen, who
had escaped at the capture of the city. It is probable that the
messenger did not set out at once, but waited until he could bring
some information as to how matters were settling down after the
war. Or he may have been a captive who had trudged the weary road
to Babylon in chains under the escort of Nebuzaradan, captain of
the guard,Jer. xxxix. 9.
and
afterwards succeeded in making his escape to the older settlement where
Ezekiel lived. All we know is that his message was not delivered
with the despatch which would have been possible if his journey had
been unimpeded, and that in the meantime the official intelligence
which must have already reached Babylon had not transpired among
the exiles who were waiting so anxiously for tidings of the fate of
Jerusalem.It is possible, however, that the word
happālît, “the fugitive,” may be used in a collective
sense, of the whole body of captives carried away after the
destruction of the city.
The immediate
effect of the announcement on the mind of the exiles is not
recorded. It was doubtless received with all the signs of public
mourning which Ezekiel had anticipated and foretold.Ch. xxiv. 21-24.
They
would require some time to adjust themselves to a situation for
which, in spite of all the warnings that had been sent them, they
were utterly unprepared; and it must have been uncertain at first
what direction their thoughts would take. Would they carry out
their half-formed intention of abandoning their national faith and
assimilating themselves to the surrounding heathenism? Would they
sink into the lethargy of despair, and pine away under a confused
consciousness of guilt? Or would they repent of their unbelief, and
turn to embrace the hope which God's mercy held out to them in the
teaching of the prophet whom they had despised? All this was for
the moment uncertain; but one thing was certain—they could no more
return to the attitude of complacent indifference and incredulity
in which they had hitherto resisted the word of Jehovah. The day on
which the tidings of the city's destruction fell like a thunderbolt
in the community of Tel-abib was the turning-point of Ezekiel's
ministry. In the arrival of the “fugitive” he recognises the sign which was to
break the spell of silence which had lain so long upon him, and set him free for the
ministry of consolation and upbuilding which was henceforth to be
his chief vocation. A presentiment of what was coming had visited
him the evening before his interview with the messenger, and from
that time “his mouth was opened, and he was
no more dumb” (ver. 22). Hitherto he had preached to deaf
ears, and the echo of his ineffectual appeals had come back in a
deadening sense of failure which had paralysed his activity. But
now in one moment the veil of prejudice and vain self-confidence is
torn from the heart of his hearers, and gradually but surely the
whole burden of his message must disclose itself to their
intelligence. The time has come to work for the formation of a new
Israel, and a new spirit of hopefulness stimulates the prophet to
throw himself eagerly into the career which is thus opened up
before him.
It may be well
at this point to try to realise the state of mind which emerged
amongst Ezekiel's hearers after the first shock of consternation
had passed away. The seven chapters (xxxiii.-xxxix.) with which we
are to be occupied in this section all belong to the second period
of the prophet's work, and in all probability to the earlier part
of that period. It is obvious, however, that they were not written
under the first impulse of the tidings of the fall of Jerusalem.
They contain allusions to certain changes which must have occupied
some time; and simultaneously a change took place in the temper of
the people resulting ultimately in a definite spiritual situation
to which the prophet had to address himself. It is this situation
which we have to try to understand. It supplies the external
conditions of Ezekiel's ministry, and unless we can in some measure
interpret it we shall lose the full meaning of his teaching in this
important period of his ministry.
At the outset we
may glance at the state of those who were left in the land of
Israel, who in a sense formed part of Ezekiel's audience. The very
first oracle uttered by him after he had received his emancipation
was a threat of judgment against these survivors of the nation's
calamity (vv. 23-29). The fact that this is recorded in connection
with the interview with the “fugitive” may mean that the information on
which it is based was obtained from that somewhat shadowy
personage. Whether in this way or through some later channel,
Ezekiel had apparently some knowledge of the disastrous feuds which
had followed the destruction of Jerusalem. These events are
minutely described in the end of the book of Jeremiah (chs.
xl.-xliv.). With a clemency which in the circumstances is
surprising the king of Babylon had allowed a small remnant of the
people to settle in the land, and had appointed over them a native
governor, Gedaliah, the son of Ahikam, who fixed his residence at
Mizpah. The prophet Jeremiah elected to throw in his lot with this
remnant, and for a time it seemed as if through peaceful submission
to the Chaldæan supremacy all might go well with the survivors. The
chiefs who had conducted the guerilla warfare in the open against
the Babylonian army came in and placed themselves under the
protection of Gedaliah, and there was every prospect that by
refraining from projects of rebellion they might be left to enjoy
the fruits of the land without disturbance. But this was not to be.
Certain turbulent spirits under Ishmael, a member of the royal
family, entered into a conspiracy with the king of Ammon to destroy
this last refuge of peace-loving Israelites. Gedaliah was
treacherously murdered; and although the murder was partially
avenged, Ishmael succeeded in making his escape to the Ammonites,
while the remains of the party of order, dreading the vengeance of
Nebuchadnezzar, took their departure for Egypt and carried Jeremiah
forcibly with them. What happened after this we do not know; but it
is not improbable that Ishmael and his followers may have held
possession of the land by force for some years. We read of a fresh
deportation of Judæan captives to Babylon five years after the
capture of Jerusalem (Jer. lii. 30); and this may have been the
result of an expedition to suppress the depredations of the robber
band that Ishmael had gathered round him. How much of this story
had reached the ears of Ezekiel we do not know; but there is one
allusion in his oracle which makes it probable that he had at least
heard of the assassination of Gedaliah. Those he addresses are men
who “stand upon their sword”—that is
to say, they hold that might is right, and glory in deeds of blood
and violence that gratify their passionate desire for revenge. Such
language could hardly be used of any section of the remaining
population of Judæa except the lawless banditti that enrolled
themselves under the banner of Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah.
What Ezekiel is
mainly concerned with, however, is the moral and religious
condition of those to whom he speaks. Strange to say, they were
animated by a species of religious fanaticism, which led them to
regard themselves as the legitimate heirs to whom the reversion of
the land of Israel belonged. “Abraham was
one,” so reasoned these desperadoes, “and yet he inherited the land: but we are many; to us
the land is given for a possession” (ver. 24). Their meaning
is that the smallness of their number is no argument against the
validity of their claim to the heritage of the land. They are still
many in comparison with the solitary patriarch to whom it was first
promised; and if he was multiplied so as to take possession of it,
why should they hesitate to claim the mastery of it? This thought
of the wonderful multiplication of Abraham's seed after he had received the
promise seems to have laid fast hold of the men of that generation.
It is applied by the great teacher who stands next to Ezekiel in
the prophetic succession to comfort the little flock who followed
after righteousness and could hardly believe that it was God's good
pleasure to give them the kingdom. “Look
unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I
called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him” (Isa.
li. 2). The words of the infatuated men who exulted in the havoc
they were making on the mountains of Judæa may sound to us like a
blasphemous travesty of this argument; but they were no doubt
seriously meant. They afford one more instance of the boundless
capacity of the Jewish race for religious self-delusion, and their
no less remarkable insensibility to that in which the essence of
religion lay. The men who uttered this proud boast were the
precursors of those who in the days of the Baptist thought to say
within themselves, “We have Abraham to our
father,” not understanding that God was able “of these stones to raise up children to
Abraham” (Matt. iii. 9). All the while they were
perpetuating the evils for which the judgment of God had descended
on the city and the Hebrew state. Idolatry, ceremonial impurity,
bloodshed, and adultery were rife amongst them (vv. 25, 26); and no
misgiving seems to have entered their minds that because of these
things the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. And
therefore the prophet repudiates their pretensions with
indignation. “Shall ye possess the
land?” Their conduct simply showed that judgment had not had
its perfect work, and that Jehovah's purpose would not be
accomplished until “the land was laid waste
and desolate, and the pomp of her strength should cease, and the
mountains of Israel be desolate, so that none passed
through” (ver. 28). We have seen that in all likelihood this
prediction was fulfilled
by a punitive expedition from Babylonia in the twenty-third year of
Nebuchadnezzar.
But we knew
before that Ezekiel expected no good thing to come of the survivors
of the judgment in Judæa. His hope was in those who had passed
through the fires of banishment, the men amongst whom his own work
lay, and amongst whom he looked for the first signs of the
outpouring of the divine Spirit. We must now return to the inner
circle of Ezekiel's immediate hearers, and consider the change
which the calamity had produced on them. The chapter now before us
yields two glimpses into the inner life of the people which help us
to realise the kind of men with whom the prophet had to do.
In the first
place it is interesting to learn that in his more frequent public
appearances the prophet rapidly acquired a considerable reputation
as a popular preacher (vv. 30-33). It is true that the interest
which he excited was not of the most wholesome kind. It became a
favourite amusement of the people hanging about the walls and doors
to come and listen to the fervid oratory of their one remaining
prophet as he declared to them “the word
that came forth from Jehovah.” It is to be feared that the
substance of his message counted for little in their appreciative
and critical listening. He was to them “as
a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play
well on an instrument”: “they heard
his words, but did them not.” It was pleasant to subject
oneself now and then to the influence of this powerful and
heart-searching preacher; but somehow the heart was never searched,
the conscience was never stirred, and the hearing never ripened
into serious conviction and settled purpose of amendment. The
people were thoroughly respectful in their demeanour and apparently
devout, coming in crowds and sitting before him as God's people
should. But they were preoccupied: “their
heart went
after their gain” (ver. 31) or their advantage.
Self-interest prevented them from receiving the word of God in
honest and good hearts, and no change was visible in their conduct.
Hence the prophet is not disposed to regard the evidences of his
newly acquired popularity with much satisfaction. It presents
itself to his mind as a danger against which he has to be on his
guard. He has been tried by opposition and apparent failure; now he
is exposed to the more insidious temptation of a flattering
reception and superficial success. It is a tribute to his power,
and an opportunity such as he had never before enjoyed. Whatever
may have been the case heretofore, he is now sure of an audience,
and his position has suddenly become one of great influence in the
community. But the same resolute confidence in the truth of his
message which sustained Ezekiel amidst the discouragements of his
earlier career saves him now from the fatal attractions of
popularity to which many men in similar circumstances have yielded.
He is not deceived by the favourable disposition of the people
towards himself, nor is he tempted to cultivate his oratorical
gifts with a view to sustaining their admiration. His one concern
is to utter the word that shall come to pass, and so to declare the
counsel of God that men shall be compelled in the end to
acknowledge that he has been “a prophet
among them” (ver. 33). We may be thankful to the prophet for
this little glimpse from a vanished past—one of those touches of
nature that make the whole world kin. But we ought not to miss its
obvious moral. Ezekiel is the prototype of all popular preachers,
and he knew their peculiar trials. He was perhaps the first man who
ministered regularly to an attached congregation, who came to hear
him because they liked it and because they had nothing better to
do. If he passed unscathed through the dangers of the position, it
was through his
overpowering sense of the reality of divine things and the
importance of men's spiritual destiny; and also we may add through
his fidelity in a department of ministerial duty which popular
preachers are sometimes apt to neglect—the duty of close personal
dealing with individual men about their sins and their state before
God. To this subject we shall revert by-and-by.
This passage
reveals to us the people in their lighter moods, when they were
able to cast off the awful burden of life and destiny and take
advantage of such sources of enjoyment as their circumstances
afforded. Mental dejection in a community, from whatever cause it
originates, is rarely continuous. The natural elasticity of the
mind asserts itself in the most depressing circumstances; and the
tension of almost unendurable sorrow is relieved by outbursts of
unnatural gaiety. Hence we need not be surprised to find that
beneath the surface levity of these exiles there lurked the feeling
of despair expressed in the words of ver. 10 and more fully in
those of ch. xxxvii. 11: “Our
transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we waste away in them:
how should we then live?” “Our bones
are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off.” These
accents of despondency reflect the new mood into which the more
serious-minded portion of the community had been plunged by the
calamities that had befallen them. The bitterness of unavailing
remorse, the consciousness of national death, had laid fast hold of
their spirits and deprived them of the power of hope. In sober
truth the nation was dead beyond apparent hope of revival; and to
an Israelite, whose spiritual interests were all identified with
those of his nation, religion had no power of consolation apart
from a national future. The people therefore abandoned themselves
to despair, and hardened themselves against the appeals which the
prophet addressed to them in the name of Jehovah. They looked on themselves as the victims of
an inexorable fate, and were disposed perhaps to resent the call to
repentance as a trifling with the misery of the unfortunate.
And yet,
although this state of mind was as far removed as possible from the
godly sorrow that worketh repentance, it was a step towards the
accomplishment of the promise of redemption. For the present,
indeed, it rendered the people more impenetrable than ever to the
word of God. But it meant that they had accepted in principle the
prophetic interpretation of their history. It was no longer
possible to deny that Jehovah the God of Israel had revealed His
secret to His servants the prophets. He was not such a Being as the
popular imagination had figured. Israel had not known Him; only the
prophets had spoken of Him the thing that was right. Thus for the
first time a general conviction of sin, a sense of being in the
wrong, was produced in Israel. That this conviction should at first
lead to the verge of despair was perhaps inevitable. The people
were not familiar with the idea of the divine righteousness, and
could not at once perceive that anger against sin was consistent in
God with pity for the sinner and mercy towards the contrite. The
chief task that now lay before the prophet was to transform their
attitude of sullen impenitence into one of submission and hope by
teaching them the efficacy of repentance. They have learned the
meaning of judgment; they have now to learn the possibility and the
conditions of forgiveness. And this can only be taught to them
through a revelation of the free and infinite grace of God, who has
“no pleasure in the death of the wicked,
but that the wicked should turn from his way and live” (ver.
11). Only thus can the hard and stony heart be taken away from
their flesh and a heart of flesh given to them.
We can now
understand the significance of the striking passage which stands as
the introduction to this whole section of the book (ch. xxxiii. 1-20). At
this juncture of his ministry Ezekiel's thoughts went back on an
aspect of his prophetic vocation which had hitherto been in
abeyance. From the first he had been conscious of a certain
responsibility for the fate of each individual within reach of his
words (ch. iii. 16-21). This truth had been one of the keynotes of
his ministry; but the practical developments which it suggested had
been hindered by the solidarity of the opposition which he had
encountered. As long as Jerusalem stood the exiles had been swayed
by one common current of feeling—their thoughts were wholly
occupied by the expectation of an issue that would annul the gloomy
predictions of Ezekiel; and no man dared to break away from the
general sentiment and range himself on the side of God's prophet.
In these circumstances anything of the nature of pastoral activity
was obviously out of the question. But now that this great obstacle
to faith was removed there was a prospect that the solidity of
popular opinion would be broken up, so that the word of God might
find an entrance here and there into susceptible hearts. The time
was come to call for personal decisions, to appeal to each man to
embrace for himself the offer of pardon and salvation. Its
watchword might have been found in words uttered in another great
crisis of religious destiny: “The kingdom
of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by
force.” Out of such “violent
men” who act for themselves and have the courage of their
convictions the new people of God must be formed; and the mission
of the prophet is to gather round him all those who are warned by
his words to “flee from the wrath to
come.”
Let us look a
little more closely at the teaching of these verses. We find that
Ezekiel restates in the most emphatic manner the theological
principles which underlie this new development of his prophetic
duties (vv. 10-20).
These principles have been considered already in the exposition of
ch. xviii.; and it is not necessary to do more than refer to them
here. They are such as these: the exact and absolute righteousness
of God in His dealings with individuals; His unwillingness that any
should perish, and His desire that all should be saved and live;
the necessity of personal repentance; the freedom and independence
of the individual soul through its immediate relation to God. On
this closely connected body of evangelical doctrine Ezekiel bases
the appeal which he now makes to his hearers. What we are specially
concerned with here, however, is the direction which they imparted
to his activity. We may study in the light of Ezekiel's example the
manner in which these fundamental truths of personal religion are
to be made effective in the ministry of the gospel for the building
up of the Church of Christ.
The general
conception is clearly set forth in the figure of the watchman, with
which the chapter opens (vv. 1-9). The duties of the watchman are
simple, but responsible. He is set apart in a time of public danger
to warn the city of the approach of an enemy. The citizens trust
him and go about their ordinary occupations in security so long as
the trumpet is not sounded. Should he sleep at his post or neglect
to give the signal, men are caught unprepared and lives are lost
through his fault. Their blood is required at the watchman's hand.
If, on the other hand, he gives the alarm as soon as he sees the
sword coming, and any man disregards the warning and is cut down in
his iniquity, his blood is upon his own head. Nothing could be
clearer than this. Office always involves responsibility, and no
responsibility could be greater than that of a watchman in time of
invasion. Those who suffer are in either case the citizens whom the
sword cuts off; but it makes all the difference in the world
whether the
blame of their death rests on themselves for their foolhardiness or
on the watchman for his unfaithfulness. Such then, as Ezekiel goes
on to explain, is his own position as a prophet. The prophet is one
who sees further into the spiritual issues of things than other
men, and discovers the coming calamity which is to them invisible.
We must notice that a background of danger is presupposed. In what
form it was to come is not indicated; but Ezekiel knows that
judgment follows hard at the heels of sin, and seeing sin in his
fellow-men he knows that their state is one of spiritual peril. The
prophet's course therefore is clear. His business is to announce as
in trumpet tones the doom that hangs over every man who persists in
his wickedness, to re-echo the divine sentence which he alone may
have heard, “O wicked man, thou shalt
surely die.” And again the main question is one of
responsibility. The watchman cannot ensure the safety of every
citizen, because any man may refuse to take the warning he gives.
No more can the prophet ensure the salvation of all his hearers,
for each one is free to accept or despise the message. But whether
men hear or whether they forbear, it is of the utmost moment for
himself that that warning should be faithfully proclaimed and that
he should thus “deliver his soul.”
Ezekiel seems to feel that it is only by frankly accepting the
responsibility which thus devolves on himself that he can hope to
impress on his hearers the responsibility that rests on them for
the use they make of his message.
These thoughts
appear to have occupied the mind of Ezekiel on the eve of his
emancipation, and must have influenced his subsequent action to an
extent which we can but vaguely estimate. It is generally
considered that this description of the prophet's functions covers
a whole department of work of which no express account is given.
Ezekiel writes no “Pastor's
Sketches,” and records no instances of individual conversion through
his ministry. The unwritten history of the Babylonian captivity
must have been rich in such incidents of spiritual experience, and
nothing could have been more instructive to us than the study of a
few typical cases had it been possible. One of the most interesting
features of the early history of Mohammedanism is found in the
narratives of personal adhesion to the new religion; and the
formation of the new Israel in the age of the Exile is a process of
infinitely greater importance for humanity at large than the
genesis of Islam. But neither in this book nor elsewhere are we
permitted to follow that process in its details. Ezekiel may have
witnessed the beginnings of it, but he was not called upon to be
its historian. Still, the inference is probably correct that a
conception of the prophet's office which holds him accountable to
God for the fate of individuals led to something more than mere
general exhortations to repentance. The preacher must have taken a
personal interest in his hearers; he must have watched for the
first signs of a response to his message, and been ready to advise
and encourage those who turned to him for guidance in their
perplexities. And since the sphere of his influence and
responsibility included the whole Hebrew community in which he
lived, he must have been eager to seize every opportunity to warn
individual sinners of the error of their ways, lest their blood
should be required at his hand. To this extent we may say that
Ezekiel held a position amongst the exiles somewhat analogous to
that of a spiritual director in the Catholic Church or the pastor
of a Protestant congregation. But the analogy must not be pressed
too far. The nurture of the spiritual life of individuals could not
have presented itself to him as the chief end of his ministrations.
His business was first to lay down the conditions of entrance into
the new kingdom of God,
and then out of the ruins of the old Israel to make ready a people
prepared for the Lord. Perhaps the nearest parallel to this
department of his work which history affords is the mission of the
Baptist. The keynote of Ezekiel's preaching was the same as that of
John: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand.” Both prophets were alike animated by a sense of
crisis and urgency, based on the conviction that the impending
Messianic age would be ushered in by a searching judgment in which
the chaff would be separated from the wheat. Both laboured for the
same end—the formation of a new circle of religious fellowship, in
anticipation of the advent of the Messianic kingdom. And as John,
by an inevitable spiritual selection, gathered round him a band of
disciples, amongst whom our Lord found some of His most devoted
followers, so we may believe that Ezekiel, by a similar process,
became the acknowledged leader of those whom he taught to wait for
the hope of Israel's restoration.
There is nothing
in Ezekiel's ministry that appeals more directly to the Christian
conscience than the serious and profound sense of pastoral
responsibility to which this passage bears witness. It is a feeling
which would seem to be inseparable from the right discharge of the
ministerial office. In this, as in many other respects, Ezekiel's
experience is repeated, on a higher level, in that of the apostle
of the Gentiles, who could take his hearers to record that he was
“pure from the blood of all men,”
inasmuch as he had “taught them publicly
and from house to house,” and “ceased not to warn every one night and day with
tears” (Acts xx. 17-35). That does not mean, of course, that
a preacher is to occupy himself with nothing else than the personal
salvation of his hearers. St. Paul would have been the last to
agree to such a limitation of the range of his teaching. But it
does mean that the
salvation of men and women is the supreme end which the minister of
Christ is to set before him, and that to which all other
instruction is subordinated. And unless a man realises that the
truth he utters is of tremendous importance on the destiny of those
to whom he speaks, he can hardly hope to approve himself as an
ambassador for Christ. There are doubtless temptations, not in
themselves ignoble, to use the pulpit for other purposes than this.
The desire for public influence may be one of them, or the desire
to utter one's mind on burning questions of the day. To say that
these are temptations is not to say that matters of public interest
are to be rigorously excluded from treatment in the pulpit. There
are many questions of this kind on which the will of God is as
clear and imperative as it can possibly be on any point of private
conduct; and even in matters as to which there is legitimate
difference of opinion amongst Christian men there are underlying
principles of righteousness which may need to be fearlessly
enunciated at the risk of obloquy and misunderstanding.
Nevertheless it remains true that the great end of the gospel
ministry is to reconcile men to God and to cultivate in individual
lives the fruits of the Spirit, so as at the last to present every
man perfect in Christ. And the preacher who may be most safely
entrusted with the handling of all other questions is he who is
most intent on the formation of Christian character and most deeply
conscious of his responsibility for the effect of his teaching on
the eternal destiny of those to whom he ministers. What is called
preaching to the age may certainly become a very poor and empty
thing if it is forgotten that the age is made up of individuals
each of whom has a soul to save or lose. What shall it profit a man
if the preacher teaches him how to win the whole world and lose his
own life? It is fashionable to hold up the prophets of Israel as
models of
all that a Christian minister ought to be. If that is true,
prophecy must at least be allowed to speak its whole lesson; and
amongst other elements Ezekiel's consciousness of responsibility
for the individual life must receive due recognition.
Chapter XX. The Messianic Kingdom.
Chapter xxxiv.
The term
“Messianic” as commonly applied to
Old Testament prophecy bears two different senses, a wider and a
narrower. In its wider use it is almost equivalent to the modern
word “eschatological.” It denotes
that unquenchable hope of a glorious future for Israel and the
world which is an all but omnipresent feature of the prophetic
writings, and includes all predictions of the kingdom of God in its
final and perfect manifestation. In its stricter sense it is
applied only to the promise of the ideal king of the house of
David, which, although a very conspicuous element of prophecy, is
by no means universal, and perhaps does not bulk quite so largely
in the Old Testament as is generally supposed. The later Jews were
guided by a true instinct when they seized on this figure of the
ideal ruler as the centre of the nation's hope; and to them we owe
this special application of the name “Messiah,” the “Anointed,” which is never used of the Son of
David in the Old Testament itself. To a certain extent we follow in
their steps when we enlarge the meaning of the word “Messianic” so as to embrace the whole prophetic
delineation of the future glories of the kingdom of God.
This distinction
may be illustrated from the prophecies of Ezekiel. If we take the
word in its more general sense, we may say that all the chapters
from the thirty-fourth
to the end of the book are Messianic in character. That is to say,
they describe under various aspects the final condition of things
which is introduced by the restoration of Israel to its own land.
Let us glance for a moment at the elements which enter into this
general conception of the last things as they are set forth in the
section of the book with which we are now dealing. We exclude from
view for the present the last nine chapters, because there the
prophet's point of view is somewhat different, and it is better to
reserve them for separate treatment.
The chapters
from the thirty-fourth to the thirty-seventh are the necessary
complement of the call to repentance in the first part of ch.
xxxiii. Ezekiel has enunciated the conditions of entrance to the
new kingdom of God, and has urged his hearers to prepare for its
appearing. He now proceeds to unfold the nature of that kingdom,
and the process by which Jehovah is to bring it to pass. As has
been said, the central fact is the restoration of Israel to the
land of Canaan. Here the prophet found a point of contact with the
natural aspirations of his fellow-exiles. There was no prospect to
which they had clung with more eager longing than that of a return
to national independence in their own land; and the feeling that
this was no longer possible was the source of the abject despair
from which the prophet sought to rouse them. How was this to be
done? Not simply by asserting in the face of all human probability
that the restoration would take place, but by presenting it to
their minds in its religious aspects as an object worthy of the
exercise of almighty power, and an object in which Jehovah was
interested for the glory of His great name. Only by being brought
round to Ezekiel's faith in God could the exiles recover their lost
hope in the future of the nation. Thus the return to which Ezekiel
looks forward has a Messianic significance; it is the establishment
of the
kingdom of God, a symbol of the final and perfect union between
Jehovah and Israel.
Now in the
chapters before us this general conception is exhibited in three
separate pictures of the Restoration, the leading ideas being the
Monarchy (ch. xxxiv.), the Land (chs. xxxv., xxxvi.), and the
Nation (ch. xxxvii.). The order in which they are arranged is not
that which might seem most natural. We should have expected the
prophet to deal first with the revival of the nation, then with its
settlement on the soil of Palestine, and last of all with its
political organisation under a Davidic king. Ezekiel follows the
reverse order. He begins with the kingdom, as the most complete
embodiment of the Messianic salvation, and then falls back on its
two presuppositions—the recovery and purification of the land on
the one hand, and the restitution of the nation on the other. It is
doubtful, indeed, whether any logical connection between the three
pictures is intended. It is perhaps better to regard them as
expressing three distinct and collateral aspects of the idea of
redemption, to each of which a certain permanent religious
significance is attached. They are at all events the outstanding
elements of Ezekiel's eschatology so far as it is expounded in this
section of his prophecies.
We thus see that
the promise of the perfect king—the Messianic idea in its more
restricted signification—holds a distinct but not a supreme place
in Ezekiel's vision of the future. It appears for the first time in
ch. xvii. at the end of an oracle denouncing the perfidy of
Zedekiah and foretelling the overthrow of his kingdom; and again,
in a similar connection, in an obscure verse of ch. xxi.Chs. xvii. 22-24, xxi. 26, 27.
Both
these prophecies belong to the time before the fall of the state,
when the prophet's thoughts were not continuously occupied with the
hope of the future.
The former is remarkable, nevertheless, for the glowing terms in
which the greatness of the future kingdom is depicted. From the top
of the lofty cedar which the great eagle had carried away to
Babylon Jehovah will take a tender shoot and plant it in the
mountain height of Israel. There it will strike root and grow up
into a lordly cedar, under whose branches all the birds of the air
find refuge. The terms of the allegory have been explained in the
proper place.See pp. 102 ff.
The
great cedar is the house of David; the topmost bough which was
taken to Babylon is the family of Jehoiachin, the direct heirs to
the throne. The planting of the tender shoot in the land of Israel
represents the founding of the Messiah's kingdom, which is thus
proclaimed to be of transcendent earthly magnificence,
overshadowing all the other kingdoms of the world, and convincing
the nations that its foundation is the work of Jehovah Himself. In
this short passage we have the Messianic idea in its simplest and
most characteristic expression. The hope of the future is bound up
with the destiny of the house of David; and the re-establishment of
the kingdom in more than its ancient splendour is the great divine
act to which all the blessings of the final dispensation are
attached.
But it is in the
thirty-fourth chapter that we find the most comprehensive
exposition of Ezekiel's teaching on the subject of the monarchy and
the Messianic kingdom. It is perhaps the most political of all his
prophecies. It is pervaded by a spirit of genuine sympathy with the
sufferings of the common people, and indignation against the
tyranny practised and tolerated by the ruling classes. The
disasters that have befallen the nation down to its final
dispersion among the heathen are all traced to the misgovernment
and anarchy for which the monarchy was primarily responsible. In like manner the
blessings of the coming age are summed up in the promise of a
perfect king, ruling in the name of Jehovah and maintaining order
and righteousness throughout his realm. Nowhere else does Ezekiel
approach so nearly to the political ideal foreshadowed by the
statesman-prophet Isaiah of a “king
reigning in righteousness and princes ruling in judgment”
(Isa. xxxii. 1), securing the enjoyment of universal prosperity and
peace to the redeemed people of God. It must be remembered of
course that this is only a partial expression of Ezekiel's
conception both of the past condition of the nation and of its
future salvation. We have had abundant evidenceCf. especially ch. xxii.
to
show that he considered all classes of the community to be corrupt,
and the people as a whole implicated in the guilt of rebellion
against Jehovah. The statement that the kings have brought about
the dispersion of the nation must not therefore be pressed to the
conclusion that civic injustice was the sole cause of Israel's
calamities. Similarly we shall find that the redemption of the
people depends on other and more fundamental conditions than the
establishment of good government under a righteous king. But that
is no reason for minimising the significance of the passage before
us as an utterance of Ezekiel's profound interest in social order
and the welfare of the poor. It shows moreover that the prophet at
this time attached real importance to the promise of the Messiah as
the organ of Jehovah's rule over His people. If civil wrongs and
legalised tyranny were not the only sins which had brought about
the destruction of the state, they were at least serious evils,
which could not be tolerated in the new Israel; and the chief
safeguard against their recurrence is found in the character of the
ideal ruler whom Jehovah will raise up from the seed of David. How far this high
conception of the functions of the monarchy was modified in
Ezekiel's subsequent teaching we shall see when we come to consider
the position assigned to the prince in the great vision at the end
of the book.See below, pp. 318 f., and ch. xxviii.
In the meantime
let us examine somewhat more closely the contents of ch. xxxiv. Its
leading ideas seem to have been suggested by a Messianic prophecy
of Jeremiah's with which Ezekiel was no doubt acquainted:
“Woe to the shepherds that destroy and
scatter the flock of My pasture! saith Jehovah. Therefore thus
saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, against the shepherds that tend
My people, Ye have scattered My flock, and dispersed them, and have
not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your
doings, saith Jehovah. And I will gather the remnant of My flock
from all the lands whither I have dispersed them, and will restore
them to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and multiply. And I
will set shepherds over them who shall feed them: and they shall
not fear any more, nor be frightened, nor be lacking, saith
Jehovah” (Jer. xxiii. 1-4). Here we have the simple image of
the flock and its shepherds, which Ezekiel, as his manner is,
expands into an allegory of the past history and future prospects
of the nation. How closely he follows the guidance of his
predecessor will be seen from the analysis of the chapter. It may
be divided into four parts.
i. The first ten
verses are a strongly worded denunciation of the misgovernment to
which the people of Jehovah had been subjected in the past. The
prophet goes straight to the root of the evil when he indignantly
asks, “Should not the shepherds feed the
flock?” (ver. 2). The first principle of all true government
is that it must
be in the interest of the governed. But the universal vice of
Oriental despotism, as we see in the case of the Turkish empire at
the present day, or Egypt before the English occupation, is that
the rulers rule for their own advantage, and treat the people as
their lawful spoil. So it had been in Israel: the shepherds had fed
themselves, and not the flock. Instead of carefully tending the
sick and the maimed, and searching out the strayed and the lost,
they had been concerned only to eat the milkPointing the Hebrew text in accordance
with the rendering of the LXX.
and
clothe themselves with the wool and slaughter the fat; they had
ruled with “violence and rigour.”
That is to say, instead of healing the sores of the body politic,
they had sought to enrich themselves at the expense of the people.
Such misconduct in the name of government always brings its own
penalty; it kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. The flock
which is spoiled by its own shepherds is scattered on the mountains
and becomes the prey of wild beasts; and so the nation that is
weakened by internal misrule loses its powers of defence and
succumbs to the attacks of some foreign invader. But the shepherds
of Israel have to reckon with Him who is the owner of the flock,
whose affection still watches over them, and whose compassion is
stirred by the hapless condition of His people. “Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of Jehovah;
... Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require My flock
at their hand; and I will make them to cease from feeding [My]
flock, that they who feed themselves may no longer shepherd them;
and I will deliver My flock from their mouth, that they be not food
for them” (vv. 9, 10).
ii. But Jehovah
not only removes the unworthy shepherds; He Himself takes on Him
the office of shepherd to
the flock that has been so mishandled (vv. 11-16). As the shepherd
goes out after the thunderstorm to call in his frightened sheep, so
will Jehovah after the storm of judgment is over go forth to
“gather together the outcasts of
Israel” (Psalm cxlvii. 2). He will seek them out and deliver
them from all places whither they were scattered in the day of
clouds and darkness; then He will lead them back to the mountain
height of Israel, where they shall enjoy abundant prosperity and
security under His just and beneficent rule. By what agencies this
deliverance is to be accomplished is nowhere indicated. It is the
unanimous teaching of the prophets that the final salvation of
Israel will be effected in a “day of
Jehovah”—i.e., a day in which Jehovah's
own power will be specially manifested. Hence there is no need to
describe the process by which the Almighty works out His purpose of
salvation; it is indescribable: the results are certain, but the
intermediate agencies are supernatural, and the precise method of
Jehovah's intervention is as a rule left indefinite. It is
particularly to be noted that the Messiah plays no part in the
actual work of deliverance. He is not the hero of a national
struggle for independence, but comes on the scene and assumes the
reins of government after Jehovah has gotten the victory and
restored peace to Israel.This seems to me to be the clear
meaning of Isaiah's prophecy of the Messiah in the beginning of the
ninth chapter, although the contrary is often asserted. Micah v.
1-6 may, however, be an exception to the rule stated above.
iii. The next
six verses (17-22) add a feature to the allegory which is not found
in the corresponding passage in Jeremiah. Jehovah will judge
between one sheep and another, especially between the rams and
he-goats on the one hand and the weaker animals on the other. The
strong cattle had monopolised the fat meadows and clear
settled waters, and
as if this were not enough, they had trampled down the residue of
the pastures and fouled the waters with their feet. Those addressed
are the wealthy and powerful upper class, whose luxury and wanton
extravagance had consumed the resources of the country, and left no
sustenance for the poorer members of the community. Allusions to
this kind of selfish tyranny are frequent in the older prophets.
Amos speaks of the nobles as panting after the dust on the head of
the poor, and of the luxurious dames of Samaria as oppressing the
poor and crushing the needy, and saying to their lords,
“Bring us to drink” (Amos ii. 7, iv.
1). Micah says of the same class in the southern kingdom that they
cast out the women of Jehovah's people from their pleasant houses,
and robbed their children of His glory for ever (Micah ii. 9). And
Isaiah, to take one other example, denounces those who “take away the right from the poor of My people, that
widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the orphans”
(Isa. x. 2). Under the corrupt administration of justice which the
kings had tolerated for their own convenience litigation had been a
farce; the rich man had always the ear of the judge, and the poor
found no redress. But in Israel the true fountain of justice could
not be polluted; it was only its channels that were obstructed. For
Jehovah Himself was the supreme judge of His people; and in the
restored commonwealth to which Ezekiel looks forward all civil
relations will be regulated by a regard to His righteous will. He
will “save His flock that they be no more a
prey, and will judge between cattle and cattle.”
iv. Then follows
in the last section (vv. 23-31) the promise of the Messianic king,
and a description of the blessings that accompany his reign:
“I will set up one shepherd over them, and
he shall feed them—My servant David: he shall feed them, and he
shall be their shepherd.
And I Jehovah will be their God, and My servant David shall be a
prince in their midst: I Jehovah have spoken it.” There are
one or two difficulties connected with the interpretation of this
passage, the consideration of which may be postponed till we have
finished our analysis of the chapter. It is sufficient in the
meantime to notice that a Davidic kingdom in some sense is to be
the foundation of social order in the new Israel. A prince will
arise, endowed with the spirit of his exalted office, to discharge
perfectly the royal functions in which the former kings had so
lamentably failed. Through him the divine government of Israel will
become a reality in the national life. The Godhead of Jehovah and
the kingship of the Messiah will be inseparably associated in the
faith of the people: “Jehovah their God,
and David their king” (Hosea iii. 5) is the expression of
the ground of Israel's confidence in the latter days. And this
kingdom is the pledge of the fulness of divine blessing descending
on the land and the people. The people shall dwell in safety, none
making them afraid, because of the covenant of peace which Jehovah
will make for them, securing them against the assaults of other
nations.Ver. 25. The idea is based on Hosea
ii. 18, where God promises to make a covenant for Israel
“with the beasts of the field, and the
birds of heaven, and the creeping things of the ground.”
This is to be understood quite literally: it means immunity from
the ravages of wild beasts and other noxious creatures. Ezekiel's
promise, however, is probably to be explained in accordance with
the terms of the allegory: the “evil
beasts” are the foreign nations from whom Israel had
suffered so severely in the past.
The
heavens shall pour forth fertilising “showers of blessing”; and the land shall be
clothed with a luxuriant vegetation which shall be the admiration
of the whole earth.This is the sense of the expression
מטע לשׂם in ver. 29 (literally “a
plantation for a name”). The LXX., however, read מטע שׁלם,
which may be translated “a perfect
vegetation.” At all events the phrase is not a title of the
Messiah.
Thus
happily situated
Israel shall shake off the reproach of the heathen, which they had
formerly to endure because of the poverty of their land and their
unfortunate history. In the plenitude of material prosperity they
shall recognise that Jehovah their God is with them, and they shall
know what it is to be His people and the flock of His
pasture.The word “men” in ver. 31 should be omitted, as in the
LXX.
We have now
before us the salient features of the Messianic hope, as it is
presented in the pages of Ezekiel. We see that the idea is
developed in contrast with the abuses that had characterised the
historic monarchy in Israel. It represents the ideal of the kingdom
as it exists in the mind of Jehovah, an ideal which no actual king
had fully realised, and which most of them had shamefully violated.
The Messiah is the vicegerent of Jehovah on earth, and the
representative of His kingly authority and righteous government
over Israel. We see further that the promise is based on the
“sure mercies of David,” the
covenant which secured the throne to David's descendants for ever.
Messianic prophecy is legitimist, the ideal king being regarded as
standing in the direct line of succession to the crown. And to
these features we may add another, which is explicitly developed in
ch. xxxvii. 22-26, although it is implied in the expression
“one shepherd” in the passage with
which we have been dealing. The Messianic kingdom represents the
unity of all Israel, and particularly the reunion of the two
kingdoms under one sceptre. The prophets attach great importance to
this idea.Cf. Amos ix. 11 f.; Hosea ii. 2, iii.
5; Isa. xi. 13; Micah ii. 12 f., v. 3.
The
existence of two rival monarchies, divided in interest and often at
war with each other, although it had never effaced the
consciousness of the original unity of the nation, was felt by the
prophets to be an
anomalous state of things, and seriously detrimental to the
national religion. The ideal relation of Jehovah to Israel was as
incompatible with two kingdoms as the ideal of marriage is
incompatible with two wives to one husband. Hence in the glorious
future of the Messianic age the schism must be healed, and the
Davidic dynasty restored to its original position at the head of an
undivided empire. The prominence given to this thought in the
teaching of Hosea shows that even in the northern kingdom devout
Israelites cherished the hope of reunion with their brethren under
the house of David as the only form in which the redemption of the
nation could be achieved. And although, long before Ezekiel's day,
the kingdom of Samaria had disappeared from history, he too looks
forward to a restoration of the ten tribes as an essential element
of the Messianic salvation.
In these
respects the teaching of Ezekiel reflects the general tenor of the
Messianic prophecy of the Old Testament. There are just two
questions on which some obscurity and uncertainty must be felt to
rest. In the first place, what is the precise meaning of the
expression “My servant David”? It
will not be supposed that the prophet expected David, the founder
of the Hebrew monarchy, to reappear in person and inaugurate the
new dispensation. Such an interpretation would be utterly false to
Eastern modes of thought and expression, besides being opposed to
every indication we have of the prophetic conception of the
Messiah. Even in popular language the name of David was current,
after he had been long dead, as the name of the dynasty which he
had founded. When the ten tribes revolted from Rehoboam they said,
exactly as they had said in David's lifetime, “What portion have we in David? neither have we
inheritance in the son of Jesse: to your tents, O Israel:
now see to thine own
house, David.”1 Kings xii. 16 (cf. 2 Sam. xx. 1). It
should be mentioned, however, that the last clause in the LXX. is
replaced by a more prosaic sentence: “for
this man is not fit to be a ruler nor a prince.”
If
the name of David could thus be invoked in popular speech at a time
of great political excitement, we need not be surprised to find it
used in a similar sense in the figurative style of the prophets.
All that the word means is that the Messiah will be one who comes
in the spirit and power of David, a representative of the ancient
family who carries to completion the work so nobly begun by his
great ancestor.
The real
difficulty is whether the title “David” denotes a unique individual or a line of
Davidic kings. To that question it is hardly possible to return a
decided answer. That the idea of a succession of sovereigns is a
possible form of the Messianic hope is shown by a passage in the
thirty-third chapter of Jeremiah. There the promise of the
righteous sprout of the house of David is supplemented by the
assurance that David shall never want a man to sit on the throne of
Israel;Jer. xxxiii. 15-17.
the
allusion therefore appears to be to the dynasty, and not to a
single person. And this view finds some support in the case of
Ezekiel from the fact that in the later vision of chs. xl.-xlviii.
the prophet undoubtedly anticipates a perpetuation of the dynasty
through successive generations.Cf. ch. xliii. 7, xlv. 8, xlvi. 16
ff.
On
the other hand it is difficult to reconcile this view with the
expressions used in this and the thirty-seventh chapters. When we
read that “My servant David shall be their
prince for ever,”Ch. xxxvii. 25.
we
can scarcely escape the impression that the prophet is thinking of
a personal Messiah reigning eternally. If it were necessary to
decide between these
two alternatives, it might be safest to adhere to the idea of a
personal Messiah, as conveying the fullest rendering of the
prophet's thought. There is reason to think that in the interval
between this prophecy and his final vision Ezekiel's conception of
the Messiah underwent a certain modification, and therefore the
teaching of the later passage cannot be used to control the
explanation of this. But the obscurity is of such a nature that we
cannot hope to remove it. In the prophets' delineations of the
future there are many points on which the light of revelation had
not been fully cast; for they, like the Christian apostle,
“knew in part and prophesied in
part.” And the question of the way in which the Messiah's
office is to be prolonged is precisely one of those which did not
greatly occupy the mind of the prophets. There is no perspective in
Messianic prophecy: the future kingdom of God is seen, as it were,
in one plane, and how it is to be transmitted from one age to
another is never thought of. Thus it may become difficult to say
whether a particular prophet, in speaking of the Messiah, has a
single individual in view or whether he is thinking of a dynasty or
a succession. To Ezekiel the Messiah was a divinely revealed ideal,
which was to be fulfilled in a person; whether the prophet himself
distinctly understood this is a matter of inferior importance.
The second
question is one that perhaps would not readily occur to a plain
man. It relates to the meaning of the word “prince” as applied to the Messiah. It has been
thought by some critics that Ezekiel had a special reason for
avoiding the title “king”; and from
this supposed reason a somewhat sweeping conclusion has been
deduced. We are asked to believe that Ezekiel had in principle
abandoned the Messianic hope of his earlier prophecies—i.e.,
the hope of a restoration of the Davidic kingdom in its ancient
splendour. What he really contemplates is the abolition of the Hebrew monarchy, and the
institution of a new political system entirely different from
anything that had existed in the past. Although the Davidic prince
will hold the first place in the restored community, his dignity
will be less than royal; he will only be a titular monarch, his
power being overshadowed by the presence of Jehovah, the true king
of Israel. Now so far as this view is suggested by the use of the
word “prince” (literally
“leader” or “president”) in preference to “king,”“Das Königthum
wird diese [the Davidic] Familie nicht wieder erhalten, denn
Ezechiel fährt fort: ‘Ich Iahwe werde ihnen
Gott sein und mein Knecht David wird nâsî d. h. Fürst in ihrer Mitte
sein.’ Also nur ein Fürstenthum wird der
Familie Davids in der besseren Zukunft Israel's zu
Theil.”—Stade, Geschichte des Volkes
Israel, vol. ii., p. 39.
it is
sufficiently answered by pointing to the Messianic passage in ch.
xxxvii., where the name “king” is
used three times and in a peculiarly emphatic manner of the
Messianic prince.Ch. xxxvii. 22-24.
There
is no reason to suppose that Ezekiel drew a distinction between
“princely” and “kingly” rank, and deliberately withheld the
higher dignity from the Messiah. Whatever may be the exact relation
of the Messiah to Jehovah, there is no doubt that he is conceived
as a king in the full sense of the term, possessed of all regal
qualities, and shepherding his people with the authority which
belonged to a true son of David.
But there is
another consideration which weighs more seriously with the writers
referred to. There is reason to believe that Ezekiel's conception
of the final kingdom of God underwent a change which might not
unfairly be described as an abandonment of the Messianic
expectation in its more restricted sense. In his latest vision the
functions of the prince are defined in such a way that his position
is shorn of the ideal significance which properly invests the
office of the Messiah. The change does not indeed affect his merely political status. He
is still son of David and king of Israel, and all that is here said
about his duty towards his subjects is there presupposed. But his
character seems to be no longer regarded as thoroughly reliable, or
equal to all the temptations that arise wherever absolute power is
lodged in human hands. The possibility that the king may abuse his
authority for his private advantage is distinctly contemplated, and
provision is made against it in the statutory constitution to which
the king himself is subject. Such precautions are obviously
inconsistent with the ideal of the Messianic kingdom which we find,
for example, in the prophecy of Isaiah. The important question
therefore comes to be, whether this lower view of the monarchy is
anticipated in the thirty-fourth and thirty-seventh chapters. This
does not appear to be the case. The prophet still occupies the same
standpoint as in ch. xvii., regarding the Davidic monarchy as the
central religious institution of the restored state. The Messiah of
these chapters is a perfect king, endowed with the Spirit of God
for the discharge of his great office, one whose personal character
affords an absolute security for the maintenance of public
righteousness, and who is the medium of communication between God
and the nation. In other words, what we have to do with is a
Messianic prediction in the fullest sense of the term.
In concluding
our study of Ezekiel's Messianic teaching, we may make one remark
bearing on its typological interpretation. The attempt is sometimes
made to trace a gradual development and enrichment of the Messianic
idea in the hands of successive prophets. From that point of view
Ezekiel's contribution to the doctrine of the Messiah must be felt
to be disappointing. No one can imagine that his portrait of the
coming king possesses anything like the suggestiveness and
religious
meaning conveyed by the ideal which stands out so clearly from the
pages of Isaiah. And, indeed, no subsequent prophet excels or even
equals Isaiah in the clearness and profundity of his directly
Messianic conceptions. This fact shows us that the endeavour to
find in the Old Testament a regular progress along one particular
line proceeds on too narrow a view of the scope of prophecy. The
truth is that the figure of the king is only one of many types of
the Christian dispensation which the religious institutions of
Israel supplied to the prophets. It is the most perfect of all
types, partly because it is personal, and partly because the idea
of kingship is the most comprehensive of the offices which Christ
executes as our Redeemer. But, after all, it expresses only one
aspect of the glorious future of the kingdom of God towards which
prophecy steadily points. We must remember also that the order in
which these types emerge is determined not altogether by their
intrinsic importance, but partly by their adaptation to the needs
of the age in which the prophet lived. The main function of
prophecy was to furnish present and practical direction to the
people of God; and the form under which the ideal was presented to
any particular generation was always that best fitted to help it
onwards, one stage nearer to the great consummation. Thus while
Isaiah idealises the figure of the king, Jeremiah grasps the
conception of a new religion under the form of a covenant, the
second Isaiah unfolds the idea of the prophetic servant of Jehovah,
Zechariah and the writer of the 110th Psalm idealise the
priesthood. All these are Messianic prophecies, if we take the word
in its widest acceptation; but they are not all cast in one mould,
and the attempt to arrange them in a single series is obviously
misleading. So with regard to Ezekiel we may say that his chief
Messianic ideal (still using the expression in a general sense) is
the sanctuary, the
symbol of Jehovah's presence in the midst of His people. At the end
of ch. xxxvii. the kingdom and the sanctuary are mentioned together
as pledges of the glory of the latter days. But while the idea of
the Messianic monarchy was a legacy inherited from his prophetic
precursors, the Temple was an institution whose typical
significance Ezekiel was the first to unfold. It was moreover the
one that met the religious requirements of the age in which Ezekiel
lived. Ultimately the hope of the personal Messiah loses the
importance which it still has in the present section of the book;
and the prophet's vision of the future concentrates itself on the
sanctuary as the centre of the restored theocracy, and the source
from which the regenerating influences of the divine grace flow
forth to Israel and the world.
Chapter XXI. Jehovah's Land. Chapters
xxxv., xxxvi.
The teaching of
this important passage turns on certain ideas regarding the land of
Canaan which enter very deeply into the religion of Israel. These
ideas are no doubt familiar in a general way to all thoughtful
readers of the Old Testament; but their full import is scarcely
realised until we understand that they are not peculiar to the
Bible, but form part of the stock of religious conceptions common
to Israel and its heathen neighbours.On the whole subject of the relation
of the gods to the land see Robertson Smith, Religion of the
Semites, pp. 91 ff.
In
the more advanced Semitic religions of antiquity each nation had
its own god as well as its own land, and the bond between the god
and the land was supposed to be quite as strong as that between the
god and the nation. The god, the land, and the people formed a
triad of religious relationship, and so closely were these three
elements associated that the expulsion of a people from its land
was held to dissolve the bond between it and the god. Thus while in
practice the land of a god was coextensive with the territory
inhabited by his worshippers, yet in theory the relation of the god
to his land is independent of his relation to the inhabitants; it
was his land whether the people in it
were his worshippers or not. The peculiar confusion of ideas that
arose when the people
of one god came to reside permanently in the territory of another
is well illustrated by the case of the heathen colony which the
king of Assyria planted in Samaria after the exile of the ten
tribes. These settlers brought their own gods with them; but when
some of them were slain by lions, they perceived that they were
making a mistake in ignoring the rights of the god of the land.
They sent accordingly for a priest to instruct them in the religion
of the god of the land; and the result was that they “feared Jehovah and served their own gods” (2
Kings xvii. 24-41). It was expected no doubt that in course of time
the foreign deities would be acclimatised.
In the Old
Testament we find many traces of the influence of this conception
on the Hebrew religion. Canaan was the land of Jehovah (Hosea ix.
3) apart altogether from its possession by Israel, the people of
Jehovah. It was Jehovah's land before Israel entered it, the
inheritance which He had selected for His people out of all the
countries of the world, the Land of Promise, given to the
patriarchs while as yet they were but strangers and sojourners in
it. Although the Israelites took possession of it as a nation of
conquerors, they did so in the consciousness that they were
expelling from Jehovah's dwelling-place a population which had
polluted it by their abominations. From that time onwards the
tenure of the soil of Palestine was regarded as an essential factor
of the national religion. The idea that Jehovah could not be
rightly worshipped outside of Hebrew territory was firmly rooted in
the mind of the people, and was accepted by the prophets as a
principle involved in the special relations that Jehovah maintained
with the people of Israel.Josh. xxii. 19; 1 Sam. xxvi. 19; Hosea
ix. 3-5.
Hence
no threat could be more terrible in the ears of the Israelites than
that of expatriation from
their native soil; for it meant nothing less than the dissolution
of the tie that subsisted between them and their God. When that
threat was actually fulfilled there was no reproach harder to bear
than the taunt which Ezekiel here puts into the mouth of the
heathen: “These are Jehovah's people—and
yet they are gone forth out of His land” (ch. xxxvi. 20).
They felt all that was implied in that utterance of malicious
satisfaction over the collapse of a religion and the downfall of a
deity.
There is another
way in which the thought of Canaan as Jehovah's land enters into
the religious conceptions of the Old Testament, and very markedly
into those of Ezekiel. As the God of the land Jehovah is the source
of its productiveness and the author of all the natural blessings
enjoyed by its inhabitants. It is He who gives the rain in its
season or else withholds it in token of His displeasure; it is He
who multiplies or diminishes the flocks and herds which feed on its
pastures, as well as the human population sustained by its produce.
This view of things was a primary factor in the religious education
of an agricultural people, as the ancient Hebrews mainly were. They
felt their dependence on God most directly in the influences of
their uncertain climate on the fertility of their land, with its
great possibilities of abundant provision for man and beast, and on
the other hand its extreme risk of famine and all the hardships
that follow in its train. In the changeful aspects of nature they
thus read instinctively the disposition of Jehovah towards
themselves. Fruitful seasons and golden harvests, diffusing comfort
and affluence through the community, were regarded as proofs that
all was well between them and their God; while times of barrenness
and scarcity brought home to them the conviction that Jehovah was
alienated. From the allusions in the prophets to droughts and
famines, to blastings and mildew, to the scourge of locusts, we seem to gather
that on the whole the later history of Israel had been marked by
agricultural distress. The impression is confirmed by a hint of
Ezekiel's in the passage now before us. The land of Canaan had
apparently acquired an unenviable reputation for barrenness. The
reproach of the heathen lay upon it as a land that “devoured men and bereaved its
population.”Ch. xxxvi. 13.
The
reference may be partly (as Smend thinks) to the ravages of war, to
which Palestine was peculiarly exposed on account of its important
strategic situation. But the “reproach of
famine”Ch. xxxvi. 30: cf. xxxiv. 29.
was
certainly one point in its ill fame among the surrounding nations,
and it is quite sufficient to explain the strong language in which
they expressed their contempt. Now this state of things was plainly
inconsistent with amicable relations between the nation and its
God. It was evidence that the land lay under the blight of
Jehovah's displeasure, and the ground of that displeasure lay in
the sin of the people. Where the land counted for so much as an
index to the mind of God, it was a postulate of faith that in the
ideal future when God and Israel were perfectly reconciled the
physical condition of Canaan should be worthy of Him whose land it
was. And we have already seen that amongst the glories of the
Messianic age the preternatural fertility of the Holy Land holds a
prominent place.
This conception
of Canaan as the land of Jehovah undoubtedly has its natural
affinities with religious notions of a somewhat primitive kind. It
belongs to the stage of thought at which the power of a god is
habitually regarded as subject to local limitations, and in which
accordingly a particular territory is assigned to every deity as
the sphere of his influence. It is probable that the great mass of
the Hebrew people had never risen above this idea, but continued to
think of their country as Jehovah's land in precisely the same way as Assyria was
Asshur's land and Moab the land of Chemosh. The monotheism of the
Old Testament revelation breaks through this system of ideas, and
interprets Jehovah's relation to the land in an entirely different
sense. It is not as the exclusive sphere of His influence that
Canaan is peculiarly associated with Jehovah's presence, but mainly
because it is the scene of His historical manifestation of Himself,
and the stage on which events were transacted which revealed His
Godhead to all the world. No prophet has a clearer perception of
the universal sweep of the divine government than Ezekiel, and yet
no prophet insists more strongly than he on the possession of the
land of Canaan as an indispensable symbol of communion between God
and His people. He has met with God in the “unclean land” of his exile, and he knows that
the moral government of the universe is not suspended by the
departure of Jehovah from His earthly sanctuary. Nevertheless he
cannot think of this separation as other than temporary. The final
reconciliation must take place on the soil of Palestine. The
kingdom of God can only be established by the return both of Israel
and Jehovah to their own land; and their joint possession of that
land is the seal of the everlasting covenant of peace that subsists
between them.
We must now
proceed to study the way in which these conceptions influenced the
Messianic expectations of Ezekiel at this period of his life. The
passage we are to consider consists of three sections. The
thirty-fifth chapter is a prophecy of judgment on Edom. The first
fifteen verses of ch. xxxvi. contain a promise of the restoration
of the land of Israel to its rightful owner. And the remainder of
that chapter presents a comprehensive view of the divine necessity
for the restoration and the power by which the redemption of the
people is to be accomplished.
I
At the time
when these prophecies were written the land of Israel was in the
possession of the Edomites. By what means they had succeeded in
effecting a lodgment in the country we do not know. It is not
unlikely that Nebuchadnezzar may have granted them this extension
of their territory as a reward for their services to his army
during the last siege of Jerusalem. At all events their presence
there was an accomplished fact, and it appeals to the mind of the
prophet in two aspects. In the first place it was an outrage on
the majesty of Jehovah which filled the cup of Edom's iniquity to
the brim. In the second place it was an obstacle to the
restoration of Israel which had to be removed by the direct
intervention of the Almighty. These are the two themes which
occupy the thoughts of Ezekiel, the one in ch. xxxv. and the
other in ch. xxxvi. Hitherto he has spoken of the return to the
land of Canaan as a matter of course, as a thing necessary and
self-evident and not needing to be discussed in detail. But as
the time draws near he is led to think more clearly of the
historical circumstances of the return, and especially of the
hindrances arising from the actual situation of affairs.
But besides
this one cannot fail to be struck by the effective contrast which
the two pictures—one of the mountain land of Israel, and the
other of the mountain land of Seir—present to the imagination. It
is like a prophetic amplification of the blessing and curse which
Isaac pronounced on the progenitors of these two nations. Of the
one it is said:—
God give thee of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth,
And abundance of corn and wine.
And of the
other:—
Surely far from the fatness of the earth shall thy dwelling be,
And far from the dew of heaven from above.Gen. xxvii. 28, 39.
In that
forecast of the destiny of the two brothers the actual
characteristics of their respective countries are tersely and
accurately expressed. But now, when the history of both nations
is about to be brought to an issue, the contrast is emphasised
and perpetuated. The blessing of Jacob is confirmed and expanded
into a promise of unimagined felicity, and the equivocal blessing
on Esau is changed into an unqualified and permanent curse. Thus,
when the mountains of Israel break forth into singing, and are
clothed with all the luxuriance of vegetation in which the
Oriental imagination revels, and cultivated by a happy and
contented people, those of Seir are doomed to perpetual sterility
and become a horror and desolation to all that pass by.
Confining
ourselves, however, to the thirty-fifth chapter, what we have
first to notice is the sins by which the Edomites had incurred
this judgment. These may be summed up under three heads: first,
their unrelenting hatred of Israel, which in the day of Judah's
calamity had broken out in savage acts of revenge (ver. 5);
second, their rejoicing over the misfortunes of Israel and the
desolation of its land (ver. 15); and third, their eagerness to
seize the land as soon as it was vacant (ver. 10). The first and
second of these have been already spoken of under the prophecies
on foreign nations; it is only the last that is of special
interest in the present connection. Of course the motive that
prompted Edom was natural, and it may be difficult to say how far
real moral guilt was involved in it. The annexation of vacant
territory, as the land of Israel practically was at this time,
would
be regarded according to modern ideas as not only justifiable but
praiseworthy. Edom had the excuse of seeking to better its
condition by the possession of a more fertile country than its
own, and perhaps also the still stronger plea of pressure by the
Arabs from behind. But in the consciousness of an ancient people
there was always another thought present; and it is here if
anywhere that the sin of Edom lies. The invasion of Israel did
not cease to be an act of aggression because there were no human
defenders to bar the way. It was still Jehovah's land, although
it was unoccupied; and to intrude upon it was a conscious
defiance of His power. The arguments by which the Edomites
justified their seizure of it were none of those which a modern
state might use in similar circumstances, but were based on the
religious ideas which were common to all the world in those days.
They were aware that by the unwritten law which then prevailed
the step they meditated was sacrilege; and the spirit that
animated them was arrogant exultation over what was esteemed the
humiliation of Israel's national deity: “The two nations and the two countries shall be mine,
and I will possess them, although Jehovah was there” (ver.
10: cf. vv. 12, 13). That is to say, the defeat and captivity of
Israel have proved the impotence of Jehovah to guard His land;
His power is broken, and the two countries called by His name lie
open to the invasion of any people that dares to trample
religious scruples underfoot. This was the way in which the
action of Edom would be interpreted by universal consent; and the
prophet is only reflecting the general sense of the age when he
charges them with this impiety. Now it is true that the Edomites
could not be expected to understand all that was involved in a
defiance of the God of Israel. To them He was only one among many
national gods, and their religion did not teach them to reverence
the gods of a
foreign state. But though they were not fully conscious of the
degree of guilt they incurred, they nevertheless sinned against
the light they had; and the consequences of transgression are
never measured by the sinner's own estimate of his culpability.
There was enough in the history of Israel to have impressed the
neighbouring peoples with a sense of the superiority of its
religion and the difference in character between Jehovah and all
other gods. If the Edomites had utterly failed to learn that
lesson, they were themselves partly to blame; and the spiritual
insensibility and dulness of conscience which everywhere
suppressed the knowledge of Jehovah's name is the very thing
which in the view of Ezekiel needs to be removed by signal and
exemplary acts of judgment.
It is not
necessary to enter minutely into the details of the judgment
threatened against Edom. We may simply note that it corresponds
point for point with the demeanour exhibited by the Edomites in
the time of Israel's final retribution. The “perpetual hatred” is rewarded by perpetual
desolation (ver. 9); their seizure of Jehovah's land is punished
by their annihilation in the land that was their own (vv. 6-8);
and their malicious satisfaction over the depopulation of
Palestine recoils on their own heads when their mountain land is
made desolate “to the rejoicing of the
whole earth” (vv. 14, 15). And the lesson that will be
taught to the world by the contrast between the renewed Israel
and the barren mountain of Seir will be the power and holiness of
the one true God: “they shall know that I
am Jehovah.”
II
The prophet's
mind is still occupied with the sin of Edom as he turns in the
thirty-sixth chapter to depict the future of the land of Israel. The
opening verses of the chapter (vv. 1-7) betray an intensity of
patriotic feeling not often expressed by Ezekiel. The utterance
of the single idea which he wishes to express seems to be impeded
by the multitude of reflections that throng upon him as he
apostrophises “the mountains and the
hills, the watercourses and the valleys, the desolate ruins and
deserted cities” of his native country (ver. 4). The land
is conceived as conscious of the shame and reproach that rest
upon it; and all the elements that might be supposed to make up
the consciousness of the land—its naked desolation, the tread of
alien feet, the ravages of war, and the derisive talk of the
surrounding heathen (Edom being specially in view)—present
themselves to the mind of the prophet before he can utter the
message with which he is charged: “Thus
saith the Lord Jehovah; Behold, I speak in My jealousy and My
anger, because ye have borne the shame of the heathen: therefore
... I lift up My hand, Surely the nations that are round about
you—even they shall bear their shame” (vv. 6, 7).
The jealousy
of Jehovah is here His holy resentment against indignities done
to Himself, and this attribute of the divine nature is now
enlisted on the side of Israel because of the despite which the
heathen had heaped on His land. But it is noteworthy that it is
through the land and not the people that this feeling is first
called into operation. Israel is still sinful and alienated from
God; but the honour of Jehovah is bound up with the land not less
than with the nation, and it is in reference to it that the
necessity of vindicating His holy name first becomes apparent.
There is what we might almost venture to call a divine
patriotism, which is stirred into activity by the desolate
condition of the land where the worship of the true God should be
celebrated. On this feature of Jehovah's character Ezekiel builds
the assurance of his
people's redemption. The idea expressed by the verses is simply
the certainty that Canaan shall be recovered from the heathen
dominion for the purposes of the kingdom of God.
The following
verses (8-15) speak of the positive aspects of the approaching
deliverance. Continuing his apostrophe to the mountains of
Israel, the prophet describes the transformation which is to pass
over them in view of the return of the exiled nation, which is
now on the eve of accomplishment (ver. 8). It might almost seem
as if the return of the inhabitants were here treated as a mere
incident of the rehabilitation of the land. That of course is
only an appearance, caused by the peculiar standpoint assumed
throughout these chapters. Ezekiel was not one who could look on
complacently
Where wealth accumulates and men decay;
nor was he
indifferent to the social welfare of his people. On the contrary
we have seen from ch. xxxiv. that he regards that as a supreme
interest in the future kingdom of God. And even in this passage
he does not make the interests of humanity subservient to those
of nature. His leading idea is a reunion of land and people under
happier auspices than had obtained of old. Formerly the land, in
mysterious sympathy with the mind of Jehovah, had seemed to be
animated by a hostile disposition towards its inhabitants. The
reluctant and niggardly subsistence that had been wrung from the
soil justified the evil report which the spies had brought up of
it at the first as a “land that eateth up
the inhabitants thereof.”Numb. xiii. 32.
Its
inhospitable character was known among the heathen, so that it
bore the reproach of being a land that “devoured men and bereaved its nation.” But in
the glorious future all
this will be changed in harmony with Jehovah's altered relations
with His people. In the language of a later prophet,Isa. lxii. 4.
the
land shall be “married” to
Jehovah, and endowed with exuberant fertility. Yielding its
fruits freely and generously, it will wipe off the reproach of
the heathen; its cities shall be inhabited, its ruins rebuilt,
and man and beast multiplied on its surface, so that its last
state shall be better than its first (ver. 11). And those who
till it and enjoy the benefits of its wonderful transformation
shall be none other than the house of Israel, for whose sins it
had borne the reproach of barrenness in the past (vv. 12-15).
III
The next
passage (vv. 16-38) deals more with the renewal of the nation
than with that of the land; and thus forms a link of connection
between the main theme of this chapter and that of ch. xxxvii. It
contains the clearest and most comprehensive statement of the
process of redemption to be found in the whole book, exhibiting
as it does in logical order all the elements which enter into the
divine scheme of salvation. The fact that it is inserted just at
this point affords a fresh illustration of the importance
attached by the prophet to the religious associations which
gathered round the Holy Land. The land indeed is still the pivot
on which his thoughts turn; he starts from it in his short review
of God's past judgments on His people, and finally returns to it
in summing up the world-wide effects of His gracious dealings
with them in the immediate future. Although the connection of
ideas is singularly clear, the passage throws so much light on
the deepest theological conceptions of Ezekiel that it will be
well to recapitulate the principal steps of the
argument.
We need not
linger on the cause of the rejection of Israel, for here the
prophet only repeats the main lesson which we have found so often
enforced in the first part of his book. Israel went into exile
because its manner of life as a nation had been abhorrent to
Jehovah, and it had defiled the land which was Jehovah's house.
As in ch. xxii. and elsewhere bloodshed and idols are the chief
emblems of the people's sinful condition; these constitute a real
physical defilement of the land, which must be punished by the
eviction of its inhabitants: “So I poured
out My wrath upon them [on account of the blood which they had
shed upon the land, and the idols wherewith they had polluted
it]: and I scattered them among the nations, and they were
dispersed through the countries.”Vv. 18, 19. The words in brackets are
wanting in the LXX.
Thus the Exile
was necessary for the vindication of Jehovah's holiness as
reflected in the sanctity of His land. But the effect of the
dispersion on other nations was such as to compromise the honour
of Israel's God in another direction. Knowing Jehovah only as a
tribal god, the heathen naturally concluded that He had been too
feeble to protect His land from invasion and His people from
captivity. They could not penetrate to the moral reasons which
rendered the chastisement inevitable; they only saw that these
were Jehovah's people, and yet they were gone forth out of His
land (ver. 20), and drew the natural inference. The impression
thus produced by the presence of Israelites amongst the heathen
was derogatory to the majesty of Jehovah, and obscured the
knowledge of the true principles of His government which was
destined to extend to all the earth. This is all that seems to be
meant by the expression “profaned My holy
name.”Vv. 20, 22, 23.
It is not implied
that the exiles scandalised the heathen by their vicious lives,
and so brought disgrace on “that glorious
name by which they were called,”James ii. 7.
although that idea is implied in ch. xii. 16. The profanation
spoken of here was caused directly not by the sin but by the
calamities of Israel. Yet it was their sins which brought down
judgment upon them, and so indirectly gave occasion to the
enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. There were probably already
some of Ezekiel's compatriots who realised the bitterness of the
thought that their fate was the means of bringing discredit on
their God. Their experience would be similar to that of the
lonely exile who composed the forty-second psalm:—
As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me;
While they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?Psalm xlii. 10.
Now in this
fact the prophet recognises an absolute ground of confidence in
Israel's restoration. Jehovah cannot endure that His name should
thus be held up to derision before the eyes of mankind. To allow
this would be to frustrate the end of His government of the
world, which is to manifest His Godhead in such a way that all
men shall be brought to acknowledge it. Although He is known as
yet only as the national God of a particular people, He must be
disclosed to the world as all that the inspired teachers of
Israel know Him to be—the one Being worthy of the homage of the
human heart. There must be some way by which His name can be
sanctified before the heathen, some means of reconciling the
partial revelation of His holiness in Israel's dispersion with
the complete manifestation of His power to the world at large.
And this reconciliation can only be effected through the
redemption of Israel. God cannot disown His ancient people, for that would be to
stultify the whole past revelation of His character and leave the
name by which He had made Himself known to contempt. That is
divinely impossible; and therefore Jehovah must carry through His
purpose by sanctifying Himself in the salvation of Israel. The
outward token of salvation will be their restoration to their own
land (ver. 24); but the inward reality of it will be a change in
the national character which will make their dwelling in the land
consistent with the revelation of Jehovah's holiness already
given by their banishment from it.
At this point
accordingly (ver. 25) Ezekiel passes to speak of the spiritual
process of regeneration by which Israel is to be transformed into
a true people of God. This is a necessary part of the
sanctification of the divine name before the world. The new life
of the people will reveal the character of the God whom they
serve, and the change will explain the calamities that had
befallen them in the past. The world will thus see “that the house of Israel went into captivity for
their iniquity,”Ch. xxxix. 23.
and
will understand the holiness which the true God requires in His
worshippers. But for the present the prophet's thoughts are
concentrated on the operations of the divine grace by which the
renewal is effected. His analysis of the process of conversion is
profoundly instructive, and anticipates to a remarkable degree
the teaching of the New Testament. We shall content ourselves at
present with merely enumerating the different parts of the
process. The first step is the removal of the impurities
contracted by past transgressions. This is represented under the
figure of sprinkling with clean water, suggested by the ablutions
or lustrations which are so common a feature of the Levitical
ritual (ver. 25).
The truth symbolised is the forgiveness of sins, the act of grace
which takes away the effect of moral uncleanness as a barrier to
fellowship with God. The second point is what is properly called
regeneration, the giving of a new heart and spirit (ver. 26). The
stony heart of the old nation, whose obduracy had dismayed so
many prophets, making them feel that they had spent their labour
for nought and in vain, shall be taken away, and instead of it
they shall receive a heart of flesh, sensitive to spiritual
influences and responsive to the divine will. And to this is
added in the third place the promise of the Spirit of God to be
in them as the ruling principle of a new life of obedience to the
law of God (ver. 27). The law, both moral and ceremonial, is the
expression of Jehovah's holy nature, and both the will and the
power to keep it perfectly must proceed from the indwelling of
His holy Spirit in the people.The phrase “cause you to walk” (ver. 27) is very strong in
the Hebrew, almost “I will bring it about
that ye walk.”
It
is thus Jehovah Himself who “saves” the people “out of all their uncleannesses” (ver. 29),
caused by the depravity and infirmity of their natural hearts.
When these conditions are realised the harmony between Jehovah
and Israel will be completely restored: He will be their God, and
they shall be His people. They shall dwell for ever in the land
promised to their fathers; and the blessing of God resting on
land and people will multiply the fruit of the tree and the
produce of the field, so that they receive no more the reproach
of famine among the nations (vv. 28-30).
Having thus
described the process of salvation as from first to last the work
of Jehovah, the prophet proceeds to consider the impression which
it will produce first on Israel and then on the surrounding
nations (vv. 31-36).
On Israel the effect of the goodness of God will be to lead them
to repentance. Remembering what their past history has been, and
contrasting it with the blessedness they now enjoy, they shall be
filled with shame and self-contempt, loathing themselves for
their iniquities and their abominations. It is not meant that all
feelings of joy and gratitude will be swallowed up in the
consciousness of unworthiness; but this is the feeling that will
be called forth by the memory of their past transgressions. Their
horror of sin will be such that they cannot think of what they
have been without the deepest compunction and self-abasement. And
this sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, reacting on their
consciousness of themselves, will be the best moral guarantee
against their relapse into the uncleanness from which they have
been delivered.
To the
heathen, on the other hand, the state of Israel will be a
convincing demonstration of the power and godhead of Jehovah. Men
will say, “Yonder land, which was
desolate, has become like the garden of Eden; and the cities that
were ruined and waste and destroyed are fenced and
inhabited” (ver. 35). They will know that it is Jehovah's
doing, and it will be marvellous in their eyes.
The last two
verses seem to be an appendix. They deal with a special feature
of the restoration, about which the minds of the exiles may have
been exercised in thinking of the possibility of their
deliverance. Where was the population of the new Israel to come
from? The population of Judah must have been terribly reduced by
the disastrous wars that had desolated the country since the time
of Hezekiah. How was it possible, with a few thousands in exile,
and a miserable remnant left in the land, to build up a strong
and prosperous nation? This thought of theirs is met by the
announcement of a great increase of the inhabitants of the land.
Jehovah is ready to meet the questionings of human anxiety on
this point:
He will “let Himself be inquired
of” for this.The thirty-seventh verse hardly bears
the sense which is sometimes put upon it: “I am ready to do this for the house of Israel, yet I
will not do it until they have learned to pray for it.” That
is true of spiritual blessings generally; but Ezekiel's idea is
simpler. The particle “yet” is not
adversative but temporal, and the “this” refers to what follows, and not to what
precedes. The meaning is, “The time shall
come when I will answer the prayer of the house of Israel,”
etc.
The
remembrance of the sacrificial flocks that used to throng the
streets leading to the Temple at the time of the great festivals
supplies Ezekiel with an image of the teeming population that
shall be in all the cities of Canaan when this prophecy is
fulfilled.
Such is in
outline the scheme of redemption which Ezekiel presents to the
minds of his readers. We shall reserve a fuller consideration of
its more important doctrines for a separate chapter.Chapter XXIII. below.
One
general application of its teaching, however, may be pointed out
before leaving the subject. We see that for Ezekiel the mysteries
and perplexities of the divine government find their solution in
the idea of redemption. He is aware of the false impression
necessarily produced on the heathen mind by God's dealings with
His people, as long as the process is incomplete. On account of
Israel's sin the revelation of God in providence is gradual and
fragmentary, and seems even for a time to defeat its own end. The
omnipotence of God was obscured by the very act of vindicating
His holiness; and what was in itself a great step towards the
complete revelation of His character came on the world in the
first instance as an evidence of His impotence. But the prophet,
looking beyond this to the final effect of God's work upon the
world, sees that Jehovah can be truly known only in the
manifestation of His redeeming grace. All the enigmas and
contradictions that arise from imperfect comprehension of His
purpose find their
answer in this truth, that God will yet redeem Israel from its
iniquities. God is His own interpreter, and when His work of
salvation is finished the result will be a conclusive
demonstration of that lofty conception of God to which the
prophet had attained.
Now this
argument of Ezekiel's illustrates a principle of wide
application. Many objections that are advanced against the
theistic view of the universe seem to proceed on the assumption
that the actual state of the world adequately represents the mind
of its Creator. The heathen of Ezekiel's day have their modern
representatives amongst dispassionate critics of Providence like
J. S. Mill, who prove to their own satisfaction that the world
cannot be the work of a being answering to the Christian idea of
God. Do what you will, they say, to minimise the evils of
existence, there is still an amount of undeniable pain and misery
in the world which is fatal to your doctrine of an all-powerful
and perfectly good Creator. Omnipotence could, and benevolence
would, find a remedy; the Author of the universe, therefore,
cannot possess both. God, in short, if there be a God, may be
benevolent, or He may be omnipotent; but if benevolent He is not
omnipotent, and if omnipotent He cannot be benevolent. How very
convincing this is—from the standpoint of the neutral,
non-Christian observer! And how poor a defence is sometimes made
by the optimism which tries to make out that most evils are
blessings in disguise, and the rest not worth minding! The
Christian religion rises superior to such criticism, mainly in
virtue of its living faith in redemption. It does not explain
away evil, nor does it profess to account for its origin. It
speaks of the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain
together even until now. But it also describes the creation as
waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. It teaches us
to discover in history the unfolding of a purpose of redemption,
the end of which
will be the deliverance of mankind from the dominion of sin and
their eternal blessedness in the kingdom of our God and His
Christ. What Ezekiel foresaw in the form of a national
restoration will be accomplished in a world-wide salvation, in a
new heavens and a new earth, where there shall be no more curse.
But meanwhile to judge of God from what is, apart from what is
yet to be revealed, is to repeat the mistake of those who judged
Jehovah to be an effete tribal deity because He had suffered His
people to go forth out of their land. Those who have been brought
into sympathy with the divine purpose, and have experienced the
power of the Spirit of God in subduing the evil of their own
hearts, can hold with unwavering confidence the hope of a
universal victory of good over evil; and in the light of that
hope the mysteries that surround the moral government of God
cease to disturb their faith in the eternal Love which labours
patiently and unceasingly for the redemption of man.
Chapter XXII. Life From The Dead.
Chapter xxxvii.
The most
formidable obstacle to faith on the part of the exiles in the
possibility of a national redemption was the complete
disintegration of the ancient people of Israel. Hard as it was to
realise that Jehovah still lived and reigned in spite of the
cessation of His worship, and hard to hope for a recovery of the
land of Canaan from the dominion of the heathen, these things were
still conceivable. What almost surpassed conception was the
restoration of national life to the feeble and demoralised remnant
who had survived the fall of the state. It was no mere figure of
speech that these exiles employed when they thought of their nation
as dead. Cast off by its God, driven from its land, dismembered and
deprived of its political organisation, Israel as a people had
ceased to exist. Not only were the outward symbols of national
unity destroyed, but the national spirit was extinct. Just as the
destruction of the bodily organism implies the death of each
separate member and organ and cell, so the individual Israelites
felt themselves to be as dead men, dragging out an aimless
existence without hope in the world. While Israel was alive they
had lived in her and for her; all the best part of their life,
religion, duty, liberty, and loyalty had been bound up with the
consciousness of belonging to a nation with a proud history behind
them and a brilliant future for their posterity. Now that Israel had perished all
spiritual and ideal significance had gone out of their lives; there
remained but a selfish and sordid struggle for existence, and this
they felt was not life, but death in life. And thus a promise of
deliverance which appealed to them as members of a nation seemed to
them a mockery, because they felt in themselves that the bond of
national life was irrevocably broken.
The hardest part
of Ezekiel's task at this time was therefore to revive the national
sentiment, so as to meet the obvious objection that even if Jehovah
were able to drive the heathen from His land there was still no
people of Israel to whom He could give it. If only the exiles could
be brought to believe that Israel had a future, that although now
dead it could be raised from the dead, the spiritual meaning of
their life would be given back to them in the form of hope, and
faith in God would be possible. Accordingly the prophet's thoughts
are now directed to the idea of the nation as the third factor of
the Messianic hope. He has spoken of the kingdom and the land, and
each of these ideals has led him on to the contemplation of the
final condition of the world, in which Jehovah's purpose is fully
manifested. So in this chapter he finds in the idea of the nation a
new point of departure, from which he proceeds to delineate once
more the Messianic salvation in its completeness.
I
The vision of
the valley of dry bones described in the first part of the
chapter contains the answer to the desponding thoughts of the
exiles, and seems indeed to be directly suggested by the figure
in which the popular feeling was currently expressed:
“Our bones are dried; our hope is lost:
we feel ourselves cut off” (ver. 11). The fact that the answer came
to the prophet in a state of trance may perhaps indicate that his
mind had brooded over these words of the people for some time
before the moment of inspiration. Recognising how faithfully they
represented the actual situation, he was yet unable to suggest an
adequate solution of the difficulty by means of the prophetic
conceptions hitherto revealed to him. Such a vision as this seems
to presuppose a period of intense mental activity on the part of
Ezekiel, during which the despairing utterance of his compatriots
sounded in his ears; and the image of the dried bones of the
house of Israel so fixed itself in his mind that he could not
escape its gloomy associations except by a direct communication
from above. When at last the hand of the Lord came upon him, the
revelation clothed itself in a form corresponding to his previous
meditations; the emblem of death and despair is transformed into
a symbol of assured hope through the astounding vision which
unfolds itself before his inner eye.
In the ecstasy
he feels himself led out in spirit to the plain which had been
the scene of former appearances of God to His prophet. But on
this occasion he sees it covered with bones—“very many on the surface of the valley, and very
dry.” He is made to pass round about them, in order that
the full impression of this spectacle of desolation might sink
into his mind. His attention is engrossed by two facts—their
exceeding great number, and their parched appearance, as if they
had lain there long. In other circumstances the question might
have suggested itself, How came these bones there? What countless
host has perished here, leaving its unburied bones to bleach and
wither on the open plain? But the prophet has no need to think of
this. They are the bones which had been familiar to his waking
thoughts, the dry bones of the house of Israel. The question he
hears addressed
to him is not, Whence are these bones? but, Can these bones live?
It is the problem which had exercised his faith in thinking of a
national restoration which thus comes back to him in vision, to
receive its final solution from Him who alone can give it.
The prophet's
hesitating answer probably reveals the struggle between faith and
sight, between hope and fear, which was latent in his mind. He
dare not say No, for that would be to limit the power of Him whom
he knows to be omnipotent, and also to shut out the last gleam of
hope from his own mind. Yet in presence of that appalling scene
of hopeless decay and death he cannot of his own initiative
assert the possibility of resurrection. In the abstract all
things are possible with God; but whether this particular thing,
so inconceivable to men, is within the active purpose of God, is
a question which none can answer save God Himself. Ezekiel does
what man must always do in such a case—he throws himself back on
God, and reverently awaits the disclosure of His will, saying,
“O Jehovah God, Thou knowest.”
It is
instructive to notice that the divine answer comes through the
consciousness of a duty. Ezekiel is commanded first of all to
prophesy over these dry bones; and in the words given him to
utter the solution of his own inward perplexity is wrapped up.
“Say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the
word of Jehovah.... Behold, I will cause breath to enter into
you, and ye shall live” (vv. 4, 5). In this way he is not
only taught that the agency by which Jehovah will effect His
purpose is the prophetic word, but he is also reminded that the
truth now revealed to him is to be the guide of his practical
ministry, and that only in the steadfast discharge of his
prophetic duty can he hold fast the hope of Israel's
resurrection. The problem that has exercised him is not one that
can be settled in retirement and inaction. What he receives is not a mere
answer, but a message, and the delivery of the message is the
only way in which he can realise the truth of it, his activity as
a prophet being indeed a necessary element in the fulfilment of
his words. Let him preach the word of God to these dry bones, and
he will know that they can live; but if he fails to do this, he
will sink back into the unbelief to which all things are
impossible. Faith comes in the act of prophesying.
Ezekiel did as
he was commanded; he prophesied over the dry bones, and
immediately he was sensible of the effect of his words. He heard
a rustling, and looking he saw that the bones were coming
together, bone to his bone. He does not need to tell us how his
heart rejoiced at this first sign of life returning to these dead
bones, and as he watched the whole process by which they were
built up into the semblance of men. It is described in minute
detail, so that no feature of the impression produced by the
stupendous miracle may be lost. It is divided into two stages,
the restoration of the bodily frame and the imparting of the
principle of life.
This division
cannot have any special significance when applied to the actual
nation, such as that the outward order of the state must be first
established, and then the national consciousness renewed. It
belongs to the imagery of the vision, and follows the order
observed in the original creation of man as described in the
second chapter of Genesis. God first formed man of the dust of
the ground, and afterwards breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life, so that he became a living soul. So here we have first a
description of the process by which the bodies were built up, the
skeletons being formed from the scattered bones, and then clothed
successively with sinews and flesh and skin. The reanimation of
these still lifeless bodies is a separate act of creative energy,
in which, however, the agency is still the word of God in the
mouth of the
prophet. He is bidden call for the breath to “come from the four winds of heaven, and breathe upon
these slain that they may live.” In Hebrew the words for
wind, breath, and spirit are identical; and thus the wind becomes
a symbol of the universal divine Spirit which is the source of
all life, while the breath is a symbol of that Spirit as so to
speak specialised in the individual man, or in other words of his
personal life. In the case of the first man Jehovah breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and the idea here is precisely
the same. The wind from the four quarters of heaven which becomes
the breath of this vast assemblage of men is conceived as the
breath of God, and symbolises the life-giving Spirit which makes
each of them a living person. The resurrection is complete. The
men live, and stand up upon their feet an exceeding great
army.
This is the
simplest, as well as the most suggestive, of Ezekiel's visions,
and carries its interpretation on the face of it. The single idea
which it expresses is the restoration of the Hebrew nationality
through the quickening influence of the Spirit of Jehovah on the
surviving members of the old house of Israel. It is not a
prophecy of the resurrection of individual Israelites who have
perished. The bones are “the whole house
of Israel” now in exile; they are alive as individuals,
but as members of a nation they are dead and hopeless of revival.
This is made clear by the explanation of the vision given in vv.
11-14. It is addressed to those who think of themselves as cut
off from the higher interests and activities of the national
life. By a slight change of figure they are conceived as dead and
buried; and the resurrection is represented as an opening of
their graves. But the grave is no more to be understood literally
than the dry bones of the vision itself; both are symbols of the
gloomy and despairing view which the exiles take of their own
condition.
The substance of the prophet's message is that the God who raises
the dead and calls the things that are not as though they were is
able to bring together the scattered members of the house of
Israel and form them into a new people through the operation of
His life-giving Spirit.
It has often
been supposed that, although the passage may not directly teach
the resurrection of the body, it nevertheless implies a certain
familiarity with that doctrine on the part of Ezekiel, if not of
his hearers likewise. If the raising of dead men to life could be
used as an analogy of a national restoration, the former
conception must have been at least more obvious than the latter,
otherwise the prophet would be explaining obscurum per
obscurius. This argument, however, has only a
superficial plausibility. It confounds two things which are
distinct—the mere conception of resurrection, which is all that
was necessary to make the vision intelligible, and settled faith
in it as an element of the Messianic expectation. That God by a
miracle could restore the dead to life no devout Israelite ever
doubted.Cf. 1 Kings xvii.; 2 Kings iv. 13 ff.,
xiii. 21.
But
it is to be noted that the recorded instances of such miracles
are all of those recently dead; and there is no evidence of a
general belief in the possibility of resurrection for those whose
bones were scattered and dry. It is this very impossibility,
indeed, that gives point to the metaphor under which the people
here express their sense of hopelessness. Moreover, if the
prophet had presupposed the doctrine of individual resurrection,
he could hardly have used it as an illustration in the way he
does. The mere prospect of a resuscitation of the multitudes of
Israelites who had perished would of itself have been a
sufficient answer to the despondency of the exiles; and it would
have
been an anti-climax to use it as an argument for something much
less wonderful. We must also bear in mind that while the
resurrection of a nation may be to us little more than a figure
of speech, to the Hebrew mind it was an object of thought more
real and tangible than the idea of personal immortality.
It would
appear therefore that in the order of revelation the hope of the
resurrection is first presented in the promise of a resurrection
of the dead nation of Israel, and only in the second instance as
the resurrection of individual Israelites who should have passed
away without sharing in the glory of the latter days. Like the
early converts to Christianity, the Old Testament believers
sorrowed for those who fell asleep when the Messiah's kingdom was
supposed to be just at hand, until they found consolation in the
blessed hope of a resurrection with which Paul comforted the
Church at Thessalonica.1 Thess. iv. 13 ff.
In
Ezekiel we find that doctrine as yet only in its more general
form of a national resurrection; but it can hardly be doubted
that the form in which he expressed it prepared the way for the
fuller revelation of a resurrection of the individual. In two
later passages of the prophetic Scriptures we seem to find clear
indications of progress in this direction. One is a difficult
verse in the twenty-sixth chapter of Isaiah—part of a prophecy
usually assigned to a period later than Ezekiel—where the writer,
after a lamentation over the disappointments and wasted efforts
of the present, suddenly breaks into a rapture of hope as he
thinks of a time when departed Israelites shall be restored to
life to join the ranks of the ransomed people of God:
“Let thy dead live again! Let my dead
bodies arise! Awake and rejoice, ye that dwell in the dust, for
thy dew is a dew of light, and the earth shall yield up [her]
shades.”Isa. xxvi. 19.
There does not seem to be any doubt that what is here predicted
is the actual resurrection of individual members of the people of
Israel to share in the blessings of the kingdom of God. The other
passage referred to is in the book of Daniel, where we have the
first explicit prediction of a resurrection both of the just and
the unjust. In the time of trouble when the people is delivered
“many of them that sleep in the dust of
the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to
shame and everlasting contempt.”Dan. xii. 2.
These remarks
are made merely to show in what sense Ezekiel's vision may be
regarded as a contribution to the Old Testament doctrine of
personal immortality. It is so not by its direct teaching, nor
yet by its presuppositions, but by the suggestiveness of its
imagery, opening out a line of thought which under the guidance
of the Spirit of truth led to a fuller disclosure of the care of
God for the individual life, and His purpose to redeem from the
power of the grave those who had departed this life in His faith
and fear.
But this line
of inquiry lies somewhat apart from the main teaching of the
passage before us as a message for the Church in all ages. The
passage teaches with striking clearness the continuity of God's
redeeming work in the world, in spite of hindrances which to
human eyes seem insurmountable. The gravest hindrance, both in
appearance and in reality, is the decay of faith and vital
religion in the Church itself. There are times when earnest men
are tempted to say that the Church's hope is lost and her bones
are dried—when laxity of life and lukewarmness in devotion
pervade all her members, and she ceases to influence the world
for good. And yet when we consider that the whole history of God's cause is
one long process of raising dead souls to spiritual life and
building up a kingdom of God out of fallen humanity, we see that
the true hope of the Church can never be lost. It lies in the
life-giving, regenerating power of the divine Spirit, and the
promise that the word of God does not return to Him void but
prospers in the thing whereto He sends it. That is the great
lesson of Ezekiel's vision, and although its immediate
application may be limited to the occasion that called it forth,
yet the analogy on which it is founded is taken up by our Lord
Himself and extended to the proclamation of His truth to the
world at large: “The hour is coming, and
now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and
they that hear shall live.”John v. 25: cf. vv. 28, 29.
We
perhaps too readily empty these strong terms of their meaning.
The Spirit of God is apt to become a mere expression for the
religious and moral influences lodged in a Christian society, and
we come to rely on these agencies for the dissemination of
Christian principles and the formation of Christian character. We
forget that behind all this there is something which is compared
to the imparting of life where there was none, something which is
the work of the Spirit of which we cannot tell whence it cometh
and whither it goeth. But in times of low spirituality, when the
love of many waxes cold, and there are few signs of zeal and
activity in the service of Christ, men learn to fall back in
faith on the invisible power of God to make His word effectual
for the revival of His cause among men. And this happens
constantly in narrow spheres which may never attract the notice
of the world. There are positions in the Church still where
Christ's servants are called to labour in the faith of Ezekiel,
with appearances all against them, and nothing to inspire them but the
conviction that the word they preach is the power of God and able
even to bring life to the dead.
II
The second
half of the chapter speaks of a special feature of the national
restoration, the reunion of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel
under one sceptre. This is represented first of all by a symbolic
action. The prophet is directed to take two pieces of wood,
apparently in the form of sceptres, and to write upon them
inscriptions dedicating them respectively to Judah and Joseph,
the heads of the two confederacies out of which the rival
monarchies were formed. The “companions” (ver. 16)—i.e.,
allies—of Judah are the two tribes of Benjamin and Simeon; those
of Joseph are all the other tribes, who stood under the hegemony
of Ephraim. If the second inscription is rather more complicated
than the first, it is because of the fact that there was no
actual tribe of Joseph. It therefore runs thus: “For Joseph, the staff of Ephraim, and all the house
of Israel his confederates.” These two staves then he is
to put together so that they become one sceptre in his hand. It
is a little difficult to decide whether this was a sign that was
actually performed before the people, or one that is only
imagined. It depends partly on what we take to be meant by the
joining of the two pieces. If Ezekiel merely took two sticks, put
them end to end, and made them look like one, then no doubt he
did this in public, for otherwise there would be no use in
mentioning the circumstance at all. But if the meaning is, as
seems more probable, that when the rods are put together they
miraculously grow into one, then we see that such a sign has a
value for the prophet's own mind as a symbol of the truth
revealed to
him, and it is no longer necessary to assume that the action was
really performed. The purpose of the sign is not merely to
suggest the idea of political unity, which is too simple to
require any such illustration, but rather to indicate the
completeness of the union and the divine force needed to bring it
about. The difficulty of conceiving a perfect fusion of the two
parts of the nation was really very great, the cleavage between
Judah and the North being much older than the monarchy, and
having been accentuated by centuries of political separation and
rivalry.
To us the most
noteworthy fact is the steadfastness with which the prophets of
this period cling to the hope of a restoration of the northern
tribes, although nearly a century and a half had now elapsed
since “Ephraim was broken from being a
people.”Isa. vii. 8.
Ezekiel, like Jeremiah, is unable to think of an Israel which
does not include the representatives of the ten northern tribes.
Whether any communication was kept up with the colonies of
Israelites that had been transported from Samaria to Assyria we
do not know, but they are regarded as still existing, and still
remembered by Jehovah. The resurrection of the nation which
Ezekiel has just predicted is expressly said to apply to the
whole house of Israel, and now he goes on to announce that this
“exceeding great army” shall march
to its land not under two banners, but under one.
We have
touched already, in speaking of the Messianic idea, on the
reasons which lead the prophets to put so much emphasis on this
union. They felt as strongly on the point as a High Churchman
does about the sin of schism, and it would not be difficult for
the latter to show that his point of view and his ideals closely
resemble those
of the prophets. The rending of the body of Christ which is
supposed to be involved in a breach of external unity is
paralleled by the disruption of the Hebrew state, which violates
the unity of the one people of Jehovah. The idea of the Church as
the bride of Christ, is the same idea under which Hosea expresses
the relations between Jehovah and Israel, and it necessarily
carries with it the unity of the people of Israel in the one case
and of the Church in the other. It must be admitted also that the
evils resulting from the division between Judah and Israel have
been reproduced, with consequences a thousand times more
disastrous to religion, in the strife and uncharitableness, the
party spirit and jealousies and animosities, which different
denominations of Christians have invariably exhibited towards
each other when they were close enough for mutual interest. But
granting all this, and granting that what is called schism is
essentially the same thing that the prophets desired to see
removed, it does not at once follow that dissent is in itself
sinful, and still less that the sin is necessarily on the side of
the Dissenter. The question is whether the national standpoint of
the prophets is altogether applicable to the communion of saints
in Christ, whether the body of Christ is really torn asunder by
differences in organisation and opinion, whether, in short,
anything is necessary to avoid the guilt of schism beyond keeping
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The Old Testament
dealt with men in the mass, as members of a nation, and its
standards can hardly be adequate to the polity of a religion
which has to provide for the freedom of the individual conscience
before God. At the worst the Dissenter may point out that the Old
Testament schism was necessary as a protest against tyranny and
despotism, that in this aspect it was sanctioned by the inspired
prophets of the age, that its undoubted evils were partly
compensated by a freer
expansion of religious life, and finally that even the prophets
did not expect it to be healed before the millennium.
From the idea
of the reunited nation Ezekiel returns easily to the promise of
the Davidic king and the blessings of the Messianic dispensation.
The one people implies one shepherd, and also one land, and one
spirit to walk in Jehovah's judgments and to observe His statutes
to do them. The various elements which enter into the conception
of national salvation are thus gathered up and combined in one
picture of the people's everlasting felicity. And the whole is
crowned by the promise of Jehovah's presence with the people,
sanctifying and protecting them from His sanctuary. This final
condition of things is permanent and eternal. The sources of
internal dispeace are removed by the washing away of Israel's
iniquities, and the impossibility of any disturbance from without
is illustrated by the onslaught of the heathen nations described
in the following chapters.
Chapter XXIII. The Conversion Of
Israel.
In an early
chapter of this volumeChapter V., above.
we
had occasion to notice some theological principles which appear to
have guided the prophet's thinking from the first. It was evident
even then that these principles pointed towards a definite theory
of the conversion of Israel and the process by which it was to be
effected. In subsequent prophecies we have seen how constantly
Ezekiel's thoughts revert to this theme, as now one aspect of it
and then another is disclosed to him. We have also glanced at one
passageCh. xxxvi. 16-38.
which
seemed to be a connected statement of the divine procedure as
bearing on the restoration of Israel. But we have now reached a
stage in the exposition where all this lies behind us. In the
chapters that remain to be considered the regeneration of the
people is assumed to have taken place; their religion and their
morality are regarded as established on a stable and permanent
basis, and all that has to be done is to describe the institutions
by which the benefits of salvation may be conserved and handed down
from age to age of the Messianic dispensation. The present is
therefore a fitting opportunity for an attempt to describe
Ezekiel's doctrine of conversion as a whole. It is all the more
desirable that the attempt should be made because the national
salvation is the central interest of the whole book; and if we can understand the
prophet's teaching on this subject, we shall have the key to his
whole system of theology.
1. The first
point to be noticed, and the one most characteristic of Ezekiel, is
the divine motive for the redemption of Israel—Jehovah's regard for
His own name. This thought finds expression in many parts of the
book, but nowhere more clearly than in the twenty-second verse of
the thirty-sixth chapter: “Not for your
sakes do I act, O house of Israel, but for My holy name, which ye
have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went.” Similarly
in the thirty-second verse: “Not for your
sakes do I act, saith the Lord Jehovah, be it known unto you: be
ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of
Israel.” There is an apparent harshness in these
declarations which makes it easy to present them in a repellent
light. They have been taken to mean that Jehovah is absolutely
indifferent to the weal or woe of the people except in so far as it
reflects on His own credit with the world; that He accepts the
relationship between Him and Israel, but does so in the spirit of a
selfish parent who exerts himself to save his child from disgrace
merely in order to prevent his own name from being dragged in the
mire. It would be difficult to explain how such a Being should be
at all concerned about what men think of Him. If Jehovah has no
interest in Israel, it is hard to see why He should be sensitive to
the opinion of the rest of mankind. That is an idea of God which no
man can seriously hold, and we may be certain that it is a
perversion of Ezekiel's meaning. Everything depends on how much is
included in the “name” of Jehovah.
If it denotes mere arbitrary power, delighting in its own exercise
and the awe which it excites, then we might conceive of the divine
action as ruled by a boundless egoism, to which all human interests
are alike
indifferent. But that is not the conception of God which Ezekiel
has. He is a moral Being, one who has compassion on other things
besides His own name,Ch. xxxvi. 21.
one
who has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he should
turn from his way and live.Chs. xviii. 23, xxxiii. 11.
But
when this aspect of His character is included in the name of God,
we see that regard for His name cannot mean mere regard for His own
interests, as if these were opposed to the interests of His
creatures; but means the desire to be known as He is, as a God of
mercy and righteousness as well as of infinite power.
The name of God
is that by which He is known amongst men. It is more than His
honour or reputation, although that is included in it according to
Hebrew idiom; it is the expression of His character or His
personality. To act for His name's sake, therefore, is to act so
that His true character may be more fully revealed, and so that
men's thoughts of Him may more truly correspond to that which in
Himself He is. There is plainly nothing in this inconsistent with
the deepest interest in men's spiritual well-being. Jehovah is the
God of salvation, and desires to reveal Himself as such; and
whether we say that He saves men in order that He may be known as a
Saviour, or that He makes Himself known in order to save them, does
not make any real difference. Revelation and redemption are one
thing. And when Ezekiel says that regard for His own name is the
supreme motive of Jehovah's action, he does not teach that Jehovah
is uninfluenced by care for man; if the question had been put to
him, he would have said that care for man is one of the attributes
included in the Name which Jehovah is concerned to reveal.
The real meaning
of Ezekiel's doctrine will perhaps be best understood from its
negative statement. What is meant to be excluded by the expression
“not for your sakes”? It might
no doubt mean, “not because I care at all
for you”; but that we have seen to be inconsistent with
other aspects of Ezekiel's teaching about the divine character. All
that it necessarily implies is “not for any
good that I find in you.” It is a protest against the idea
of Pharisaic self-righteousness that a man may have a legal claim
upon God through his own merits. It is true that that was not a
prevalent notion amongst the people in the time of Ezekiel. But
their state of mind was one in which such a thought might easily
arise. They were convinced of having been entirely in the wrong in
their conceptions of the relation between them and Jehovah. The
pagan notion that the people is indispensable to the god on account
of a physical bond between them had broken down in the recent
experience of Israel, and with it had vanished every natural ground
for the hope of salvation. In such circumstances the promise of
deliverance would naturally raise the thought that there must after
all be something in Israel that was pleasing to Jehovah, and that
the prophet's denunciations of their past sins were overdone. In
order to guard against that error Ezekiel explicitly asserts, what
was involved in the whole of his teaching, that the mercy of God
was not called forth by any good in Israel, but that nevertheless
there are immutable reasons in the divine nature on which the
certainty of Israel's redemption may be built.
The truth here
taught is therefore, in theological language, the sovereignty of
the divine grace. Ezekiel's statement of it is liable to all the
distortions and misrepresentations to which that doctrine has been
subjected at the hands both of its friends and its enemies; but
when fairly treated it is no more objectionable than any other
expression of the same truth to be found in Scripture. In Ezekiel's
case it was the result of a penetrating analysis of the moral condition of his people
which led him to see that there was nothing in them to suggest the
possibility of their being restored. It is only when he falls back
on the thought of what God is, on the divine necessity of
vindicating His holiness in the salvation of His people, that his
faith in Israel's future finds a sure point of support. And so in
general a profound sense of human sinfulness will always throw the
mind back on the idea of God as the one immovable ground of
confidence in the ultimate redemption of the individual and the
world. When the doctrine is pressed to the conclusion that God
saves men in spite of themselves, and merely to display His power
over them, it becomes false and pernicious, and indeed
self-contradictory. But so long as we hold fast to the truth that
God is love, and that the glory of God is the manifestation of His
love, the doctrine of the divine sovereignty only expresses the
unchangeableness of that love and its final victory over the sin of
the world.
2. The
intellectual side of the conversion of Israel is the acceptance of
that idea of God which to the prophet is summed up in the name of
Jehovah. This is expressed in the standing formula which denotes
the effect of all God's dealings with men, “They shall know that I am Jehovah.” We need
not, however, repeat what has been already said as to the meaning
of these words.See pp. 75 f. above.
Nor
shall we dwell on the effect of the national judgment as a means
towards producing a right impression of Jehovah's nature. It is
possible that as time went on Ezekiel came to see that chastisement
alone would not effect the moral change in the exiles which was
necessary to bring them into sympathy with the divine purposes. In
the early prophecy of ch. vi. the knowledge of Jehovah and the
self-condemnation which accompanies it are spoken of as the direct
result of His judgment on sin,Ch. vi. 8-10.
and
this undoubtedly was one
element in the conversion of the people to right thoughts about
God. But in all other passages this feeling of self-loathing is not
the beginning but the end of conversion; it is caused by the
experience of pardon and redemption following upon
punishment.Chs. xvi. 61-63, xx. 43, 44, xxxvi.
31, 32.
There
is also another aspect of judgment which may be mentioned in
passing for the sake of completeness. It is that which is expounded
in the end of the twentieth chapter. There the judgment which still
stands between the exiles and the return to their own land is
represented as a sifting process, in which those who have undergone
a spiritual change are finally separated from those who perish in
their impenitence. This idea does not occur in the prophecies
subsequent to the fall of Jerusalem, and it may be doubtful how it
fits into the scheme of redemption there unfolded. The prophet here
regards conversion as a process wholly carried through by the
operation of Jehovah on the mind of the people; and what we have
next to consider is the steps by which this great end is
accomplished. They are these two—forgiveness and regeneration.
3. The
forgiveness of sins is denoted in the thirty-sixth chapter, as we
have already seen, by the symbol of sprinkling with clean water.
But it must not be supposed that this isolated figure is the only
form in which the doctrine appears in Ezekiel's exposition of the
process of salvation. On the contrary forgiveness is the
fundamental assumption of the whole argument, and is present in
every promise of future blessedness to the people. For the Old
Testament idea of forgiveness is extremely simple, resting as it
does on the analogy of forgiveness in human life. The spiritual
fact which constitutes the essence of forgiveness is the change in
Jehovah's disposition towards His people which is manifested by the renewal
of those indispensable conditions of national well-being which in
His anger He had taken away. The restoration of Israel to its own
land is thus not simply a token of forgiveness, but the act of
forgiveness itself, and the only form in which the fact could be
realised in the experience of the nation. In this sense the whole
of Ezekiel's predictions of the Messianic deliverance and the
glories that follow it are one continuous promise of forgiveness,
setting forth the truth that Jehovah's love to His people persists
in spite of their sin, and works victoriously for their redemption
and restoration to the full enjoyment of His favour. There is
perhaps one point in which we discover a difference between
Ezekiel's conception and that of his predecessors. According to the
common prophetic doctrine penitence, including amendment, is the
moral effect of Jehovah's chastisement, and is the necessary
condition of pardon. We have seen that there is some doubt whether
Ezekiel regarded repentance as the result of judgment, and the same
doubt exists as to whether in the order of salvation repentance is
a preliminary or a consequence of forgiveness. The truth is that
the prophet appears to combine both conceptions. In urging
individuals to prepare for the coming of the kingdom of God he
makes repentance a necessary condition of entering it; but in
describing the whole process of salvation as the work of God he
makes contrition for sin the result of reflection on the goodness
of Jehovah already experienced in the peaceful occupation of the
land of Canaan.
4. The idea of
regeneration is very prominent in Ezekiel's teaching. The need for
a radical change in the national character was impressed on him by
the spectacle which he witnessed daily of evil tendencies and
practices persisted in, in spite of the clearest demonstration that
they were hateful to Jehovah and had been the cause of the nation's calamities. And he
does not ascribe this state of things merely to the influence of
tradition and public opinion and evil example, but traces it to its
source in the hardness and corruption of the individual nature. It
was evident that no mere change of intellectual conviction would
avail to alter the currents of life among the exiles; the heart
must be renewed, out of which are the issues both of personal and
national life. Hence the promise of regeneration is expressed as a
taking away of the stony, unimpressible heart that was in them, and
putting within them a heart of flesh, a new heart and a new spirit.
In exhorting individuals to repentance Ezekiel calls on them to
make themselves a new heart and a new spirit,Ch. xviii. 31.
meaning that their repentance must be genuine, extending to the
inner motives and springs of action, and not be confined to outward
signs of mourning.Cf. Joel's “Rend your heart, and not your garments” (Joel
ii. 13).
But
in other connections the new heart and spirit is represented as a
gift, the result of the operation of the divine grace.Chs. xi. 19, xxxvi. 26, 27.
Closely
connected with this, perhaps only the same truth in another form,
is the promise of the outpouring of the Spirit of God.Chs. xxxvi. 27, xxxvii. 14.
The
general expectation of a new supernatural power infused into the
national life in the latter days is common in the prophets. It
appears in Hosea under the beautiful image of the dew,Hosea xiv. 5.
and
in Isaiah it is expressed in the consciousness that the desolation
of the land must continue “until spirit be
poured upon us from on high.”Isa. xxxii. 15.
But
no earlier prophet presents the idea of the Spirit as a principle
of regeneration with the precision and clearness which the doctrine
assumes in the hands of Ezekiel. What in Hosea and Isaiah may be only a divine influence,
quickening and developing the flagging spiritual energies of the
people, is here revealed as a creative power, the source of a new
life, and the beginning of all that possesses moral or spiritual
worth in the people of God.
5. It only
remains for us now to note the twofold effect of these operations
of Jehovah's grace in the religious and moral condition of the
nation. There will be produced, in the first place, a new readiness
and power of obedience to the divine commandments.Chs. xi. 20, xxxvi. 27.
Like
the apostle, they will not only “consent
unto the law that it is good”;Rom. vii. 16.
but
in virtue of the new “Spirit of
life” given to them, they will be in a real sense
“free from the law,”Rom. viii. 2.
because the inward impulse of their own regenerate nature will lead
them to fulfil it perfectly. The inefficiency of law as a mere
external authority acting on men by hope of reward and fear of
punishment was perceived both by Jeremiah and Ezekiel almost as
clearly as by Paul, although this conviction on the part of the
prophets was based on observation of national depravity rather than
on their personal experience. It led Jeremiah to the conception of
a new covenant under which Jehovah will write His law on men's
hearts;Jer. xxxi. 33.
and
Ezekiel expresses the same truth in the promise of a new Spirit
inclining the people to walk in Jehovah's statutes and to keep His
judgments.
The second
inward result of salvation is shame and self-loathing on account of
past transgressions.Chs. vi. 9, xvi. 63, xx. 43, xxxvi.
31, 32.
It
seems strange that the prophet should dwell so much on this as a
mark of Israel's saved condition. His strong protest against the
doctrine of inherited guilt in the eighteenth chapter would have led us to expect
that the members of the new Israel would not be conscious of any
responsibility for the sins of the old. But here, as in other
instances, the conception of the personified nation proves itself a
better vehicle of religious truth from the Old Testament standpoint
than the religious relations of the individual. The continuity of
the national consciousness sustains that profound sense of
unworthiness which is an essential element of true reconciliation
to God, although each individual Israelite in the kingdom of God
knows that he is not accountable for the iniquity of his
fathers.
This outline of
the prophet's conception of salvation illustrates the truth of the
remark that Ezekiel is the first dogmatic theologian. In so far as
it is the business of a theologian to exhibit the logical
connection of the ideas which express man's relation to God,
Ezekiel more than any other prophet may claim the title. Truths
which are the presuppositions of all prophecy are to him objects of
conscious reflection, and emerge from his hands in the shape of
clearly formulated doctrines. There is probably no single element
of his teaching which may not be traced in the writings of his
predecessors, but there is none which has not gained from him a
more distinct intellectual expression. And what is specially
remarkable is the manner in which the doctrines are bound together
in the unity of a system. In grounding the necessity of redemption
in the divine nature, Ezekiel may be said to foreshadow the
theology which is often called Calvinistic or Augustinian, but
which might more truly be called Pauline. Although the final remedy
for the sin of the world had not yet been revealed, the scheme of
redemption disclosed to Ezekiel agrees with much of the teaching of
the New Testament regarding the effects of the work of Christ on
the individual.
Speaking of the passage ch. xxxvi. 16-38 Dr. Davidson writes as
follows:—
“Probably no passage in the Old Testament of the same
extent offers so complete a parallel to New Testament doctrine,
particularly to that of St. Paul. It is doubtful if the apostle
quotes Ezekiel anywhere, but his line of thought entirely coincides
with his. The same conceptions and in the same order belong to
both,—forgiveness (ver. 25); regeneration, a new heart and spirit
(ver. 26); the Spirit of God as the ruling power in the new life
(ver. 27); the issue of this, the keeping of the requirements of
God's law (ver. 27; Rom. viii. 4); the effect of being ‘under grace’ in softening the human heart and
leading to obedience (ver. 31; Rom. vi., vii.); and the organic
connection of Israel's history with Jehovah's revelation of Himself
to the nations (vv. 33-36; Rom. xi.).”
Chapter XXIV. Jehovah's Final
Victory. Chapters xxxviii., xxxix.
These chapters
give the impression of having been intended to stand at the close
of the book of Ezekiel. Their present position is best explained on
the supposition that the original collection of Ezekiel's
prophecies actually ended here, and that the remaining chapters
(xl.-xlviii.) form an appendix, added at a later period without
disturbing the plan on which the book had been arranged. In
chronological order, at all events, the oracle on Gog comes after
the vision of the last nine chapters. It marks the utmost limit of
Ezekiel's vision of the future of the kingdom of God. It represents
the dénouement of the great drama of
Jehovah's self-manifestation to the nations of the world. It
describes an event which is to take place in the far-distant
future, long after the Messianic age has begun and after Israel has
long been settled peacefully in its own land. Certain
considerations, which we shall notice at the end of this lecture,
brought home to the prophet's mind the conviction that the lessons
of Israel's restoration did not afford a sufficient illustration of
Jehovah's glory or of the meaning of His past dealings with His
people. The conclusive demonstration of this is therefore to be
furnished by the destruction of Gog and his myrmidons when in the
latter days they make an onslaught on the Holy Land.
The idea of a
great world-catastrophe, following after a long interval the establishment of the
kingdom of God, is peculiar to Ezekiel amongst the prophets of the
Old Testament. According to other prophets the judgment of the
nations takes place in a “day of
Jehovah” which is the crisis of history; and the Messianic
era which follows is a period of undisturbed tranquillity in which
the knowledge of the true God penetrates to the remotest regions of
the earth. In Ezekiel, on the other hand, the judgment of the world
is divided into two acts. The nearer nations which have played a
part in the history of Israel in the past form a group by
themselves; their punishment is a preliminary to the restoration of
Israel, and the impression produced by that restoration is for them
a signal, though not perhaps a complete,Cf. ch. xxxix. 23.
vindication of the Godhead of Jehovah. But the outlying barbarians,
who hover on the outskirts of civilisation, are not touched by this
revelation of the divine power and goodness; they seem to be
represented as utterly ignorant of the marvellous course of events
by which Israel has been brought to dwell securely in the midst of
the nations.See ch. xxxviii. 11, 12.
These, accordingly, are reserved for a final reckoning, in which
the power of Jehovah will be displayed with the terrible physical
convulsions which mark the great day of the Lord.Ch. xxxviii. 19-23.
Only
then will the full meaning of Israel's history be disclosed to the
world; in particular it will be seen that it was for their sin that
they had fallen under the power of the heathen, and not because of
Jehovah's inability to protect them.Ch. xxxix. 23.
These are some
general features of the prophecy which at once attract attention.
We shall now examine the details of the picture, and then proceed
to consider its significance in relation to other elements of
Ezekiel's teaching.
I
The
thirty-eighth chapter may be divided into three sections of seven
verses each.
i. Vv.
3-9.—The prophet having been commanded to direct his face towards
Gog in the land of Magog, is commissioned to announce the fate
that is in store for him and his hosts in the latter days. The
name of this mysterious and formidable personage was evidently
familiar to the Jewish world of Ezekiel's time, although to us
its origin is altogether obscure. The most plausible suggestion,
on the whole, is perhaps that which identifies it with the name
of the Lydian monarch Gyges, which appears on the Assyrian
monuments in the form Gugu, corresponding as closely
as is possible to the Hebrew Gog.See E. Meyer, Geschichte des
Alterthums, p. 558; Schrader, Cuneiform
Inscriptions, etc., on this passage.
But
in the mind of Ezekiel Gog is hardly an historical figure. He is
but the impersonation of the dreaded power of the northern
barbarians, already recognised as a serious danger to the peace
of the world. His designation as prince of Rosh, Meshech, and
Tubal points to the region east of the Black Sea as the seat of
his power.Meshech and Tubal are the Moschi and
Tibareni of the Greek geographers, lying south-east of the Black
Sea. A country or tribe Rosh has not been found.
He
is the captain of a vast multitude of horsemen, gorgeously
arrayed, and armed with shield, helmet, and sword. But although
Gog himself belongs to the “uttermost
north,” he gathers under his banner all the most distant
nations both of the north and the south. Not only northern
peoples like the Cimmerians and Armenians,Gomer (according to others, however,
Cappadocia) and Togarmah (ver. 6).
but
Persians and Africans,Cush and Put (ver. 5).
all
of them with
shield and helmet, swell the ranks of his motley army. The name
of Gog is thus on the way to become a symbol of the implacable
enmity of this world to the kingdom of God; as in the book of the
Revelation it appears as the designation of the ungodly
world-power which perishes in conflict with the saints of God
(Rev. xx. 7 ff.).
Gog therefore
is summoned to hold himself in readiness, as Jehovah's
reserve,Ver. 7. The LXX. reads “for me” instead of “unto them,” giving to the word mishmar the sense of
“reserve force.”
against the last days, when the purpose for which he has been
raised up will be made manifest. After many days he shall receive
his marching orders; Jehovah Himself will lead forth his
squadrons and the innumerable hosts of nations that follow in his
train,The words of ver. 4, “I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy
jaws,” are wanting in the best manuscripts of the LXX., and
are perhaps better omitted. Gog does not need to be dragged forth
with hooks; he comes up willingly enough, as soon as the
opportunity presents itself (vv. 11, 12).
and
bring them up against the mountains of Israel, now reclaimed from
desolation, and against a nation gathered from among many
peoples, dwelling in peace and security. The advance of these
destructive hordes is likened to a tempest, and their innumerable
multitude is pictured as a cloud covering all the land (ver.
9).
ii. Vv.
10-16.—But like the Assyrian in the time of Isaiah, Gog
“meaneth not so”; he is not aware
that he is Jehovah's instrument, his purpose being to
“destroy and cut off nations not a
few.”Isa. x. 7.
Hence the prophet proceeds to a new description of the enterprise
of Gog, laying stress on the “evil
thought” that will arise in his heart and lure him to his
doom. What urges him on is the lust of plunder. The report of the
people of Israel as a people that has amassed wealth and
substance, and is at the same time defenceless, dwelling in a
land without
walls or bolts or gates, will have reached him. These two verses
(11, 12) are interesting as giving a picture of Ezekiel's
conception of the final state of the people of God. They dwell in
the “navel of the world”; they are
rich and prosperous, so that the fame of them has gone forth
through all lands; they are destitute of military resources, yet
are unmolested in the enjoyment of their favoured lot because of
the moral effect of Jehovah's name on all nations that know their
history. To Gog, however, who knows nothing of Jehovah, they will
seem an easy conquest, and he will come up confident of victory
to seize spoil and take booty and lay his hand on waste places
reinhabited and a people gathered out of the heathen. The news of
the great expedition and the certainty of its success will rouse
the cupidity of the trading communities from all the ends of the
earth, and they will attach themselves as camp-followers to the
army of Gog. In historic times this rôle would naturally have
fallen to the Phœnicians, who had a keen eye for business of this
description.An actual parallel is furnished by the
crowds of slave-dealers who followed the army of Antiochus
Epiphanes when it set out to crush the Maccabæan insurrection in
166 b.c.
But
Ezekiel is thinking of a time when Tyre shall be no more; and its
place is taken by the mercantile tribes of Arabia and the ancient
Phœnician colony of Tarshish. The whole world will then resound
with the fame of Gog's expedition, and the most distant nations
will await its issue with eager expectation. This then is the
meaning of Gog's destiny. In the time when Israel dwells
peacefully he will be restless and eager for spoil;In ver. 14 the LXX. has “he stirred up” instead of “know,” and gives a more forcible sense.
his
multitudes will be set in motion, and throw themselves on the
land, covering it like a cloud. But this is Jehovah's doing, and
the purpose of it is that the nations may know Him and that He may be
sanctified in Gog before their eyes.
iii. Vv.
17-23.—These verses are in the main a description of the
annihilation of Gog's host by the fierce wrath of Jehovah; but
this is introduced by a reference to unfulfilled prophecies which
are to receive their accomplishment in this great catastrophe. It
is difficult to say what particular prophecies are meant. Those
which most readily suggest themselves are perhaps the fourth
chapter of Joel and the twelfth and fourteenth of Zechariah; but
these probably belong to a later date than Ezekiel. The
prophecies of Zephaniah and Jeremiah, called forth by the
Scythian invasion,Zeph. i.-iii. 8; Jer. iv.-vi.
have also been thought of, although the point of view there is
different from that of Ezekiel. In Jeremiah and Zephaniah the
Scythians are the scourge of God, appointed for the chastisement
of the sinful nation; whereas Gog is brought up against a holy
people, and for the express purpose of having judgment executed
on himself. On the supposition that Ezekiel's vision was coloured
by his recollection of the Scythians, this view has no doubt the
greatest likelihood. It is possible, however, that the allusion
is not to any particular group of prophecies, but to a general
idea which pervades prophecy—the expectation of a great conflict
in which the power of the world shall be arrayed against Jehovah
and Israel, and the issue of which shall exhibit the sole
sovereignty of the true God to all mankind.Cf. besides the passages already
cited, Isa. x. 5-34, xvii. 12-14; Micah iv. 11-13.
It
is of course unnecessary to suppose that any prophet had
mentioned Gog by name in a prediction of the future. All that is
meant is that Gog is the person in whom the substance of previous
oracles is to be accomplished.
The question
of ver. 17 leads thus to the announcement of the outpouring of
Jehovah's indignation on the violators of His territory. As soon
as Gog sets foot on the soil of Israel, Jehovah's wrath is
kindled against him. A mighty earthquake shall shatter the
mountains and level every wall to the ground and strike terror
into the hearts of all creatures. The host of Gog shall be
panic-stricken,Ver. 21. LXX.: “I will summon against him every terror.”
each man turning his sword against his fellow; while Jehovah
completes the slaughter by pestilence and blood, rain and
hailstones, fire and brimstone. The deliverance of Israel is
effected without the help of any human arm; it is the doing of
Jehovah, who thus magnifies and sanctifies Himself and makes
Himself known before the eyes of many peoples, so that they may
know Him to be Jehovah.
iv. Ch. xxxix.
1-8.—Commencing afresh with a new apostrophe to Gog, Ezekiel here
recapitulates the substance of the previous chapter—the bringing
up of Gog from the farthest north, his destruction on the
mountains of Israel, and the effect of this on the surrounding
nations. Mention is expressly made of the bow and arrows which
were the distinctive weapons of the Scythian horsemen.ἱπποτοξόται (mounted archers) is the
term applied to them by Herodotus (iv. 46).
These are struck from the grasp of Gog, and the mighty host falls
on the open field to be devoured by wild beasts and by ravenous
birds of every feather. But the judgment is universal in its
extent; it reaches to Magog, the distant abode of Gog, and all
the remote lands whence his auxiliaries were drawn. This is the
day whereof Jehovah has spoken by His servants the prophets of
Israel, the day which finally manifests His glory to all the ends
of the earth.
v. Vv.
9-16.—Here the prophet falls into a more prosaic strain, as he
proceeds to describe with characteristic fulness of detail the sequel of the great
invasion. As the English story of the Invincible Armada would be
incomplete without a reference to the treasures cast ashore from
the wrecked galleons on the Orkneys and the Hebrides, so the fate
of Gog's ill-starred enterprise is vividly set forth by the
minute description of the traces it left behind in the peaceful
life of Israel. The irony of the situation is unmistakable, and
perhaps a touch of conscious exaggeration is permissible in such
a picture. In the first place the weapons of the slain warriors
furnish wood enough to serve for fuel to the Israelites for the
space of seven years. Then follows a picture of the process of
cleansing the land from the corpses of the fallen enemy. A
burying-place is assigned to them in the valley of AbarimThis translation, which is given by
Hitzig and Cornill, is obtained by a change in the punctuation of
the word rendered “passengers” in
ver. 11: cf. the “mountains of
Abarim,” Numb. xxxiii. 47, 48; Deut. xxxii. 49.
on
the eastern side of the Dead Sea, outside of the sacred
territory. The whole people of Israel will be engaged for seven
months in the operation of burying them; after this the mouth of
the valley will be sealed,“It shall stop
the noses of the passengers” (ver. 11) gives no sense; and
the text, as it stands, is almost untranslatable. The LXX. reads,
“and they shall seal up the valley,”
which gives a good enough meaning, so far as it goes.
and
it will be known ever afterwards as the Valley of the Host of
Gog. But even after the seven months have expired the scrupulous
care of the people for the purity of their land will be shown by
the precautions they take against its continued defilement by any
fragment of a skeleton that may have been overlooked. They will
appoint permanent officials, whose business will be to search for
and remove relics of the dead bodies, that the land may be
restored to its purity. Whenever any passer-by lights on a bone he will set up a
mark beside it to attract the attention of the buriers.
“Thus [in course of time] they shall
cleanse the land.”
vi. Vv.
17-24.—The overwhelming magnitude of the catastrophe is once more
set forth under the image of a sacrificial feast, to which
Jehovah summons all the birds of the air and every beast of the
field (vv. 17-20). The feast is represented as a sacrifice not in
any religious sense, but simply in accordance with ancient usage,
in which the slaughtering of animals was invariably a sacrificial
act. The only idea expressed by the figure is that Jehovah has
decreed this slaughter of Gog and his host, and that it will be
so great that all ravenous beasts and birds will eat flesh to the
full and drink the blood of princes of the earth to intoxication.
But we turn with relief from these images of carnage and death to
the moral purpose which they conceal (vv. 21-24). This is stated
more distinctly here than in earlier passages of this prophecy.
It will teach Israel that Jehovah is indeed their God; the
lingering sense of insecurity caused by the remembrance of their
former rejection will be finally taken away by this signal
deliverance. And through Israel it will teach a lesson to the
heathen. They will learn something of the principles on which
Jehovah has dealt with His people when they contrast this great
salvation with His former desertion of them. It will then fully
appear that it was for their sins that they went into captivity;
and so the knowledge of God's holiness and His displeasure
against sin will be extended to the nations of the world.
vii. Vv.
25-29.—The closing verses do not strictly belong to the oracle on
Gog. The prophet returns to the standpoint of the present, and
predicts once more the restoration of Israel, which has
heretofore been assumed as an accomplished fact. The connection
with what precedes is, however, very close. The divine
attributes,
whose final manifestation to the world is reserved for the
far-off day of Gog's defeat, are already about to be revealed to
Israel. Jehovah's compassion for His people and His jealousy for
His own name will speedily be shown in “turning the fortunes” of Israel, bringing
them back from the peoples, and gathering them from the land of
their enemies. The consequences of this upon the nation itself
are described in more gracious terms than in any other passage.
They shall forget their shame and all their trespasses when they
dwell securely in their own land, none making them afraid.Ver. 26. The choice between the
rendering “forget” and that of the
English Version, “bear,” depends on
the position of a single dot in the Hebrew. In the former case
“shame” must be taken in the sense
of reproach (schande); in
the latter it means the inward feeling of self-abasement
(schaam). The forgetting of past
trespasses, if that is the right reading, can only mean that they
are entirely broken off and dismissed from mind; there is nothing
inconsistent with passages like ch. xxxvi. 31. It must be
understood that in any event the reference is to the future;
“after that they have borne”
is altogether wrong.
The
saving knowledge of Jehovah as their God, who led them into
captivity and brought them back again, will as far as Israel is
concerned be complete; and the gracious relation thus established
shall no more be interrupted, because of the divine Spirit which
has been poured out on the house of Israel.
II
It will be
seen from this summary of the contents of the prophecy that,
while it presents many features peculiar to itself, it also
contains much in common with the general drift of the prophet's
thinking. We must now try to form an estimate of its significance
as an episode in the great drama of Providence which unfolded
itself before his inspired imagination.
The ideas
peculiar to the passage are for the most part such as might have been
suggested to the mind of Ezekiel by the remembrance of the great
Scythian invasion in the reign of Josiah. Although it is not
likely that he had himself lived through that time of terror, he
must have grown up whilst it was still fresh in the public
recollection, and the rumour of it had apparently left upon him
impressions never afterwards effaced. Several circumstances, none
of them perhaps decisive by itself, conspire to show that at
least in its imagery the oracle on Gog is based on the conception
of an irruption of Scythian barbarians. The name of Gog may be
too obscure to serve as an indication; but his location in the
extreme north, the description of his army as composed mainly of
cavalry armed with bow and arrows, their innumerable multitude,
and the love of pillage and destruction by which they are
animated, all point to the Scythians as the originals from whom
the picture of Gog's host is drawn. Besides the light which it
casts on the genesis of the prophecy, this fact has a certain
biographical interest for the reader of Ezekiel. That the
prophet's furthest vista into the future should be a reflection
of his earliest memory reminds us of a common human experience.
“The thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts,” reaching far into manhood and old age; and the
mind as it turns back upon them may often discover in them that
which carries it furthest in reading the divine mysteries of life
and destiny.
Thus while the Sun sinks down to rest
Far in the regions of the west,
Though to the vale no parting beam
Be given, not one memorial gleam,
A lingering light he fondly throws
On the dear hills where first he rose.
For it is not
merely the imagery of the prophecy that reveals the influence of
these early associations; the thoughts which it embodies are
themselves partly the
result of the prophet's meditation on questions suggested by the
invasion. His youthful impressions of the descent of the northern
hordes were afterwards illuminated, as we see from his own words,
by the study of contemporary prophecies of Jeremiah and Zephaniah
called forth by the event. From these and other predictions he
learned that Jehovah had a purpose with regard to the remotest
nations of the earth which yet awaited its accomplishment. That
purpose, in accordance with his general conception of the ends of
the divine government, could be nothing else than the
manifestation of Jehovah's glory before the eyes of the world.
That this involved an act of judgment was only too certain from
the universal hostility of the heathen to the kingdom of God.
Hence the prophet's reflections would lead directly to the
expectation of a final onslaught of the powers of this world on
the people of Israel, which would give occasion for a display of
Jehovah's might on a grander scale than had yet been seen. And
this presentiment of an impending conflict between Jehovah and
the pagan world headed by the Scythian barbarians forms the
kernel of the oracle against Gog.
But we must
further observe that this idea, from Ezekiel's point of view,
necessarily presupposes the restoration of Israel to its own
land. The peoples assembled under the standard of Gog are those
which have never as yet come in contact with the true God, and
consequently have had no opportunity of manifesting their
disposition towards Him. They have not sinned as Edom and Tyre,
as Egypt and Assyria have sinned, by injuries done to Jehovah
through His people. Even the Scythians themselves, although they
had approached the confines of the sacred territory, do not seem
to have invaded it. Nor could the opportunity present itself so
long as Israel was in Exile. While Jehovah was without
an earthly
sanctuary or a visible emblem of His government, there was no
possibility of such an infringement of His holiness on the part
of the heathen as would arrest the attention of the world. The
judgment of Gog, therefore, could not be conceived as a
preliminary to the restoration of Israel, like that on Egypt and
the nations immediately surrounding Palestine. It could only take
place under a state of things in which Israel was once more
“holiness to the Lord, and the
firstfruits of His increase,” so that “all that devoured him were counted guilty”
(Jer. ii. 3). This enables us partly to understand what appears
to us the most singular feature of the prophecy, the projection
of the final manifestation of Jehovah into the remote future,
when Israel is already in possession of all the blessings of the
Messianic dispensation. It is a consequence of the extension of
the prophetic horizon, so as to embrace the distant peoples that
had hitherto been beyond the pale of civilisation.
There are
other aspects of Ezekiel's teaching on which light is thrown by
this anticipation of a world-judgment as the final scene of
history. The prophet was evidently conscious of a certain
inconclusiveness and want of finality in the prospect of the
restoration as a justification of the ways of God to men.
Although all the forces of the world's salvation were wrapped up
in it, its effects were still limited and measurable, both as to
their range of influence and their inherent significance. Not
only did it fail to impress the more distant nations, but its own
lessons were incompletely taught. He felt that it had not been
made clear to the dull perceptions of the heathen why the God of
Israel had ever suffered His land to be desecrated and His people
to be led into captivity. Even Israel itself will not fully know
all that is meant by having Jehovah for its God until the history
of revelation is finished. Only in the summing up of the ages,
and in the
light of the last judgment, will men truly realise all that is
implied in the terms God and sin and redemption. The end is
needed to interpret the process; and all religious conceptions
await their fulfilment in the light of eternity which is yet to
break on the issues of human history.
Part V. The Ideal Theocracy.
Chapter XXV. The Import Of The
Vision.
We have now
reached the last and in every way the most important section of the
book of Ezekiel. The nine concluding chapters record what was
evidently the crowning experience of the prophet's life. His
ministry began with a vision of God; it culminates in a vision of
the people of God, or rather of God in the midst of His people,
reconciled to them, ruling over them, and imparting the blessings
and glories of the final dispensation. Into that vision are thrown
the ideals which had been gradually matured through twenty years of
strenuous action and intense meditation. We have traced some of the
steps by which the prophet was led towards this consummation of his
work. We have seen how, under the idea of God which had been
revealed to him, he was constrained to announce the destruction of
that which called itself the people of Jehovah, but was in reality
the means of obscuring His character and profaning His holiness
(chs. iv.-xxiv.). We have seen further how the same fundamental
conception led him on in his prophecies against foreign nations to
predict a great clearing of the stage of history for the
manifestation of Jehovah (chs. xxv.-xxxii.). And we have seen from
the preceding section what are the processes by which the divine
Spirit breathes new life into a dead nation and creates out of its
scattered members a people worthy of the God whom the prophet has
seen.
But there is
still something more to accomplish before his task is finished. All through, Ezekiel
holds fast the truth that Jehovah and Israel are necessarily
related to each other, and that Israel is to be the medium through
which alone the nature of Jehovah can be fully disclosed to
mankind. It remains, therefore, to sketch the outline of a perfect
theocracy—in other words, to describe the permanent forms and
institutions which shall express the ideal relation between God and
men. To this task the prophet addresses himself in the chapters now
before us. That great New Year's Vision may be regarded as the ripe
fruit of all God's training of His prophet, as it is also the part
of Ezekiel's work which most directly influenced the subsequent
development of religion in Israel.
It cannot be
doubted, then, that these chapters are an integral part of the
book, considered as a record of Ezekiel's work. But it is certainly
a significant circumstance that they are separated from the body of
the prophecies by an interval of thirteen years. For the greater
part of that time Ezekiel's literary activity was suspended. It is
probable, at all events, that the first thirty-nine chapters had
been committed to writing soon after the latest date they mention,
and that the oracle on Gog, which marks the extreme limit of
Ezekiel's prophetic vision, was really the conclusion of an earlier
form of the book. And we may be certain that, since the eventful
period that followed the arrival of the fugitive from Jerusalem, no
new divine communication had visited the prophet's mind. But at
last, in the twenty-fifth year of the captivity, and on the first
day of a new year,The beginning of the year is that
referred to in Lev. xxv. 9, the tenth day of the seventh month
(September-October). From the Exile downwards two calendars were in
use, the beginning of the sacred year falling in the seventh month
of the civil year. It was not necessary for Ezekiel to mention the
number of the month.
he
falls into a trance more prolonged than any he had yet passed through, and he emerged from it
with a new message for his people.
In what
direction were the prophet's thoughts moving as Israel passed into
the midnight of her exile? That they have moved in the
interval—that his standpoint is no longer quite identical with that
represented in his earlier prophecies—seems to be shown by one
slight modification of his previous conceptions, which has been
already mentioned.See pp. 318 f.
I
refer to the position of the prince in the theocratic state. We
find that the king is still the civil head of the commonwealth, but
that his position is hardly reconcilable with the exalted functions
assigned to the Messianic king in ch. xxxiv. The inference seems
irresistible that Ezekiel's point of view has somewhat changed, so
that the objects in his picture present themselves in a different
perspective.
It is true that
this change was effected by a vision, and it may be said that that
fact forbids our regarding it as indicating a progress in Ezekiel's
thoughts. But the vision of a prophet is never out of relation to
his previous thinking. The prophet is always prepared for his
vision; it comes to him as the answer to questions, as the solution
of difficulties, whose force he has felt, and apart from which it
would convey no revelation of God to his mind. It marks the point
at which reflection gives place to inspiration, where the
incommunicable certainty of the divine word lifts the soul into the
region of spiritual and eternal truth. And hence it may help us,
from our human point of view, to understand the true import of this
vision, if from the answer we try to discover the questions which
were of pressing interest to Ezekiel in the later part of his
career.
Speaking
generally, we may say that the problem that occupied the mind of Ezekiel at this
time was the problem of a religious constitution. How to secure for
religion its true place in public life, how to embody it in
institutions which shall conserve its essential ideas and transmit
them from one generation to another, how a people may best express
its national responsibility to God—these and many kindred questions
are real and vital to-day amongst the nations of Christendom, and
they were far more vital in the age of Ezekiel. The conception of
religion as an inward spiritual power, moulding the life of the
nation and of each individual member, was at least as strong in him
as in any other prophet; and it had been adequately expressed in
the section of his book dealing with the formation of the new
Israel. But he saw that this was not for that time sufficient. The
mass of the community were dependent on the educative influence of
the institutions under which they lived, and there was no way of
impressing on a whole people the character of Jehovah except
through a system of laws and observances which should constantly
exhibit it to their minds. The time was not yet come when religion
could be trusted to work as a hidden leaven, transforming life from
within and bringing in the kingdom of God silently by the operation
of spiritual forces. Thus, while the last section insists on the
moral change that must pass over Israel, and the need of a direct
influence from God on the heart of the people, that which now lies
before us is devoted to the religious and political arrangements by
which the sanctity of the nation must be preserved.
Starting from
this general notion of what the prophet sought, we can see, in the
next place, that his attention must be mainly concentrated on
matters belonging to public worship and ritual. Worship is the
direct expression in word and act of man's attitude to God, and no
public religion can maintain a higher level of spirituality
than the symbolism
which gives it a place in the life of the people. That fact had
been abundantly illustrated by the experience of centuries before
the Exile. The popular worship had always been a stronghold of
false religion in Israel. The high places were the nurseries of all
the corruptions against which the prophets had to contend, not
simply because of the immoral elements that mingled with their
worship, but because the worship itself was regulated by
conceptions of the deity which were opposed to the religion of
revelation. Now the idea of using ritual as a vehicle of the
highest spiritual truth is certainly not peculiar to Ezekiel's
vision. But it is there carried through with a thoroughness which
has no parallel elsewhere except in the priestly legislation of the
Pentateuch. And this bears witness to a clear perception on the
part of the prophet of the value of that whole side of things for
the future development of religion in Israel. No one was more
deeply impressed with the evils that had flowed from a corrupt
ritual in the past, and he conceives the final form of the kingdom
of God to be one in which the blessings of salvation are
safeguarded by a carefully regulated system of religious
ordinances. It will become manifest as we proceed that he regards
the Temple ritual as the very centre of theocratic life, and the
highest function of the community of the true religion.
But Ezekiel was
prepared for the reception of this vision, not only by the
practical reforming bent of his mind, but also by a combination in
his own experience of the two elements which must always enter into
a conception of this nature. If we may employ philosophical
language to express a very obvious distinction, we have to
recognise in the vision a material and a formal element. The matter
of the vision is derived from the ancient religious and political
constitution of the Hebrew state. All true and lasting reformations
are conservative at heart; their object never is to make a clean sweep
of the past, but so to modify what is traditional as to adapt it to
the needs of a new era. Now Ezekiel was a priest, and possessed all
a priest's reverence for antiquity, as well as a priest's
professional knowledge of ceremonial and of consuetudinary law. No
man could have been better fitted than he to secure the continuity
of Israel's religious life along the particular line on which it
was destined to move. Accordingly we find that the new theocracy is
modelled from beginning to end after the pattern of the ancient
institutions which had been destroyed by the Exile. If we ask, for
example, what is the meaning of some detail of the Temple building,
such as the cells surrounding the main sanctuary, the obvious and
sufficient answer is that these things existed in Solomon's Temple,
and there was no reason for altering them. On the other hand,
whenever we find the vision departing from what had been
traditionally established, we may be sure that there is a reason
for it, and in most cases we can see what that reason was. In such
departures we recognise the working of what we have called the
formal element of the vision, the moulding influence of the ideas
which the system was intended to express. What these ideas were we
shall consider in subsequent chapters; here it is enough to say
that they were the fundamental ideas which had been communicated to
Ezekiel in the course of his prophetic work, and which have found
expression in various forms in other parts of his writings. That
they are not peculiar to Ezekiel, but are shared by other prophets,
is true, just as it is true on the other hand that the priestly
conceptions which occupy so large a place in his mind were an
inheritance from the whole past history of the nation. Nor was this
the first time when an alliance between the ceremonialism of the
priesthood and the more ethical and spiritual teaching of prophecy
had proved of the utmost
advantage to the religious life of Israel.Cf. Davidson, Ezekiel, pp. liv. f.
The
unique importance of Ezekiel's vision lies in the fact that the
great development of prophecy was now almost complete, and that the
time was come for its results to be embodied in institutions which
were in the main of a priestly character. And it was fitting that
this new era of religion should be inaugurated through the agency
of one who combined in his own person the conservative instincts of
the priest with the originality and the spiritual intuition of the
prophet.
It is not
suggested for a moment that these considerations account for the
inception of the vision in the prophet's mind. We are not to regard
it as merely the brilliant device of an ingenious man, who was
exceptionally qualified to read the signs of the times, and to
discover a solution for a pressing religious problem. In order that
it might accomplish the end in view, it was absolutely necessary
that it should be invested with a supernatural sanction and bear
the stamp of divine authority. Ezekiel himself was well aware of
this, and would never have ventured to publish his vision if he had
thought it all out for himself. He had to wait for the time when
“the hand of the Lord was upon him,”
and he saw in vision the new Temple and the river of life
proceeding from it, and the renovated land, and the glory of God
taking up its everlasting abode in the midst of His people. Until
that moment arrived he was without a message as to the form which
the life of the restored Israel must assume. Nevertheless the
psychological conditions of the vision were contained in those
parts of the prophet's experience which have just been indicated.
Processes of thought which had long occupied his mind suddenly
crystallised at the touch of the divine hand, and the result was
the marvellous conception
of a theocratic state which was Ezekiel's greatest legacy to the
faith and hopes of his countrymen.
That this vision
of Ezekiel's profoundly influenced the development of post-exilic
Judaism may be inferred from the fact that all the best tendencies
of the restoration period were towards the realisation of the
ideals which the vision sets forth with surpassing clearness. It is
impossible, indeed, to say precisely how far Ezekiel's influence
extended, or how far the returning exiles consciously aimed at
carrying out the ideas contained in his sketch of a theocratic
constitution. That they did so to some extent is inferred from a
consideration of some of the arrangements established in Jerusalem
soon after the return from Babylon.See Prof. W. R. Smith, The Old Testament in
the Jewish Church, pp. 442 f.
But
it is certain that from the nature of the case the actual
institutions of the restored community must have differed very
widely in many points from those described in the last nine
chapters of Ezekiel. When we look more closely at the composition
of this vision, we see that it contains features which neither then
nor at any subsequent time have been historically fulfilled. The
most remarkable thing about it is that it unites in one picture two
characteristics which seem at first sight difficult to combine. On
the one hand it bears the aspect of a rigid legislative system
intended to regulate human conduct in all matters of vital moment
to the religious standing of the community; on the other hand it
assumes a miraculous transformation of the physical aspect of the
country, a restoration of all the twelve tribes of Israel under a
native king, and a return of Jehovah in visible glory to dwell in
the midst of the children of Israel for ever. Now these
supernatural conditions of the perfect theocracy could not be
realised by any effort on the part of the people, and as a matter
of fact were never
literally fulfilled at all. It must have been plain to the leaders
of the Return that for this reason alone the details of Ezekiel's
legislation were not binding for them in the actual circumstances
in which they were placed. Even in matters clearly within the
province of human administration we know that they considered
themselves free to modify his regulations in accordance with the
requirements of the situation in which they found themselves. It
does not follow from this, however, that they were ignorant of the
book of Ezekiel, or that it gave them no help in the difficult task
to which they addressed themselves. It furnished them with an ideal
of national holiness, and the general outline of a constitution in
which that ideal should be embodied; and this outline they seem to
have striven to fill up in the way best adapted to the straitened
and discouraging circumstances of the time.
But this throws
us back on some questions of fundamental importance for the right
understanding of Ezekiel's vision. Taking the vision as a whole, we
have to ask whether a fulfilment of the kind just indicated was the
fulfilment that the prophet himself anticipated. Did he lay stress
on the legislative or the supernatural aspect of the vision—on
man's agency or on God's? In other words, does he issue it as a
programme to be carried out by the people as soon as the
opportunity is presented by their return to the land of Canaan? or
does he mean that Jehovah Himself must take the initiative by
miraculously preparing the land for their reception, and taking up
His abode in the finished Temple, the “place of His throne, and the place of the soles of His
feet”? The answer to these questions is not difficult, if
only we are careful to look at things from the prophet's point of
view, and disregard the historical events in which his predictions
were partly realised. It is frequently assumed that the
elaborate
description of the Temple buildings in chs. xl.-xlii. is intended
as a guide to the builders of the second Temple, who are to make it
after the fashion of that which the prophet saw on the mount. It is
quite probable that in some degree it may have served that purpose;
but it seems to me that this view is not in keeping with the
fundamental idea of the vision. The Temple that Ezekiel saw, and
the only one of which he speaks, is a house not made with hands; it
is as much a part of the supernatural preparation for the future
theocracy as the “very high
mountain” on which it stands, or the river that flows from
it to sweeten the waters of the Dead Sea. In the important passage
where the prophet is commanded to exhibit the plan of the house to
the children of Israel (ch. xliii. 10, 11), there is unfortunately
a discrepancy between the Hebrew and Greek texts which throws some
obscurity on this particular point. According to the Hebrew there
can hardly be a doubt that a sketch is shown to them which is to be
used as a builder's plan at the time of the Restoration.See ver. 10, “let them measure the pattern”; ver. 11,
“that they may keep the whole form
thereof.”
But
in the Septuagint, which seems on the whole to give a more correct
text, the passage runs thus: “And, thou son
of man, describe the house to the house of Israel (and let them be
ashamed of their iniquities), and its form, and its construction:
and they shall be ashamed of all that they have done. And do thou
sketch the house, and its exits, and its outline; and all its
ordinances and all its laws make known to them; and write it before
them, that they may keep all its commandments and all its
ordinances, and do them.” There is nothing here to suggest
that the construction of the Temple was left for human workmanship.
The outline of it is shown to the people only that they may
be ashamed of all
their iniquities. When the arrangements of the ideal Temple are
explained to them, they will see how far those of the first Temple
transgressed the requirements of Jehovah's holiness, and this
knowledge will produce a sense of shame for the dulness of heart
which tolerated so many abuses in connection with His worship. No
doubt that impression sank deep into the minds of Ezekiel's
hearers, and led to certain important modifications in the
structure of the Temple when it had to be built; but that is not
what the prophet is thinking of. At the same time we see clearly
that he is very much in earnest with the legislative part of his
vision. Its laws are real laws, and are given that they may be
obeyed—only they do not come into force until all the institutions
of the theocracy, natural and supernatural alike, are in full
working order. And apart from the doubtful question as to the
erection of the Temple, that general conclusion holds good for the
vision as a whole. Whilst it is pervaded throughout by the
legislative spirit, the miraculous features are after all its
central and essential elements. When these conditions are realised,
it will be the duty of Israel to guard her sacred institutions by
the most scrupulous and devoted obedience; but till then there is
no kingdom of God established on earth, and therefore no system of
laws to conserve a state of salvation, which can only be brought
about by the direct and visible interposition of the Almighty in
the sphere of nature and history.
This blending of
seemingly incongruous elements reveals to us the true character of
the vision with which we have to deal. It is in the strictest sense
a Messianic prophecy—that is, a picture of the kingdom of God in
its final state as the prophet was led to conceive it. It is common
to all such representations that the human authors of them have no
idea of a long historical development gradually leading up to the
perfect manifestation
of God's purpose with the world. The impending crisis in the
affairs of the people of Israel is always regarded as the
consummation of human history and the establishment of God's
kingdom in the plenitude of its power and glory. In the time of
Ezekiel the next step in the unfolding of the divine plan of
redemption was the restoration of Israel to its own land; and in so
far as his vision is a prophecy of that event, it was realised in
the return of the exiles with Zerubbabel in the first year of
Cyrus. But to the mind of Ezekiel this did not present itself as a
mere step towards something immeasurably higher in the remote
future. It is to include everything necessary for the complete and
final inbringing of the Messianic dispensation, and all the powers
of the world to come are to be displayed in the acts by which
Jehovah brings back the scattered members of Israel to the
enjoyment of blessedness in His own presence.
The thing that
misleads us as to the real nature of the vision is the emphasis
laid on matters which seem to us of merely temporal and earthly
significance. We are apt to think that what we have before us can
be nothing else than a legislative scheme to be carried out more or
less fully in the new state that should arise after the Exile. The
miraculous features in the vision are apt to be dismissed as mere
symbolisms to which no great significance attaches. Legislating for
the millennium seems to us a strange occupation for a prophet, and
we are hardly prepared to credit even Ezekiel with so bold a
conception. But that depends entirely on his idea of what the
millennium will be. If it is to be a state of things in which
religious institutions are of vital importance for the maintenance
of the spiritual interests of the community of the people of God,
then legislation is the natural expression for the ideals which are
to be realised in it. And we must remember, too, that what we have
to do with is a vision.
Ezekiel is not the ultimate source of this legislation, however
much it may bear the impress of his individual experience. He has
seen the city of God, and all the minute and elaborate regulations
with which these nine chapters are filled are but the exposition of
principles that determine the character of a people amongst whom
Jehovah can dwell.
At the same time
we see that a separation of different aspects of the vision was
inevitably effected by the teaching of history. The return from
Babylon was accomplished without any of those supernatural adjuncts
with which it had been invested in the rapt imagination of the
prophet. No transformation of the land preceded it; no visible
presence of Jehovah welcomed the exiles back to their ancient
abode. They found Jerusalem in ruins, the holy and beautiful house
a desolation, the land occupied by aliens, the seasons unproductive
as of old. Yet in the hearts of these men there was a vision even
more impressive than that of Ezekiel in his solitude. To lay the
foundations of a theocratic state in the dreary, discouraging
daylight of the present was an act of faith as heroic as has ever
been performed in the history of religion. The building of the
Temple was undertaken amidst many difficulties, the ritual was
organised, the rudiments of a religious constitution appeared, and
in all this we see the influence of those principles of national
holiness that had been formulated by Ezekiel. But the crowning
manifestation of Jehovah's glory was deferred. Prophet after
prophet appeared to keep alive the hope that this Temple, poor in
outward appearance as it was, would yet be the centre of a new
world, and the dwelling-place of the Eternal. Centuries rolled
past, and still Jehovah did not come to His Temple, and the
eschatological features which had bulked so largely in Ezekiel's
vision remained an unfulfilled aspiration. And when at length in the fulness of time the
complete revelation of God was given, it was in a form that
superseded the old economy entirely, and transformed its most
stable and cherished institutions into adumbrations of a spiritual
kingdom which knew no earthly Temple and had need of none.
This brings us
to the most difficult and most important of all the questions
arising in connection with Ezekiel's vision—What is its relation to
the Pentateuchal Legislation? It is obvious at once that the
significance of this section of the book of Ezekiel is immensely
enhanced if we accept the conclusion to which the critical study of
the Old Testament has been steadily driven, that in the chapters
before us we have the first outline of that great conception of a
theocratic constitution which attained its finished expression in
the priestly regulations of the middle books of the Pentateuch. The
discussion of this subject is so intricate, so far-reaching in its
consequences, and ranges over so wide an historical field, that one
is tempted to leave it in the hands of those who have addressed
themselves to its special treatment, and to try to get on as best
one may without assuming a definite attitude on one side or the
other. But the student of Ezekiel cannot altogether evade it. Again
and again the question will force itself on him as he seeks to
ascertain the meaning of the various details of Ezekiel's
legislation, How does this stand related to corresponding
requirements in the Mosaic law? It is necessary, therefore, in
justice to the reader of the following pages, that an attempt
should be made, however imperfectly, to indicate the position which
the present phase of criticism assigns to Ezekiel in the history of
the Old Testament legislation.
We may begin by
pointing out the kind of difficulty that is felt to arise on the
supposition that Ezekiel had before him the entire body of laws contained
in our present Pentateuch. We should expect in that case that the
prophet would contemplate a restoration of the divine institutions
established under Moses, and that his vision would reproduce with
substantial fidelity the minute provisions of the law by which
these institutions were to be maintained. But this is very far from
being the case. It is found that while Ezekiel deals to a large
extent with the subjects for which provision is made by the law,
there is in no instance perfect correspondence between the
enactments of the vision and those of the Pentateuch, while on some
points they differ very materially from one another. How are we to
account for these numerous and, on the supposition, evidently
designed divergencies? It has been suggested that the law was found
to be in some respects unsuitable to the state of things that would
arise after the Exile, and that Ezekiel in the exercise of his
prophetic authority undertook to adapt it to the conditions of a
late age. The suggestion is in itself plausible, but it is not
confirmed by the history. For it is agreed on all hands that the
law as a whole had never been put in force for any considerable
period of Israel's history previous to the Exile. On the other
hand, if we suppose that Ezekiel judged its provisions unsuitable
for the circumstances that would emerge after the Exile, we are
confronted by the fact that where Ezekiel's legislation differs
from that of the Pentateuch it is the latter and not the former
that regulated the practice of the post-exilic community. So far
was the law from being out of date in the age of Ezekiel that the
time was only approaching when the first effort would be made to
accept it in all its length and breadth as the authoritative basis
of an actual theocratic polity. Unless, therefore, we are to hold
that the legislation of the vision is entirely in the air, and that
it takes no account whatever of practical considerations,
we must feel that a
certain difficulty is presented by its unexplained deviations from
the carefully drawn ordinances of the Pentateuch.
But this is not
all. The Pentateuch itself is not a unity. It consists of different
strata of legislation which, while irreconcilable in details, are
held to exhibit a continuous progress towards a clearer definition
of the duties that devolve on different classes in the community,
and a fuller exposition of the principles that underlay the system
from the beginning. The analysis of the Mosaic writings into
different legislative codes has resulted in a scheme which in its
main outlines is now accepted by critics of all shades of opinion.
The three great codes which we have to distinguish are: (1) the
so-called Book of the Covenant (Exod. xx. 24-xxiii., with which may
be classed the closely allied code of Exod. xxxiv. 10-28); (2) the
Book of Deuteronomy; and (3) the Priestly Code (found in Exod.
xxv.-xxxi., xxxv.-xl., the whole book of Leviticus, and nearly the
whole of the book of Numbers).This last group is considered to be
composed of several layers of legislation, and one of its sections
is of particular interest for us because of its numerous affinities
with the book of Ezekiel. It is the short code contained in Lev.
xvii.-xxvi., now generally known as the Law of Holiness.
Now
of course the mere separation of these different documents tells us
nothing, or not much, as to their relative priority or antiquity.
But we possess at least a certain amount of historical and
independent evidence as to the times when some of them became
operative in the actual life of the nation. We know, for example,
that the Book of Deuteronomy attained the force of statute law
under the most solemn circumstances by a national covenant in the
eighteenth year of Josiah. The distinctive feature of that book is
its impressive enforcement of the principle that there is but one
sanctuary at
which Jehovah can be legitimately worshipped. When we compare the
list of reforms carried out by Josiah, as given in the twenty-third
chapter of 2 Kings, with the provisions of Deuteronomy, we see that
it must have been that book and it alone that had been found in the
Temple and that governed the reforming policy of the king. Before
that time the law of the one sanctuary, if it was known at all, was
certainly more honoured in the breach than the observance.
Sacrifices were freely offered at local altars throughout the
country, not merely by the ignorant common people and idolatrous
kings, but by men who were the inspired religious leaders and
teachers of the nation. Not only so, but this practice is
sanctioned by the Book of the Covenant, which permits the erection
of an altar in every place where Jehovah causes His name to be
remembered, and only lays down injunctions as to the kind of altar
that might be used (Exod. xx. 24-26). The evidence is thus very
strong that the Book of Deuteronomy, at whatever time it may have
been written, had not the force of public law until the year 621
b.c., and that down to
that time the accepted and authoritative expression of the divine
will for Israel was the law embraced in the Book of the
Covenant.
To find similar
evidence of the practical adoption of the Priestly Code we have to
come down to a much later period. It is not till the year 444
b.c., in the time of Ezra
and Nehemiah, that we read of the people pledging themselves by a
solemn covenant to the observance of regulations which are clearly
those of the finished system of Pentateuchal law (Neh. viii.-x.).
It is there expressly stated that this law had not been observed in
Israel up to that time (Neh. ix. 34), and in particular that the
great Feast of Tabernacles had not been celebrated in accordance
with the requirements of the law since the days of Joshua (Neh.
viii. 17). This is quite conclusive as to actual practice in Israel; and the fact that
the observance of the law was thus introduced by instalments and on
occasions of epoch-making importance in the history of the
community raises a strong presumption against the hypothesis that
the Pentateuch was an inseparable literary unity which must be
known in its entirety where it was known at all.
Now the date of
Ezekiel's vision (572) lies between these two historic
transactions—the inauguration of the law of Deuteronomy in 621, and
that of the Priestly Code in 444; and in spite of the ideal
character which belongs to the vision as a whole, it contains a
system of legislation which admits of being compared point by point
with the provisions of the other two codes on a variety of subjects
common to all three. Some of the results of this comparison will
appear as we proceed with the exposition of the chapters before us.
But it will be convenient to state here the important conclusion to
which a number of critics have been led by discussion of this
question. It is held that Ezekiel's legislation represents on the
whole a transition from the law of Deuteronomy to the more complex
system of the Priestly document. The three codes exhibit a regular
progression, the determining factor of which is a growing sense of
the importance of the Temple worship and of the necessity for a
careful regulation of the acts which express the religious standing
and privileges of the community. On such matters as the feasts, the
sacrifices, the distinction between priests and Levites, the Temple
dues, and the provision for the maintenance of ordinances, it is
found that Ezekiel lays down enactments which go beyond those of
Deuteronomy and anticipate a further development in the same
direction in the Levitical legislation.This argument is most fully worked out
by Wellhausen in the first division of his Prolegomena zur
Geschichte Israels: I., “Geschichte des Cultus.”
The legislation of
Ezekiel is accordingly regarded as a first step towards the
codification of the ritual laws which regulated the usage of the
first Temple. It is not of material consequence to know how far
these laws had been already committed to writing, or how far they
had been transmitted by oral tradition. The important point is that
down to the time of Ezekiel the great body of ritual law had been
the possession of the priests, who communicated it to the people in
the shape of particular decisions as occasion demanded. Even the
book of Deuteronomy, except on one or two points, such as the law
of leprosy and of clean and unclean animals, does not encroach on
matters of ritual, which it was the special province of the
priesthood to administer. But now that the time was drawing near
when the Temple and its worship were to be the very centre of the
religious life of the nation, it was necessary that the essential
elements of the ceremonial law should be systematised and published
in a form understood of the people. The last nine chapters of
Ezekiel, then, contain the first draft of such a scheme, drawn from
an ancient priestly tradition which in its origin went back to the
time of Moses. It is true that this was not the precise form in
which the law was destined to be put in practice in the post-exilic
community. But Ezekiel's legislation served its purpose when it
laid down clearly, with the authority of a prophet, the fundamental
ideas that underlie the conception of ritual as an aid to spiritual
religion. And these ideas were not lost sight of, though it was
reserved for others, working under the impulse supplied by Ezekiel,
to perfect the details of the system, and to adopt the principles
of the vision to the actual circumstances of the second Temple.
Through what subsequent stages the work was carried we can hardly
hope to determine with exactitude; but it was finished in all
essential respects
before the great covenant of Ezra and Nehemiah in the year
444.It should perhaps be stated, even in
so incomplete a sketch as this, that there is still some difference
of opinion among critics as to Ezekiel's relation to the so-called
“Law of Holiness” in Lev.
xvii.-xxvi. It is agreed that this short but extremely interesting
code is the earliest complete, or nearly complete, document that
has been incorporated in the body of the Levitical legislation. Its
affinities with Ezekiel both in thought and style are so striking
that Colenso and others have maintained the theory that the author
of the Law of Holiness was no other than the prophet himself. This
view is now seen to be untenable; but whether the code is older or
more recent than the vision of Ezekiel is still a subject of
discussion among scholars. Some consider that it is an advance upon
Ezekiel in the direction of the Priests' Code; while others think
that the book of Ezekiel furnishes evidence that the prophet was
acquainted with the Law of Holiness, and had it before him as he
wrote. That he was acquainted with its laws
seems certain; the question is whether he had them before him in
their present written form. For fuller information on this and
other points touched on in the above pages, the reader may consult
Driver's Introduction and Robertson
Smith's Old Testament in the Jewish
Church.
Let us now
consider the bearing of this theory on the interpretation of
Ezekiel's vision. It enables us to do justice to the unmistakable
practical purpose which pervades its legislation. It frees us from
the grave difficulties involved in the assumption that Ezekiel
wrote with the finished Pentateuch before him. It vindicates the
prophet from the suspicion of arbitrary deviations from a standard
of venerable antiquity and of divine authority which was afterwards
proved by experience to be suited to the requirements of that
restored Israel in whose interest Ezekiel legislated. And in doing
so it gives a new meaning to his claim to speak as a prophet
ordaining a new system of laws with divine authority. Whilst
perfectly consistent with the inspiration of the Mosaic books, it
places that of Ezekiel on a surer footing than does the supposition
that the whole Pentateuch was of Mosaic authorship. It involves, no
doubt, that the details of the Priestly law were in a more or less fluid condition
down to the time of the Exile; but it explains the otherwise
unaccountable fact that the several parts of the law became
operative at different times in Israel's history, and explains it
in a manner that reveals the working of a divine purpose through
all the ages of the national existence. It becomes possible to see
that Ezekiel's legislation and that of the Levitical books are in
their essence alike Mosaic, as being founded on the institutions
and principles established by Moses at the beginning of the
nation's history. And an altogether new interest is imparted to the
former when we learn to regard it as an epoch-making contribution
to the task which laid the foundation of the post-exilic
theocracy—the task of codifying and consolidating the laws which
expressed the character of the new nation as a holy people
consecrated to the service of Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel.
Chapter XXVI. The Sanctuary. Chapters
xl.-xliii.
The fundamental
idea of the theocracy as conceived by Ezekiel is the literal
dwelling of Jehovah in the midst of His people. The Temple is in
the first instance Jehovah's palace, where He manifests His
gracious presence by receiving the gifts and homage of His
subjects. But the enjoyment of this privilege of access to the
presence of God depends on the fulfilment of certain conditions
which, in the prophet's view, had been systematically violated in
the arrangements that prevailed under the first Temple. Hence the
vision of Ezekiel is essentially the vision of a Temple
corresponding in all respects to the requirements of Jehovah's
holiness, and then of Jehovah's entrance into the house so prepared
for His reception. And the first step towards the realisation of
the great hope of the future was to lay before the exiles a full
description of this building, so that they might understand the
conditions on which alone Israel could be restored to its own
land.
To this task the
prophet addresses himself in the first four of the chapters before
us, and he executes it in a manner which, considering the great
technical difficulties to be surmounted, must excite our
admiration. He tells us first in a brief introduction how he was
transported in prophetic ecstasy to the land of Israel, and there
on the site of the old Temple, now elevated into a “very high
mountain,” he sees before him an imposing pile of buildings
like the building of a city (ver. 2). It is the future Temple, the
city itself having been removed nearly two miles to the south. At
the east gate he is met by an angel, who conducts him from point to
point of the buildings, calling his attention to significant
structural details, and measuring each part as he goes along with a
measuring-line which he carries in his hand. It is probable that
the whole description would be perfectly intelligible but for the
state of the text, which is defective throughout and in some places
hopelessly corrupt. This is hardly surprising when we consider the
technical and unfamiliar nature of the terms employed; but it has
been suspected that some parts have been deliberately tampered with
in order to bring them into harmony with the actual construction of
the second Temple. Whether that is so or not, the description as a
whole remains in its way a masterpiece of literary exposition, and
a remarkable proof of the versatility of Ezekiel's accomplishments.
When it is necessary to turn himself into an architectural
draughtsman he discharges the duty to perfection. No one can study
the detailed measurements of the buildings without being convinced
that the prophet is working from a ground plan which he has himself
prepared; indeed his own words leave no doubt that this was the
case (see ch. xliii. 10, 11). And it is a convincing demonstration
of his descriptive powers that we are able, after the labours of
many generations of scholars, to reproduce this plan with a
certainty which, except with regard to a few minor features, leaves
little to be desired. It has been remarked as a curious fact that
of the three temples mentioned in the Old Testament the only one of
whose construction we can form a clear conception is the one that
was never built;Gautier, La Mission du
Prophète Ezekiel, p. 118.
and
certainly the knowledge we have of Solomon's Temple from the first book of Kings is very
incomplete compared with what we know of the Temple which Ezekiel
saw only in vision.
It is impossible
in this chapter to enter into all the minutiæ of the description,
or even to discuss all the difficulties of interpretation which
arise in connection with different parts. Full information on these
points will be found in short compass in Dr. Davidson's commentary
on the passage. All that can be attempted here is to convey a
general idea of the arrangements of the various buildings and
courts of the sanctuary, and the extreme care with which they have
been thought out by the prophet. After this has been done we shall
try to discover the meaning of these arrangements in so far as they
differ from the model supplied by the first Temple.
I
Let the
reader, then, after the manner of Euclid, draw a straight line
a
b, and describe thereon a square a b c
d. Let him divide two adjacent sides of the square
(say a b and a
d) into ten equal parts, and let lines be drawn
from the points of section parallel to the sides of the square in
both directions. Let a side of the small squares represent a
length of fifty cubits, and the whole consequently a square of
five hundred cubits.
The cubit
which is the unit of measurement is said to be a handbreadth
longer than the cubit in common use (ver. 5). The length of the
larger cubit is variously estimated at from eighteen to
twenty-two inches. If we adopt the smaller estimate, we have only
to take the half of Ezekiel's dimensions to get the measurement
in English yards. The other, however, is more probable. Both the
Egyptians and Babylonians had a larger and a smaller cubit, their
respective lengths being approximately as follows:—
Common cubit:
Egypt 17.8 in., Babylon 19.5 in.
Royal cubit: Egypt 20.7 in., Babylon 21.9 in.
In Egypt the
royal cubit exceeded the common by a handbreadth, just as in
Ezekiel. It is probable in any case that the large cubit used by
the angel was of the same order of magnitude as the royal cubit
of Egypt and Babylon—i.e., was between twenty and a
half and twenty-two inches long. Cf. Benzinger, Hebräische
Archäologie, pp. 178 ff.
It
will now be found that the bounding lines of Ezekiel's plan run
throughout on the lines of this diagram;See the plan in Benzinger,
Archäologie, p. 394.
and
this fact gives a better idea than anything else of the
symmetrical structure of the Temple and of the absolute accuracy
of the measurements.
The sides of
the large square represent of course the outer boundary of the
enclosure, which is formed by a wall six cubits thick and six
high.The outer court, however, is some feet
higher than the level of the ground, being entered by an ascent of
seven steps; the height of the wall inside must therefore be less
by this amount than the six cubits, which is no doubt an outside
measurement.
Its
sides are directed to the four points of the compass, and at the
middle of the north, east and south sides the wall is pierced by
the three gates, each with an ascent of seven steps outside. The
gates, however, are not mere openings in the wall furnished with
doors, but covered gateways similar to those that penetrate the
thick wall of a fortified town. In this case they are large
separate buildings projecting into the court to a distance of
fifty cubits, and twenty-five cubits broad, exactly half the size
of the Temple proper. On either side of the passage are three
recesses in the wall six cubits square, which were to be used as
guard-rooms by the Temple police. Each gateway terminates towards
the court in a large hall called “the
porch,” eight cubits broad (along the line of entry) by
twenty long (across): the porch of the east gate was reserved for
the use of the prince; the purpose of the other two is nowhere
specified.
Passing
through the eastern gateway, the prophet stands in the outer
court of the Temple, the place where the people assembled for
worship. It seems to have been entirely destitute of buildings,
with the exception of
a row of thirty cells along the three walls in which the gates
were. The outer margin of the court was paved with stone up to
the line of the inside of the gateways (i.e.,
fifty cubits, less the thickness of the outer wall); and on this
pavement stood the cells, the dimensions of which, however, are
not given. There were, moreover, in the four corners of the court
rectangular enclosures forty cubits by thirty, where the Levites
were to cook the sacrifices of the people (ch. xlvi. 21-24). The
purpose of the cells is nowhere specified; but there is little
doubt that they were intended for those sacrificial feasts of a
semi-private character which had always been a prominent feature
of the Temple worship. From the edge of the pavement to the inner
court was a distance of a hundred cubits; but this space was free
only on three sides, the western side being occupied by buildings
to be afterwards described.
The inner
court was a terrace standing probably about five feet above the
level of the outer, and approached by flights of eight steps at
the three gates. It was reserved for the exclusive use of the
priests. It had three gateways in a line with those of the outer
court, and precisely similar to them, with the single exception
that the porches were not, as we might have expected, towards the
inside, but at the ends next to the outer court. The free space
of the inner court, within the line of the gateways, was a square
of a hundred cubits, corresponding to the four middle squares of
the diagram. Right in the middle, so that it could be seen
through the gates, was the great altar of burnt-offering, a huge
stone structure rising in three terraces to a height apparently
of twelve cubits, and having a breadth and length of eighteen
cubits at the base. That this, rather than the Temple, should be
the centre of the sanctuary, corresponds to a consciousness in
Israel that the altar was the one indispensable requisite for the
performance of sacrificial worship acceptable to Jehovah. Accordingly, when
the first exiles returned to Jerusalem, before they were in a
position to set about the erection of the Temple, they reared the
altar in its place, and at once instituted the daily sacrifice
and the stated order of the festivals. And even in Ezekiel's
vision we shall find that the sacrificial consecration of the
altar is considered as equivalent to the dedication of the whole
sanctuary to the chief purpose for which it was erected. Besides
the altar there were in the inner court certain other objects of
special significance for the priestly and sacrificial service. By
the side of the north and south gates were two cells or chambers
opening towards the middle space. The purpose for which these
cells were intended clearly points to a division of the
priesthood (which, however, may have been temporary and not
permanent) into two classes—one of which was entrusted with the
service of the Temple, and the other with the service of the
altar. The cell on the north, we are told, was for the priests
engaged in the service of the house, and that on the south for
those who officiated at the altar (ch. xl. 45, 46). There is
mention also of tables on which different classes of sacrificial
victims were slaughtered, and of a chamber in which the
burnt-offering was washed (ch. xl. 38-43); but so obscure is the
text of this passage that it cannot even be certainly determined
whether these appliances were situated at the east gate or the
north gate, or at each of the three gates.
The four small
squares immediately adjoining the inner court on the west are
occupied by the Temple proper and its adjuncts. The Temple itself
stands on a solid basement six cubits above the level of the
inner court, and is reached by a flight of ten steps. The breadth
of the basement (north to south) is sixty cubits: this leaves a
free space of twenty cubits on either side, which is really a
continuation of the inner court, although it bears the special name of the
gizra
(“separate place”). In length the
basement measures a hundred and five cubits, projecting, as we
immediately see, five cubits into the inner court in front.Smend and Stade assume that it was a
hundred and ten cubits long, and extended five cubits to the west
beyond the line of the square to which it belongs. This was not
necessary, and it would imply that the binyā behind the Temple, to be
afterwards described, was without a wall on its eastern side, which
is extremely improbable. (So Davidson.)
The
inner space of the Temple was divided, as in Solomon's Temple,
into three compartments, communicating with each other by
folding-doors in the middle of the partitions that separated
them. Entering by the outer door on the east, we come first to
the vestibule, which is twenty cubits broad (north to south) by
twelve cubits east to west. Next to this is the hall or
“palace” (hêkāl), twenty cubits by
forty. Beyond this again is the innermost shrine of the Temple,
the Most Holy Place, where the glory of the God of Israel is to
take the place occupied by the ark and cherubim of the first
Temple. It is a square of twenty cubits; but Ezekiel, although
himself a priest, is not allowed to enter this sacred space; the
angel goes in alone, and announces the measurements to the
prophet, who waits without in the great hall of the Temple. The
only piece of furniture mentioned in the Temple is an altar or
table in the hall, immediately in front of the Most Holy Place
(ch. xli. 22). The reference is no doubt to the table on which
the shewbread was laid out before Jehovah (cf. Exod. xxv. 23-30).
Some details are also given of the wood-carving with which the
interior was decorated (ch. xli. 16-20, 25), consisting
apparently of cherubs and palm trees in alternate panels. This
appears to be simply a reminiscence of the ornamentation of the
old Temple, and to have no direct religious significance in the
mind of the prophet.
The Temple was
enclosed first by a wall six cubits thick, and then on each side
except the east by an outer wall of five cubits, separated from
the inner by an interval of four cubits. This intervening space
was divided into three ranges of small cells rising in three
stories one over another. The second and third stories were
somewhat broader than the lowest, the inner wall of the house
being contracted so as to allow the beams to be laid upon it
without breaking into its surface. We must further suppose that
the inner wall rose above the cells and the outer wall, so as to
leave a clear space for the windows of the Temple. The entire
length of the Temple on the outside is a hundred cubits, and the
breadth fifty cubits. This leaves room for a passage of five
cubits broad round the edge of the elevated platform on which the
main building stood. The two doors which gave access to the cells
opened on this passage, and were placed in the north and south
sides of the outer wall. There was obviously no need to continue
the passage round the west side of the house, and this does not
appear to be contemplated.
It will be
seen that there still remains a square of a hundred cubits behind
the Temple, between it and the west wall. The greater part of
this was taken up by a structure vaguely designated as the
“building” (binyā or binyan), which is commonly
supposed to have been a sort of lumber-room, although its
function is not indicated. Nor does it appear whether it stood on
the level of the inner court or of the outer. But while this
building fills the whole breadth of the square from north to
south (a hundred cubits), the other dimension (east to west) is
curtailed by a space of twenty cubits left free between it and
the Temple, the gizra (see p.
410) being thus
continuous round three sides of the house.
The most
troublesome part of the description is that of two blocks of cellsAccording to the Septuagint they were
either five or fifteen in number in each block.
situated north and south of the Temple building (ch. xlii. 1-14).
It seems clear that they occupied the oblong spaces between the
gizra north
and south of the Temple and the walls of the inner court. Their
length is said to be a hundred cubits, and their breadth fifty
cubits. But room has to be found for a passage ten cubits broad
and a hundred long, so that the measurements do not exhibit in
this case Ezekiel's usual accuracy. Moreover, we are told that
while their length facing the Temple was a hundred cubits, the
length facing the outer court was only fifty cubits. It is
extremely difficult to gain a clear idea of what the prophet
meant. Smend and Davidson suppose that each block was divided
longitudinally into two sections, and that the passage of ten
cubits ran between them from east to west. The inner section
would then be a hundred cubits in length and twenty in breadth.
But the other section towards the outer court would have only
half this length, the remaining fifty cubits along the edge of
the inner court being protected by a wall. This is perhaps the
best solution that has been proposed, but one can hardly help
thinking that if Ezekiel had had such an arrangement in view he
would have expressed himself more clearly. The one thing that is
perfectly unambiguous is the purpose for which these cells were
to be used. Certain sacrifices to which a high degree of sanctity
attached were consumed by the priests, and being “most holy” things they had to be eaten in a
holy place. These chambers, then, standing within the sacred
enclosure of the inner court, were assigned to the priests for
this purpose.From a later passage (ch. xlvi. 19,
20) we learn that in some recess to the west of the northern block
of cells there was a place where these sacrifices (the sin-,
guilt-, and meal-offerings) were cooked, so that the people in the
outer court might not run any risk of being brought in contact with
them.
In
them also the priests were to deposit the sacred garments
in which they
ministered, before leaving the inner court to mingle with the
people.
II
Such, then,
are the leading features presented by Ezekiel's description of an
ideal sanctuary. What are the chief impressions suggested to the
mind by its perusal? The fact no doubt that surprises us most is
that our attention is almost exclusively directed to the
ground-plan of the buildings. It is evident that the prophet is
indifferent to what seems to us the noblest element of
ecclesiastical architecture, the effect of lofty spaces on the
imagination of the worshipper. It is no part of his purpose to
inspire devotional feeling by the aid of purely æsthetic
impressions. “The height, the span, the
gloom, the glory” of some venerable Gothic cathedral do
not enter into his conception of a place of worship. The
impressions he wishes to convey, although religious, are
intellectual rather than æsthetic, and are such as could be
expressed by the sharp outlines and mathematical precision of a
ground-plan. Now of course the sanctuary was, to begin with, a
place of sacrifice, and to a large extent its arrangements were
necessarily dictated by a regard for practical convenience and
utility. But leaving this on one side, it is obvious enough that
the design is influenced by certain ruling principles, of which
the most conspicuous are these three: separation, gradation, and
symmetry. And these again symbolise three aspects of the one
great idea of holiness, which the prophet desired to see embodied
in the whole constitution of the Hebrew state as the guarantee of
lasting fellowship between Jehovah and Israel.
In Ezekiel's
teaching on the subject of holiness there is nothing that is
absolutely new or peculiar to himself. That Jehovah is the one
truly holy Being is the common doctrine of the prophets, and it
means that He alone unites in Himself all the attributes of true
Godhead. The Hebrew language does not admit of the formation of
an adjective from the name for God like our word “divine,” or an abstract noun corresponding to
“divinity.” What we denote by
these terms the Hebrews expressed by the words qādôsh , “holy,” and qōdesh, “holiness.” All that constitutes true divinity
is therefore summed up in the Old Testament idea of the holiness
of God. The fundamental thought expressed by the word when
applied to God appears to be the separation or contrast between
the divine and the human—that in God which inspires awe and
reverence on the part of man, and forbids approach to Him save
under restrictions which flow from the nature of the Deity. In
the light of the New Testament revelation we see that the only
barrier to communion with God is sin; and hence to us holiness,
both in God and man, is a purely ethical idea denoting moral
purity and perfectness. But under the Old Testament access to God
was hindered not only by sin, but also by natural disabilities to
which no moral guilt attaches. The idea of holiness is therefore
partly ethical and partly ceremonial, physical uncleanness being
as really a violation of the divine holiness, as offences against
the moral law. The consequences of this view appear nowhere more
clearly than in the legislation of Ezekiel. His mind was
penetrated with the prophetic idea of the unique divinity or
holiness of Jehovah, and no one can doubt that the moral
attributes of God occupied the supreme place in his conception of
what true Godhead is. But along with this he has a profound sense
of what the nature of Jehovah demands in the way of ceremonial
purity. The divine holiness, in fact, contains a physical as well as an ethical
element; and to guard against the intrusion of anything unclean
into the sphere of Jehovah's worship is the chief design of the
elaborate system of ritual laws laid down in the closing chapters
of Ezekiel. Ultimately no doubt the whole system served a moral
purpose by furnishing a safeguard against the introduction of
heathen practices into the worship of Israel. But its immediate
effect was to give prominence to that aspect of the idea of
holiness which seems to us of least value, although it could not
be dispensed with so long as the worship of God took the form of
material offerings at a local sanctuary.
Now in
reducing this idea to practice it is obvious that everything
depends on the strict enforcement of the principle of separation
that lies at the root of the Hebrew conception of holiness. The
thought that underlies Ezekiel's legislation is that the holiness
of Jehovah is communicated in different degrees to everything
connected with His worship, and in the first instance to the
Temple, which is sanctified by His presence. The sanctity of the
place is of course not fully intelligible apart from the
ceremonial rules which regulate the conduct of those who are
permitted to enter it. Throughout the ancient world we find
evidence of the existence of sacred enclosures which could only
be entered by those who fulfilled certain conditions of physical
purity. The conditions might be extremely simple, as when Moses
was commanded to take his shoes off his feet as he stood within
the holy ground on Mount Sinai. But obviously the first essential
of a permanently sacred place was that it should be definitely
marked off from common ground, as the sphere within which
superior requirements of holiness became binding. A holy place is
necessarily a place “cut off,”
separated from ordinary use and guarded from intrusion by
supernatural sanctions. The idea of the sanctuary as a separate
place was
therefore perfectly familiar to the Israelites long before the
time of Ezekiel, and had been exhibited in a lax and imperfect
way in the construction of the first Temple. But what Ezekiel did
was to carry out the idea with a thoroughness never before
attempted, and in such a way as to make the whole arrangements of
the sanctuary an impressive object lesson on the holiness of
Jehovah.
How important
this notion of separateness was to Ezekiel's conception of the
sanctuary is best seen from the emphatic condemnation of the
arrangement of the old Temple pronounced by Jehovah Himself on
His entrance into the house: “Son of man,
[hast thou seen]So in the LXX.
the
place of My throne, and the place of the soles of My feet, where
I shall dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever? No
longer shall the house of Israel defile My holy name, they and
their kings, by their whoredom [idolatry], and by the corpses of
their kings in their death; by placing their threshold alongside
of My threshold, and their post beside My post, with only the
wall between Me and them, and defiling My holy name by their
abominations which they committed; so that I consumed them in My
anger. But now they must remove their whoredom and the corpses of
their kings from Me, and I will dwell amongst them for
ever” (ch. xliii. 7-9). There is here a clear allusion to
defects in the structure of the Temple which were inconsistent
with a due recognition of the necessary separation between the
holy and the profane (ch. xlii. 20). It appears that the first
Temple had only one court, corresponding to the inner court of
Ezekiel's vision. What answered to the outer court was simply an
enclosure surrounding, not only the Temple, but also the royal
palace and the other buildings of state. Immediately adjoining the Temple
area on the south was the court in which the palace stood, so
that the only division between the dwelling-place of Jehovah and
the residence of the kings of Judah was the single wall
separating the two courts. This of itself was derogatory to the
sanctity of the Temple, according to the enhanced idea of
holiness which it was Ezekiel's mission to enforce. But the
prophet touches on a still more flagrant transgression of the law
of holiness when he speaks of the dead bodies of the kings as
being interred in the neighbourhood of the Temple. Contact with a
dead body produced under all circumstances the highest degree of
ceremonial uncleanness, and nothing could have been more
abhorrent to Ezekiel's priestly sense of propriety than the close
proximity of dead men's bones to the house in which Jehovah was
to dwell. In order to guard against the recurrence of these
abuses in the future it was necessary that all secular buildings
should be removed to a safe distance from the Temple precincts.
The “law of the house” is that
“upon the top of the mountain it shall
stand, and all its precincts round about shall be most
holy” (ch. xliii. 12). And it is characteristic of Ezekiel
that the separation is effected, not by changing the situation of
the Temple, but by transporting the city bodily to the southward;
so that the new sanctuary stood on the site of the old, but
isolated from the contact of that in human life which was common
and unclean.The actual building of the second
Temple had of course to be carried out irrespective of the bold
idealism of Ezekiel's vision. The miraculous transformation of the
land had not taken place, and it was altogether impossible to build
a new metropolis in the region marked out for it by the vision. The
Temple had to be erected on its old site, and in the immediate
neighbourhood of the city. To a certain extent, however, the
requirements of the ideal sanctuary could be complied with. Since
the new community had no use for royal buildings, the whole of the
old Temple plateau was available for the sanctuary, and was
actually devoted to this purpose. The new Temple accordingly had
two courts, set apart for sacred uses; and in all probability these
were laid out in a manner closely corresponding to the plan
prepared by Ezekiel.
The effect of
this teaching, however, is immensely enhanced by the principle of
gradation, which is the
second feature exhibited in Ezekiel's description of the
sanctuary. Holiness, as a predicate of persons or things, is
after all a relative idea. That which is “most holy” in relation to the profane
every-day life of men may be less holy in comparison with
something still more closely associated with the presence of God.
Thus the whole land of Israel was holy in contrast with the world
lying outside. But it was impossible to maintain the whole land
in a state of ceremonial purity corresponding to the sanctity of
Jehovah. The full compass of the idea could only be illustrated
by a carefully graded series of sacred spaces, each of which
entailed provisions of sanctity peculiar to itself. First of all
an “oblation” is set apart in the
middle of the tribes; and of this the central portion is assigned
for the residence of the priestly families. In the midst of this,
again, stands the sanctuary with its wall and precinct, dividing
the holy from the profane (ch. xlii. 20). Within the wall are the
two courts, of which the outer could only be trodden by
circumcised Israelites and the inner only by the priests. Behind
the inner court stands the Temple house, cut off from the
adjoining buildings by a “separate
place,” and elevated on a platform, which still further
guards its sanctity from profane contact. And finally the
interior of the house is divided into three compartments,
increasing in holiness in the order of entrance—first the porch,
then the main hall, and then the Most Holy Place, where Jehovah
Himself dwells. It is impossible to mistake the meaning of all
this. The practical object is to secure the presence of Jehovah against the
possibility of contact with those sources of impurity which are
inseparably bound up with the incidents of man's natural
existence on earth.It is not necessary to dwell on the
third feature of the Temple plan, its symmetry. Although this has
not the same direct religious significance as the other two, it is
nevertheless a point to which considerable importance is attached
even in matters of minute detail. Solomon's Temple had, for
example, only one door to the side chambers, in the wall facing the
south, and this was sufficient for all practical purposes. But
Ezekiel's plan provides for two such doors, one in the south and
the other in the north, for no assignable reason but to make the
two sides of the house exactly alike. There are just two slight
deviations from a strictly symmetrical arrangement that can be
discerned; one is the washing-chamber by the side of one of the
gates of the inner court, and the other the space for cooking the
most holy class of sacrifices near the block of cells on the north
side of the Temple. With these insignificant exceptions, all the
parts of the sanctuary are disposed with mathematical regularity;
nothing is left to chance, regard for convenience is everywhere
subordinated to the sense of proportion which expresses the ideal
order and perfection of the whole.
Before we pass
on let us return for a moment to the primary notion of separation
in space as an emblem of the Old Testament conception of
holiness. What is the permanent religious truth underlying this
representation? We may find it in the idea conveyed by the
familiar phrase “draw near to
God.” What we have just seen reminds us that there was a
stage in the history of religion when these words could be used
in the most literal sense of every act of complete worship. The
worshipper actually came to the place where God was; it was
impossible to realise His presence in any other way. To us the
expression has only a metaphorical value; yet the metaphor is one
that we cannot dispense with, for it covers a fact of spiritual
experience. It may be true that with God there is no far or near,
that He is omnipresent, that His eyes are in every place
beholding the evil and the good. But what does that mean? Not
surely that all men everywhere and at all times are equally under
the influence of
the divine Spirit? No; but only that God may
be found in any place by the soul that is open to receive His
grace and truth, that place has nothing to do with the conditions
of true fellowship with Him. Translated into terms of the
spiritual life, drawing near to God denotes the act of faith or
prayer or consecration, through which we seek the manifestation
of His love in our experience. Religion knows nothing of
“action at a distance”; God is
near in every place to the soul that knows Him, and distant in
every place from the heart that loves darkness rather than
light.
Now when the
idea of access to God is thus spiritualised the conception of
holiness is necessarily transformed, but it is not superseded. At
every stage of revelation holiness is that “without which no man shall see the
Lord.”Heb. xii. 14.
In
other words, it expresses the conditions that regulate all true
fellowship with God. So long as worship was confined to an
earthly sanctuary these conditions were so to speak materialised.
They resolved themselves into a series of “carnal ordinances”—gifts and sacrifices,
meats, drinks, and divers washings—that could never make the
worshipper perfect as touching the conscience. These things were
“imposed until a time of
reformation,” the “Holy Ghost this
signifying, that the way into the holy place had not been made
manifest while as the first tabernacle was yet
standing.”Heb. ix. 8-10.
And
yet when we consider what it was that gave such vitality to that
persistent sense of distance from God, of His unapproachableness,
of danger in contact with Him, what it was that inspired such
constant attention to ceremonial purity in all ancient religions,
we cannot but see that it was the obscure workings of the
conscience, the haunting sense of moral defect cleaving to a
man's common life and all his common actions. In heathenism this feeling took an
entirely wrong direction; in Israel it was gradually liberated
from its material associations and stood forth as an ethical
fact. And when at last Christ came to reveal God as He is, He
taught men to call nothing common or unclean. But He taught them
at the same time that true holiness can only be attained through
His atoning sacrifice, and by the indwelling of that Spirit which
is the source of moral purity and perfection in all His people.
These are the abiding conditions of fellowship with the Father of
our spirits; and under the influence of these great Christian
facts it is our duty to perfect holiness in the fear of God.
III
No sooner has
the prophet completed his tour of inspection of the sacred
buildings than he is conducted to the eastern gate to witness the
theophany by which the Temple is consecrated to the service of
the true God. “He (the angel) led me to
the gate that looks eastward, and, lo, the glory of the God of
Israel came from the east; its sound was as the sound of many
waters, and the earth shone with its glory. The appearance which
I saw was like that which I had seen when He came to destroy the
city, and like the appearance which I saw by the river Kebar, and
I fell on my face. And the glory of Jehovah entered the house by
the gate that looks towards the east. The Spirit caught me up,
and brought me to the inner court; and, behold, the glory of
Jehovah filled the house. Then I heard a voice from the house
speaking to me—the man was standing beside me—and saying, Son of
man, hast thou seen the place of My throne, and the place of the
soles of My feet, where I shall dwell in the midst of the
children of Israel for ever?” (ch. xliii.
1-7).
This great
scene, so simply described, is really the culmination of
Ezekiel's prophecy. Its spiritual meaning is suggested by the
prophet himself when he recalls the terrible act of judgment
which he had seen in vision on that very spot some twenty years
before (chs. ix.-xi.). The two episodes stand in clear and
conscious parallelism with each other. They represent in dramatic
form the sum of Ezekiel's teaching in the two periods into which
his ministry was divided. On the former occasion he had witnessed
the exit of Jehovah from a Temple polluted by heathen
abominations and profaned by the presence of men who had disowned
the knowledge of the Holy One of Israel. The prophet had read in
this the death sentence of the old Hebrew state, and the truth of
his vision had been established in the tale of horror and
disaster which the subsequent years had unfolded. Now he has been
privileged to see the return of Jehovah to a new Temple,
corresponding in all respects to the requirements of His
holiness; and he recognises it as the pledge of restoration and
peace and all the blessings of the Messianic age. The future
worshippers are still in exile bearing the chastisement of their
former iniquities; but “the Lord is in
His holy Temple,” and the dispersed of Israel shall yet be
gathered home to enter His courts with praise and
thanksgiving.
To us this
part of the vision symbolises, under forms derived from the Old
Testament economy, the central truth of the Christian
dispensation. We do no injustice to the historic import of
Ezekiel's mission when we say that the dwelling of Jehovah in the
midst of His people is an emblem of reconciliation between God
and man, and that his elaborate system of ritual observances
points towards the sanctification of human life in all its
relations through spiritual communion with the Father revealed in
our Lord Jesus Christ. Christian interpreters have differed widely as to
the manner in which the vision is to be realised in the history
of the Church; but on one point at least they are agreed, that
through the veil of legal institutions the prophet saw the day of
Christ. And although Ezekiel himself does not distinguish between
the symbol and the reality, it is nevertheless possible for us to
see, in the essential ideas of his vision, a prophecy of that
eternal union between God and man which is brought to pass by the
work of Christ.
Chapter XXVII. The Priesthood.
Chapter xliv.
In the last
chapter we saw how the principle of holiness through separation was
exhibited in the plan of a new Temple, round which the Theocracy of
the future was to be constituted. We have now to consider the
application of the same principle to the personnel of the Sanctuary, the
priests and others who are to officiate within its courts. The
connection between the two is obvious. As has been already
remarked, the sanctity of the Temple is not intelligible apart from
the ceremonial purity required of the persons who are permitted to
enter it. The degrees of holiness pertaining to its different areas
imply an ascending scale of restrictions on access to the more
sacred parts. We may expect to find that in the observance of these
conditions the usage of the first Temple left much to be desired
from the point of view represented by Ezekiel's ideal. Where the
very construction of the sanctuary involved so many departures from
the strict idea of holiness it was inevitable that a corresponding
laxity should prevail in the discharge of sacred functions. Temple
and priesthood in fact are so related that a reform of the one
implies of necessity a reform of the other. It is therefore not in
itself surprising that Ezekiel's legislation should include a
scheme for the reorganisation of the Temple priesthood. But these general
considerations hardly prepare us for the sweeping and drastic
changes contemplated in the forty-fourth chapter of the book. It
requires an effort of imagination to realise the situation with
which the prophet has to deal. The abuses for which he seeks a
remedy and the measures which he adopts to counteract them are
alike contrary to preconceived notions of the order of worship in
an Israelite sanctuary. Yet there is no part of the prophet's
programme which shows the character of the earnest practical
reformer more clearly than this. If we might regard Ezekiel as a
mere legislator we should say that the boldest task to which he set
his hand was a reformation of the Temple ministry, involving the
degradation of an influential class from the priestly status and
privileges to which they aspired.
I
The first and
most noteworthy feature of the new scheme is the distinction
between priests and Levites. The passage in which this
instruction is given is so important that it may be quoted here
at length. It is an oracle communicated to the prophet in a
peculiarly impressive manner. He has been brought into the inner
court in front of the Temple, and there, in full view of the
glory of God, he falls on his face, when Jehovah speaks to him as
follows:—
“Son of man, give heed and see with thine eyes and
hear with thine ears all that I speak to thee concerning all the
ordinances and all the laws of Jehovah's house. Mark well the
[rule of] entrance into the house, and all the outgoings in the
sanctuary. And say to the house of rebellion, the house of
Israel: Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, It is high time to desist
from all your abominations, O house of Israel, in that ye bring in
aliens uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh to be in
My sanctuary, profaning it, while ye offer My bread, the fat and
the blood; thus ye have broken My covenant, in addition to all
your [other] abominations; and ye have not kept the charge of My
holy things, but have appointed them as keepers of My charge in
My sanctuary. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, No alien
uncircumcised in heart and flesh shall enter into My sanctuary,
of all the foreigners who are amongst the Israelites. But the
Levites who departed from Me when Israel went astray from Me
after their idols, they shall bear their guilt, and
shall minister in My sanctuary in charge at the gates of the
house and as ministers of the house; they shall slay the burnt
offering and the sacrifice for the people, and stand before them
to minister to them. Because they ministered to them before their
idols, and were to the house of Israel an occasion of guilt,
therefore I lift My hand against them, saith the Lord Jehovah,
and they shall bear their guilt, and shall not draw near to Me to
act as priests to Me or to touch any of My holy things, the most
holy things, but shall bear their shame and the abominations
which they have committed. I will make them keepers of the charge
of the house, for all its servile work and all that has to be
done in it. But the priest-Levites, the sons of Zadok, who kept
the charge of My sanctuary when the Israelites strayed from
Me—they shall draw near to Me to minister to Me, and shall stand
before Me to present to Me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord
Jehovah. They shall enter into My sanctuary, and they shall draw
near to My table to minister to Me, and shall keep My
charge” (xliv. 5-16).
Now the first
thing to be noticed here is that the new law of the priesthood is
aimed directly against a particular abuse in the practice of the
first Temple. It appears that down to the time of the Exile uncircumcised
aliens were not only admitted to the Temple, but were entrusted
with certain important functions in maintaining order in the
sanctuary (ver. 8). It is not expressly stated that they took any
part in the performance of the worship, although this is
suggested by the fact that the Levites who are installed in their
place had to slay the sacrifices for the people and render other
necessary services to the worshippers (ver. 11). In any case the
mere presence of foreigners while sacrifice was being offered
(ver. 7) was a profanation of the sanctity of the Temple which
was intolerable to a strict conception of Jehovah's holiness. It
is therefore of some consequence to discover who these aliens
were, and how they came to be engaged in the Temple.
For a partial
answer to this question, we may turn first to the memorable scene
of the coronation of the young king Joash as described in the
eleventh chapter of the second book of Kings (c.
b.c. 837). The moving
spirit in that transaction was the chief priest Jehoiada, a man
who was honourably distinguished by his zeal for the purity of
the national religion. But although the priest's motives were
pure he could only accomplish his object by a palace revolution,
carried out with the assistance of the captains of the royal
bodyguard. Now from the time of David the royal guard had
contained a corps of foreign mercenaries recruited from the
Philistine country; and on the occasion with which we are dealing
we find mention of a body of Carians, showing that the custom was
kept up in the end of the ninth century. During the coronation
ceremony these guards were drawn up in the most sacred part of
the inner court, the space between the Temple and the altar, with
the new king in their midst (ver. 11). Moreover we learn
incidentally that keeping watch in the Temple was part of the
regular duty of the
king's bodyguard, just as much as the custody of the palace (vv.
5-7). In order to understand the full significance of this
arrangement, it must be borne in mind that the Temple was in the
first instance the royal sanctuary, maintained at the king's
expense and subject to his authority. Hence the duty of keeping
order in the Temple courts naturally devolved on the troops that
attended the king's person and acted as the palace guard. So at
an earlier period of the history we read that as often as the
king went into the house of Jehovah, he was accompanied by the
guard that kept the door of the king's house (1 Kings xiv. 27,
28).
Here, then, we
have historical evidence of the admission to the sanctuary of a
class of foreigners answering in all respects to the
uncircumcised aliens of Ezekiel's legislation. That the practice
of enlisting foreign mercenaries for the guard continued till the
reign of Josiah seems to be indicated by an allusion in the book
of Zephaniah, where the prophet denounces a body of men in the
service of the king who observed the Philistine custom of
“leaping over the threshold”
(Zeph. i. 9: cf. 1 Sam. v. 5). We have only to suppose that this
usage, along with the subordination of the Temple to the royal
authority, persisted to the close of the monarchy, in order to
explain fully the abuse which excited the indignation of our
prophet. It is possible no doubt that he had in view other
uncircumcised persons as well, such as the Gibeonites (Josh. ix.
27), who were employed in the menial service of the sanctuary.
But we have seen enough to show at all events that pre-exilic
usage tolerated a freedom of access to the sanctuary and a
looseness of administration within it which would have been
sacrilegious under the law of the second Temple. It need not be
supposed that Ezekiel was the only one who felt this state of
things to be a scandal and an injury to religion. We may believe
that in this respect he only expressed the higher conscience of his
order. Amongst the more devout circles of the Temple priesthood
there was probably a growing conviction similar to that which
animated the early Tractarian party in the Church of England, a
conviction that the whole ecclesiastical system with which their
spiritual interests were bound up fell short of the ideal of
sanctity essential to it as a divine institution. But no scheme
of reform had any chance of success so long as the palace of the
kings stood hard by the Temple, with only a wall between them.
The opportunity for reconstruction came with the Exile, and one
of the leading principles of the reformed Temple is that here
enunciated by Ezekiel, that no “alien
uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh” shall
henceforth enter the sanctuary.
In order to
prevent a recurrence of these abuses Ezekiel ordains that for the
future the functions of the Temple guard and other menial offices
shall be discharged by the Levites who had hitherto acted as
priests of the idolatrous shrines throughout the kingdom (vv.
11-14). This singular enactment becomes at once intelligible when
we understand the peculiar circumstances brought about by the
enforcement of the Deuteronomic Law in the reformation of the
year 621. Let us once more recall the fact that the chief object
of that reformation was to do away with all the provincial
sanctuaries and to concentrate the worship of the nation in the
Temple at Jerusalem. It is obvious that by this measure the
priests of the local sanctuaries were deprived of their means of
livelihood. The rule that they who serve the altar shall live by
the altar applied equally to the priests of the high places and
to those in the Temple at Jerusalem. All the priests indeed
throughout the country were members of a landless caste or tribe;
the Levites had no portion or inheritance like the other tribes,
but subsisted
on the offerings of the worshippers at the various shrines where
they ministered. Now the law of Deuteronomy recognises the
principle of compensation for the vested interests that were thus
abolished. Two alternatives were offered to the Levites of the
high places: they might either remain in the villages or
townships where they were known, or they might proceed to the
central sanctuary and obtain admission to the ranks of the
priesthood there. In the former case, the Lawgiver commends them
earnestly, along with other destitute members of the community,
to the charity of their well-to-do fellow-townsmen and
neighbours. If, on the other hand, they elected to try their
fortunes in the Temple at Jerusalem, he secures their full
priestly status and equal rights with their brethren who
regularly officiated there. On this point the legislation is
quite explicit. Any Levite from any district of Israel who came
of his own free will to the place which Jehovah had chosen might
minister in the name of Jehovah his God, as all his brethren the
Levites did who stood there before Jehovah, and have like
portions to eat (Deut. xviii. 6-8). In this matter, however, the
humane intention of the law was partly frustrated by the
exclusiveness of the priests who were already in possession of
the sacred offices in the Temple. The Levites who were brought up
from the provinces to Jerusalem were allowed their proper share
of the priestly dues, but were not permitted to officiate at the
altar.2 Kings xxiii. 9. The sense of the
passage is undoubtedly that given above; but the expression
“unleavened bread” as a general name
for the priests' portion is peculiar. It has been proposed to read,
with a change merely of the punctuation, instead of מַצּוֹת,
מִצְוֹת = “statutory portions,” as
in Neh. xiii. 5.
It
is not probable that a large number of the provincial Levites
availed themselves of this grudging provision for their
maintenance. In the idolatrous reaction which set in after the death of
Josiah the worship of the high places was revived, and the great
body of the Levites would naturally be favourable to the
re-establishment of the old order of things with which their
professional interests were identified. Still, there would be a
certain number who for conscientious motives attached themselves
to the movement for a purer and stricter conception of the
worship of Jehovah, and were willing to submit to the irksome
conditions which this movement imposed on them. They might hope
for a time when the generous provisions of the Deuteronomic Code
would be applied to them; but their position in the meantime was
both precarious and humiliating. They had to bear the doom
pronounced long ago on the sinful house of Eli: “Every one that is left in thine house shall come and
bow down to him (the high priest of the line of Zadok) for a
piece of silver and a loaf of bread, and shall say, Thrust me, I
pray thee, into one of the priests' offices, that I may eat a
morsel of bread.”1 Sam. ii. 36.
We see thus
that Ezekiel's legislation on the subject of the Levites starts
from a state of things created by Josiah's reformation, and, let
us remember, a state of things with which the prophet was
familiar in his earlier days when he was himself a priest in the
Temple. On the whole he justifies the exclusive attitude of the
Temple priesthood towards the new-comers, and carries forward the
application of the idea of sanctity from the point where it had
been left by the law of Deuteronomy. That law recognises no
sacerdotal distinctions within the ranks of the priesthood. Its
regular designation of the priests of the Temple is “the priests, the Levites”; that of the
provincial priests is simply “the
Levites.” All priests are brethren, all belong to the same
tribe of Levi; and it
is assumed, as we have seen, that any Levite, whatever his
antecedents, is qualified for the full privileges of the
priesthood in the central sanctuary if he choose to claim them.
But we have also seen that the distinction emerged as a
consequence of the enforcement of the fundamental law of the
single sanctuary. There came to be a class of Levites in the
Temple whose position was at first indeterminate. They themselves
claimed the full standing of the priesthood, and they could
appeal in support of their claim to the authority of the
Deuteronomic legislation. But the claim was never conceded in
practice, the influence of the legitimate Temple priests being
strong enough to exclude them from the supreme privilege of
ministering at the altar. This state of things could not
continue. Either the disparity of the two orders must be effaced
by the admission of the Levites to a footing of equality with the
other priests, or else it must be emphasised and based on some
higher principle than the jealousy of a close corporation for its
traditional rights. Now such a principle is supplied by the
section of Ezekiel's vision with which we are dealing. The
permanent exclusion of the Levites from the priesthood is founded
on the unassailable moral ground that they had forfeited their
rights by their unfaithfulness to the fundamental truths of the
national religion. They had been a “stumbling-block of iniquity” to the house of
Israel through their disloyalty to Jehovah's cause during the
long period of national apostasy, when they lent themselves to
the popular inclination towards impure and idolatrous worship.
For this great betrayal of their trust they must bear the guilt
and shame in their degradation to the lowest offices in the
service of the new sanctuary. They are to fill the place formerly
occupied by uncircumcised foreigners, as keepers of the gates and
servants of the house and the worshipping congregation; but they
may not draw near to Jehovah in the exercise of priestly prerogatives, nor
put their hands to the most holy things. The priesthood of the
new Temple is finally vested in the “sons
of Zadok”—i.e., the body of Levitical
priests who had ministered in the Temple since its foundation by
Solomon. Whatever the faults of these Zadokites had been—and
Ezekiel certainly does not judge them lenientlyCf. ch. xxii. 26.
—they
had at least steadfastly maintained the ideal of a central
sanctuary, and in comparison with the rural clergy they were
doubtless a purer and better-disciplined body. The judgment is
only a relative one, as all class judgments necessarily are.
There must have been individual Zadokites worse than an ordinary
Levite from the country, as well as individual Levites who were
superior to the average Temple priest. But if it was necessary
that in the future the interests of religion should be mainly
confided to a priesthood, there could be no question that as a
class the old priestly aristocracy of the central sanctuary were
those best qualified for spiritual leadership.
In Ezekiel's
vision we thus seem to find the beginning of a statutory and
official distinction between priests and Levites. This fact forms
one of the arguments chiefly relied on by those who hold that the
book of Ezekiel precedes the introduction of the Priestly Code of
the Pentateuch. Two things, indeed, appear to be clearly
established. In the first place the tendency and significance of
Ezekiel's legislation is adequately explained by the historical
situation that existed in the generation immediately preceding
the Exile. In the second place the Mosaic books, apart from
Deuteronomy, had no influence on the scheme propounded in the
vision. It is felt that these results are difficult to reconcile
with the view that the middle books of the Pentateuch were known
to the
prophet as part of a divinely ordained constitution for the
Israelite theocracy. We should have expected in that case that
the prophet would simply have fallen back on the provisions of
the earlier legislation, where the division between priests and
Levites is formulated with perfect clearness and precision. Or,
looking at the matter from the divine point of view, we should
have expected that the revelation given to Ezekiel would endorse
the principles of the revelation that had already been given. It
is equally hard to suppose that any existing law should have been
unknown to Ezekiel, or to suggest a reason for his ignoring it if
it was known. The facts that have come before us seem thus, so
far as they go, to be in favour of the theory that Ezekiel stands
midway between Deuteronomy and the Priestly Code, and that the
final codification and promulgation of the latter took place
after his time.
It is nearer
our purpose, however, to note the probable effect of these
regulations on the personnel of the second Temple.
In the book of Ezra we are told that in the first colony of
returning exiles there were four thousand two hundred and
eighty-nine priests and only seventy-four Levites.Ezra ii. 36-40.
One
man in every ten was a priest, and the total number was probably
in excess of the requirements of a fully equipped Temple. The
number of Levites, on the other hand, would have been quite
insufficient for the duties required of them under the new
arrangements, had there not been a contingent of nearly four
hundred of the old Temple servants to supply their lack of
service.Ezra ii. 58.
Again, when Ezra came up from Babylon in the year 458, we find
that not a single Levite volunteered to accompany him. It was
only after some negotiations that about forty Levites were
induced to go up with him to Jerusalem; and again they were far
outnumbered by the
Nethinim or Temple slaves.Ezra viii. 15-20.
These figures cannot possibly represent the proportionate
strength of the tribe of Levi under the old monarchy. They
indicate unmistakably that there was a great reluctance on the
part of the Levites to share the perils and glory of the founding
of the new Jerusalem. Is it not probable that the new conditions
laid down by Ezekiel's legislation were the cause of this
reluctance? That, in short, the prospect of being servants in a
Temple where they had once claimed to be priests was not
sufficiently attractive to the majority to lead them to break up
their comfortable homes in exile, and take their proper place in
the ranks of those who were forming the new community of Israel?
And ought we not to spare a moment's admiration even at this
distance of time for the public-spirited few who in
self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of God willingly accepted
a position which was scorned by the great mass of their
tribesmen? If this was their spirit, they had their reward.
Although the position of a Levite was at first a symbol of
inferiority and degradation, it ultimately became one of very
great honour. When the Temple service was fully organised, the
Levites were a large and important order, second in dignity in
the community only to the priests. Their ranks were swelled by
the incorporation of the Temple musicians, as well as other
functionaries; and thus the Levites are for ever associated in
our minds with the magnificent service of praise which was the
chief glory of the second Temple.
II
The remainder
of the forty-fourth chapter lays down the rules of ceremonial
holiness to be observed by the priests, the duties they have to
perform towards the
community, and the provision to be made for their maintenance. A
few words must here suffice on each of these topics.
1. The
sanctity of the priests is denoted, first of all, by the
obligation to wear special linen garments when they enter the
inner court, which is the sphere of their peculiar ministrations.
Vestries were provided, as we have seen from the description of
the Temple, between the inner and outer courts, where these
garments were to be put on and off as the priests passed to and
from the discharge of their sacred duties. The general idea
underlying this regulation is too obvious to require explanation.
It is but an application of the fundamental principle that
approach to the Deity, or entrance into a place sanctified by His
presence, demands a condition of ceremonial purity which cannot
be maintained and must not be imitated by persons of a lower
degree of religious privilege. A strange but very suggestive
extension of the principle is found in the injunction to put off
the garments before going into the outer court, lest the ordinary
worshipper should be sanctified by chance contact with them. That
both holiness and uncleanness are propagated by contagion is of
the very essence of the ancient idea of sanctity; but the
remarkable thing is that in some circumstances communicated
holiness is as much to be dreaded as communicated uncleanness. It
is not said what would be the fate of an Israelite who should by
chance touch the sacred vestments, but evidently he must be
disqualified for participation in worship until he had purged
himself of his illegitimate sanctity.On this peculiar affinity between
holiness and uncleanness see the interesting argument in Robertson
Smith's Religion of the Semites, pp. 427
ff. The passage Hag. ii. 12-14 does not appear to be inconsistent
with what is there said. The meaning is that “very indirect contact with the holy does not make
holy, but very direct contact with the unclean makes
unclean” (Wellhausen, Die Kleinen Propheten, p.
170).
In the next
place the priests are under certain permanent obligations with
regard to signs of mourning, marriage, and contact with death, which again are the
mark of the peculiar sanctity of their caste. The rules as to
mourning—prohibition of shaving the head and letting the hair
flow dishevelledCf. ch. xxiv. 17; Lev. x. 6, xxi. 5,
10.
—have
been thought to be directed against heathen customs arising out
of the worship of the dead. In marriage the priest may only take
a virgin of the house of Israel or the widow of a priest. And
only in the case of his nearest relatives—parent, child, brother,
and unmarried sister—may he defile himself by rendering the last
offices to the departed, and even these exceptions involve
exclusion from the sacred office for seven days.It is remarkable that neither here nor
in Leviticus (ch. xxi. 1-3) is the priest's wife mentioned as one
for whom he may defile himself at her death.
The relations
of these requirements to the corresponding parts of the Levitical
law are somewhat complicated. The great point of difference is
that Ezekiel knows nothing of the unique privileges and sanctity
of the high priest. It might seem at first sight as if this
implied a deliberate departure from the known usage of the first
Temple. It is certain that there were high priests under the
monarchy, and indeed we can discover the rudiments of a hierarchy
in a distribution of authority between the high priest, second
priest, keepers of the threshold, and chief officers of the
house.Cf. 2 Kings xii. 11, xxiii. 14, xxv.
18; Jer. xx. 1.
But
the silence of Ezekiel does not necessarily mean that he
contemplated any innovation on the established order of things.
The historical books afford no ground for supposing that the high
priest in the old Temple had a religious standing distinguished
from that of his colleagues. He was primus inter
pares, the president of the priestly college and
the supreme authority in the internal administration of the
Temple affairs, but probably nothing more. Such an office was
almost necessary in the interest of order and authority, and
there is nothing in Ezekiel's regulations inconsistent with its
continuance.Hence it does not seem to me that any
argument can be based on the fact that a high priest was at the
head of the returning exiles either for or against the existence of
the Priestly Code at that date.
On
the other hand it must be admitted that his silence would be
strange if he had in view the position assigned to the high
priest under the law. For there the high priest is as far
elevated above his colleagues as these are above the Levites. He
is the concentration of all that is holy in Israel, and the sole
mediator of the nearest approach to God which the symbolism of
Temple worship permitted. He is bound by the strictest conditions
of ceremonial sanctity, and any transgression on his part has to
be atoned for by a rite similar to that required for a
transgression of the whole congregation.Lev. iv. 3, 13: cf. Lev. xvi. 6.
The
omission of this striking figure from the pages of Ezekiel makes
a comparison between his enactments concerning the priesthood and
those of the law difficult and in some degree uncertain.
Nevertheless there are points both of likeness and contrast which
cannot escape observation. Thus the laws of this chapter on
defilement by a dead body are identical with those enjoined in
Lev. xxi. 1-3 (the “Law of
Holiness”) for ordinary priests; while the high priest is
there forbidden to touch any dead body whatsoever. On the other
hand Ezekiel's regulations as to priestly marriages seem as it
were to strike an average between the restrictions imposed in the
law on ordinary priests and those binding on the high priest. The
former may marry any woman that is not violated or a harlot or a
divorced wife; but
the high priest is forbidden to marry any one but a virgin of his
own people. Again, the priestly garments, according to Exod.
xxviii. 39-42, xxxix. 27, are made partly of linen and partly of
byssus (? cotton), which certainly looks like a refinement on the
simpler attire prescribed by Ezekiel. But it is impossible to
pursue this subject further here.
2. The duties
of the priests towards the people are few, but exceedingly
important. In the first place they have to instruct the people in
the distinctions between the holy and the profane and between the
clean and the unclean. It will not be supposed that this
instruction took the form of set lectures or homilies on the
principles of ceremonial religion. The verb translated
“teach” in ver. 23 means to give
an authoritative decision in a special case; and this had always
been the form of priestly instruction in Israel. The subject of
the teaching was of the utmost importance for a community whose
whole life was regulated by the idea of holiness in the
ceremonial sense. To preserve the land in a state of purity
befitting the dwelling-place of Jehovah required the most
scrupulous care on the part of all its inhabitants; and in
practice difficult questions would constantly occur which could
only be settled by an appeal to the superior knowledge of the
priest. Hence Ezekiel contemplates a perpetuation of the old
ritual Torah or direction of the priests even in the ideal state
of things to which his vision looks forward. Although the people
are assumed to be all righteous in heart and responsive to the
will of Jehovah, yet they could not all have the professional
knowledge of ritual laws which was necessary to guide them on all
occasions, and errors of inadvertence were unavoidable. Jeremiah
could look forward to a time when none should teach his neighbour
or his brother, saying, Know Jehovah, because the religion which
consists in spiritual emotions and affections becomes the independent
possession of every one who is the subject of saving grace. But
Ezekiel, from his point of view, could not anticipate a time when
all the Lord's people should be priests; for ritual is
essentially an affair of tradition and technique, and can only be
maintained by a class of experts specially trained for their
office. Ritualism and sacerdotalism are natural allies; and it is
not wholly accidental that the great ritualistic Churches of
Christendom are those organised on the sacerdotal principle.
But, secondly,
the priests have to act as judges or arbitrators in cases of
disagreement between man and man (ver. 24). This again was an
important department of priestly Torah in ancient Israel, the
origin of which went back to the personal legislation of Moses in
the wilderness.Exod. xviii. 25 ff.
Cases too hard for human judgment were referred to the decision
of God at the sanctuary, and the judgment was conveyed through
the agency of the priest. It is impossible to over-estimate the
service thus rendered by the priesthood to the cause of religion
in Israel; and Hosea bitterly complains of the defection of the
priests from the Torah of their God as the source of the
widespread moral corruption of his time.Hosea iv. 6.
In
the book of Deuteronomy the Levitical priests of the central
sanctuary are associated with the civil magistrate as a court of
ultimate appeal in matters of controversy that arise within the
community; and this is by no means a tribute to the superior
legal acumen of the clerical mind, but a reassertion of the old
principle that the priest is the mouthpiece of Jehovah's
judgment.Cf. Deut. i. 17: “judgment is God's.”
That the priests should be the sole judges in Ezekiel's ideal
polity was to be expected from the high position assigned to the
order generally;
but there is another reason for it. We have once more to keep in
mind that we are dealing with the Messianic community, when the
people are anxious to do the right when they know it, and only
cases of honest perplexity require to be resolved. The priests'
decision had never been backed up by executive authority, and in
the kingdom of God no such sanction will be necessary. By this
simple judicial arrangement the ethical demands of Jehovah's
holiness will be made effective in the ordinary life of the
community.
Finally, the
priests have complete control of public worship, and are
responsible for the due observance of the festivals and for the
sanctification of the Sabbath (ver. 24).
3. With regard
to the provisions for the support of the priesthood, the old law
continues in force that the priests can hold no landed property
and have no possession like the other tribes of Israel (ver. 28).
It is true that a strip of land, measuring about twenty-seven
square miles, was set apart for their residence;See below, p. 493.
but
this was probably not to be cultivated, and at all events it is
not reckoned as a possession yielding revenue for their
maintenance. The priests' inheritance is Jehovah Himself, which
means that they are to live on the offerings of the community
presented to Jehovah at the sanctuary. In the practice of the
first Temple this ancient rule appears to have been interpreted
in a broad and liberal spirit, greatly to the advantage of the
Zadokite priests. The Temple dues consisted partly of money
payments by the worshippers; and at least the fines for
ceremonial trespasses which took the place of the sin- and
guilt-offerings were counted the lawful perquisites of the
priests.2 Kings xii. 4-16.
Ezekiel knows nothing of this system; and if it remained in force down to his
time, he undoubtedly meant to abolish it. The tribute of the
sanctuary is to be paid wholly in kind, and out of this the
priests are to receive a stated allowance. In the first place
those sacrifices which are wholly made over to the Deity, and yet
are not consumed on the altar, have to be eaten by the priests in
a holy place. These are the meal-offering, the sin-offering, and
the guilt-offering; of which more hereafter. For precisely the
same reason all that is ḥerem—i.e.,
“devoted” irrevocably to
Jehovah—becomes the possession of the priests, His
representatives, except in the cases where it had to be
absolutely destroyed. Besides this they have a claim to the best
(an indefinite portion) of the firstfruits and “oblations” (terûmah) brought to the
sanctuary in accordance with ancient custom to be consumed by the
worshipper and his friends.They also receive the best of the
arîsoth, a word of uncertain
meaning, probably either dough or coarse meal. This offering is
said to bring a blessing on the household.
These
regulations are undoubtedly based on pre-exilic usages, and
consequently leave much to be supplied from the people's
knowledge of use and wont. They do not differ very greatly from
the enumeration of the priestly dues in the eighteenth chapter of
Deuteronomy. There, as in Ezekiel, we find that the two great
sources from which the priests derive their maintenance are the
sacrifices and the firstfruits. The Deuteronomic Code, however,
knows nothing of the special class of sacrifices called sin- and
guilt-offerings, but simply assigns to the priest certain
portions of each victim,Deut. xviii. 3.
except of course the burnt-offerings, which were consumed entire
on the altar. The priest's share of natural produce is the
“best” of corn, new wine, oil, and
wool,Deut. xviii. 4.
and
would be selected as a matter of course from the tithe and terûmah brought to the
sanctuary; so that on this point there is practically complete
agreement between Ezekiel and Deuteronomy. On the other hand the
differences of the Levitical legislation are considerable, and
all in the direction of a fuller provision for the Temple
establishment. Such an increased provision was called for by the
peculiar circumstances of the second Temple. The revenue of the
sanctuary obviously depended on the size and prosperity of the
constituency to which it ministered. The stipulations of Deut.
xviii. were no doubt sufficient for the maintenance of the
priesthood in the old kingdom of Judah; and similarly those of
Ezekiel's legislation would amply suffice in the ideal condition
of the people and land presupposed by the vision. But neither
could have been adequate for the support of a costly ritual in a
small community like that which returned from Babylon where one
man in ten was a priest. Accordingly we find that the
arrangements made under Nehemiah for the endowment of the Temple
ministry are conformed to the extended provisions of the Priestly
Code (Neh. x. 32-39).The regulations of the Priests' Code
with regard to the revenues of the Temple clergy are most
comprehensively given in Numb. xviii. 8-32. The first thing that
strikes us there is the distinction between the due of the priests
and that of the Levites. The absence of any express provision for
the latter is a somewhat remarkable feature in Ezekiel's
legislation, when we consider the care with which he has defined
the status and duties of the order. It is evident, however, that no
complete arrangements could be made for the Temple service without
some law on this point such as is contained in the passage Num.
xviii. and referred to in Neh. x. 37-39; and this is closely
connected with a disposition of the tithes and firstlings different
from the directions of Deuteronomy, and probably also from the
tacit assumption of Ezekiel. The book of Deuteronomy leaves no
doubt that both the tithes of natural produce and the firstlings of
the flock and herd were intended to furnish the material for
sacrificial feasts at the sanctuary (cf. chs. xii. 6, 7, 11, 12,
xiv. 22-27). The priest received the usual portions of the
firstlings (ch. xviii. 3), and also a share of the tithe; but the
rest was eaten by the worshipper and his guests. In Numb. xviii.,
on the other hand, all the firstlings are the property of the
priest (ver. 15), and the whole of the tithes is assigned to the
Levites, who in turn are required to hand over a tenth of the tithe
to the priests (vv. 24-32). The portion of the priests consists of
the following items: (1) The meal-offering, sin-offering, and
guilt-offering (as in Ezekiel); (2) the best of oil, new wine, and
corn (as in Deuteronomy) (ver. 12); (3) all the firstfruits (an
advance on Ezekiel) (ver. 13); (4) every devoted thing (Ezekiel)
(ver. 14); (5) all the firstlings (vv. 15-18); (6) the breast and
right thigh of all ordinary private sacrifices (ver. 18: cf. Lev.
vii. 31-34) (like Deuteronomy, but choicer portions); (7) the tenth
of the Levites' tithe. It will be seen from this enumeration that
the Temple tariff of the Priestly law includes, with some slight
modification, all the requirements of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel,
besides the two important additions referred to above.
III
In conclusion,
let us briefly consider the significance of this great
institution of the priesthood in Ezekiel's scheme of an ideal
theocracy. It would of course be an utter mistake to suppose that
the prophet is merely legislating in the interests of the
sacerdotal order to which he himself belonged. It was necessary
for him to insist on the peculiar sanctity and privileges of the
priests, and to draw a sharp line of division between them and
ordinary members of the community. But he does this, not in the
interest of a privileged caste within the nation, but in the
interest of a religious ideal which embraced priests and people
alike and had to be realised in the life of the nation as a
whole. That ideal is expressed by the word “holiness,” and we have already seen how the
idea of holiness demanded ceremonial conditions of immediate
access to Jehovah's presence which the ordinary Israelite could
not observe. But “exclusion” could
not possibly be the last word of a religion which seeks to bring
men into fellowship with God. Access to God might be hedged about
by restrictions and
conditions of the most onerous kind, but access there must be if
worship was to have any meaning and value for the nation or the
individual. Although the worshipper might not himself lay his
victim on the altar, he must at least be permitted to offer his
gift and receive the assurance that it was accepted. If the
priest stood between him and God, it was not merely to separate
but also to mediate between them, and through the fulfilment of
superior conditions of holiness to establish a communication
between him and the holy Being whose face he sought. Hence the
great function of the priesthood in the theocracy is to maintain
the intercourse between Jehovah and Israel which was exhibited in
the Temple ritual by acts of sacrificial worship.
Now it is
manifest that this system of ideas rests on the representative
character of the priestly office. If the principal idea
symbolised in the sanctuary is that of holiness through
separation, the fundamental idea of priesthood is holiness
through representation. It is the holiness of Israel concentrated
in the priesthood which qualifies the latter for entrance within
the inner circle of the divine presence. Or perhaps it would be
more correct to say that the presence of Jehovah first sanctifies
the priests in an eminent degree, and then through them, though
in a less degree, the whole body of the people. The idea of
national solidarity was too deeply rooted in the Hebrew
consciousness to admit of any other interpretation of the
priesthood than this. The Israelite did not need to be told that
his standing before God was secured by his membership in the
religious community on whose behalf the priests ministered at the
altar and before the Temple. It would not occur to him to think
of his personal exclusion from the most sacred offices as a
religious disability; it was enough for him to know that the
nation to which he belonged was admitted to the presence of
Jehovah in the
persons of its representatives, and that he as an individual
shared in the blessings which accrued to Israel through the
privileged ministry of the priests. Thus to a Temple poet of a
later age than Ezekiel's the figure of the high priest supplies a
striking image of the communion of saints and the blessing of
Jehovah resting on the whole people:—
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
That they who are brethren should also dwell together!
Like the precious oil on the head,
That flows down on the beard,
The beard of Aaron,
That flows down on the hem of his garments—
Like the Hermon-dew that descends on the hills of Zion;
For there hath Jehovah ordained the blessing,
Life for evermore.Psalm cxxxiii.
Chapter XXVIII. Prince And People.
Chapters xliv.-xlvi. passim.
It was remarked
in a previous lecture that the “prince” of the closing vision appears to occupy
a less exalted position than the Messianic king of ch. xxxiv. or
ch. xxxvii. The grounds on which this impression rests require,
however, to be carefully considered, if we are not to carry away a
thoroughly false conception of the theocratic state foreshadowed by
Ezekiel. It must not be supposed that the prince is a personage of
less than royal rank, or that his authority is overshadowed by that
of a priestly caste. He is undoubtedly the civil head of the
nation, owing no allegiance within his own province to any earthly
superior. Nor is there any reason to doubt that he is the heir of
the Davidic house and holds his office in virtue of the divine
promise which secured the throne to David's descendants. It would
therefore be a mistake to imagine that we have here an anticipation
of the Romish theory of the subordination of the secular to the
spiritual power. It may be true that in the state of things
presupposed by the vision very little is left for the king to do,
whilst a variety of important duties falls to the priesthood; but
at all events the king is there and is supreme in his own sphere.
Ezekiel does not show the road to Canossa. If the king is
overshadowed, it is by the personal presence of Jehovah in the
midst of His people; and that which limits his prerogative is not the sacerdotal
power, but the divine constitution of the theocracy as revealed in
the vision itself, under which both king and priests have their
functions defined and regulated with a view to the religious ends
for which the community as a whole exists.
Our purpose in
the present chapter is to put together the scattered references to
the duties of the prince which occur in chs. xliv.-xlvi., so as to
gain as clear a picture as possible of the position of the monarchy
in the theocratic state. It must be remembered, however, that the
picture will necessarily be incomplete. National life in its
secular aspects, with which the king is chiefly concerned, is
hardly touched on in the vision. Everything being looked upon from
the point of view of the Temple and its worship, there are but few
allusions in which we can detect anything of the nature of a civil
constitution. And these few are introduced incidentally, not for
their own sake, but to explain some arrangement for securing the
sanctity of the land or the community. This fact must never be lost
sight of in judging of Ezekiel's conception of the monarchy. From
all that appears in these pages we might conclude that the prince
is a mere ornamental figurehead of the constitution, and that the
few real duties assigned to him could have been equally well
performed by a committee of priests or laymen elected for the
purpose. But this is to forget that outside the range of subjects
here touched upon there is a whole world of secular interests, of
political and social action, where the king has his part to play in
accordance with the precedents furnished by the best days of the
ancient monarchy.
Let us glance
first of all at Ezekiel's institutes of the kingdom in its more
political relations. The notices here are all in the form of
constitutional checks and safeguards against an arbitrary and
oppressive exercise of the royal authority. They are instructive,
not only as showing the
interest which the prophet had in good government and his care for
the rights of the subject, but also for the light they cast on
certain administrative methods in force previous to the Exile.
The first point
that calls for attention is the provision made for the maintenance
of the prince and his court. It would seem that the revenue of the
prince was to be derived mainly, if not wholly, from a portion of
territory reserved as his exclusive property in the division of the
country among the tribes.Chs. xlv. 7, 8, xlviii. 21, 22.
These
crown lands are situated on either side of the sacred “oblation” around the sanctuary, set apart for
the use of the priests and Levites; and they extend to the sea on
the west and to the Jordan Valley on the east. Out of these he is
at liberty to assign a possession to his sons in perpetuity, but
any estate bestowed on his courtiers reverts to the prince in the
“year of liberty.”I.e., either the seventh year,
as in Jer. xxxiv. 14, or the year of Jubilee, the fiftieth year
(Lev. xxv. 10); more probably the former.
The
object of this last regulation apparently is to prevent the
formation of a new hereditary aristocracy between the royal family
and the peasantry. A life peerage, so to speak, or something less,
is deemed a sufficient reward for the most devoted service to the
king or the state. And no doubt the certainty of a revision of all
royal grants every seventh year would tend to keep some persons
mindful of their duty. The whole system of royal demesnes which the
king might dispose of as appanages for his younger children or his
faithful retainers presents a curious resemblance to a well-known
feature of feudalism in the Middle Ages; but it was never
practically enforced in Israel. Before the Exile it was evidently
unknown, and after the Exile there was no king to provide for. But
why does the prophet bestow so much care on a mere detail of a
political system in
which, as a whole, he takes so little interest? It is because of
his concern for the rights of the common people against the
high-handed tyranny of the king and his nobles. He recalls the bad
times of the old monarchy when any man was liable to be ejected
from his land for the benefit of some court favourite, or to
provide a portion for a younger son of the king. The cruel
evictions of the poorer peasant proprietors, which all the early
prophets denounce as an outrage against humanity, and of which the
story of Naboth furnished a typical example, must be rendered
impossible in the new Israel; and as the king had no doubt been the
principal offender in the past, the rule is firmly laid down in his
case that on no pretext must he take the people's inheritance. And
this, be it observed, is an application of the religious principle
which underlies the constitution of the theocracy. The land is
Jehovah's, and all interference with the ancient landmarks which
guard the rights of private ownership is an offence against the
holiness of the true divine King who has His abode amongst the
tribes of Israel. This suggests developments of the idea of
holiness which reach to the very foundations of social well-being.
A conception of holiness which secures each man in the possession
of his own vine and fig tree is at all events not open to the
charge of ignoring the practical interests of common life for the
sake of an unprofitable ceremonialism.
In the next
place, we come across a much more startling revelation of the
injustice habitually practised by the Hebrew monarchs. Just as
later sovereigns were wont to meet their deficits by debasing the
currency, so the kings of Judah had learned to augment their
revenue by a systematic falsification of weights and measures. We
know from the prophet AmosAmos viii. 5.
that
this was a common
trick of the wealthy landowners who sold grain at exorbitant prices
to the poor whom they had driven from their possessions. They
“made the ephah small and the shekel great,
and dealt falsely with balances of deceit.” But it was left
for Ezekiel to tell us that the same fraud was a regular part of
the fiscal system of the Judæan kingdom. There is no mistaking the
meaning of his accusation: “Have done, O
princes of Israel, with your violent and oppressive rule; execute
judgment and justice, and take away your exactions from My people,
saith Jehovah God. Ye shall have just balances, and a just ephah,
and a just bath.”Ezek. xlv. 9, 10. In the translation
of ver. 9 I have followed an emendation proposed by Cornill. The
sense is not affected, but the grammatical construction seems to
demand some alteration on the Massoretic text.
That
is to say, the taxes were surreptitiously increased by the use of a
large shekel (for weighing out money payments) and a large bath and
ephah (for measuring tribute paid in kind). And if it was
impossible for the poor to protect themselves against the rapacity
of private dealers, poor and rich alike were helpless when the
fraud was openly practised in the king's name. This Ezekiel had
seen with his own eyes, and the shameful injustice of it was so
branded on his spirit that even in a vision of the last days it
comes back to him as an evil to be sedulously guarded against. It
was eminently a case for legislation. If there was to be such a
thing as fair dealing and commercial probity in the community, the
system of weights and measurement must be fixed beyond the power of
the royal caprice to alter it. It was as sacred as any principle of
the constitution. Accordingly he finds a place in his legislation
for a corrected scale of weights and measures, restored no doubt to
their original values. The ephah for dry measure and the bath for
liquid measure are each fixed at the tenth part of a homer. “The shekel shall be twenty geras:In Exod. xxx. 13, Lev. xxvii. 25,
Numb. iii. 47 (Priests' Code) the shekel of twenty geras is
described as the “shekel of the
sanctuary,” or “sacred
shekel,” clearly implying that another shekel was in common
use.
five
shekels shall be five, and ten shekels shall be ten, and fifty
shekels shall be your maneh.”Ezek. xlv. 12, according to the
LXX.
These
regulations extend far beyond the immediate object for which they
are introduced, and have both a moral and a religious bearing. They
express a truth often insisted on in the Old Testament, that
commercial morality is a matter in which the holiness of Jehovah is
involved: “A false balance is an
abomination to Jehovah, but a just weight is His
delight.”Prov. xi. 1.
In
the Law of Holiness an ordinance very similar to Ezekiel's occurs
amongst the conditions by which the precept is to be fulfilled:
“Be ye holy, for I am holy.”Lev. xix. 35, 36.
It is
evident that the Israelites had learned to regard with a religious
abhorrence all tampering with the fixed standards of value on which
the purity of commercial life depended. To overreach by lying words
was a sin; but to cheat by the use of a false balance was a species
of profanity comparable to a false oath in the name of Jehovah.
These rules
about weights and measures required, however, to be supplemented by
a fixed tariff, regulating the taxes which the prince might impose
on the people.Ezek. xlv. 13-16.
It is
not quite clear whether any part of the prince's own income was to
be derived from taxation. The tribute is called an “oblation,” and there is no doubt that it was
intended principally for the support of the Temple ritual, which in
any case must have been the heaviest charge on the royal exchequer.
But the oblation was rendered to the prince in the first instance;
and the prophet's anxiety to prevent unjust exactions springs from
a fear that the
king might make the Temple tax a pretext for increasing his own
revenue. At all events the people's duty to contribute to the
support of public ordinances according to their ability is here
explicitly recognised. Compared with the provision of the Levitical
law the scale of charges here proposed must be pronounced extremely
moderate. The contribution of each householder varies from
one-sixtieth to one-twohundredth of his income and is wholly paid
in kind.The exact figures are, one part in
sixty of cereal produce (wheat and barley), one share in a hundred
of oil, and one animal out of every two hundred from the flock (ch.
xlv. 13-15).
The
proper equivalent under the second Temple of Ezekiel's “oblation” was a poll-tax of one-third of a
shekel, voluntarily undertaken at the time of Nehemiah's covenant
“for the service of the house of our God;
for the shewbread and for the continual meal-offering, and for the
continual burnt-offering, of the Sabbaths, of the new moons, for
the set feasts, and for the holy things, and for the sin-offerings
to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of
our God.”Neh. x. 32, 33: cf. Ezek. xlv.
15.
In
the Priestly Code this tax is fixed at half a shekel for each
man.Exod. xxx. 11-16. Whether the third of
a shekel in the book of Nehemiah is a concession to the poverty of
the people, or whether the law represents an increased charge found
necessary for the full Temple service, is a question that need not
be discussed here.
But
in addition to this money payment the law required a tenth of all
produce of the soil and the flock to be given to the priests and
Levites. In Ezekiel's legislation the tithes and firstfruits are
still left for the use of the owner, who is expected to consume
them in sacrificial feasts at the sanctuary. The only charge,
therefore, of the nature of a fixed tribute for religious purposes
is the oblation here required for the regular sacrifices which
represent the stated worship rendered on behalf of the community as
a whole.
This brings us
now to the more important aspect of the kingly office—its religious
privileges and duties. Here there are three points which require to
be noticed.
1. In the first
place it is the duty of the prince to supply the material of the
public sacrifices offered in the name of the people.Ch. xlv. 17.
Out
of the tribute levied on the people for this purpose he has to
furnish the altar with the stated number of victims for the daily
service, the Sabbaths, and new moons, and the great yearly
festivals. It is clear that some one must be charged with the
responsibility of this important part of the worship, and it is
significant of Ezekiel's relations to the past that the duty does
not yet devolve directly on the priests. They seem to exercise no
authority outside of the Temple, the king standing between them and
the community as a sort of patron of the sanctuary. But the
position of the prince is not simply that of an official receiver,
collecting the tribute, and then handing it over to the Temple as
it was required. He is the representative of the religious unity of
the nation, and in this capacity he presents in person the regular
sacrifices offered on behalf of the community. Thus on the day of
the Passover he presents a sin-offering for himself and the
people,Ch. xlv. 22.
as
the high priest does in the ceremonial of the Great Day of
Atonement.Lev. xvi. 11, 15.
And
so all the sacrifices of the stated ritual are his sacrifices,
officiating as the head of the nation in its acts of common
worship. In this respect the prince succeeds to the rights
exercised by the kings of Judah in the ritual of the first Temple,
although on a different footing. Before the Exile the king had a
proprietary interest in the central sanctuary, and the expense of
the stated service was defrayed as a matter of course out of the
royal revenues. Part of this revenue, as we see in the case of Joash, was raised by a
system of Temple dues paid by the worshippers and expended on the
repairs of the house; but at a much later date than this we find
Ahaz assuming absolute control over the daily sacrifices,2 Kings xvi. 15, 16.
which
were doubtless maintained at his expense.
Now the tendency
of Ezekiel's legislation is to bring the whole community into a
closer and more personal connection with the worship of the
sanctuary, and to leave no part of it subject to the arbitrary will
of the prince. But still the idea is preserved that the prince is
the religious as well as the civil representative of the nation;
and although he is deprived of all control over the performance of
the ritual, he is still required to provide the public sacrifices
and to offer them in the name of his people.
2. In virtue of
his representative character the prince possesses certain
privileges in his approaches to God in the sanctuary not accorded
to ordinary worshippers. In this connection it is necessary to
explain some details regulating the use of the sanctuary by the
people. The outer court might be entered by prince or people either
through the north or south gate, but not from the east. The eastern
gate was that by which Jehovah had entered His dwelling-place, and
the doors of it are for ever closed. No foot might cross its
threshold. But the prince—and this is one of his peculiar
rights—might enter the gateway from the court to eat his
sacrificial meals.Ch. xliv. 1-3.
It
seems therefore to have served the same purpose for the prince as
the thirty cells along the wall did for common worshippers. The
east gate of the inner court was also shut as a rule, and was
probably never used as a passage even by the priests. But on the
Sabbaths and new moons it was thrown open to receive the sacrifices
which the prince
had to bring on these days, and it remained open till the evening.
On days when the gate was open the worshipping congregation
assembled at its door, while the prince entered as far as the
threshold and looked on while the priests presented his offering;
then he went out by the way he had entered. If on any other
occasion he presented a voluntary sacrifice in his private
capacity, the east gate was opened for him as before, but was shut
as soon as the ceremony was over. On those occasions when the
eastern gate was not opened, as at the great annual festivals, the
people probably gathered round the north and south gates, from
which they could see the altar; and at these seasons the prince
enters and departs in the common throng of worshippers. A very
peculiar regulation, for which no obvious reason appears, is that
each man must leave the Temple by the gate opposite to that at
which he entered; if he entered by the north, he must leave by the
south, and vice versâ.See ch. xlvi. 1-12. The Syriac Version
indeed makes an exception to this rule in the case of the prince.
Ver. 10 reads: “But the prince in their
midst shall go out by the gate by which he entered.” But why
the prince more than any other body should go back by the road he
came, or what particular honour there was in that, is a mystery;
and it is probable that the reading is an error originating in
repetition of ver. 8. The real meaning of the verse seems to be
that the prince must go in and out without the retinue of
foreigners who used to give éclat to royal visits to the
sanctuary.
Many of these
arrangements were no doubt suggested by Ezekiel's acquaintance with
the practice in the first Temple, and their precise object is lost
to us. But one or two facts stand out clearly enough, and are very
instructive as to the whole conception of Temple worship. The chief
thing to be noticed is that the principal sacrifices are
representative. The people are merely spectators of a transaction
with God on their behalf, the efficacy of which in no way depends
on their co-operation. Standing at the gates of the inner court, they see the
priests performing the sacred ministrations; they bow themselves in
humble reverence before the presence of the Most High; and these
acts of devotion may have been of the utmost importance for the
religious life of the individual Israelite. But the congregation
takes no real part in the worship; it is done for them, but not by
them; it is an opus operatum
performed by the prince and the priests for the good of the
community, and is equally necessary and equally valid whether there
is a congregation present to witness it or not. Those who attend
are themselves but representatives of the nation of Israel, in
whose interest the ritual is kept up. But the supreme
representative of the people is the king, and we note how
everything is done to emphasise his peculiar dignity within the
sanctuary. It was necessary perhaps to do something to compensate
for the loss of distinction caused by the exclusion of the royal
body-guard from the Temple. The prince is still the one conspicuous
figure in the outer court. Even his private sacrificial meals are
eaten in solitary state, in the eastern gateway, which is used for
no other purpose. And in the great functions where the prince
appears in his representative character he approaches nearer to the
altar than is permitted to any other layman. He ascends the steps
of the eastern gateway in the sight of the people, and passing
through he presents his offerings on the verge of the inner court
which none but the priests may enter. His whole position is thus
one of great importance in the celebration of public ordinances. In
detail his functions are no doubt determined by ancient
prescriptive usages not known to us, but modified in accordance
with the stricter ideal of holiness which Ezekiel's vision was
intended to enforce.
3. Finally, we
have to observe that the prince is rigorously excluded from
properly priestly offices. It is true that in some respects his position is
analogous to that of the high priest under the law. But the analogy
extends only to that aspect of the high priest's functions in which
he appears as the head and representative of the religious
community, and ceases the moment he enters upon priestly duties. So
far as the special degree of sanctity which characterises the
priesthood is concerned, the prince is a layman, and as such he is
jealously debarred from approaching the altar, and even from
intruding into the sacred inner court where the priests minister.
Now this fact has perhaps a deeper historical importance than we
are apt to imagine. There is good reason to believe that in the old
Temple the kings of Judah frequently officiated in person at the
altar. At the time when the monarchy was established it was the
rule that any man might sacrifice for himself and his household,
and that the king as the representative of the nation should
sacrifice on its behalf was an extension of the principle too
obvious to require express sanction. Accordingly we find that both
Saul and David on public occasions built altars and offered
sacrifice to Jehovah. The older theory indeed seems to have been
that priestly rights were inherent in the kingly office, and that
the acting priests were the ministers to whom the king delegated
the greater part of his priestly functions. Although the king might
not appoint any one to this duty without respect to the Levitical
qualification, he exercised within certain limits the right of
deposing one family and installing another in the priesthood of the
royal sanctuary. The house of Zadok itself owed its position to
such an act of ecclesiastical authority on the part of David and
Solomon.
The last
occasion on which we read of a king of Judah officiating in person
in the Temple is at the dedication of the new altar of Ahaz, when
the king not only himself sacrificed, but gave directions to the
priests
as to the future observance of the ritual. The occasion was no
doubt unusual, but there is not a word in the narrative to indicate
that the king was committing an irregular action or exceeding the
recognised prerogatives of his position. It would be unsafe,
however, to conclude that this state of things continued unchanged
till the close of the monarchy. After the time of Isaiah the Temple
rose greatly in the religious estimation of the people, and a very
probable result of this would be an increasing sense of the
importance of the ministration of the official priesthood. The
silence of the historical books and of Deuteronomy may not count
for much in an argument on this question; but Ezekiel's own
decisions lack the emphasis and solemnity with which he introduces
an absolute innovation like the separation between priests and
Levites in ch. xliv. It is at least possible that the later kings
had gradually ceased to exercise the right of sacrifice, so that
the privilege had lapsed through desuetude. Nevertheless it was a
great step to have the principle affirmed as a fundamental law of
the theocracy; and this Ezekiel undoubtedly does. If no other
practical object were gained, it served at least to illustrate in
the most emphatic way the idea of holiness, which demanded the
exclusion of every layman from unhallowed contact with the most
sacred emblems of Jehovah's presence.
It will be seen
from all that has been said that the real interest of Ezekiel's
treatment of the monarchy lies far apart from modern problems which
might seem to have a superficial affinity with it. No lessons can
fairly be deduced from it on the relations between Church and
State, or the propriety of endowing and establishing the Christian
religion, or the duty of rulers to maintain ordinances for the
benefit of their subjects. Its importance lies in another
direction. It shows the transition in Israel from a state of things in which the king is
both de jure and
de facto the source of power and
the representative of the nation and where his religious status is
the natural consequence of his civic dignity, to a very different
state of things, where the forms of the ancient constitution are
retained although the power has largely vanished from them. The
prince now requires to have his religious duties imposed on him by
an abstract political system whose sole sanction is the authority
of the Deity. It is a transition which has no precise parallel
anywhere else, although resemblances more or less instructive might
doubtless be instanced from the history of Catholicism. Nowhere
does Ezekiel's idealism appear more wonderfully blended with his
equally characteristic conservatism than here. There is no real
trace of the tendency attributed to the prophet to exalt the
priesthood at the expense of the monarchy. The prince is after all
a much more imposing personage even in the ceremonial worship than
any priest. Although he lacks the priestly quality of holiness, his
duties are quite as important as those of the priests, while his
dignity is far greater than theirs. The considerations that enter
in to limit his power and importance come from another quarter.
They are such as these: first, the loss of military leadership,
which is at least to be presumed in the circumstances of the
Messianic kingdom; second, the welfare of the people at large; and
third, the principle of holiness, whose supremacy has to be
vindicated in the person of the king no less than in that of his
meanest subject.
Perhaps the most
remarkable thing is that the transition referred to was not
actually accomplished even in the history of Israel itself. It was
only in a vision that the monarchy was ever to be represented in
the form which it bears here. From the time of Ezekiel no native
king was ever to rule over Israel again save the priest-princes
of the Asmonean
dynasty, whose constitutional position was defined by their
high-priestly dignity. Ezekiel's vision is therefore a preparation
for the kingless state of post-exilic Judaism. The foreign
potentates to whom the Jews were subject did in some instances
provide materials for the Temple worship, but their local
representatives were of course unqualified to fill the position
assigned to the prince by the great prophet of the Exile. The
community had to get along as best it could without a king, and the
task was not difficult. The Temple dues were paid directly to the
priests and Levites, and the function of representing the community
before the altar was assigned to the High Priest. It was then
indeed that the High Priesthood came to the front and blossomed out
into all the magnificence of its legal position. It was not only
the religious part of the prince's duties that fell to it, but a
considerable share of his political importance as well. As the only
hereditary institution that had survived the Exile, it naturally
became the chief centre of social order in the community. By
degrees the Persian and Greek kings found it expedient to deal with
the Jews through the High Priest, whose authority they were bound
to respect, and thus to leave him a free hand in the internal
affairs of the commonwealth. The High Priesthood, in fact, was a
civil as well as a priestly dignity. We can see that this great
revolution would have broken the continuity of Hebrew history far
more violently than it did, but for the stepping-stone furnished by
the ideal “prince” of Ezekiel's
vision.
Chapter XXIX. The Ritual. Chapters
xlv., xlvi.
It is difficult
to go back in imagination to a time when sacrifice was the sole and
sufficient form of every complete act of worship.Smith, Religion of the
Semites, pp. 196 f.
That
the slaughter of an animal, or at least the presentation of a
material offering of some sort, should ever have been considered of
the essence of intercourse with the Deity may seem to us incredible
in the light of the idea of God which we now possess. Yet there can
be no doubt that there was a stage of religious development which
recognised no true approach to God except as consummated in a
sacrificial action. The word “sacrifice” itself preserves a memorial of this
crude and early type of religious service. Etymologically it
denotes nothing more than a sacred act. But amongst the Romans, as
amongst ourselves, it was regularly applied to the offerings at the
altar, which were thus marked out as the
sacred actions par excellence of ancient
religion. It would be impossible to explain the extraordinary
persistence and vitality of the institution amongst races that had
attained a relatively high degree of civilisation, unless we
understand that the ideas connected with it go back to a time when
sacrifice was the typical and fundamental form of primitive
worship.
By the time of
Ezekiel, however, the age of sacrifice in this strict and absolute
sense may be said to have passed away, at least in principle.
Devout Jews who had lived through the captivity in Babylon and
found that Jehovah was there to them “a
little of a sanctuary,”Ch. xi. 16.
could
not possibly fall back into the belief that their God was only to
be approached and found through the ritual of the altar. And long
before the Exile, the ethical teaching of the prophets had led
Israel to appreciate the external rites of sacrifice at their true
value.
Wherewithal shall I come before Jehovah
Or bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings,
With calves of a year old?
Is Jehovah pleased with thousands of rams,
With myriads of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn as an atonement for me,
The fruit of my body as a sin-offering for my life?
He hath showed thee, O man, what is good;
And what does Jehovah require of thee,
But to do justice and to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with thy God?Micah vi. 6-8.
This great word
of spiritual religion had been uttered long before Ezekiel, as a
protest against the senseless multiplication of sacrifices which
came in in the reign of Manasseh. Nor can we suppose that Ezekiel,
with all his engrossment in matters of ritual, was insensible to
the lofty teaching of his predecessors, or that his conception of
God was less spiritual than theirs. As a matter of fact the worship
of Israel was never afterwards wholly absorbed in the routine of
the Temple ceremonies. The institution of the synagogue with its
purely devotional exercises of prayer and reading of the Scriptures
must have been nearly coeval with the second Temple, and prepared
the way far more than the latter for the spiritual worship
of the New
Testament. But even the Temple worship was spiritualised by the
service of praise and the marvellous development of devotional
poetry which it called forth. “The emotion
with which the worshipper approaches the second Temple, as recorded
in the Psalter, has little to do with sacrifice, but rests rather
on the fact that the whole wondrous history of Jehovah's grace to
Israel is vividly and personally realised as he stands amidst the
festal crowd at the ancient seat of God's throne, and adds his
voice to the swelling song of praise.”Smith, Old Testament in
Jewish Church, p. 379.
How then, it may
be asked, are we to account for the fact that the prophet shows
such intense interest in the details of a system which was already
losing its religious significance? If sacrifice was no longer of
the essence of worship, why should he be so careful to legislate
for a scheme of ritual in which sacrifice is the prominent feature,
and say nothing of the inward state of heart which alone is an
acceptable offering to God? The chief reason no doubt is that the
ritual elements of religion were the only matters, apart from moral
duties, which admitted of being reduced to a legal system, and that
the formation of such a system was demanded by the circumstances
with which the prophet had to deal. The time was not yet come when
the principle of a central national sanctuary could be abandoned,
and if such a sanctuary was to be maintained without danger to the
highest interests of religion it was necessary that its service
should be regulated with a view to preserve the deposit of revealed
truth that had been committed to the nation through the prophets.
The essential features of the sacrificial institutions were charged
with a deep religious significance, and there existed in the
popular mind a great mass of sound religious impression and
sentiment clustering around that central rite. To dispense with the institution of
sacrifice would have rendered worship entirely impossible for the
great body of the people, while to leave it unregulated was to
invite a recurrence of the abuses which had been so fruitful a
source of corruption in the past. Hence the object of the ritual
ordinances which we are about to consider is twofold: in the first
place to provide an authorised code of ritual free from everything
that savoured of pagan usages, and in the second to utilise the
public worship as a means of deepening and purifying the religious
conceptions of those who could be influenced in no other way.
Ezekiel's legislation has a special regard for the wants of the
“common rude man” whose religious
life needs all the help it can get from external observances. Such
persons form the majority of every religious society; and to train
their minds to a deeper sense of sin and a more vivid apprehension
of the divine holiness proved to be the only way in which the
spiritual teaching of the prophets could be made a practical power
in the community at large. It is true that the highest spiritual
needs were not satisfied by the legal ritual. But the irrepressible
longings of the soul for nearer fellowship with God cannot be dealt
with by rigid formal enactments. Ezekiel is content to leave them
to the guidance of that Spirit whose saving operations will have
changed the heart of Israel and made it a true people of God. The
system of external observances which he foreshadows in his vision
was not meant to be the life of religion, but it was, so to speak,
the trellis-work which was necessary to support the delicate
tendrils of spiritual piety until the time when the spirit of
filial worship should be the possession of every true member of the
Church of God.
Bearing these
facts in mind, we may now proceed to examine the scheme of
sacrificial worship contained in chapters xlv. and xlvi. Only its
leading features can here
be noticed, and the points most deserving of attention may be
grouped under three heads: the Festivals, the Representative
Service, and the Idea of Atonement.
I. The Yearly
Feasts.—The most striking thing in Ezekiel's festal
calendarCh. xlv. 18-25.
is
the division of the ecclesiastical year into two precisely similar
parts. Each half of the year commences with an atoning sacrifice
for the purification of the sanctuary from defilement contracted
during the previous half.Vv. 18-20. In ver. 20 we should read
with the LXX. “in the seventh month, on the
first day of the month,” etc.
Each
contains a great festival—in the one case the Passover, beginning
on the fourteenth day of the first month and lasting seven days,
and in the other the Feast of Tabernacles (simply called the
Feast), beginning on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and
also lasting for seven days.Vv. 21-25. Some critics, as Smend and
Cornill, think that in ver. 14 we should read fifteenth instead of
fourteenth, to perfect the symmetry of the two halves of the year.
There is no MS. authority for the proposed change.
The
passage is chiefly devoted to a minute regulation of the public
sacrifices to be offered on these occasions, other and more
characteristic features of the celebration being assumed as well
known from tradition.
It is difficult
to see what is the precise meaning of the proposed rearrangement of
the feasts in two parallel series. It may be due simply to the
prophet's love of symmetry in all departments of public life, or it
may have been suggested by the fact that at this time the
Babylonian calendar, according to which the year begins in spring,
was superimposed on the old Hebrew year commencing in the
autumn.Smend.
At
all events it involved a breach with pre-exilic tradition, and was
never carried
out in practice. The earlier legislation of the Pentateuch
recognises a cycle of three festivals—Passover and Unleavened
Bread, the Feast of Harvest or of Weeks (Pentecost), and the Feast
of Ingathering or of Tabernacles.Exod. xxiii. 14-17 (Book of the
Covenant, with which the other code—Exod. xxxiv. 18-22—agrees);
Deut. xvi. 1-17.
In
order to carry through his symmetrical division of the sacred year
Ezekiel has to ignore one of these, the Feast of Pentecost, which
seems to have always been counted the least important of the three.
It is not to be supposed that he contemplated its abolition, for he
is careful not to alter in any particular the positive regulations
of Deuteronomy; only it did not fall into his scheme, and so he
does not think it of sufficient importance to prescribe regular
public sacrifices for it. After the Exile, however, Jewish practice
was regulated by the canons of the Priestly Code, in which, along
with other festivals, the ancient threefold cycle is continued, and
stated sacrifices are prescribed for Pentecost, just as for the
other two.Cf. Lev. xxiii. 4-44 (Law of
Holiness); Numb. xxviii., xxix.
Similarly, the two atoning ceremonies in the beginning of the first
and seventh months,It is usual to speak of these
ceremonies in Ezekiel as festivals. But this seems to go beyond the
prophet's meaning. Only a single sacrifice, a sin-offering, is
mentioned; and there is no hint of any public assemblage of the
people on these days. It was the priests' business to see that the
sanctuary was purified, and there was no occasion for the people to
be present at the ceremony. The congregation would be the ordinary
congregation at the new moon feast, which of course did not
represent the whole population of the country. No doubt, as we see
from the references below, the ceremony developed into a special
feast after the Exile.
which
are not mentioned in the older legislation, are replaced in the
Priests' Code by the single Day of Atonement on the tenth day of
the seventh month, whilst the beginning of the year is celebrated
by the Feast of Trumpets on the first day of the same month.Cf. Lev. xxiii. 23-32; Numb. xxix.
1-11.
But although the
details of Ezekiel's system thus proved to be impracticable in the
circumstances of the restored Jewish community, it succeeded in the
far more important object of infusing a new spirit into the
celebration of the feasts, and impressing on them a different
character. The ancient Hebrew festivals were all associated with
joyous incidents of the agricultural year. The Feast of Unleavened
Bread marked the beginning of harvest, when “the sickle was first put into the corn.”Cf. Deut. xvi. 9, with Lev. xxiii. 10
f., 15 t. In the one case the seven weeks to Pentecost are reckoned
from the putting of the sickle into the corn, in the other from the
presentation of a first sheaf of ripe corn in the Temple, which
falls within the Passover week. The latter can only be regarded as
a more precise determination of the former, and thus Unleavened
Bread must have coincided with the beginning of barley
harvest.
At
this time also the firstlings of the flock and herd were
sacrificed. The seven weeks which elapse till Pentecost are the
season of the cereal harvest, which is then brought to a close by
the Feast of Harvest, when the goodness of Jehovah is acknowledged
by the presentation of part of the produce at the sanctuary.
Finally the Feast of Tabernacles celebrates the most joyous
occasion of the year, the storing of the produce of the winepress
and the threshing-floor.Deut. xvi. 13.
The
nature of the festivals is easily seen from the events with which
they are thus associated. They are occasions of social mirth and
festivity, and the religious rites observed are the expressions of
the nation's heart-felt gratitude to Jehovah for the blessing that
has rested on the labours of husbandman and shepherd throughout the
year. The Passover with its memories of anxiety and escape was no
doubt of a more sombre character than the others, but the joyous
and festive nature of Pentecost and Tabernacles is strongly
insisted on in the book of Deuteronomy. By these institutions
religion was closely
intertwined with the great interests of every-day life, and the
fact that the sacred seasons of the Israelites' year were the
occasions on which the natural joy of life was at its fullest,
bears witness to the simple-minded piety which was fostered by the
old Hebrew worship. There was, however, a danger that in such a
state of things religion should be altogether lost sight of in the
exuberance of natural hilarity and expressions of social good-will.
And indeed no great height of spirituality could be nourished by a
type of worship in which devotional feeling was concentrated on the
expression of gratitude to God for the bountiful gifts of His
providence. It was good for the childhood of the nation, but when
the nation became a man it must put away childish things.
The tendency of
the post-exilic ritual was to detach the sacred seasons more and
more from the secular associations which had once been their chief
significance. This was done partly by the addition of new festivals
which had no such natural occasion, and partly by a change in the
point of view from which the older celebrations were regarded. No
attempt was made to obliterate the traces of the affinity with
events of common life which endeared them to the hearts of the
people, but increasing importance was attached to their historic
significance as memorials of Jehovah's gracious dealings with the
nation in the period of the Exodus. At the same time they take on
more and more the character of religious symbols of the permanent
relations between Jehovah and His people. The beginnings of this
process can be clearly discerned in the legislation of Ezekiel. Not
indeed in the direction of a historic interpretation of the feasts,
for this is ignored even in the case of the Passover, where it was
already firmly established in the national consciousness. But the
institution of a special
series of public sacrifices, which was the same for the Passover
and the Feast of Tabernacles, and particularly the prominence given
to the sin-offering, obviously tended to draw the mind of the
people away from the passing interest of the occasion, and fix it
on those standing obligations imposed by the holiness of Jehovah on
which the continuance of all His bounties depended. We cannot be
mistaken in thinking that one design of the new ritual was to
correct the excesses of unrestrained animal enjoyment by deepening
the sense of guilt and the fear of possible offences against the
sanctity of the divine presence. For it was at these festivals that
the prince was required to offer the atoning sacrifice for himself
and the people.Ch. xlv. 22.
Thus
the effect of the whole system was to foster the sensitive and
tremulous tone of piety which was characteristic of Judaism, in
contrast to the hearty, if undisciplined, religion of the ancient
Hebrew feasts.
II. The Stated
Service.—In the course of this chapter we have had
occasion more than once to touch on the prominence given in
Ezekiel's vision to sacrifices offered in accordance with a fixed
rubric in the name of the whole community. The significance of this
fact may best be seen from a comparison with the sacrificial
regulations of the book of Deuteronomy. These are not numerous, but
they deal exclusively with private sacrifices. The person addressed
is the individual householder, and the sacrifices which he is
enjoined to render are for himself and his family. There is no
explicit allusion in the whole book to the official sacrifices
which were offered by the regular priesthood and maintained at the
king's expense. In Ezekiel's scheme of Temple worship the case is
exactly the reverse. Here there is no mention of private sacrifice except in the
incidental notices as to the free-will offerings and the
sacrificial meal of the prince,Ch. xlvi. 12: cf. xliv. 3.
while
on the other hand great attention is paid to the maintenance of the
regular offerings provided by the prince for the congregation. This
of course does not mean that there were no statutory sacrifices in
the old Temple, or that Ezekiel contemplated the cessation of
private sacrifice in the new. Deuteronomy passes over the public
sacrifices because they were under the jurisdiction of the king,
and the people at large were not directly responsible for them; and
similarly Ezekiel is silent as to private offerings because their
observance was assured by all the traditions of the sanctuary.
Still it is a noteworthy fact that of two codes of Temple worship,
separated by only half a century, each legislates exclusively for
that element of the ritual which is taken for granted by the
other.
What it
indicates is nothing less than a change in the ruling conception of
public worship. Before the Exile the idea that Jehovah could desert
His sanctuary hardly entered into the mind of the people, and
certainly did not in the least affect the confidence with which
they availed themselves of the privileges of worship. The Temple
was there and God was present within it, and all that was necessary
was that the spontaneous devotion of the worshippers should be
regulated by the essential conditions of ceremonial propriety. But
the destruction of the Temple had proved that the mere existence of
a sanctuary was no guarantee of the favour and protection of the
God who was supposed to dwell within it. Jehovah might be driven
from His Temple by the presence of sin among the people, or even by
a neglect of the ceremonial precautions which were necessary to
guard against the profanation of His holiness. On this idea the whole edifice of
the later ritual is built up, and here as in other respects Ezekiel
has shown the way. In his view the validity and efficiency of the
whole Temple service hangs on the due performance of the public
rites which preserve the nation in a condition of sanctity and
continually represent it as a holy people before God. Under cover
of this representative service the individual may draw near with
confidence to seek the face of his God in acts of private homage,
but apart from the regular official ceremonial his worship has no
reality, because he can have no assurance that Jehovah will accept
his offering. His right of access to God springs from his
fellowship with the religious community of Israel, and hence the
indispensable presupposition of every act of worship is that the
standing of the community before Jehovah be preserved intact by the
rites appointed for that purpose. And, as has been already said,
these rites are representative in character. Being performed on
behalf of the nation, the obligation of presenting them rests with
the prince in his representative capacity, and the share of the
people in them is indicated by the tribute which the prince is
empowered to levy for this end. In this way the ideal unity of the
nation finds continual expression in the worship of the sanctuary,
and the supreme interest of religion is transferred from the mere
act of personal homage to the abiding conditions of acceptance with
God symbolised by the stated service.
Let us now look
at some details of the scheme in which this important idea is
embodied. The foundation of the whole system is the daily
burnt-offering—the tāmîd.
Under the first Temple the daily offering seems to have been a
burnt-offering in the morning and a meal-offering (minhah) in the evening,2 Kings xvi. 15: cf. 1 Kings xviii.
29, 36.
and
this practice seems to have continued down to the time of
Ezra.Ezra ix. 5.
According to
the Levitical law it consists of a lamb morning and evening,
accompanied on each occasion by a minhah and a libation of
wine.Numb. xxviii. 3-8; Exod. xxix.
38-42.
Ezekiel's ordinance occupies a middle position between these two.
Here the tamîd is a lamb for a burnt-offering in the morning, along
with a minhah of flour mingled with oil; and there is no provision
for an evening sacrifice.Ch. xlvi. 13-15.
The
presentation of this sacrifice on the altar in the morning, as the
basis on which all other offerings through the day were laid, may
be taken to symbolise the truth that the acceptance of all ordinary
acts of worship depended on the representation of the community
before God in the regular service. To the spiritual perception of a
Psalmist it may have suggested the duty of commencing each day's
work with an act of devotion:—
Jehovah, in the morning shalt Thou hear my voice;
In the morning will I set [my prayer] in order before Thee, and will look out.
Psalm v. 3, probably used at the
presentation of the morning tamîd. A more distinct recognition of
the spiritual significance of the evening
sacrifice is found in Psalm cxli. 2.
The offerings
for the Sabbaths and new moons may be considered as amplifications
of the daily sacrifice. They consist exclusively of
burnt-offerings. On the Sabbath six lambs are presented, perhaps
one for each working day of the week, together with a ram for the
Sabbath itself (Smend). At the new moon feast this offering is
repeated with the addition of a bullock. It may be noted here once
for all that each burnt sacrifice is accompanied by a corresponding
minhah, according to a fixed scale. For sin-offerings, on the other
hand, no minhah seems to be appointed.
At the annual
(or rather half-yearly) celebrations the sin-offering appears for the first time among
the stated sacrifices. The sacrifice for the cleansing of the
sanctuary at the beginning of each half of the year consists of a
young bullock for a sin-offering, in addition of course to the
burnt-offerings which were prescribed for the first day of the
month. For the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles the daily
offering is a he-goat for a sin-offering, and seven bullocks and
seven rams for a burnt-offering during the week covered by these
festivals. Besides this, at Passover, and probably also at
Tabernacles, the prince presents a bullock as a sin-offering for
himself and the people. We have now to consider more particularly
the place which this class of sacrifices occupies in the
ritual.
III.
Atoning Sacrifices.—It is
evident, even from this short survey, that the idea of atonement
holds a conspicuous place in the symbolism of Ezekiel's Temple. He
is, indeed, the earliest writer (setting aside the Levitical Code)
who mentions the special class of sacrifices known as sin- and
guilt-offerings. Under the first Temple ceremonial offences were
regularly atoned for at one time by money payments to the priests,
and these fines are called by the names afterwards applied to the
expiatory sacrifices.2 Kings xii. 17.
It
does not follow, of course, that such sacrifices were unknown
before the time of Ezekiel, nor is such a conclusion probable in
itself. The manner in which the prophet alludes to them rather
shows that the idea was perfectly familiar to his contemporaries.
But the prominence of the sin-offering in the public ritual may be
safely set down as a new departure in the Temple service, as it is
one of the most striking symptoms of the change that passed over
the spirit of Israel's religion at the time of the
Exile.
Of the elements
that contributed to this change the most important was the deepened
consciousness of sin that had been produced by the teaching of the
prophets as verified in the terrible calamity of the Exile. We have
seen how frequently Ezekiel insists on this effect of the divine
judgment; how, even in the time of her pardon and restoration, he
represents Israel as ashamed and confounded, not opening her mouth
any more for the remembrance of all that she had done. We are
therefore prepared to find that full provision is made for the
expression of this abiding sense of guilt in the revised scheme of
worship. This was done not by new rites invented for the purpose,
but by seizing on those elements of the old ritual which
represented the wiping out of iniquity, and by so remodelling the
whole sacrificial system as to place these prominently in the
foreground. Such elements were found chiefly in the sin-offering
and guilt-offering, which occupied a subsidiary position in the old
Temple, but are elevated to a place of commanding importance in the
new. The precise distinction between these two kinds of sacrifice
is an obscure point of the Levitical ritual which has never been
perfectly cleared up. In the system of Ezekiel, however, we observe
that the guilt-offering plays no part in the stated service, and
must therefore have been reserved for private transgressions of the
law of holiness. And in general it may be remarked that the atoning
sacrifices differ from others, not in their material, but in
certain features of the sacred actions to be observed with regard
to them. We cannot here enter upon the details of the symbolism,
but the most important fact is that the flesh of the victims is
neither offered on the altar as in the burnt-offering, nor eaten by
the worshippers as in the peace-offering, but belongs to the
category of most holy things, and must be consumed by the priests
in a holy place. In certain extreme cases, however, it has to be burned
without the sanctuary.Cf. ch. xliii. 21.
Now in the
chapters before us the idea of sacrificial atonement is chiefly
developed in connection with the material fabric of the sanctuary.
The sanctuary may contract defilement by involuntary lapses from
the stringent rules of ceremonial purity on the part of those who
use it, whether priests or laymen. Such errors of inadvertence were
almost unavoidable under the complicated set of formal regulations
into which the fundamental idea of holiness branched out, yet they
are regarded as endangering the sanctity of the Temple, and require
to be carefully atoned for from time to time, lest by their
accumulation the worship should be invalidated and Jehovah driven
from His dwelling-place. But besides this the Temple (or at least
the altar) is unfit for its sacred functions until it has undergone
an initial process of purification. The principle involved still
survives in the consecration of ecclesiastical buildings in
Christendom, although its application had doubtless a much more
serious import under the old dispensation than it can possibly have
under the new.
A full account
of this initial ceremony of purification is given in the end of the
forty-third chapter, and a glance at the details of the ritual may
be enough to impress on us the conceptions that underlie the
process. It is a protracted operation, extending apparently over
eight days.Another explanation, however, is
possible, and is adopted by Smend and Davidson. Assuming that a
burnt-offering was offered on the first day, and holding the whole
description to be somewhat elliptical, they bring the entire
process within the limits of the week. This certainly looks more
satisfactory in itself. But would Ezekiel be likely to admit an
ellipsis in describing so important a function? I have taken for
granted above that the seven days of the double sacrifice are
counted from the “second day” of
ver. 22.
The
first and fundamental act is the offering of a sin-offering of the
highest degree of sanctity, the victim being a bullock and the
flesh being burned
outside the sanctuary. The blood alone is sprinkled on the four
horns of the altar, the four corners of the “settle,” and the “border”: this is the first stage in the
dedication of the altar. Then for seven days a he-goat is offered
for a sin-offering, the same rites being observed, and after it a
burnt-offering consisting of a bullock and a ram. These sacrifices
are intended only for the purification of the altar, and only on
the day after their completion is the altar ready to receive
ordinary public or private gifts—burnt-offerings and
peace-offerings. Now four expressions are used to denote the effect
of these ceremonies on the altar. The most general is “consecrate,” literally “fill its hand”Ver. 26.
—a
phrase used originally of the installation of a priest into his
office, and then applied metaphorically to consecration or
initiation in general. The others are “purify,”טִהֵר (ver. 20).
“unsin,”הִטֵּא a denominative form from הֵטְא
= sin (ver. 22).
(the
special effect of the sin-offering) and “expiate.”כִּפֵּר (ver. 26).
Of
these the last is the most important. It is the technical priestly
term for atonement for sin, the reference being of course generally
to persons. As to the fundamental meaning of the word, there has
been a great deal of discussion, which has not yet led to a
decisive result. The choice seems to lie between two radical ideas,
either to “wipe out” or to
“cover,” and so render
inoperative.See Smith, Old Testament in
Jewish Church, p. 381.
But
either etymology enables us to understand the use of the word in
legal terminology. It means to undo the effect of a transgression
on the religious status of the offender, or, as in the case before
us, to
remove natural or contracted impurity from a material object. And
whether this is conceived as a covering up of the fault so as to
conceal it from view, or a wiping out of it, amounts in the end to
the same thing. The significant fact is that the same word is
applied both to persons and things. It furnishes another
illustration of the intimate way in which the ideas of moral guilt
and physical defect are blended in the ceremonial of the Old
Testament.
The meaning of
the two atoning services appointed for the beginning of the first
and the seventh month is now clear. They are intended to renew
periodically the holiness of the sanctuary established by the
initiatory rites just described. For it is evident that no
indelible character can attach to the kind of sanctity with which
we are here dealing. It is apt to be lost, if not by mere lapse of
time, at least by the repeated contact of frail men who with the
best intentions are not always able to fulfil the conditions of a
right use of sacred things. Every failure and mistake detracts from
the holiness of the Temple, and even unnoticed and altogether
unconscious offences would in course of time profane it if not
purged away. Hence “for every one that
erreth and for him that is simple”Ch. xlv. 20.
atonement has to be made for the house twice a year. The ritual to
be observed on these occasions bears a general resemblance to that
of the inaugural ceremony, but is simpler, only a single bullock
being presented for a sin-offering. On the other hand, it expressly
symbolises a purification of the Temple as well as of the altar.
The blood is sprinkled not only on the “settle” of the altar, but also on the doorposts
of the house, and the posts of the eastern gate of the inner
court.
We may now pass
on to the second application made by Ezekiel of the idea of sacrificial
atonement. These purifications of the sanctuary, which bulk so
largely in his system, have their counterpart in atonements made
directly for the faults of the people. For this purpose, as we have
already seen, a sin-offering was to be presented at each of the
great annual festivals by the prince, for himself and the nation
which he represented. But it is important to observe that the idea
of atonement is not confined to one particular class of sacrifices.
It lies at the foundation of the whole system of the stated
service, the purpose of which is expressly said to be “to make atonement for the house of
Israel.”Ch. xlv. 15, 17.
Thus
while the half-yearly sin-offering afforded a special opportunity
for confession of sin on the part of the people, we are to
understand that the holiness of the nation was secured by the
observance of every part of the prescribed ritual which regulated
its intercourse with God. And since the nation is in itself
imperfectly holy and stands in constant need of forgiveness, the
maintenance of its sanctity by sacrificial rites was equivalent to
a perpetual act of atonement. Special offences of individuals had
of course to be expiated by special sacrifices, but beneath all
particular transgressions lay the broad fact of human impurity and
infirmity; and in the constant “covering
up” of this by a divinely instituted system of religious
ordinances we recognise an atoning element in the regular Temple
service.
The sacrificial
ritual may therefore be regarded as a barrier interposed between
the natural uncleanness of the people and the awful holiness of
Jehovah seated in His Temple. That men should be permitted to
approach Him at all is an unspeakable privilege conferred on Israel
in virtue of its covenant relation to God. But that the
approach is
surrounded by so many precautions and restrictions is a perpetual
witness to the truth that God is of purer eyes than to behold
iniquity and one with whom evil cannot dwell. If these precautions
could have been always perfectly observed, it is probable that no
periodical purification of the sanctuary would have been enjoined.
The ordinary ritual would have sufficed to maintain the nation in a
state of holiness corresponding with the requirements of Jehovah's
nature. But this was impossible on account of the slowness of men's
minds and their liability to err in their most sacred duties. Sin
is so subtle and pervasive that it is conceived as penetrating the
network of ordinances destined to intercept it, and reaching even
to the dwelling-place of Jehovah Himself. It is to remove such
accidental, though inevitable, violations of the majesty of God
that the ritual edifice is crowned by ceremonies for the
purification of the sanctuary. They are, so to speak, atonements in
the second degree. Their object is to compensate for defects in the
ordinary routine of worship, and to remove the arrears of guilt
which had accumulated through neglect of some part of the
ceremonial scheme. This idea appears quite clearly in Ezekiel's
legislation, but it is far more impressively exhibited in the
Levitical law, where different elements of Ezekiel's ritual are
gathered up into one celebration in the Great Day of Atonement, the
most solemn and imposing of the whole year.
Hence we see
that the whole system of sacrificial worship is firmly knit
together, being pervaded from end to end by the one principle of
expiation, behind which lay the assurance of pardon and acceptance
to all who approached God in the use of the appointed means of
grace. Herein lay the chief value of the Temple ritual for the
religious life of Israel. It served to impress on the mind of the
people the great realities of sin and forgiveness, and so to create that profound
consciousness of sin which has passed over, spiritualised but not
weakened, into Christian experience. Thus the law proved itself a
schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, in whose atoning death the
evil of sin and the eternal conditions of forgiveness are once for
all and perfectly revealed.
The positive
truths taught or suggested by the ritual of atonement are too
numerous to be considered here. It is a remarkable fact that
neither in Ezekiel nor in any other part of the Old Testament is an
authoritative interpretation given of the most essential features
of the ritual. The people seem to have been left to explain the
symbolism as best they could, and many points which are obscure and
uncertain to us must have been perfectly intelligible to the least
instructed amongst them. For us the only safe rule is to follow the
guidance of the New Testament writers in their use of sacrificial
institutions as types of the death of Christ. The investigation is
too large and intricate to be attempted in this place. But it may
be well in conclusion to point out one or two general principles,
which ought never to be overlooked in the typical interpretation of
the expiatory sacrifices of the Old Testament.
In the first
place atonement is provided only for sins committed in ignorance;
and moral and ceremonial offences stand precisely on the same
footing in the eye of the law. In Ezekiel's system, indeed, it was
only sins of inadvertence that needed to be considered. He has in
view the final state of things in which the people, though not
perfect nor exempt from liability to error, are wholly inclined to
obey the law of Jehovah so far as their knowledge and ability
extend. But even in the Levitical legislation there is no legal
dispensation for guilt incurred through wanton and deliberate
defiance of the law of
Jehovah. To sin thus is to sin “with a high
hand,”As distinguished from sins,
בִּשִׁנָנָה, or through inadvertence. See Numb. xv. 30, 31.
and
such offences have to be expiated by the death of the sinner, or at
least his exclusion from the religious community. And whether the
precept belong to what we call the ceremonial or to the moral side
of the law, the same principle holds good, although of course its
application is one-sided, strictly moral transgressions being for
the most part voluntary, while ritual offences may be either
voluntary or inadvertent. But for wilful and high-handed departure
from any precept, whether ethical or ceremonial, no atonement is
provided by the law; the guilty person “falls into the hands of the living God,” and
forgiveness is possible only in the sphere of personal relations
between man and God, into which the law does not enter.
This leads to a
second consideration. Atoning sacrifices do not purchase
forgiveness. That is to say, they are never regarded as exercising
any influence on God, moving Him to mercy towards the sinner. They
are simply the forms to which, by Jehovah's own appointment, the
promise of forgiveness is attached. Hence sacrifice has not the
fundamental significance in Old Testament religion that the death
of Christ has in the New. The whole sacrificial system, as we see
quite clearly from Ezekiel's prophecy, presupposes redemption; the
people are already restored to their land and sanctified by
Jehovah's presence amongst them before these institutions come into
operation. The only purpose that they serve in the system of
religion to which they belong is to secure that the blessings of
salvation shall not be lost. Both in this vision and throughout the
Old Testament the ultimate ground of confidence in God lies in
historic
acts of redemption in which Jehovah's sovereign grace and love to
Israel are revealed. Through the sacrifices the individual was
enabled to assure himself of his interest in the covenant blessings
promised to his nation. They were the sacraments of his personal
acceptance with Jehovah, and as such were of the highest importance
for his normal religious life. But they were not and could not be
the basis of the forgiveness of sins, nor did later Judaism ever
fall into the error of seeking to appease the Deity by a
multiplication of sacrificial gifts. When the insufficiency of the
ritual system to give true peace of conscience or to bring back the
outward tokens of God's favour is dwelt upon, the ancient Church
falls back on the spiritual conditions of forgiveness already
enunciated by the prophets.
Thou desirest not sacrifice that I should give it,
Thou delightest not in burnt-offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.Psalm li. 16, 17.
Finally, we have
learned from Ezekiel that the idea of atonement is not lodged in
any particular rite, but pervades the sacrificial system as a
whole. Suggestive as the ritual of the sin-offering is to the
Christian conscience, it must not be isolated from other
developments of the sacrificial idea or taken to embody the whole
permanent meaning of the institution. There are at least two other
aspects of sacrifice which are clearly expressed in the ritual
legislation of the Old Testament—that of homage, chiefly symbolised
by the burnt-offering, and that of communion, symbolised by the
peace-offering and the sacrificial feast observed in connection
with it. And although, both in Ezekiel and the Levitical law, these
two elements are thrown into the shade by the idea of expiation,
yet there are subtle
links of affinity between all three, which will have to be traced
out before we are in a position to understand the first principles
of sacrificial worship. The brilliant and learned researches of the
late Professor Robertson Smith have thrown a flood of light on the
original rite of sacrifice and the important place which it
occupies in ancient religion.See his Burnet Lectures on the
Religion
of the Semites, to which, as well as to his
Old
Testament in the Jewish Church, the present chapter
is largely indebted.
He
has sought to explain the intricate system of the Levitical
legislation as an unfolding, under varied historical influences, of
different aspects of the idea of communion between God and men,
which is the essence of primitive sacrifice. In particular he has
shown how special atoning sacrifices arise through emphasising by
appropriate symbolism the element of reconciliation which is
implicitly contained in every act of religious communion with God.
This at least enables us to understand how the atoning ritual with
all its distinctive features yet resembles so closely that which is
common to all types of sacrifice, and how the idea of expiation,
although concentrated in a particular class of sacrifices, is
nevertheless spread over the whole surface of the sacrificial
ritual. It would be premature as well as presumptuous to attempt
here to estimate the consequences of this theory for Christian
theology. But it certainly seems to open up the prospect of a wider
and deeper apprehension of the religious truths which are
differentiated and specialised in the Old Testament dispensation,
to be reunited in that great Atoning Sacrifice, in which the blood
of the new covenant has been shed for many for the remission of
sins.
Chapter XXX. Renewal And Allotment Of
The Land. Chapters xlvii., xlviii.
In the first
part of the forty-seventh chapter the visionary form of the
revelation, which had been interrupted by the important series of
communications on which we have been so long engaged, is again
resumed. The prophet, once more under the direction of his angelic
guide, sees a stream of water issuing from the Temple buildings and
flowing eastward into the Dead Sea.Ch. xlvii. 1-12.
Afterwards he receives another series of directions relating to the
boundaries of the land and its division among the twelve
tribes.Chs. xlvii. 13-xlviii. 35.
With
this the vision and the book find their appropriate close.
I
The Temple
stream, to which Ezekiel's attention is now for the first time
directed, is a symbol of the miraculous transformation which the
land of Canaan is to undergo in order to fit it for the
habitation of Jehovah's ransomed people. Anticipations of a
renewal of the face of nature are a common feature of Messianic
prophecy. They have their roots in the religious interpretation
of the possession of the land as the chief token of the divine
blessing on the nation. In the vicissitudes of agricultural or
pastoral life the Israelite read the reflection of Jehovah's
attitude
towards Himself and His people: fertile seasons and luxuriant
harvests were the sign of His favour; drought and famine were the
proof that He was offended. Even at the best of times, however,
the condition of Palestine left much to be desired from the
husbandman's point of view, especially in the kingdom of Judah.
Nature was often stern and unpropitious, the cultivation of the
soil was always attended with hardship and uncertainty, large
tracts of the country were given over to irreclaimable
barrenness. There was always a vision of better things possible,
and in the last days the prophets cherished the expectation that
that vision would be realised. When all causes of offence are
removed from Israel and Jehovah smiles on His people, the land
will blossom into supernatural fertility, the ploughman
overtaking the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth
seed, the mountains dropping new wine and the hills
melting.Amos ix. 13.
Such idyllic pictures of universal plenty and comfort abound in
the writings of the prophets, and are not wanting in the pages of
Ezekiel. We have already had one in the description of the
blessings of the Messianic kingdom;Ch. xxxiv. 25-29.
and
we shall see that in this closing vision a complete remodelling
of the land is presupposed, rendering it all alike suitable for
the habitation of the tribes of Israel.
The river of
life is the most striking presentation of this general conception
of Messianic felicity. It is one of those vivid images from
Eastern life which, through the Apocalypse, have passed into the
symbolism of Christian eschatology. “And
he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal,
proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst
of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there
the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded
her fruits every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the
healing of the
nations.”Rev. xxii. 1, 2.
So
writes the seer of Patmos, in words whose music charms the ear
even of those to whom running water means much less than it did
to a native of thirsty Palestine. But John had read of the mystic
river in the pages of his favourite prophet before he saw it in
vision. The close resemblance between the two pictures leaves no
doubt that the origin of the conception is to be sought in
Ezekiel's vision. The underlying religious truth is the same in
both representations, that the presence of God is the source from
which the influences flow forth that renew and purify human
existence. The tree of life on each bank of the river, which
yields its fruit every month and whose leaves are for healing, is
a detail transferred directly from Ezekiel's imagery to fill out
the description of the glorious city of God into which the
nations of them that are saved are gathered.
But with all
its idealism, Ezekiel's conception presents many points of
contact with the actual physiography of Palestine; it is less
universal and abstract in its significance than that of the
Apocalypse. The first thing that might have suggested the idea to
the prophet is that the Temple mount had at least one small
stream, whose “soft-flowing”
waters were already regarded as a symbol of the silent and
unobtrusive influence of the divine presence in Israel.Isa. viii. 6.
The
waters of this stream flowed eastward, but they were too scanty
to have any appreciable effect on the fertility of the region
through which they passed. Further, to the south-east of
Jerusalem, between it and the Dead Sea, stretched the great
wilderness of Judah, the most desolate and inhospitable tract in
the whole country. There the steep declivity of the limestone
range refuses to detain sufficient moisture to nourish the most
meagre vegetation, although the few spots where wells are found,
as at Engedi, are clothed with almost tropical luxuriance.
To reclaim these
barren slopes and render them fit for human industry, the Temple
waters are sent eastward, making the desert to blossom as the
rose. Lastly, there was the Dead Sea itself, in whose bitter
waters no living thing can exist, the natural emblem of
resistance to the purposes of Him who is the God of life. These
different elements of the physical reality were familiar to
Ezekiel, and come back to mind as he follows the course of the
new Temple river, and observes the wonderful transformation which
it is destined to effect. He first sees it breaking forth from
the wall of the Temple at the right-hand side of the entrance,
and flowing eastward through the courts by the south side of the
altar. Then at the outer wall he meets it rushing from the south
side of the eastern gate, and still pursuing its easterly course.
At a thousand cubits from the sanctuary it is only ankle deep,
but at successive distances of a thousand cubits it reaches to
the knees, to the loins, and becomes finally an impassable river.
The stream is of course miraculous from source to mouth. Earthly
rivers do not thus broaden and deepen as they flow, except by the
accession of tributaries, and tributaries are out of the question
here. Thus it flows on, with its swelling volume of water,
through “the eastern circuit,”
“down to the Arabah” (the trough
of the Jordan and the Dead Sea), and reaching the sea it sweetens
its waters so that they teem with fishes of all kinds like those
of the Mediterranean. Its uninviting shores become the scene of a
busy and thriving industry; fishermen ply their craft from Engedi
to Eneglaim,Engedi, “well
of the kid,” is at the middle of the western shore;
Eneglaim, “well of two calves,” is
unknown, but probably lay at the north end. The eastern side is
left to the Arabian nomads.
and
the food supply of the country is materially increased. The
prophet may not have been greatly concerned about this, but one
characteristic detail illustrates his careful forethought in matters of
practical utility. It is from the Dead Sea that Jerusalem has
always obtained its supply of salt. The purification of this lake
might have its drawbacks if the production of this indispensable
commodity should be interfered with. Salt, besides its culinary
uses, played an important part in the Temple ritual, and Ezekiel
was not likely to forget it. Hence the strange but eminently
practical provision that the shallows and marshes at the south
end of the lake shall be exempted from the influence of the
healing waters. “They are given for
salt.”Ver. 11.
We may venture
to draw one lesson for our own instruction from this beautiful
prophetic image of the blessings that flow from a pure religion.
The river of God has its source high up in the mount where
Jehovah dwells in inaccessible holiness, and where the
white-robed priests minister ceaselessly before Him; but in its
descent it seeks out the most desolate and unpromising region in
the country, and turns it into a garden of the Lord. While the
whole land of Israel is to be renewed and made to minister to the
good of man in fellowship with God, the main stream of fertility
is expended in the apparently hopeless task of reclaiming the
Judæan desert and purifying the Dead Sea. It is an emblem of the
earthly ministry of Him who made Himself the friend of publicans
and sinners, and lavished the resources of His grace and the
wealth of His affection on those who were deemed beyond ordinary
possibility of salvation. It is to be feared, however, that the
practice of most Churches has been too much the reverse of this.
They have been tempted to confine the water of life within fairly
respectable channels, amongst the prosperous and contented, the
occupants of happy homes, where the advantages of religion are most likely to
be appreciated. That seems to have been found the line of least
resistance, and in times when spiritual life has run low it has
been counted enough to keep the old ruts filled and leave the
waste places and stagnant waters of our civilisation ill provided
with the means of grace. Nowadays we are sometimes reminded that
the Dead Sea must be drained before the gospel can have a fair
chance of influencing human lives, and there may be much wisdom
in the suggestion. A vast deal of social drainage may have to be
accomplished before the word of God has free course. Unhealthy
and impure conditions of life may be mitigated by wise
legislation, temptations to vice may be removed, and vested
interests that thrive on the degradation of human lives may be
crushed by the strong arm of the community. But the true spirit
of Christianity can neither be confined to the watercourses of
religious habit, nor wait for the schemes of the social reformer.
Nor will it display its powers of social salvation until it
carries the energies of the Church into the lowest haunts of vice
and misery with an earnest desire to seek and to save that which
is lost. Ezekiel had his vision, and he believed in it. He
believed in the reality of God's presence in the sanctuary and in
the stream of blessings that flowed from His throne, and he
believed in the possibility of reclaiming the waste places of his
country for the kingdom of God. When Christians are united in
like faith in the power of Christ and the abiding presence of His
Spirit, we may expect to see times of refreshing from the
presence of God and the whole earth filled with the knowledge of
the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
II
Ezekiel's map
of Palestine is marked by something of the same mathematical
regularity which was exhibited in his plan of the Temple. His boundaries are
like those we sometimes see on the map of a newly settled country
like America or Australia—that is to say, they largely follow the
meridian lines and parallels of latitude, but take advantage here
and there of natural frontiers supplied by rivers and mountain
ranges. This is absolutely true of the internal divisions of the
land between the tribes. Here the northern and southern
boundaries are straight lines running east and west over hill and
dale, and terminating at the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan
Valley, which form of course the western and eastern limits. As
to the external delimitation of the country it is unfortunately
not possible to speak with certainty. The eastern frontier is
fixed by the Jordan and the Dead Sea so far as they go, and the
western is the sea. But on the north and south the lines of
demarcation cannot be traced, the places mentioned being nearly
all unknown. The north frontier extends from the sea to a place
called Hazar-enon, said to lie on the border of Hauran. It passes
the “entrance to Hamath,” and has
to the north not only Hamath, but also the territory of Damascus.
But none of the towns through which it passes—Hethlon, Berotha,
Sibraim—can be identified, and even its general direction is
altogether uncertain.I do not myself see much objection to
supposing that it leaves the sea near Tyre and proceeds about due
east to Hazar-enon, which may be near the foot of Hermon, where
Robinson located it. In this case the “entrance to Hamath” would be the south end of
the Beḳa', where one strikes north
to go to Hamath. This would correspond nearly to the extent of the
country actually occupied by the Hebrews under the judges and the
monarchy. The statement that the territory of Damascus lies to the
north presents some difficulty on any theory. It may be added that
Hazar-hattikon in ver. 16 is the same as Hazar-enon; it is
probably, as Cornill suggests, a scribe's error for נצרה ענון (the
locative ending being mistaken for the article).
From
Hazar-enon the eastern border stretches southward till it reaches the Jordan,
and is prolonged south of the Dead Sea to a place called Tamar,
also unknown. From this we proceed westwards by Kadesh till we
strike the river of Egypt, the Wady el-Arish, which carries the
boundary to the sea. It will be seen that Ezekiel, for reasons on
which it is idle to speculate, excludes the transjordanic
territory from the Holy Land. Speaking broadly, we may say that
he treats Palestine as a rectangular strip of country, which he
divides into transverse sections of indeterminate breadth, and
then proceeds to parcel out these amongst the twelve tribes.
A similar
obscurity rests on the motives which determined the disposition
of the different tribes within the sacred territory. We can
understand, indeed, why seven tribes are placed to the north and
only five to the south of the capital and the sanctuary.
Jerusalem lay much nearer the south of the land, and in the
original distribution all the tribes had their settlements to the
north of it except Judah and Simeon. Ezekiel's arrangement seems
thus to combine a desire for symmetry with a recognition of the
claims of historical and geographic reality. We can also see that
to a certain extent the relative positions of the tribes
correspond with those they held before the Exile, although of
course the system requires that they shall lie in a regular
series from north to south. Dan, Asher, and Naphtali are left in
the extreme north, Manasseh and Ephraim to the south of them,
while Simeon lies as of old in the south with one tribe between
it and the capital. But we cannot tell why Benjamin should be
placed to the south and Judah to the north of Jerusalem, why
Issachar and Zebulun are transferred from the far north to the
south, or why Reuben and Gad are taken from the east of the
Jordan to be settled one to the north and the other to the south
of the city. Some principle of arrangement there must have been
in the mind of the
prophet, and several have been suggested; but it is perhaps
better to confess that we have lost the key to his meaning.Smend, for example, points out that if
we count the Levites' portion as a tribal inheritance, and include
Manasseh and Ephraim under the house of Joseph (as is done in the
naming of the gates of the city), we have the sons of Rachel and
Leah evenly distributed on either side of the “oblation.” Then at the farthest distance from
the Temple are the sons of Jacob's handmaids, Gad in the extreme
south, and Dan, Asher, and Naphtali in the north. This is
ingenious, but not in the least convincing.
The prophet's
interest is centred on the strip of land reserved for the
sanctuary and public purposes, which is subdivided and measured
out with the utmost precision. It is twenty-five thousand cubits
(about 8-1/3 miles) broad, and extends right across the country.
The two extremities east and west are the crown lands assigned to
the prince for the purposes we have already seen. In the middle a
square of twenty-five thousand cubits is marked off; this is the
“oblation” or sacred offering of
land, in the middle of which the Temple stands. This again is
subdivided into three parallel sections, as shown in the
accompanying diagram. The most northerly, ten thousand cubits in
breadth, is
assigned to the Levites; the central portion, including the
sanctuary, to the priests; and the remaining five thousand cubits
is a “profane place” for the city
and its common lands. The city itself is a square of four
thousand five hundred cubits, situated in the middle of this
southmost section of the oblation. With its free space of two
hundred and fifty cubits in width belting the wall it fills the
entire breadth of the section; the communal possessions flanking
it on either hand, just as the prince's domain does the
“oblation” as a whole. The produce
of these lands is “for food to them that
‘serve’ [i.e.,
inhabit] the city.”Ver. 18.
Residence in the capital, it appears, is to be regarded as a
public service. The maintenance of the civic life of Jerusalem
was an object in which the whole nation was interested, a truth
symbolised by naming its twelve gates after the twelve sons of
Jacob.Vv. 31-34. It is difficult to trace a
clear connection between the positions of the gates and the
geographical distribution of the tribes in the country. The fact
that here Levi is counted as a tribe and Ephraim and Manasseh are
united under the name of Joseph indicates perhaps that none was
intended.
Hence, also, its population is to be representative of all the
tribes of Israel, and whoever comes to dwell there is to have a
share in the land belonging to the city.Ver. 19.
But
evidently the legislation on this point is incomplete. How were
the inhabitants of the capital to be chosen out of all the
tribes? Would its citizenship be regarded as a privilege or as an
onerous responsibility? Would it be necessary to make a selection
out of a host of applications, or would special inducements have
to be offered to procure a sufficient population? To these
questions the vision furnishes no answer, and there is nothing to
show whether Ezekiel contemplated the possibility that residence
in the new city might present few attractions and many
disadvantages
to an agricultural community such as he had in view. It is a
curious incident of the return from the Exile that the problem of
peopling Jerusalem emerged in a more serious form than Ezekiel
from his ideal point of view could have foreseen. We read that
“the rulers of the people dwelt at
Jerusalem: the rest of the people also cast lots, to bring one of
ten to dwell in Jerusalem, the holy city, and nine parts in
[other] cities. And the people blessed all the men that willingly
offered themselves to dwell at Jerusalem.”Neh. xi. 1, 2.
There may have been causes for this general reluctance which are
unknown to us, but the principal reason was doubtless the one
which has been hinted at, that the new colony lived mainly by
agriculture, and the district in the immediate vicinity of the
capital was not sufficiently fertile to support a large
agricultural population. The new Jerusalem was at first a
somewhat artificial foundation, and a city too largely developed
for the resources of the community of which it was the centre.
Its existence was necessary more for the protection and support
of the Temple than for the ordinary ends of civilisation; and
hence to dwell in it was for the majority an act of
self-sacrifice by which a man was felt to deserve well of his
country. And the only important difference between the actual
reality and Ezekiel's ideal is that in the latter the
supernatural fertility of the land and the reign of universal
peace obviate the difficulties which the founders of the
post-exilic theocracy had to encounter.
This seeming
indifference of the prophet to the secular interests represented
by the metropolis strikes us as a singular feature in his
programme. It is strange that the man who was so thoughtful about
the salt-pans of the Dead Sea should pass so lightly over the
details of
the reconstruction of a city. But we have had several intimations
that this is not the department of things in which Ezekiel's hold
on reality is most conspicuous. We have already remarked on the
boldness of the conception which changes the site of the capital
in order to guard the sanctity of the Temple. And now, when its
situation and form are accurately defined, we have no sketch of
municipal institutions, no hint of the purposes for which the
city exists, and no glimpse of the busy and varied activities
which we naturally connect with the name. If Ezekiel thought of
it at all, except as existing on paper, he was probably
interested in it as furnishing the representative congregation on
minor occasions of public worship, such as the Sabbaths and new
moons, when the whole people could not be expected to assemble.
The truth is that the idea of the city in the vision is simply an
abstract religious symbol, a sort of epitome and concentration of
theocratic life. Like the figure of the prince in earlier
chapters, it is taken from the national institutions which
perished at the Exile; the outline is retained, the typical
significance is enhanced, but the form is shadowy and indistinct,
the colour and variety of concrete reality are absent. It was
perhaps a stage through which political conceptions had to pass
before their religious meaning could be apprehended. And yet the
fact that the symbol of the Holy City is preserved is deeply
suggestive and indeed scarcely less important in its own way than
the retention of the type of the king. Ezekiel can no more think
of the land without a capital than of the state without a prince.
The word “city”—synonym of the
fullest and most intense form of life, of life regulated by law
and elevated by devotion to a common ideal, in which every worthy
faculty of human nature is quickened by the close and varied
intercourse of men with each other—has definitely taken its place
in the vocabulary of religion. It is there, not to be superseded, but to
be refined and spiritualised, until the city of God, glorified in
the praises of Israel, becomes the inspiration of the loftiest
thought and the most ardent longing of Christendom. And even for
the perplexing problems that the Church has to face at this day
there is hardly a more profitable exercise of the Christian
imagination than to dream with practical intent of the
consecration of civic life through the subjection of all its
influences to the ends of the Redeemer's kingdom.
On the other
hand we must surely recognise that this vision of a Temple and a
city separated from each other—where religious and secular
interests are as it were concentrated at different points, so
that the one may be more effectually subordinated to the other—is
not the final and perfect vision of the kingdom of God. That
ideal has played a leading and influential part in the history of
Christianity. It is essentially the ideal formulated in
Augustine's great work on the city of God, which ruled the
ecclesiastical polity of the mediæval Church. The State is an
unholy institution; it is an embodiment of the power of this
present evil world: the true city of God is the visible Catholic
Church, and only by subjection to the Church can the State be
redeemed from itself and be made a means of blessing. That theory
served a providential purpose in preserving the traditions of
Christianity through dark and troubled ages, and training the
rude nations of Europe in purity and righteousness and reverence
for that by which God makes Himself known. But the Reformation
was, amongst other things, a protest against this conception of
the relation of Church to State, of the sacred to the secular. By
asserting the right of each believer to deal with Christ directly
without the mediation of Church or priest it broke down the
middle wall of partition between religion and every-day duty; it
sanctified common
life by showing how a man may serve God as a citizen in the
family or the workshop better than in the cloister or at the
altar. It made the kingdom of God to be a present power wherever
there are lives transformed by love to Christ and serving their
fellow-men for His sake. And if Catholicism may find some
plausible support for its theory in Ezekiel and the Old Testament
theocracy in general, Protestants may perhaps with better right
appeal to the grander ideal represented by the new Jerusalem of
the Apocalypse—the city that needs no Temple, because the Lord
Himself is in her midst.
“And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold,
the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them,
and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them,
and be their God.... And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord
God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had
no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the
glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light
thereof.”Rev. xxi. 2, 3, 22, 23.
It may be
difficult for us amid the entanglements of the present to read
that vision aright—difficult to say whether it is on earth or in
heaven that we are to look for the city in which there is no
Temple. Worship is an essential function of the Church of Christ;
and so long as we are in our earthly abode worship will require
external symbols and a visible organisation. But this at least we
know, that the will of God must be done on earth as it is in
heaven. The true kingdom of God is within us; and His presence
with men is realised, not in special religious services which
stand apart from our common life, but in the constant influence of His Spirit,
forming our characters after the image of Christ, and permeating
all the channels of social intercourse and public action, until
everything done on earth is to the glory of our Father which is
in heaven. That is the ideal set forth by the coming of the holy
city of God, and only in this way can we look for the fulfilment
of the promise embodied in the new name of Ezekiel's city,
Jehovah-shammah,—
The Lord is There.