EZEKIEL 12 COMMENTARYEDITED BY GLENN PEASE

The Exile Symbolized1 The word of the Lord came to me:

GILL, "The word of the Lord came unto me, saying. The word of prophecy, as the Targum; the vision of the cherubim being over, this, very likely, immediately followed upon the former; though the exact time of the prophecy cannot be fixed, because the date is not given; it must be between the sixth month of the sixth year of Jehoiachin's captivity, Eze_8:1; and the fifth month of the seventh year, Eze_20:1.

HENRY 1-8, "Perhaps Ezekiel reflected with so much pleasure upon the vision he had had of the glory of God that often, since it went up from him, he was wishing it might come down to him again, and, having seen it once and a second time, he was willing to hope he might be a third time so favoured; but we do not find that he ever saw it any more, and yet the word of the Lord comes to him; for God did in divers manners speak to the fathers(Heb_1:1) and they often heard the words of God when they did not see the visions of the Almighty. Faith comes by hearing that word of prophecy which is more sure than vision. We may keep up our communion with God without raptures and ecstasies. In these verses the prophet is directed,I. By what signs and actions to express the approaching captivity of Zedekiah king of Judah; that was the thing to be foretold, and it is foretold to those that are already in captivity, because as long as Zedekiah was upon the throne they flattered themselves with hopes that he would make his part good with the king of Babylon, whose yoke he was now projecting to shake off, from which, it is probable, these poor captives promised themselves great things; and it may be, when he was forming that design, he privately sent encouragement to them to hope that he would rescue them shortly, or procure their liberty by exchange of prisoners. While they were fed with these vain hopes they could not set themselves either to submit to their affliction or to get good by their affliction. It was therefore necessary, but very difficult, to convince them that Zedekiah, instead of being their deliverer, should very shortly be their fellow-suffered. Now, one would think it might have been sufficient if the prophet had only told them this in God's name, as he does afterwards (Eze_12:10); but, to prepare them for the prophecy of it, he must first

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give them a sign of it, must speak it to their eyes first and then to their ears: and here we have, 1. The reason why he must take this method (Eze_12:2): It is because they are a stupid, dull, unthinking people, that will not heed or will soon forget what they only hear of, or at least will not be at all affected with it; it will make no impression at all upon them: Thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, whom it is next to impossible to work any good upon. They have eyes and ears, they have intellectual powers and faculties, but they see not, they hear not. They were idolaters, whose character it was that they were like the idols they worshipped, which have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, Psa_115:5, Psa_115:6, Psa_115:8. Note, Those are to be reckoned rebellious that shut their eyes against the divine light and stop their ears to the divine law. The ignorance of those that are wilfully ignorant, that have faculties and means and will not use them, is so far from being their excuse that it adds rebellion to their sin. None so blind, so deaf, as those that will not see, that will not hear. They see not, they hear not; for they are a rebellious house. The cause is all from themselves: the darkness of the understanding is owing to the stubbornness of the will. Now this is the reason why he must speak to them by signs, as deaf people are taught, that they might be either instructed or ashamed. Note, Ministers must accommodate themselves not only to the weakness, but to the wilfulness of those they deal with, and deal with them accordingly: if they dwell among those that are rebellious they must speak to them the more plainly and pressingly, and take that course that is most likely to work upon them, that they may be left inexcusable. 2. The method he just take to awaken and affect them; he must furnish himself with all necessaries for removing (Eze_12:3), provide for a journey clothes and money; he must remove from one place to another, as one unsettled and forced to shift; this he must do by day, in the sight of the people; he must bring out all his household goods, to be packed up and sent away (Eze_12:4); and, because all the doors and gates were either locked up that they could not pass through them or so guarded by the enemy that they durst not, he must therefore dig through the wall, and convey his goods away clandestinely through that breach in the wall, Eze_12:5. He must carry his goods away himself upon his own shoulders, for want of a servant to attend him; he must do this in the twilight, that he might not be discovered; and, when he has made what shift he can to secure some of the best of his effects, he must himself steal away at evening in their sight, with fear and trembling, and must go as those that go forth into captivity (Eze_12:4); that is, he must cover his face (Eze_12:6) as being ashamed to be seen and afraid to be known, or in token of very great sorrow and concern; he must go away as a poor broken tradesman, who, when he is forced to shut up shop, hides his head, or quits his country. Thus Ezekiel must be himself a sign to them; and when perhaps he seemed somewhat backward to put himself to all this trouble, and to expose himself to be bantered and ridiculed for it, to reconcile him to it God says (Eze_12:3) “It may be they will consider, and will by it be taken off from their vain confidence, though they be a rebellious house.” Note, We must not despair even of the worst, but that yet they may be brought to bethink themselves and repent; and therefore we must continue the use of proper means for their conviction and conversion, because, while there is life, there is hope. And ministers must be willing to go through the most difficult and inconvenient offices (for such was this of Ezekiel's removing), though there be but the it may be of success. If but one soul be awakened to consider, our care and pains will be well bestowed. 3. Ezekiel's ready and punctual obedience to the orders God gave him (Eze_12:7): I did so as I was commanded. Hereby he teaches us all, and ministers especially, (1.) To obey with cheerfulness every command of God, even the most difficult. Christ himself learned obedience, and so we must all. (2.) To do 2

all we can for the good of the souls of others, to put ourselves to any trouble or pains for the conviction of those that are unconvinced. We do all things (that is, we are willing to do any thing), dearly beloved, for your edifying. (3.) To be ourselves affected with those things wherewith we desire to affect others. When Ezekiel would give his hearers a melancholy prospect he does himself put on a melancholy aspect. (4.) To sit loose to this world, and prepare to leave it, to carry out our stuff for removing, because we have here no continuing city. Arise, depart, this it not your rest, for it is polluted. Thou dwellest in a rebellious house, therefore prepare for removing; for who would not be willing to leave such a house, such a wicked world as this is?

JAMISON, "Eze_12:1-28. Ezekiel’s typical moving to exile: Prophecy of Zedekiah’s captivity and privation of sight: The Jews’ unbelieving surmise as to the distance of the event reproved.

eyes to see, and see not, ... ears to hear, and hear not — fulfilling the prophecy of Deu_29:4, here quoted by Ezekiel (compare Isa_6:9; Jer_5:21). Ezekiel needed often to be reminded of the people’s perversity, lest he should be discouraged by the little effect produced by his prophecies. Their “not seeing” is the result of perversity, not incapacity. They are willfully blind. The persons most interested in this prophecy were those dwelling at Jerusalem; and it is among them that Ezekiel was transported in spirit, and performed in vision, not outwardly, the typical acts. At the same time, the symbolical prophecy was designed to warn the exiles at Chebar against cherishing hopes, as many did in opposition to God’s revealed word, of returning to Jerusalem, as if that city was to stand; externally living afar off, their hearts dwelt in that corrupt and doomed capital.

K&D 1-7, "Symbol of the EmigrationEze_12:1. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Eze_12:2. Son of man, thou dwellest amidst the refractory generation, who have eyes to see, and see not; and have ears to hear, and hear not; for they are a refractory generation. Eze_12:3. And thou, son of man, make thyself an outfit for exile, and depart by day before their eyes; and depart from thy place to another place before their eyes: perhaps they might see, for they are a refractory generation. Eze_12:4. And carry out thy things like an outfit for exile by day before their eyes; but do thou go out in the evening before their eyes, as when going out to exile. Eze_12:5. Before their eyes break through the wall, and carry it out there. Eze_12:6. Before their eyes take it upon thy shoulder, carry it out in the darkness; cover thy face, and look not upon the land; for I have set thee as a sign to the house of Israel. Eze_12:7. And I did so as I was commanded: I carried out my things like an outfit for exile by day, and in the evening I broke through the wall with my hand; I carried it out in the darkness; I took it upon my shoulder before their eyes. - In Eze_12:2 the reason is assigned for the command to perform the symbolical action, namely, the hard-heartedness of the people. Because the generation in the midst of which Ezekiel dwelt was blind, with seeing eyes, and deaf, with hearing ears, the prophet was to depict before its eyes, by means of the sign that followed, the judgment which was approaching; in the hope, as is added in Eze_12:3, that they might possibly observe and

lay the sign to heart. The refractoriness (בית as in Eze_2:5-6; Eze_3:26, etc.) is ,מרי3

described as obduracy, viz., having eyes, and not seeing; having ears, and not hearing, after Deu_29:3 (cf. Jer_5:21; Isa_6:9; Mat_13:14-15). The root of this mental blindness and deafness was to be found in obstinacy, i.e., in not willing; “in that presumptuous insolence,” as Michaelis says, “through which divine light can obtain no admission.” כלילה the goods (or outfit) of exile, were a pilgrim's staff and traveller's wallet, with the ,גprovisions and utensils necessary for a journey. Ezekiel was to carry these out of the house into the street in the day-time, that the people might see them and have their attention called to them. Then in the evening, after dark, he was to go out himself, not by the door of the house, but through a hole which he had broken in the wall. He was also to take the travelling outfit upon his shoulder and carry it through the hole and out of the place, covering his face all the while, that he might not see the land to which he was going. “Thy place” is thy dwelling-place. צאי כמ : as the departures of exiles generally take place, i.e., as exiles are accustomed to depart, not “at the usual time of departure into exile,” as Hävernick proposes. For חא בעלטה .see the comm. on Mic_5:1 ,מ differs from בערב, and signifies the darkness of the depth of night (cf. Gen_15:17); not, however, “darkness artificially produced, equivalent to, with the eyes shut, or the face covered; so that the words which follow are simply explanatory of בעלטה,” as Schmieder imagines. Such an assumption would be at variance not only with Eze_12:7, but also with Eze_12:12, where the covering or concealing of the face is expressly distinguished from the carrying out “in the dark.” The order was to be as follows: In the day-time Ezekiel was to take the travelling outfit and carry it out into the road; then in the evening he was to go out himself, having first of all broken a hole through the wall as evening was coming on; and in the darkness of night he was to place upon his shoulders whatever he was about to carry with him, and take his departure. This he was to do, because God had made him a mōphēth for Israel: in other words, by doing this he was to show himself to be a marvellous sign to Israel. For mōphēth, see the comm. on Exo_4:21. In Eze_12:7, the execution of the command, which evidently took place in the strictness of the letter, is fully described. There was nothing impracticable in the action, for breaking through the wall did not preclude the use of a hammer or some other tool.

CALVIN, "Because God was about to give a command to his servant, he wished to inspire him with fortitude of mind, lest, when he saw that he was consuming his labor in vain, he should withdraw from his course. For we know how severe is that temptation to God’s servants when they speak to the deaf, and not only is their doctrine rejected but even refused with ignominy. They think, therefore, that nothing is better than silence, because where their word is so despised it only exposes the name of God to the reproaches of the impious. Now then we understand for what purpose God admonishes his Prophet about the contumacy of the nation. The Prophet had tried enough, and more than enough, how unmanageable the Israelites were, but God confirms by his judgment what the Prophet had discovered sufficiently in practice. Then we must observe another reason, for God not only

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commanded his Prophet what to say, but he added an outward symbol, as we shall see. But the Prophet might object, that it would be ridiculous to take a staff, and scrip, and hat, as a traveler about to commence a journey. Nor is it doubtful that the Israelites derided through perverseness what he was doing, as a boyish amusement.

Lest, therefore, the Prophet should think what he was commanded to do absurd, God instructs him, and gives him the reason of his plan. He says, therefore, the house of Israel is rebellious, and then he expresses the greatness of their contumacy, namely, that they are deaf, though endued with ears: that they are blind, and yet do not want eyes God here shows that the Israelites could not defend their error, as if they had sinned without consideration; but he assigns their neither hearing nor seeing to their obstinacy. And this must be diligently remarked, because hypocrites, when convicted, catch as much as possible at this excuse, that they fell through error or ignorance. But God on the contrary here pronounces that the Israelites were blind and deaf, and shows that their blindness was voluntary. When, therefore, unbelievers pretend that they have not been illuminated by the Lord, it may be conceded to them that they are blind and deaf: but we must often proceed beyond this, since their own obstinacy is the fountain of their blindness and deafness: and God blinds them, because they will not admit the light offered them, but stop their ears. In God’s judgments, indeed, the causes do not always appear, for we sometimes see a whole nation Minded without any reason apparent to us; but as far as the ten tribes are concerned, there can be no excuse for their error, since they were brought up from childhood in God’s law, so that their pride and contempt caused God to reject them. Hence they were so stupified that they neither saw with their eyes nor heard with their ears. And this the Prophet expresses significantly, they hear not, says he, since they are a rebellious house; he does not say, because their senses do not penetrate to the secrets of God, are not sufficiently acute, are not endued with such great prudence; but because they are a rebellious house, that is, because they have stupified themselves. Hence it happens that they neither hear nor see. It follows —

COFFMAN, "VARIOUS PROPHECIES AGAINST JERUSALEM (Ezekiel 12-19)

ACTED PROPHECIES REGARDING THE SIEGE AND CAPTIVITY

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There is very little need for any special help in understanding this chapter. The judicially hardened condition of the Chosen People, including even those of the captivity, had left them unwilling to hear the word of God; and yet both Jeremiah in Jerusalem and Ezekiel in Babylon continued their faithful ministries.

The necessity for God's prophets to continue their efforts to guide the Chosen People into the Truth derived from the fact that a proliferation of false prophets were shouting their false assurances of the safety and security of Jerusalem, and their equally false promises of a short captivity for the exiles and their speedy return to Jerusalem.

Of course, the message of the false prophets was extremely attractive to the hardened people of God, and that made it very difficult for them to believe God's true prophets. It was almost impossible for the people to accept the bitter facts that practically none of them would ever return to Jerusalem, that Jerusalem would be destroyed, along with the temple, that the few survivors would be deported to join the other captives in Babylon, and that "the righteous remnant" would be derived from a few of the captives who, in the second generation, would indeed find their way back to Jerusalem.

It was due to the very great difficulties of the situation that special miracles attended some of the prophecies of Ezekiel. The sudden death of Pelatiah in Ezekiel 11 was one such miracle; and the exact prophecy of the capture, blinding, and deportation of Zedekiah, all of which was most circumstantially fulfilled shortly after the prophecy was given, is another.

It was also the severe difficulty of conditions under which Ezekiel prophesied that resulted in the use of dramatic, enacted prophecies of the siege, deportation, terror, and hardships of the people. There was no way that even the most unwilling of the captives could have failed to understand what God's message actually was.

"The purpose is evident throughout this whole section of Ezekiel 12-19, namely, that 6

of presenting the necessity for the exile and the moral cause of it."[1]

Ezekiel 12:1-6

"The word of Jehovah also came unto me, saying, Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of the rebellious house, that have eyes to see, and see not, that have ears to hear, and hear not; for they are a rebellious house. Therefore, thou son of man, prepare thee stuff for removing, and remove by day in their sight; and thou shalt remove from thy place to another place in their sight: it may be they will consider, though they are a rebellious house. And thou shalt bring forth thy stuff by day in their sight, as stuff for removing; and thou shalt go forth thy self at even in their sight, as when men go forth into exile. Dig thou through the wall in their sight, and carry out thereby. In their sight shalt thou bear it upon thy shoulder, and carry it forth in the dark; thou shalt cover thy face that thou see not the land: for I have set thee for a sign unto the house of Israel."

GOD COMMANDED AN ENACTED PROPHECY

This command to Ezekiel, "Stands under the same date as Ezekiel 8:1, namely 592-1 B.C.;"[2] and this means that the fulfillment of it was only about four or five years after this prophecy was enacted.

There were no great difficulties involved in Ezekiel's following these instructions. It had been only a few years since he himself and thousands of others were exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon; and he would have remembered exactly what the exiles would have carried, the manner of their loading it, and what would be necessary. All of his exiled neighbors would also have recognized the significance of such a back-pack, designed to be carried by exiles.

"In their sight ..." (Ezekiel 12:3-4). These words appear no less than six times in four verses, indicating that the purpose of the prophet's actions was that of getting as much public attention as possible; and it is easy to suppose that such actions did

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indeed attract a lot of attention and speculation upon the possible meaning of what Ezekiel did.

The covering of the face was a symbol of the people's sorrow in leaving their homeland. It also appears that this might have been a prophecy of the blinding of Zedekiah, or a reference to his flight at night, when he could not see the land.

COKE, "Ezekiel 12:1. The word of the Lord also came, &c.— This happened in the sixth year of Zedekiah, and five years before the siege of Jerusalem. The prophesies in the following chapters to the 20th are of the same year. The prophet here applies himself to those of the captivity among whom he dwelt: they saw Jerusalem still inhabited, and under the government of its own king; so that they who were left in the land of Canaan, insulted the exiles, who repined at their own situation; thinking those who dwelt at Jerusalem in a much better condition than themselves. The following parables, therefore, are designed to shew, that they who were left behind to sustain the miseries of a siege and the insults of a conqueror, would be in a much worse situation, than those who were already settled in a foreign land. See Lowth and Calmet. Houbigant, however, is of a different opinion, and thinks that this prophesy was delivered while Ezekiel dwelt in Jerusalem, before he was carried captive to Babylon.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:1 The word of the LORD also came unto me, saying,

Ver. 1. The word of the Lord also came unto me.] This variety of visions shows the great unbelief of the people, whose captivity and calamity is here further described and assured by a new type, which is set out in Ezekiel 12:1-6 :, and then applied in Ezekiel 12:7-16. One sermon pegs in another, and the man of God must stick to his work, and επιστηθι, stand over it. [2 Timothy 4:2]

EBC, "THE END OF THE MONARCHY

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Ezekiel 12:1-15; Ezekiel 17:1-24; Ezekiel 19:1-14

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 pre-possessions 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". [Ezekiel 12:2] 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 chapters 8-11 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 chapter 12 to chapter 19; 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

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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 wilt 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 a 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 representatives were 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". [Lamentations 4:20] 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. His very name has 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

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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 Chaldea 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 Chaldaean 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 Chaldaeans, 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

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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. 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". [Ezekiel 12:12]

II.

In chapter 17 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." 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

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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 Judaean 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" (Ezekiel 17:13-14). 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

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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" (Ezekiel 17:17). 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". [Lamentations 4:17]

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" (Ezekiel 17:19-21).

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 distinguished 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

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considered when we have to deal with Ezekiel’s Messianic conceptions in their fully developed form in chapter 34.

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. [Jeremiah 22:10-12] 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 (chapter 19). Many critics have indeed found it impossible

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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 qinah, or dirge, is applicable only to the first part of the chapter (Ezekiel 19:2-9), where the rhythm characteristic of the Hebrew elegy is clearly traceable. With a few slight changes of the text the passage may be translated thus:-

1. Jehoahaz.

"How was thy mother a lioness!-

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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" (Ezekiel 19:2-4).

2. Jehoiachin.

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"And when she saw that she was disappointed-

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".

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"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" (Ezekiel 19:5-9).

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

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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 (Ezekiel 19:14). 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.

PARKER, " Ezekiel"s Vision

Ezekiel 12

Ezekiel will speak nothing in his own name. He does not guarantee one word of what he speaks by his own authority. The wondrous imagery is not the birth of his fancy, it is something which his soul"s eyes have seen. Ezekiel makes no sermons, he simply tells what he has heard. It was his business to deliver messages, not to make them. When he is incoherent, he makes no apology; when we cannot follow him, he cannot help it; when he is apparently mad, he does not know it: he will only tell what he has seen and heard. He will not write a sentence, he will not study literary form, he knows nothing about taste, polish, style; he roars, he whispers, he screams like a man in fright, he prays like a man who is sure he can have what he asks for. He is a thousand prophets in one; hence his peculiarities—his imagination so gorgeous, his command so authoritative, his threatening so appalling, his signs and tokens so bewildering. He knows nothing of what he is talking about. No house will

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hold him: he would tear its clay walls down by that burning fury which is characteristic of his prophetic genius; he would melt the furnace and flow abroad in a freedom chartered by Heaven. He must stand upon a mountain—no other pulpit will do; he must ride upon the wings of the wind, and with the thunder talk as friend to friend. You must get into his key before you can understand his speech; you must be as mad as he is before you can take any pleasure in him.

Inspired men should have inspired students. Perhaps here and there we may be able to join him in his tragical progress.

"The word of the Lord also came unto me, saying, Son of Prayer of Manasseh , thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house" ( Ezekiel 12:1-2).

He was a prophet though the house was rebellious. Can the Lord find no better place for his prophets? Can he not make them a second garden? He made one: can he not make two? Can he not cause his prophet to stand in some high tower where he will be untainted by the pollution of place and time, and whence he can thunder out the divine word? Has the prophet to mingle with the people, to live with them, to touch their corruptness, to feel the contagion of their evil manners? Might he not have a pedestal to himself? No. The Son of man when he comes will go on eating and drinking, a social reformer, a brother, a fellow-guest at tables; he will take the cup after we have partaken of it, and we may cut him what morsel of bread he may eat, or he will hand them to us; he will be one of his fellow-creatures. And yet Ezekiel was a prophet. So is the Son of man. Nothing could mingle Ezekiel with the rebellious house, so as to be unable to distinguish between the one and the other. Proximity is not identification. We may sit close to a murderer, and be quite distinct from him as to all our proclivities, and desires, and aspirations. We need not be corrupt because we live in a corrupt age; we need not go down because the neighbourhood is bad. It is poor pleading, it is an irreligious and inexcusable defence, which says it could not resist atmospheric pressure, the subtle influence of social custom and habitude. It is the business of a prophet to stand right apart from his fellow-men, and yet to be so near as to be able to teach them, exhort them, rebuke them, and comfort them when they turn their face but a point towards the throne, the Cross, and the promised heaven. Ezekiel"s experience was tumultuous, rough, difficult, hard to undergo and impossible to understand.

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"A rebellious house."—What was the charge made against this rebellious house? The words "rebellious house" are general: does the accusation descend to particulars? It does,—"Which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not." Rebelliousness means loss of faculty. You cannot commit sin and be as clear-minded as you were before you committed it The obscurity of mind may not be immediately evident, but let a man allow one bad thought to pass through his brain, and the brain has lost quality, a tremendous injury has been inflicted on that sensitive organ; by-and-by, after a succession of such passages, there will be no brain to injure. Sin tears down whatever it touches. Your habit is bringing you to imbecility, if it is a bad habit. You must name it; preachers may not speak distinctly and definitely, but they create a standard by which men may judge themselves, and by which preachers may also judge their own aspirations and purposes. You are losing your eyesight by your sin; you are becoming deaf because you are becoming worse in thought and desire and purpose; you are not the business man you were a quarter of a century ago when you were a disciplinarian, a Spartan, a self-critic, when you held yourself in a leash, and would not allow yourself to go an inch faster than your judgment approved: since then you have loosened the reins, you have allowed the steeds to go at their own will, and the consequence is that you miss one half of what is spoken to you, and you fail to see God"s morning and God"s sunset; they are but commonplaces to you, mayhap but broad vulgarities. Men should be good if they wish to keep their genius. Morality is the defence of mental power and general faculty. The bad man goes down. His descent may not be palpable today or tomorrow, but the process is not the less certain and tremendous because it is sometimes imperceptible.

What does the prophet do? This chapter indicates that Ezekiel was called upon to show himself in two distinct aspects. Ezekiel is charged to represent two signs:—

PETT, "Introduction

Chapter 12 The Fate of the Inhabitants of Jerusalem and of Its King Is Depicted.

Ezekiel is told to act out the attempted desperate escape from Jerusalem of the 22

defeated leading Israelites. He is then to depict the sad state to which they will come because of their disobedience and sin. This is followed by the renunciation of a well known proverb and a warning that, contrary to it, the consequences of Ezekiel’s prophecies will come about.

Verse 1-2

Ezekiel’s Depiction of the Coming Great Escape That Will Fail.

‘The word of Yahweh also came to me saying, “Son of man, you dwell among the rebellious house, who have eyes to see, and do not see, who have ears to hear, but do not hear, for they are a rebellious house.” ’

Again ‘the word of Yahweh came to’ Ezekiel, the indication of a new prophecy, and a reminder that he could only speak when he had a word from Yahweh. Otherwise he must remain dumb (Ezekiel 3:26). And He spoke of the difficulties that Ezekiel was facing, the difficulties of ministering to a people who would not hear.

That is always the most difficult and heartless of tasks. And Yahweh offered little hope. They were, he said, a rebellious group of people, who did not want to hear the truth. While they would not listen to His word, they wanted comfort and assurance that they would soon return to their homeland. They could not believe that Jerusalem and the temple would be destroyed. They could not believe that God would allow it. They could not bring themselves to accept that it was what they deserved.

Yahweh’s words may have reference to their treatment of Ezekiel’s description of his visions, or to their treatment of his overall message that God has deserted Jerusalem so that its fate was sealed, or indeed to both. They just would not and could not accept it.

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‘Eyes to see’ may have specific reference to the acted out prophecies that Ezekiel has already performed. They had seen him bound up and lying on his side, eating starvation rations, they had watched him grow thinner and thinner and develop the inevitable painful sores, they had seen him depict the fall of Jerusalem, but they had refused to see in that the certainty of the downfall of Jerusalem, and of Israel and Judah. And they had heard what he had to tell them, both in his visions and through the word that Yahweh had spoken to him. But they were sceptical and unbelieving. They did not accept what he said. And why? Because, said God, their hearts were rebellious. That is why they would not believe that what he said was possible. Because it did not fit in with their idea of Yahweh, and they did not want to know what God had to say about it (compare Ezekiel 2:4; Isaiah 6:9-10; Jeremiah 5:21).

How easily we can fall into such a state. We can be so convinced that we are right that we do not subject our ideas fully to Scriptural examination.

So it would now be necessary for Ezekiel again to act out vividly and graphically what was about to happen.

PULPIT, "The word of the Lord, etc. This formula, so familiar in Isaiah and Jeremiah, appears for the first time in Ezekiel, but occurs repeatedly afterwards, especially in this chapter (verses 8, 17, 21, 26. and again Ezekiel 13:1; Ezekiel 14:2, et al.). The teaching by "the visions of God" ceases, and that of direct message or symbolic acts is resumed. In each case the point aimed at was the same. The people who heard the one or saw the other were to be taught how utterly groundless was the hope that Jerusalem could hold out against its enemies. The interval between the two was probably a short one, and the new teaching, we may conjecture, had its starting point in the prophecies of a speedy deliverance which were current both at Jerusalem and among the exiles at Babylon.

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2 “Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.

BARNES, "Compare Deu_1:26; margin reference; Rom_10:21. The repetition of such words from age to age, shows that the prophet’s words are intended to reach beyond the generation in which he lived.

CLARKE, "Which have eyes to see, and see not - It is not want of grace that brings them to destruction. They have eyes to see, but they will not use them. No man is lost because he had not sufficient grace to save him, but because he abused that grace.

GILL, "Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house,.... The captives in Babylon, who murmured at their present condition and circumstances, and looked upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem to be in happy ones, and believed they would continue in them, as the false prophets persuaded them; not believing the prophets of the Lord; and encouraged them to stand out against the king of Babylon, repenting that they had surrendered to him, and hoped they should by their means be delivered see the same character of them, Eze_2:3; which have eyes to see, and see not: they have ears to hear, and hear not; they had natural sense and understanding, and means and opportunities of being better informed, and of knowing the true state of things, and how they were, and would be; but they wilfully shut their eyes against all light and evidence, and stopped their ears, and would not hearken to the words of the prophets: for they are a rebellious house; stubborn, obstinate, and self-willed: or, "a house of rebellion" (r). TRAPP. "Ezekiel 12:2 Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house,

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which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they [are] a rebellious house.

Ver. 2. A rebellious house.] Heb., A house of rebellion, domus perduellis, that hath cast down the gauntlet of defiance against me.

Which have eyes to see, and see not,] sc., To any good purpose. They will not see, [Isaiah 26:11] and who so blind as such? They wink wilfully, which is no small aggravation of their sin. [John 9:4 Ephesians 4:18]

Which have ears to hear, and hear not,] i.e., Castigatiores non evadunt. They are not a button the better for what they hear. They draw not up the ears of their minds to the ears of their bodies, that one sound might pierce both.

WHEDON, "2. Which have eyes to see, and see not — This rebellious nation (Ezekiel 2:3; Ezekiel 2:8; Ezekiel 3:26-27) have had their eyes blinded and their ears deafened by their rebellion (Isaiah 6:9; Isaiah 42:20; Jeremiah 5:21; Matthew 13:14-15). They have seared their consciences and deadened their moral perception until even the prophecies just uttered have not moved them to faith and reformation. This is true not only of the hopeless Israelites in Jerusalem now, forsaken by Jehovah, but of many even of the true Israel who are in exile. (See notes Ezekiel 11:16-21.) They need simpler and more impressive picture-sermons to bring them to a conscious recognition of their spiritual condition and the fate which awaits impenitence — even the destruction of the holy city.

PULPIT, "Which have eyes to see, etc. We note the words in their relation both to like utterances in the past (Isaiah 6:9; Isaiah 42:20), and by Ezekiel's contemporary (Jeremiah 5:21), and in the future by our Lord (Matthew 13:13), by St. John (John 12:40), and lastly by St. Paul (Acts 28:27). The thought and phrase were naturally as ever-recurring as the fact.

BI, "Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to 26

see and see not.The disuse of spiritual facultiesEyes and ears are for many reasons the most important and valuable organs of the human body, the chief “gates”—to use the language of Bunyan—to the famous town of Mansoul. The one brings us into contact with form, the other with sound; the one has relation to space, the other to time. No part in the human frame is so wonderful in their execution as these. “The eye,” says one, “by its admirable combination of coats and humours and lenses, produces on the retina, or expansion of nerve at the back of the socket or bony cavity, in which it is so securely lodged, a distinct picture of the minutest or largest object; so that, on a space that is less than an inch in diameter, a landscape of miles in extent, with all its variety of scenery, is depicted with perfect exactness of relative proportion in all its parts.” Nor is the ear less wonderful. “It is a complicated mechanism lying wholly within the body, showing only the wide outer porch through which the sound enters. It conveys the sound through various chambers to the inmost extremities of those nerves which bear the messages to the brain. So delicate is this organ, that it catches the softest whispers, and conveys them to the soul, and so strong that it hears the roll of the loudest thunder in the chamber of its mistress.” Now, the text—as well as other parts of Scripture—teaches that man’s spiritual nature has organs answering to those organs of the body. The text calls us to notice the spiritual disuse of these faculties.I. It involves the greatest deprivation.

1. The disuse shuts out the grandest realities of existence. What are the immutable principles of rectitude, what is the great spiritual universe, what is God Himself, to the man who is morally blind and deaf?2. The disuse shuts out the sublimest joys of existence. What are the charms of physical to moral beauty, the beauty of holiness and God? What are the charms of physical harmony to those of that great moral anthem that fills the spiritual universe with rapture and delights the ear of God Himself? How great then the deprivation of the spiritually blind and deaf! God is with them, His pure, happy heavens lie about them, and they know it not.3. The disuse deteriorates the faculties themselves. Unused organs often die out.

II. It involves the greatest wickedness.1. It is an abuse of talent. All the powers we possess, we possess as trustees, not as proprietors; they are entrusted to us for a specific purpose.2. It is an abuse of the greatest talents. These spiritual faculties are the highest we have—higher than bodily power, higher than intellectual ability, higher than natural genius.

Conclusion—1. The sad condition of the unregenerate world.2. The deeply needed mission of Christ. (Homilist.)

Rebelliousness means loss of faculty27

You cannot commit sin and be as clear-minded as you were before you committed it. The obscurity of mind may not be immediately evident; but let a man allow one bad thought to pass through his brain, and the brain has lost quality, a tremendous injury has been inflicted on that sensitive organ; by and by, after a succession of such passages, there will be no brain to injure. Sin tears down whatever it touches. Your habit is bringing you to imbecility, if it is a bad habit. You must name it; preachers may not speak distinctly and definitely, but they create a standard by which men may judge themselves, and by which preachers may also judge their own aspirations and purposes. You are losing your eyesight by your sin; you are becoming deaf because you are becoming worse in thought and desire and purpose; you are not the business man you were a quarter of a century ago, when you were a disciplinarian, a Spartan, a self-critic, when you held yourself in a leash, and would not allow yourself to go an inch faster than your judgment approved; since then you have loosened the reins, you have allowed the steeds to go at their own will, and the consequence is that you miss one-half of what is spoken to you, and you fail to see God’s morning and God’s sunset; they are but commonplaces to you, mayhap but broad vulgarities. Men should be good if they wish to keep their genius. The bad man goes down. His descent may not be palpable today or tomorrow, but the process is not the less certain and tremendous because it is sometimes imperceptible. (J. Parker, D. D.)

3 “Therefore, son of man, pack your belongings for exile and in the daytime, as they watch, set out and go from where you are to another place. Perhaps they will understand, though they are a rebellious people.

BARNES, "Stuff - Raiment, vessels, and the like. The “removing” was to be of the kind that accompanied exile. The whole account of this transaction marks it as a real act. The prophet was to be “a sign” to his countrymen, and the “exiles” as well as those that remained in Judaea had need to be taught this lesson, for though themselves far away, they looked to Jerusalem as their home, and were scarcely less eager for its safety than the inhabitants themselves.

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CLARKE, "Prepare thee stuff for removing - Get carriages to transport thy goods to another place; signifying by this the captivity that was at hand.

GILL, "Therefore, thou son of man, prepare thee stuff for removing,.... Or, "vessels of captivity" (s), such as persons take along with them when they go a journey, or into a far country; such as a staff, scrip, purse, shoes, &c. or household goods; such as tables, chairs, and the like, which are removed when a person goes from one house to another; by which sign they of the captivity were to be taught that Zedekiah and the people of the Jews should in like manner be carried captive into Babylon; which they were not willing to believe, and the false prophets had told them the contrary: and remove by day in their sight; be carrying the stuff out, day by day, several days running, as Jarchi from Menachem interprets it; that they may see and take notice of it, and ask the reason of it; which, when known, they might send to their correspondents at Jerusalem, and acquaint them with it: and thou shall remove from thy place to another place in their sight; from the house in which he dwelt, to another house at some distance; yet so as to be seen by them, both from whence and whither he moved: it may be they will consider; or "see" (t); make use of their eyes, and of their understandings, and think better of things. The Targum is, "perhaps they will fear;'' the Lord, and regard his prophets, and be afraid of his judgments: though they be a rebellious house; such who are the most obstinate may be reclaimed.

JAMISON, "stuff for removing — rather, “an exile’s outfit,” the articles proper to a person going as an exile, a staff and knapsack, with a supply of food and clothing; so “instruments of captivity,” Jer_46:19, Margin, that is, the needful equipments for it. His simple announcements having failed, he is symbolically to give them an ocular demonstration conveyed by a word-painting of actions performed in vision.

consider — (Deu_32:29).

CALVIN, "Now God instructs his Prophet in what he wishes him to do: he orders him to take vessels for journeying, that is, he orders him to prepare for a long journey, even for exile: for exile is the subject here. But he who is compelled to leave

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home to go into a foreign land, collects whatever he can carry with him, namely, his clothes, shoes, hat, scrip, and staff, and other things of that kind, if he have even a little money. Therefore the Prophet is advised to gird himself for his journey, by which he represents the character of those who were just about to be dragged into exile. For this reason he is ordered to prepare for himself vessels for traveling The Latins call garments as well as other goods “vessels:” whence proverbially to collect goods is to remove baggage in a military phrase, or to take away one’s stuff. But he orders this to be done in the day-time, that the Israelites may see what is done.

Then the Prophet is ordered to remove from one place to another As I have said, this might appear puerile. Cicero describes those legal fictions, (246) how those who went to law about a field when called upon to plead, had, so to speak, an imaginary way of going to see it; for since it was too troublesome to the judge to mount his horse and ride over various fields, they retained an ancient and customary ceremony: the plaintiff said, the land which you say is yours, I claim for myself and say is mine, and if you wish to dispute with me legally, I summon you to the spot: the defendant replied, as you summon me there, I in return answer your summons. The judge then arose and moved from his place, and so an imaginary action took place. Cicero derides that by-play, and says it is unworthy of the gravity of a court of law. But such was the action of the Prophet; he took his hat, cloak, staff, and shoes, and other things, and changed his place as if he were moving. But he only went a short distance. But God previously had said, that he was dealing with a perverse nation, and so had need of such assistances. And we must remark the particle, if by chance they should see, because they are a rebellious house For here God as it were suspends the event of his teaching, when he says, if perhaps they should hear And the reason is added, because the hardness of the people was so great, that they could scarcely be turned to obedience by any discourses or signs. Meanwhile let us learn from this place, that we must still go on, although success does not answer to our labor, when we spend our strength for God. And this instruction is peculiarly necessary, because when God imposes on us any duty, we dispute with ourselves as to its result, and thus all energy flags, because we are seldom willing to put forth a finger unless we perceive a prosperous issue. Because, therefore, we are always too attentive to the fruit of our labor, hence this passage should be diligently regarded, when God sends his Prophet and yet adds, if by chance they should listen. Whatever may be the event, we must obey God; if our labor should not profit, yet God wishes us to obey him. It follows —

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COKE, "Ezekiel 12:3. Prepare thee stuff for removing— See the note on chap. Ezekiel 4:1. This command is merely an information by action, instead of words, foretelling the approaching captivity of Zedekiah. Dr. Waterland observes, that he sees no reason for thinking that the prophet might not really perform all here related, and more, without difficulty, or forfeiting either his discretion or gravity. The manner and circumstances of the whole narrative, as it stands in the prophet, being very different from what we meet with in several others, pleads strongly for the strict and literal interpretation. It is no less than seven times repeated, that the prophet was to do, or did this in the sight of the people; and he did it in the evening, in the twilight, and in the morning, after God came to ask him whether the house of Israel had taken notice of such his uncommon behaviour, and had inquired what it meant. These and other circumstances appear to be very cogent proofs of real facts, and that it is more than a narrative of a vision, or recital of a parable. And, therefore, I cannot but think that it is going much too far from strict rule, to reject the literal sense here, though I know that a very pious and learned writer has done it, and that he had some appearance of reason, besides the authority of some Jewish interpreters to countenance him in it. See his Script. Vind. part 3: p. 97 and Smith's Select Discourses, p. 228.Stuff— Instruments, furniture, goods; whatever is fitting for a particular purpose; as here, for a long journey.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:3 Therefore, thou son of man, prepare thee stuff for removing, and remove by day in their sight; and thou shalt remove from thy place to another place in their sight: it may be they will consider, though they [be] a rebellious house.

Ver. 3. Therefore, thou son of man,] i.e., Nevertheless do thou as thou art bidden, and let what thou doest and sayest be for a testimony against them, stick in their souls and flesh, as the envenomed arrows of the Almighty throughout eternity.

Prepare thee stuff for removing.] Heb., Instruments, or vessels. Convasa res tuas, collae sarcinas, pack up and away. See if this way thou canst work upon them.

It may be they will consider,] sc., By this express sign, though they profit not by thy plain preaching. Ministers must study their people’s souls; turn themselves into all

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forms and shapes, of spirit and of speech, to win upon them.

WHEDON, " 3. Stuff for removing — Literally, traveling baggage for exile.

Remove by day — Literally, remove as into captivity. Ezekiel is to represent himself as among the besieged in Jerusalem getting ready for flight; attempting thus to make the people consider (literally, see) what lies in the immediate future.

Though they be — Literally, for they be.

PARKER, ""Therefore, thou son of Prayer of Manasseh , prepare thee stuff for removing, and remove by day in their sight; and thou shalt remove from thy place to another place in their sight: it may be they will consider, though they be a rebellious house" ( Ezekiel 12:3).

He was to be performing a very singular Acts , and to be so constantly doing it that people would say, What is he doing now? He is moving things: what is the madman after today? Watch him:—he brings forth his stuff in their sight; he goes forth at even in their sight; he digs through the wall in their sight; in their sight he bears the burden upon his shoulders and carries it forth in the twilight (i.e, in the dark); he covers his face that he may not see the ground. The Lord makes this use of the man that by an act singular, absurd, irrational, unaccountable, he may attract attention, so that the people may say, What is it? It is thus the preachers would do if they dare. The preacher has lost his power of sign-making, and he has taken now to sentence-making. The preacher should always be doing something that attracts the religious attention of mankind. He should be praying so unexpectedly and vehemently as to cause people to say, What is this? But he dare not. Quietness has been patented, and indifference has been gazetted respectable. They are right who beat drums, sound trumpets, fly flags, tramp the streets like soldiers taking a fortress, so that people shall say, looking out of high windows and round the street corners, What is this? what are these men doing now? "It may be," saith the Lord,—"it may be they will consider." But they can only be brought to consideration by sign and token, by madness on the part of the Church. Trust the Church for going mad today! The

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Church now locks up its premises six days out of seven, and blesses the man who occupies it as little as possible on the seventh day. Rebelliousness overfloods the fading energy and zeal of the Church.

All prophets are to be signs. When a minister becomes indistinguishable from another man he ceases to be a minister. He is nothing except in his distinctiveness. His whole power is in his individuality. If he does anything like another man he has by so much obliterated his whole function. The Lord has always been setting signs in the ages, so much so that at one time they were in danger of losing their significance and their power:—"The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?" Do you not see amid all the tumult the outline of a Face, the shaping of a Hand, the direction of a Will? Or is the day nothing to you but a succession of unrelated events? If your souls" eyes were opened you would see every night another colour in the web, and you would say to one another, See how the divine purpose proceeds: how singular the figure, how marked, how emphatic, how divine! The Lord"s hand rests not day nor night. "A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas." You have had your signs: read them well. Noah was a sign when he was building his ark, but the sign became so common that the people signalled to one another as they passed the poor old carpenter, and said some half-genial pleasant word about his infatuation. Jonah was a sign to his generation. The people heeded not the sign; the religious people called it a miracle, and the irreligious people called it a lie. The great complaint against the Church is that it makes no signs. He who makes a sign will expose himself to momentarily ruinous criticism; therefore it is that men dare not make a sign. If they could overget the first sensation, and welcome the first difficulty, after that they would occupy the position of conqueror, not of conquered. If you could only plunge into the water you would be warm in a moment. But that first moment looks like eternity when it is still to be taken in hand. Plunge in, leap into the sea of providence, accept your destiny; the little moment will be forgotten in the glad hereafter.

See to what straits they may come who oppose God:—

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PETT, "Verse 3-4

“Therefore, you son of man, prepare your stuff for removal, and remove by day in their sight. And you will remove from your place to another place in their sight. It may be that they will consider, even though they are a rebellious house. And you will bring forth your stuff by day in their sight, as stuff for removal, and you will go forth yourself in the evening in their sight, as when men go forth into exile.” is

What Ezekiel had to do this time was make a great show of packing his household goods and chattels as though he was moving house and going on a journey. Indeed just as though he was going into exile. He was to pack during the day and leave in the evening, bearing his goods and transferring from one place to another.

This would then stir the thinking of his fellow-captives who would want to know what he was doing. They had seen what he had acted out before, they had seen him in a trance-like state as though he was no longer in his body, and now the news got around that he was ‘doing it again’. Unquestionably the crowds would gather. Some would mock, others would shake their heads, but hopefully, said Yahweh, some might even consider the implications of his actions in spite of their rebelliousness (compare Ezekiel 2:5). It was necessary to give them a chance, for Ezekiel was the watchman of the house of Israel.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 12:3-7

Prepare thee stuff for removing, etc.; better, equipment for a journey, with the implied thought that it is the journey of one going into exile. "Bag and baggage," all the household goods which an exile could take with him, were to be brought out in broad daylight and piled up opposite his door. Then in the twilight (Revised Version, in the dark, and so in Ezekiel 12:7, Ezekiel 12:12) he was to go forth, not by the door of his house, but by breaking through the wall (with such walls as those of Ezekiel 13:11 the process would not be difficult), as a man might do who was escaping secretly from a city through the gates of which he dared not pass (Ezekiel

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12:5), and was to start with his travelling chattels upon his shoulder. Lastly (Ezekiel 12:6), as the strangest feature of all, he was to go forth with his face covered, as one who wished to avoid recognition, as one also who could not see one step of the way before him. This, it is intimated, would startle even the most careless, and in this way he would become, as he had been before in like symbolic acts (Ezekiel 4:1-17; Ezekiel 5:1-17.), as Isaiah (Isaiah 20:2) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 27:2) had been before him, a sign unto the house of Israel.

BI 3-7, "Prepare thee stuff for removing.A drama of exileI. The vision in its historical fulfilment.II. The vision in its practical lessons for the present.

1. The consequence of sin is moral exile. All evil, not only in act, but in thought and in wish, involves in greater or less degree a going away from the holy—is a self-exileship, not perhaps, as in the vision, from a holy place, but from the holy God.2. This moral exile is awfully sad.

(1) This exile is burdensome. The man goes with the baggage of an emigrant. He carries as much as he can. And he who goes away from God into any sin goes burdened. Responsibility, an accusing conscience, a growing fear; these, as with Cain, load guilty souls.(2) The exile was severed from social ties. With what solitariness of soul, as though he were utterly alone and in the dark, does each man have to say, “I have sinned”!(3) The exile went out into wild uncertainties. Whither he should hurry when once beyond the city walls he could not tell. And into what unexplored regions of wrong-doing, or what abysses of consequent remorse a sinner may wander, who can tell?

3. This moral exile is stealthy. Not through a gate, but by a hole dug through the wall; not at noon, but at night, the exile gets away from the holy city. So with the beginnings of all sin. The excuses, the concealments, the artifices of the selfish, the impure, the mean, breathe the stealthy spirit of the father of lies. Evil chooses the dark first, and then gets blinded.4. This moral exile is shameful. The exile, ashamed to look on the ground, is a true type of those who, first with blush of shame, and whitened lip, and trembling voice or hand, do wrong; and who at last “will wake to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Urijah R. Thomas.)

It may be they will consider.—The Divine expectation

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I. The subject to which this expectation refers.1. Men do not consider that they are sinful creatures.2. Nor that they are dying creatures.3. Nor that they are immortal creatures.

II. The means employed for bringing about the expectation which is here expressed.1. The Divine forbearance.2. The afflictive dispensations of Divine Providence.3. The ministry of the Gospel. (J. C. Gray.)

4 During the daytime, while they watch, bring out your belongings packed for exile. Then in the evening, while they are watching, go out like those who go into exile.

BARNES, "The particulars which Ezekiel here foretold actually occurred (compare 2Ki_25:4; Jer_39:4); but at this time Zedekiah seemed to be prosperous, and the Jews at Jerusalem expected, it is clear, a long continuance of his prosperity (see Eze_17:1note).

The prophetic character of the passage is undoubted (the prophet is declared to be “a sign,” Eze_12:6) - the genuineness of the book and of the position of the passage in the book, are beyond dispute; in the historical event we have an exact fulfillment. The only legitimate inference is that the prophet received his knowledge from above.

GILL, "Then shall thou bring forth thy stuff by day in their sight,.... Bring it forth, that they may be spectators of it; and "by day", that it might be manifest to them

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what was carried out; and this day by day, till all was removed: as stuff for removing; that is intended to be removed from one place to another, and is carried away in the daytime, in the view of everyone: and thou shall go forth at even in their sight; as a man, having removed his goods in the daytime, goes forth himself at evening: this denotes the flight of Zedekiah from Jerusalem in the night, Jer_39:4; as they that go forth into captivity: with a sorrowful countenance, in a mournful habit, and with airs and gestures showing anger, anxiety, and distress; with a bundle on their shoulders, and a staff in their hands.

JAMISON, "by day — in broad daylight, when all can see thee.at even — not contradicting the words “by day.” The baggage was to be sent before by day, and Ezekiel was to follow at nightfall [Grotius]; or, the preparations were to be made by day, the actual departure was to be effected at night [Henderson].as they that go forth into captivity — literally, “as the goings forth of the captivity,” that is, of the captive band of exiles, namely, amid the silent darkness: typifying Zedekiah’s flight by night on the taking of the city (Jer_39:4; Jer_52:7).

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:4 Then shalt thou bring forth thy stuff by day in their sight, as stuff for removing: and thou shalt go forth at even in their sight, as they that go forth into captivity.

Ver. 4. Thou shalt bring forth thy stuff.] Arma viatoria; travelling bags for an ocular demonstration. What surer than sight?

Go forth at even.] The king and his men of war were glad to do so, [2 Kings 25:4] but it would not do.

5 While they watch, dig through the wall and take your belongings out through it.

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CLARKE, "Dig thou through the wall - This refers to the manner in which Zedekiah and his family would escape from the city. They escaped by night through a breach in the wall. See Jer_39:2-4; and 2Ki_25:4.

GILL, "Dig thou through the wall in their sight,.... The wall of the house where he was, as an emblem of the city of Jerusalem closely besieged, from whence there was no escape but by digging through the wall this showed the manner in which Zedekiah made his escape, by the way of the gate, between the two walls which was by the king's garden, Jer_52:7; and carry out thereby; not his stuff, as before; but provisions for himself, necessary for his journey or flight; as no doubt Zedekiah and those with him did.

JAMISON, "Dig — as Zedekiah was to escape like one digging through a wall, furtively to effect an escape (Eze_12:12).

carry out — namely, “thy stuff” (Eze_12:4).thereby — by the opening in the wall. Zedekiah escaped “by the gate betwixt the two walls” (Jer_39:4).

CALVIN, "Ezekiel is verbose in this narration. But in the beginning of the book we said, that because the teacher was sent to men very slow and stupid, he therefore used a rough style. We added also, that he had acquired it partly from the custom of the region in which he dwelt. For the people declined by degrees from the polish of their language, and hence it happens that the Prophet’s diction is not quite pure, but is intermixed with something foreign. As to the subject itself there is no ambiguity, since God repeats that he should dig through a wall, and bring out his vessels by himself before their eyes Here follows another part of the vision, namely, that there should be no free egress but that the Jews would desire to depart by stealth. First, therefore, it is shown to the Prophet, that the Jews who when secure at Jerusalem boasted that all was well with them, should be exiles; then, that it would not be in their power to go forth when they wished, unless perhaps they stealthily escaped the hands of the enemy through their hiding-place, as thieves escape by digging through a wall. Then the application will follow, but yet it was worth while to state what God

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intended by this vision. Afterwards everything is embraced. In their sight, says he, thou shalt bear upon thy shoulder, that is, thou shalt be prepared and girt for a journey as a traveler, and this shall be done in the day-time: but in darkness, says he,thou shalt bring them forth: after thy vessels have been prepared, wait for the evening: in the darkness afterwards thou shalt go forth. Here he shows what I have already touched upon, when necessity expelled the Jews from their country, that their departure would not be free, because they would be well off if’ they could snatch themselves away from the sight of their enemies in hiding-places and the darkness of the night.

He adds, thou shalt hide thy face, and the clause, neither shalt thou look upon the earth, means the same thing. Anxiety and trembling is marked by this phrase, as when he says, thou shalt hide thy face, it signifies that the Jews should be so perplexed that they should fear every event which happened. For those who fear everything veil their faces, as is well known. But this trembling is better expressed when he says,thou shaft not look upon the earth. For those who are in haste do not dare to bend down their eyes the least in either one direction or another, but are carried along to the place to which they are going, and press forward with their eyes, because they cannot hasten with their feet as quickly as they desire. Hence they seize their way, as it were, with their eyes. This is the reason why God says, thou shalt not look upon the earth, because I have set thee, says he, for a sign to the house of Israel. Here God meets the petulance of those who otherwise would laugh at what the Prophet was doing: what do you mean by that fictitious emigration? why do you not rest at home? why do you here frighten us with an empty spectacle? God, therefore, that the Jews should not obstinately despise what he shows them, adds, that the Prophet was a sign or a wonder to the house of Israel The word wonder is here taken in its genuine sense, though sometimes it has an unfavorable meaning. We say that anything portentous is disagreeable: but a “ portent” properly designates any sign of the future. When therefore men predict what is hidden, it is called a portent. And this is the meaning of Isaiah, (Isaiah 8:18,) where he says, Behold me, and the children whom God has given me, for signs and wonders. He puts אתות, athoth, “signs,” in the first place, then מופתים, mophthim, “portents.” Here the Prophet speaks in the singular: I have given thee for a wonder. But since Isaiah treats of the rest of the faithful, he then uses signs and portents; since Isaiah seems to imply something more, namely, that the people were so stupid that they so feared and abhorred God’s servants, as if they had met, with a prodigy. Here, therefore, the depravity of the people is to be marked, because when they saw any pious and sincere worshipper of God they turned away their eyes as from a

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formidable prodigy. But now the Prophet speaks simply, that he had been placed for a prodigy to the house of Israel: because in truth this action was a presage of that future captivity which the Jews did not fear for themselves, and which was also incredible to the Israelites; whence that penitence and weariness of which I have spoken. But I do not object if any think that the Prophet speaks of a portent, because the Israelites were struck with astonishment; but the former sense is far more apposite. In this way then God distinguishes the action of the Prophet from all empty spectacles, and so vindicates his servant from all opprobrium. Meanwhile he signifies that although the Prophet was despised, yet that he would be true, and at the same time the avenger of contempt. It follows —

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:5 Dig thou through the wall in their sight, and carry out thereby.

Ver. 5. Dig through the wall.] Make any shift. Necessitas magnum telum. He that digged Mortimer’s hole, as they call it, at Nottingham Castle, earned his liberty dearly. God might have said to the prophet at once, Get thee gone out of thy country - how sad a thing that is Ovid when banished setteth forth in many elegant elegies, sed cuncta per partes digerit - but he must do it piecemeal and by degrees, that it may the more affect them.

WHEDON, "Verse 5-6

5, 6. Dig thou through the wall… and carry it [LXX., go] forth in the twilight — Or, darkness (Genesis 15:17). They dare not attempt to leave the city by one of the gates, because of the watchfulness of the besieging army, but must attempt to break a way through the wall at a point less carefully guarded.

Thou shalt cover thy face… for I have set thee for a sign — Or, portent. (See Ezekiel 12:11.) Representing the people, he carries out with him the provisions and other articles necessary for a hasty flight, and representing Prince Zedekiah, he goes forth with his face covered in shame and sorrow (Ezekiel 12:12; Ezekiel 24:17; 2 Samuel 15:30). There may also be a veiled prophecy that Zedekiah’s eyes are to be put out

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in the strange statement that he shall not see the ground (literally, land).

PETT, "Verse 5-6

“Dig through the wall in their sight, and carry your things out through there. In their sight you will bear it on your shoulder, and carry it out in the dark. You will cover your face so that you do not see the ground, for I have set you as a sign to the house of Israel.”

These further instructions would add to the significance of his acts. He was to leave his house through the wall, symbolising surreptitious escape from the city, and he was to leave as it was becoming dark in order to indicate the idea of secrecy and haste. And he was to cover his face so that he could not see the ground.

The houses in Babylonia would be made of sun-dried brick which, with some effort, would not be difficult to hack through , removing the bricks in order to make a way through. The covering of the face was probably to indicate that he was not expecting to see his homeland again so that he could not bear to look at the ground as he left (see Ezekiel 12:11), and it may possibly have also been intended to indicate secrecy and disguise.

And these things were to be ‘a sign’, a guarantee of their happening. They would warn the house of Israel, of what was coming. As they watched his actions he was to hope that they would accept that this was really what was going to happen to their fellow-Israelites in Jerusalem. At least when Jerusalem did fall, and it is difficult for us to imagine just how huge a blow that would be to them when it happened, they would recognise that God had been telling them that this was what He was going to do all the time.

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6 Put them on your shoulder as they are watching and carry them out at dusk. Cover your face so that you cannot see the land, for I have made you a sign to the Israelites.”

BARNES, "Thou shalt cover thy face - A sign of mourning (see Eze_24:17); also of Zedekiah’s blindness Eze_12:12.

CLARKE, "Thou shalt cover thy face, that thou see not the ground -Referring to the blinding of Zedekiah: even the covering of the face might be intended to signify that in this way Zedekiah should be carried to Babylon on men’s shoulders in some sort of palanquin, with a cloth tied over his eyes, because of the recent wounds made by extracting them. All the prophecies from this to the twentieth chapter are supposed to have been delivered in the sixth year of Zedekiah, five years before the taking of Jerusalem. How accurate the prediction! and how exactly fulfilled!

GILL, "In their sight shall thou bear it upon thy shoulders,.... The bundle, packed up for his use and service, carried out through the wall dug by him. The Septuagint and Vulgate Latin versions render it, as if he himself was to be carried out upon the shoulders of another, thus: "in their sight, upon the shoulders, thou shall be carried"; but the former sense is best: and carry it forth in the twilight; signifying the same as before: thou shall cover thy face, that thou see not the ground; or "land"; not the land of Israel, but the land of Chaldea, where the prophet was: this shows that great shame and confusion which should attend the king of Judah when he fled, and great fear and terror also; and likewise his regard to his eyes being put out by the king of Babylon; so that he saw not the land into which he was carried captive, Jer_52:11; for I have set thee for a sign unto the house of Israel; to show unto them by deeds, as well as by words, what should befall them; see Isa_8:18.

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JAMISON, "In their sight shall thou bear it upon thy shoulders,.... The bundle, packed up for his use and service, carried out through the wall dug by him. The Septuagint and Vulgate Latin versions render it, as if he himself was to be carried out upon the shoulders of another, thus: "in their sight, upon the shoulders, thou shall be carried"; but the former sense is best: and carry it forth in the twilight; signifying the same as before: thou shall cover thy face, that thou see not the ground; or "land"; not the land of Israel, but the land of Chaldea, where the prophet was: this shows that great shame and confusion which should attend the king of Judah when he fled, and great fear and terror also; and likewise his regard to his eyes being put out by the king of Babylon; so that he saw not the land into which he was carried captive, Jer_52:11; for I have set thee for a sign unto the house of Israel; to show unto them by deeds, as well as by words, what should befall them; see Isa_8:18.TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:6 In their sight shalt thou bear [it] upon [thy] shoulders, [and] carry [it] forth in the twilight: thou shalt cover thy face, that thou see not the ground: for I have set thee [for] a sign unto the house of Israel.

Ver. 6. In their sight shalt thou bear it upon thy shoulders.] To show that King Zedekiah himself should carry out some of his most precious things upon his shoulders when he fled. See Ezekiel 12:12. This was a base thing for a king to do. King Alphonsus indeed is renowned for drawing a poor perishing man out of a ditch, and bearing him on his back to a place of relief.

Thou shalt cover thy face.] In token that Zedekiah should be made blind. A just hand of God upon him who had eyes and saw not, [Ezekiel 12:2] like as it was upon Muleasses King of Tunis, who had those eyes of his dug out which had been inlets of lust, and which he oft covered with his hat pulled over them, that he might listen the better to wanton ditties and profane music.

For I have set thee for a sign.] Portentum, a sign portending their going into captivity.

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7 So I did as I was commanded. During the day I brought out my things packed for exile. Then in the evening I dug through the wall with my hands. I took my belongings out at dusk, carrying them on my shoulders while they watched.

BARNES, "In the evening the prophet was to return to the wall, break through it, and transport the goods from the inside to the outside of the city.

GILL, "And I did so as I was commanded,.... Though it might seem ridiculous in the sight of men, and he be bantered and despised for it; yet, it being the will of God, he was obedient to it; as it becomes the servants of the Lord to be with all readiness and cheerfulness; even in things for which they may be laughed at by others: I brought forth my stuff by day, as stuff for captivity; brought his goods out of his house, in order to be had to another place, as a type of the captivity of his countrymen the Jews: and in the even I digged through the wall with mine hand; not with an iron instrument, with which walls are dug; but with his hand, he having no such instrument with him, and being in haste, and also that it might be done without noise; denoting the suddenness of Zedekiah's flight, and the haste he was in; not having time and leisure to take proper instruments with him, he and his men pulled out the stones of the wall with their own hands, and silently made their way through and escaped; see Eze_12:12; I brought it forth in the twilight, and I bare it upon my shoulder in their sight: that it might be a sign and emblem of the above things to them, and they might learn some instructions from it.

CALVIN, "Here the Prophet relates that he had executed what God had commanded: nor did it escape him that this action would be exposed to many jeers and reproaches. But he esteemed nothing of equal moment with pleasing God: hence

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we must remark the Prophet’s alacrity in executing God’s commands. For since to ingenuous natures nothing is more distasteful than reproach, he might reject the burden imposed upon him, because it provoked the laughter of all men. But because God was otherwise pleased he did as he was ordered. He says, therefore, that he carried away his vessels, as it were vessels of captivity, or of migration, and that in the day-time: as if he said that he had prepared whatever was necessary for the journey, as if he saw that a long march, even exile was before him. This then was the reason why he prepared his goods in the day-time. Now it follows, at evening he dug through the wall This belongs to the second clause, that the Israelites might understand that all egress was blocked up to the Jews, so that no safety remained but in concealed flight. He says also, by the hand, whence it appears to be done suddenly and tumultuously. He says, that he went out in darkness, and carried things on his shoulder —namely, that he may confirm what we have so often said, that the Jews had no hope of safety except under cover of the night: because they were besieged on every side, and could not move on one side or the other, lest the enemy should seize them. This is the reason why the Prophet says, that he went out in darkness through the wall which had been dug through

COFFMAN, ""And I did as I was commanded; I brought forth my stuff by day, as stuff for removing, and in the even I digged through the wall with my hand; I brought it forth in the dark, and bare it upon my shoulder in their sight."

This verse merely notes that Ezekiel carded out the Lord's instructions exactly.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:7 And I did so as I was commanded: I brought forth my stuff by day, as stuff for captivity, and in the even I digged through the wall with mine hand; I brought [it] forth in the twilight, [and] I bare [it] upon [my] shoulder in their sight.

Ver. 7. And [did as I was commanded.] Though well laughed at for my labour by the mad world, ever beside itself in point of salvation, and looking upon God’s Jordans as Naaman did, with Syrian eyes. The outward signs in our sacraments are in themselves mean and ordinary matters; yet the minister is to make use of them, and the people to climb up to heaven by them as ladders of life Hence even in the ancient

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church liturgy they had their Sursum corda, Lift up your hearts. Rideant athei et ringantur.

WHEDON, "7. I did so as I was commanded — Whether Ezekiel actually dug through the walls of Tel-abib or through the walls which surrounded the mimic city prepared within his own house (Ezekiel 4:1) is not said, but the latter is far more probable. It was the tile, and not Tel-abib, which the exiles had learned to think of as the besieged city.

PETT, "Verse 7

‘And I did so, as I was commanded. I brought out my stuff by day, as stuff for removing, and in the evening I dug through the wall with my hand. I brought it out in the dark, and bore it on my shoulder in their sight.’

Note the emphasis on the fact that he did as he was told. If only Israel had done the same. It would appear that during the day he prepared his stuff and gathered it together ready for the great removal, and then at night, having made a hole in the wall with his hands, actually shouldered it and carried it to another place.

8 In the morning the word of the Lord came to me:

GILL, "And in the morning came the word of the Lord unto me, saying. That is, in the morning after he had done all the above things commanded him; explaining the meaning of them, and showing to whom they belonged.

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K&D 8-16, "Explanation of the Symbolical ActionEze_12:8. And the word of Jehovah came to me in the morning, saying, Eze_12:9.Son of man, have they not said to thee, the house of Israel, the refractory generation, What art thou doing? Eze_12:10. Say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, This burden applies to the prince in Jerusalem, and to all the house of Israel to whom they belong. Eze_12:11. Say, I am your sign: as I have done, so shall it happen to them; into exile, into captivity, will they go. Eze_12:12. And the prince who is in the midst of them he will lift it upon his shoulder in the dark, and will go out: they will break through the wall, and carry it out thereby: he will cover his face, that he may not see the land with eyes. Eze_12:13. And I will spread my net over him, so that he will be caught in my snare: and I will take him to Babel, into the land of the Chaldeans; but he will not see it, and will die there. Eze_12:14. And all that is about him, his help and all his troops, I will scatter into all winds, and draw out the sword behind them. Eze_12:15. And they shall learn that I am Jehovah, when I scatter them among the nations, and winnow them in the lands. Eze_12:16. Yet I will leave of them a small number of men from the sword, from the famine, and from the pestilence; that they may relate all their abominations among the nations whither they have come; and learn that I am

Jehovah. - As queries introduced with הלא have, as a rule, an affirmative sense, the words “have they not asked,” etc., imply that the Israelites had asked the prophet what he was doing, though not in a proper state of mind, not in a penitential manner, as the epithet בית plainly shows. The prophet is therefore to interpret the action which he had just been performing, and all its different stages. The words הנשיא המשא to which ,הזהvery different renderings have been given, are to be translated simply “the prince is this burden,” i.e., the object of this burden. Hammassâ does not mean the carrying, but the burden, i.e., the threatening prophecy, the prophetic action of the prophet, as in the headings to the oracles (see the comm. on Nah_1:1). The “prince” is the king, as in Eze_21:30, though not Jehoiachin, who had been carried into exile, but Zedekiah. This is stated in the apposition “in Jerusalem,” which belongs to “the prince,” though it is not introduced till after the predicate, as in Gen_24:24. To this there is appended the further definition, “the whole house of Israel,” which, being co-ordinated with הנשיא, affirms that all Israel (the covenant nation) will share the fate of the prince. In the last clause of Eze_12:10 כם בת does not stand for כה ,so that the suffix would refer to Jerusalem ,בת“in the midst of which they (the house of Israel) are.” אשר cannot be a nominative, because in that case המה to be understood as referring to the persons addressed, i.e., to the Israelites in exile (Hitzig, Kliefoth): in the midst of whom they are, i.e., to whom they belong. The sentence explains the reason why the prophet was to announce to those in exile the fat of the prince and people in Jerusalem; namely, because the exiles formed a portion of the nation, and would be affected by the judgment which was about to burst upon the king and people in Jerusalem. In this sense Ezekiel was also able to say to the exiles (in Eze_12:11), “I am your sign;” inasmuch as his sign was also of importance for them, as those who were already banished would be so far affected by the departure of the king and people which Ezekiel depicted, that it would deprive them of all hope of a speedy return to their native land.לה .in Eze_12:11, refers to the king and the house of Israel in Jerusalem ,להם בג is

rendered more forcible by the addition of בשבי. The announcement that both king and people must go into exile, is carried out still further in Eze_12:12 and Eze_12:13 with

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reference to the king, and in Eze_12:14 with regard to the people. The king will experience all that Ezekiel has described. The literal occurrence of what is predicted here is related in Jer_39:1., Jer_52:4.; 2Ki_25:4. When the Chaldeans forced their way into the city after a two years' siege, Zedekiah and his men of war fled by night out of the city through the gate between the two walls. It is not expressly stated, indeed, in the historical accounts that a breach was made in the wall; but the expression “through the gate between the two walls” (Jer_39:4; Jer_52:7; 2Ki_25:4) renders this very probable, whether the gate had been walled up during the siege, or it was necessary to break through the wall at one particular spot in order to reach the gate. The king's attendants would naturally take care that a breach was made in the wall, to secure for him a way of escape; hence the expression, “they will break through.” The covering of the face, also, is not mentioned in the historical accounts; but in itself it is by no means improbable, as a sign of the shame and grief with which Zedekiah left the city. The words, “that he may not see the land with eyes,” do not appear to indicate anything more than the necessary consequence of covering the face, and refer primarily to the simple fact that the king fled in the deepest sorrow, and did not want to see the land; but, as Eze_12:13 clearly intimates, they were fulfilled in another way, namely, by the fact that Zedekiah did not see with his eyes the land of the Chaldeans into which he was led, because he had been blinded at Riblah (Jer_39:5; Jer_52:11; 2Ki_25:7). לעין, by eye = with his eyes, is added to give prominence to the idea of seeing. For the same purpose, the subject, which is already implied in the verb, is rendered more emphatic by הוא; and this הוא is placed after the verb, so that it stands in contrast with הארץ. The capture of the king was not depicted by Ezekiel; so that in this respect the announcement (Eze_12:13) goes further than the symbolical action, and removes all doubt as to the credibility of the prophet's word, by a distinct prediction of the fate awaiting him. At the same time, his not seeing the land of Babylon is left so indefinite, that it cannot be regarded as a vaticinium post eventum. Zedekiah died in prison at Babylon (Jer_52:11). Along with the king, the whole of his military force will be scattered in all directions (Eze_12:14). עזרה, his help, i.e., the troops that break through with him. כל־אגפיו, all his wings (the wings of his army), i.e., all the rest of his forces. The word is peculiar to Ezekiel, and is rendered “wings” by Jos. Kimchi, like kenâphaim in Isa_8:8. For the rest of the verse compare Eze_5:2; and for the fulfilment, Jer_52:8; Jer_40:7, Jer_40:12. The greater part of the people will perish, and only a small number remain, that they may relate among the heathen, wherever they are led, all the abominations of Israel, in order that the heathen may learn that it is not from weakness, but simply to punish idolatry, that God has given up His people to them (cf. Jer_22:8).

CALVIN, "We gather from these words of the Prophet, that he was himself derided when he began to migrate: then that he dug through the wall by night secretly, and thus carried away his baggage. For those who think that the Israelites enquired about this, as if it were unknown to them, do not sufficiently consider the Prophet’s words. For the repetition of the epithet rebellious house is not in vain; for if this question had proceeded from mere folly, God would not have called them rebellious.

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This epithet, then, refers to the present passage, and thus we may determine that the Israelites asked the Prophet deridingly, what does this mean? For he seemed to them to be trifling, and thus they jeered at him; for we know the audacity of the nation in despising their Prophets. It is not, then, to be wondered at, when they obtained a plausible ground for it, if they commented rather freely upon what the Prophet was doing. We said yesterday ‘that this seemed a childish spectacle. Hence the Israelites seemed, not without reason, to reject what the Prophet was doing as a thing of nought. But God does not suffer his servants to be reviled in this way. He now signified to the Prophet that his calling ought to be deservedly held sacred. Since therefore Ezekiel bore certain marks of the prophetic office, although at first sight his conduct could not appear serious, yet the people ought to have enquired modestly. For whatever we know to flow from God should be reverently received without controversy. But if there is any obscurity we may wonder and enquire into it; but as I have said, docility and modesty ought always to precede. But what did the Israelites do? they enquired, indeed, the meaning of the Prophet’s conduct, but only to reject it with ridicule. For this reason God is angry, and announces himself a severe avenger of that audacity, because they persecuted the sacred Prophet. Hence this must be read emphatically — what doest thou? as if they said that the Prophet was foolish, and carried and prepared his goods, and dug through the wall, in vain, since all these things were of no moment. But the answer, when it shows that God is greatly offended with such trifling, sufficiently demonstrates that they did not ask the question through ignorance, or want of thought, but through mere wantonness.

He now says, this prophecy relates to the prince, and the whole house of Israel which is in the midst of them. Without doubt he understands the king, as we shall soon see: nor does he speak of any king indefinitely, but points out Zedekiah, as will be immediately evident from circumstances. He says, therefore, this burden, or this sorrowful prophecy, looks towards the prince, and to the house of Israel, which dwell at Jerusalem. But it is probable that some had fled that they might not fall into the hands of the enemy, since Jerusalem was a safe receptacle for them. The captives thought themselves bad managers, because they had not followed those leaders, since Jerusalem was a safe refuge for them, and hence the greater sorrow at their captivity. Hence God pronounces that the Israelites were comprehended with their king in this prophecy. It is indeed true that this was a common name to all the posterity of Abraham; for the twelve tribes sprung from the patriarch Jacob, but it was then becoming customary for the ten tribes to retain the name of Israel, and for that of Judah to have their own proper and peculiar name. Afterwards he confirms his teaching, that he was as a sign to them. We explained this expression yesterday,

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showing how the Prophet was placed before them as a sign, so that God represented what was as yet unknown to them; for signs divinely sent are called portents, when they foretell what no one would expect to happen. God, indeed, often shows what he is going’ to do by many, yet ordinary signs; but an extraordinary one, which cannot be considered natural, is called a portent. So therefore the Prophet is ordered to say to the Israelites that he was to them for a wonder, namely, to reprove their obstinacy, which, as we have said, was the cause of their impious contempt. For it was no part of their religion for a Prophet to deride them, so that they should suppose him to be trifling with them, as if frightening children about nothing. God, therefore, that the Israelites might at length be roused up at his own time, pronounces his servant to be a wonder to them. And we gather from the reason which is added, what the name portent meant in yesterday’s lecture. For he says, as I have done, so shall it be done to you; that is, what you now think to be child’s play, shall be seriously fulfilled in yourselves. For the Prophet seemed to act a part, like a player, and on this account was derided. He now declares that it should not be fabulous, since the Israelites, who were left in Judea among the Jews, and the king himself, should not act a part; for God would compel them to collect their baggage, and to take flight by stealth in the darkness of the night, which he follows up through the whole verse. Into banishment and exile, says he, shall they go. When therefore the Prophet was commanded to collect and prepare his goods, he was a sign of the exile of which he now speaks. But the explanation of the second part is added.

COFFMAN, ""And in the morning came the word of Jehovah unto me, saying, Son of man, hath not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, said unto thee, What doest thou? Say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: this burden concerneth the prince in Jerusalem, and all the house of Israel among whom they are. Say, I am your sign: like as I have done, so shall it be done unto them; they shall go forth into exile, into captivity. And the prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in the dark, and shall go forth: they shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby: he shall cover his face, for he shall not see the land, because he shall not see the land with his eyes. My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare; and I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there."

"This burden concerneth the prince in Jerusalem ..." (Ezekiel 12:10). The word "burden" refers to a prediction of some woeful event, and was often used by God's

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prophets to describe the prophecy of doom to some city or some individual, as, for example, in the case of Nahum's "burden of Nineveh." Here, the message is that this prophecy of capture, blindness, and captivity applies to Zedekiah, the puppet king of Nebuchadnezzar's on the throne of Judah.

G. A. Cooke, and other radical critics, denominate this prophecy as a "post eventum" prophecy, without any authority whatever, against all evidence, and in spite of the historical corroboration of the fact that the prophecy was spoken long before Zedekiah's fall.

What is the basis of this scholarly blindness? It is based upon the critical dictum that, there is no such thing as predictive prophecy, a silly and irresponsible rule that has no basis whatever except in the prejudice of evil men who are simply unwilling to believe God's Word.

Did not the Hebrew Scriptures prophesy the whole person and works of the Son of God afull quarter of a millennium before our Lord was born? Did they not name the town where he would be born, eight centuries before the event? Only a fool can accept the critical dictum that there is no such thing as predictive prophecy.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF PREDICTIVE PROPHECY

In the paragraph before us, we have the prophecy of Zedekiah's flight from Jerusalem by night, his capture, his blinding, and his deportation to Babylon. It just happens that Ezekiel dates his prophecy (Ezekiel 8:1), about five years prior to its fulfillment.

Canon Cook reminds us that, "The genuineness of Ezekiel and the position of this passage within it are beyond dispute. Jer. 39:4,2 Kings 25:4 provide a Scriptural record of the historical fulfillment; and the only legitimate inference is that Ezekiel received his information from above."[3]

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Note that Cook stated that the facts here are "beyond dispute." How is this true? The Jewish historian, Josephus records the fact that Zedekiah himself was familiar with Ezekiel's prophecy, which definitely means that the prophecy did not originate after the king's death.

Zedekiah himself heard the prophecies both of Jeremiah and of Ezekiel, for Ezekiel's prophecy had been sent to Jerusalem; but Zedekiah did not believe their prophecies for the following reason. The two prophets agreed with one another in all other things: (1) that the city should be taken, (2) Zedekiah himself would be taken captive and carried to Babylon. Zedekiah was told by Jeremiah that his eyes should see Nebuchadnezzar; but Ezekiel prophesied that Zedekiah would never see Babylon. Zedekiah thought that contradicted Jeremiah who had prophesied that Zedekiah would indeed be carried to Babylon. Therefore, he disbelieved what they both said, condemning them as false prophets![4]

This event is too well documented, both in the Bible and in history for it to be intelligently denied. Poor old Zedekiah, like many another skeptic, fancied that he found a contradiction in God's Word; but both prophecies were most accurately and circumstantially fulfilled. It all happened as the prophets said. Zedekiah did indeed see Nebuchadnezzar face to face in Riblah in Hamath, but he never saw Babylon, despite the fact of his being carried captive to Babylon and eventually dying there. Nebuchadnezzar blinded Zedekiah at Riblah after forcing the unhappy king to witness the execution of all of his sons.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:8 And in the morning came the word of the LORD unto me, saying,

Ver. 8. And in the morning came the word of the Lord.] Mane, id est, mature. God not only betime, but timeously, admonished his people; but they refused to be reformed - would have none of his counsel.

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PETT, "Verse 8-9

-10 ‘And in the morning the word of Yahweh came to me, saying, “Son of man, has not the house of Israel said to you, ‘What are you doing?’ You say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh, This burden concerns the prince in Jerusalem and all the house of Israel among whom they are.’ ” ’

Ezekiel carried out his instructions, and as expected the people came to him and asked him what he was doing, and why he was doing it. So God then revealed to him the full import of what his actions revealed. They revealed not only what would happen to some of the people, but also to ‘the prince’ himself. (He possibly prefers this term for Zedekiah because all saw Jehoiachin (2 Kings 24:15; 2 Kings 25:27-30) as still their real king, even though deposed. But we should recognise that ‘prince’ is a regular term for the king in Ezekiel). All would be included in the situation.

‘This burden.’ Prophecy is regularly described in this way, for it was a heavy burden to the prophet, who did not delight in what he had to prophesy, and to the people who heard it because of the nature of the prophecy.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 12:8, Ezekiel 12:9

The commands were obeyed, and the prophet waited fur the next inspiration, the next word of the Lord. It would seem as if he had himself done what he was told to do without knowing what it meant. It was not till night had passed to morning that he was able to answer the question which the exiles asked him, What doest thou! At last the answer came.

9 “Son of man, did not the Israelites, that 53

rebellious people, ask you, ‘What are you doing?’

GILL, "Son of man, hath not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, said unto thee,.... The Jews that were in captivity; for with these the prophet was, and before their eyes he had done the above things; and they only could put the following question to him, who were "the rebellious house"; Eze_12:2; what dost thou? this they put not seriously, as desirous of being informed what was meant by all this; but as deriding the prophet for acting such a weak and silly part: this the Lord knew they had done, and therefore directs the prophet to make a proper answer; though some think the sense is, "hath not the house of Israel said unto thee, what dost thou?" no, they have not; they take no notice of it; never say one word about it, or inquire into the meaning of it; quite careless, thoughtless, and stupid; wherefore, though they will not ask anything concerning it, yet begin with them, and show them the design of it.

HENRY, "He is directed by what words to explain those signs and actions, as Agabus, when he bound his own hands and feet, told whose binding was thereby signified. But observe, It was not till morning that God gave him an exposition of the sign, till the next morning, to keep up in him a continual dependence upon God for instruction. As what God does, so what he directs us to do, perhaps we know not now, but shall know hereafter.

1. It was supposed that the people would ask the meaning of this sing, or at least they should (Eze_12:9): “Hath not the house of Israel said unto thee, What doest thou? Yes, I know they have. Though they are a rebellious house, yet they are inquisitive concerning the mind of God,” as those (Isa_58:2) who sought God daily. Therefore the prophet must do such a strange uncouth thing, that they might enquire what it meant; and then, it may be hoped, people will take notice of what is told them, and profit by it, when it comes to them in answer to their enquiries. But some understand it as an intimation that they had not made any such enquiries: “Hath not this rebellious house so much as asked thee, What doest thou? No; they take no notice of it; but tell them the meaning of it, though they do not ask.” Note, When God sends to us by his ministers he observes what entertainment we give to the messages he sends us; he hearkens and hears what we say to them, and what enquiries we make upon them, and is much displeased if we pass them by without taking any notice of them. When we have heard the word we should apply to our ministers for further instruction; and then we shall know if we thus follow on to know.

JAMISON, "What doest thou? — They ask not in a docile spirit, but making a jest 54

of his proceedings.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:9 Son of man, hath not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, said unto thee, What doest thou?

Ver. 9. Hath not the house of Israel … said unto thee, What doest thou?] (a) q.d., Nothing less. So stupid they are, or so stubborn, that they never once asked any such question; or if they did, it was in a jeer, as who should say, You are a wise man to trouble yourself and us in this foolish and childish manner; a great deal of gravity sure you show therewhile.

10 “Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This prophecy concerns the prince in Jerusalem and all the Israelites who are there.’

BARNES, "Burden - A word used to indicate a prediction of woe to be borne by some individual or people (Isa_13:1 note). Ezekiel, bearing his “stuff” on his shoulder was a sign of the weight of calamity coming upon king and people.

CLARKE, "This burden - This prediction concerning the prince. By this I point out the capture, misery, and ruin of Zedekiah.

GILL, "Say thou unto them, thus saith the Lord God,.... In answer to their sneering question; or notwithstanding their stupidity and indolence, and in order to awaken them out of it:

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this burden concerneth the prince in Jerusalem; the present reigning prince in Jerusalem, King Zedekiah. The sense is, either that that burden of goods the prophet carried out on his shoulders had a regard to the king of Judah and his captivity, and was an emblem of it; or rather that the burden of prophecy, or that sorrowful calamity predicted by the above sign or type, had relation to that prince, and would be fulfilled in him; and so the Targum, "upon the prince is the burden of this prophecy;'' in like manner Jarchi interprets it of prophecy: and all the house of Israel which are among them; they were also concerned in it, and would be carried captive with their prince.

HENRY 10-16, " The prophet is to tell them the meaning of it. In general (Eze_12:10), This burden concerns the prince in Jerusalem; they knew who that was, and gloried in it now that they were in captivity that they had a prince of their own in Jerusalem, and that the house of Israel was yet entire there, and therefore doubted not but in time to do well enough. “But tell them,” says God, “that in what thou hast done they may read the doom of their friends at Jerusalem. Say, I am your sign,” Eze_12:11. As the conversation of ministers should teach the people what they should do, so the providences of God concerning them are sometimes intended to tell them what they must expect. The unsettled state and removals of ministers give warning to people what they must expect in this world, no continuance, but constant changes. When times of trouble are coming on Christ tells his disciples, They shall first lay their hands on you,Luk_21:12. (1.) The people shall be led away into captivity (Eze_12:11): As I have done, so shall it be done unto them; they shall be forced away from their own houses, no more to return to them, neither shall their place know them any more. We cannot say concerning our dwelling-place that it is our resting-place; for how far we may be tossed from it before we die we cannot foresee. (2.) The prince shall in vain attempt to make his escape; for he also shall go into captivity. Jeremiah had told Zedekiah the same to his face (Jer_34:3): Thou shalt not escape, but shalt surely be taken. Ezekiel here foretels it to those who made him their confidence and promised themselves relief from him. [1.] That he shall himself carry away his own goods: He shall bear upon his shoulder some of his most valuable effects. Note, The judgments of God can turn a prince into a porter. He that was wont to have the regalia carried before him, and to march through the city at noon-day, shall now himself carry his goods on his back and steal away out of the city in the twilight. See what a change sin makes with men! All the avenues to the palace being carefully watched by the enemy, they shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby.Men shall be their own house-breakers, and steal away their own goods; so it is when the sword of war has cancelled all right and property. [2.] That he shall attempt to escape in a disguise, with a mask or a visor on, which shall cover his face, so that he shall be able only to look before him, and shall not see the ground with his eyes. He who, when he was in pomp, affected to be seen, now that he is in his flight is afraid to be seen; let none therefore either be proud of being looked at or over-much pleased with looking about them, when they see a king with his face covered, that he cannot see the ground. [3.] That he shall be made a prisoner and carried captive into Babylon (Eze_12:13): My net

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will I spread upon him and he shall be taken in my snare. It seemed to be the Chaldeans' net and their snare, but God owns them for his. Those that think to escape the sword of the Lord will find themselves taken in his net. Jeremiah had said that king Zedekiah should see the king of Babylon and that he should go to Babylon; Ezekiel says, He shall be brought to Babylon, yet he shall not see it, though he shall die there. Those that were disposed to cavil would perhaps object that these two prophets contradicted one another; for one said, He shall see the king of Babylon, the other said, He shall not see Babylon; and yet both proved true: he did see the king of Babylon at Riblah, where he passed sentence upon him for his rebellion, but there he had his eyes put out, so that he did not see Babylon when he was brought thither. These captives expected to see their prince come to Babylon as a conqueror, to bring them out of their trouble; but he shall come thither a prisoner, and his disgrace will be a great addition to their troubles. Little joy could they have in seeing him when he could not see them. [4.] That all his guards should be dispersed and utterly disabled for doing him any service (Eze_12:14): I will scatter all that are about him to help him, so that he shall be left helpless; I will scatter them among the nations and disperse them in the countries (Eze_12:15), to be monuments of divine justice wherever they go. But are there not hopes that they may rally again? (he that flies one time may fight another time); no: I will draw out the sword after them, which shall cut them off wherever if finds them; for the sword that God draws out will be sure to do the execution designed. Yet of Zedekiah's scattered troops some shall escape (Eze_12:16): I will leave a few men of them. Though they shall all be scattered, yet they shall not all be cut off; some shall have their lives given them for a prey. And the end for which they are thus remarkably spared is very observable: That they may declare all their abominations among the heathen whither they come;the troubles they are brought into will bring them to themselves and to their right mind, and then they will acknowledge the justice of God in all that is brought upon them and will make an ingenuous confession of their sins, which provoked God thus to contend with them; and, as by this it shall appear that they were spared in mercy, so hereby they will make a suitable grateful return to God for his favours to them in sparing them. Note, When God has remarkably delivered us from the deaths wherewith we were surrounded we must look upon it that for this end, among others, we were spared, that we might glorify God and edify others by making a penitent acknowledgment of our sins. Those that by their afflictions are brought to this are then made to know that God is the Lordand may help to bring others to the knowledge of him. See how God brings good out of evil. The dispersion of sinners, who had done God much dishonour and disservice in their own country, proves the dispersion of penitents, who shall do him much honour and service in others countries. The Levites are by a curse divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel, yet it is turned into a blessing, for thereby they have the fairest opportunity to teach Jacob God's laws.

JAMISON, "burden — that is, weighty oracle.the prince — The very man Zedekiah, in whom they trust for safety, is to be the chief sufferer. Josephus [Antiquities, 10.7] reports that Ezekiel sent a copy of this prophecy to Zedekiah. As Jeremiah had sent a letter to the captives at the Chebar, which was the means of calling forth at first the agency of Ezekiel, so it was natural for Ezekiel to send a message to Jerusalem confirming the warnings of Jeremiah. The prince, however, fancying a contradiction between Eze_12:13; “he shall not see Babylon,” and Jer_24:8,

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Jer_24:9, declaring he should be carried to Babylon, believed neither. Seeming discrepancies in Scripture on deeper search prove to be hidden harmonies.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:10 Say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD This burden [concerneth] the prince in Jerusalem, and all the house of Israel that [are] among them.

Ver. 10. This burden concerneth the princes in Jerusalem.] There is an elegance in the original. Princes who overburden their people shall one day have their back burden of miseries. Potentes potenter torquebuntur.

WHEDON, " 10. This burden concerneth the prince in Jerusalem — This is a very difficult phrase. Jeremiah had already used the word “burden” for a heavy and fear-inciting utterance of Jehovah (Jeremiah 23:33), and this may be the meaning here. Or does it mean that this bearing, or leading, has reference to the prince (Ezekiel 12:12), David’s son? This reference to the prince must have been very dangerous to the popularity of the prophet.

Reverence for the king, “the son of David,” the “anointed of Jehovah,” was highly developed in Israel. The religion and Messianic hope of everlasting dominion seemed bound up with the Davidic dynasty. But Ezekiel, except in one doubtful passage, never calls Zedekiah king. He considered the glory of the state as well as of the temple to have departed. This so-called king is but a vassal of Nebuchadnezzar, and deserves no kingly dignity or allegiance (Skinner). He, as well as the priests and the captains, is involved in the universal guilt and must meet the penalty.

And all the house of Israel that are among them — R.V., “all the house of Israel, among whom they are,” or, all the house of Israel which is in the midst of it (Kautzsch, Davidson).

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 12:10, Ezekiel 12:11

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This burden concerneth the prince in Jerusalem; literally, the prince is this burden in Jerusalem. The word "burden," in the sense of "prophecy," so common in Isaiah and Jeremiah and other prophets, as Hosea (Hosea 8:10) and Nahum (Nahum 1:1), is used by Ezekiel here only. Possibly he on the whole avoided it, as having fallen into discredit through its constant use by the false prophets (Jeremiah 23:1-40 :83-38), and preferred the formula of "the word of Jehovah." As interpreted by Jeremiah 39:4 and 2 Kings 25:4, the "prince" is Zedekiah. Possibly Ezekiel avoided the title "king," as seeing in him one who was a ruler de facto, but not a king de jure. The facts related in Jeremiah 39:4 exactly correspond with the symbolic act. Zedekiah and his men of war escape from the city by night, "by the way of the king's garden, by the gate between the two walls," probably enough with faces covered, as David's was in his flight (2 Samuel 15:30), to avoid detection, or as a sign of mourning, and through some freshly made exit from the palace. The further significance of the covered face is found in the fact that Zedekiah was blinded at Riblah by Nebuchadnezzar's orders, and from that time could not see the ground on which he trod. Those who see in every Old Testament prediction nothing but a prophecy ex eventu infer from this that this section of Ezekiel was written after the destruction of Jerusalem. I do not take that view, and place it in close connection with the preceding chapters. We note in verse 11 the peculiar phrase," I am your sign." Ezekiel, in what he does in the presence of the exiles, is figuring that which, before long, will come to pass in Jerusalem. They were to go forth into captivity as he had gone. For they shall remove, the Revised. Version gives, they shall go into exile.

11 Say to them, ‘I am a sign to you.’“As I have done, so it will be done to them. They will go into exile as captives.

GILL, "Say, I am your sign,.... Which represents you, and shows what will befall you: 59

like as I have done, so shall it be done unto them; as he had carried out his stuff, and had removed it from one place to another, so they should be carried away out of their own land into a foreign country, as follows: they shall remove, and go into captivity; the Babylonish captivity.

JAMISON, "sign — portent of evil to come (Eze_24:27; Zec_3:8, Margin). Fulfilled (2Ki_25:1-7; Jer_52:1-11).

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:11 Say, I [am] your sign: like as I have done, so shall it be done unto them: they shall remove [and] go into captivity.

Ver. 11. I am your sign.] And so it pleases you to make me your mocking stock. Sed risus hic est Sardonius. Of such mirth one may safely say, "It is mad; and of such laughter, What doeth it?" [Ecclesiastes 2:2]

Like as I have done.] My removal is mira, nova inimica, et ludicra; a marvel, newly hostile, and a show; but upon you it will fall heavily and horridly. That which hath befallen me in type only, shall befall you in truth and reality.

WHEDON, "11. I am your sign — It is no light thing to be set as a sign by the Lord. It is only the brave and consecrated man that God can so use. Few men have been great enough to be honored thus. Jehovah never takes the man clothed in fine linen, but the one clothed in sackcloth, when he would set a man as a sign before the world.

PETT, "Verse 11

“Say, I am your sign. Just as I have done, so will it be done to them. They will go into exile, into captivity. And the prince who is among them will bear on his shoulder in the dark, and will go out. They will dig through the wall to carry out by it. He will cover his face because he will not see the ground with his eyes.”

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What Ezekiel had acted out was a sign, a guarantee from God of would happen to both prince and people. Kings did not usually bear heavy burdens. But Zedekiah would, for he would have been brought down to a humble level by what was happening. Bearing the burdens may well have been part of his disguise. And they would go out ‘in the dark’. Compare John 13:30. It would be both literally true, and spiritually true. The future was dark before them. Their proud boast of being the chosen of Yahweh (Ezekiel 11:15) would have collapsed.

As mentioned above the covering of the face probably primarily indicated that he could not bear to look at the sacred ground which he was having to leave behind him, a measure of his despair. He and his followers would be leaving with broken hearts (compare 1 Samuel 28:14). But it may also have indicated some measure of disguise (so LXX), or even have included that he would shortly be blinded (Ezekiel 12:13).

Breaking through the wall indicated the extremity they would have come to. It was an ignominious flight. The gates would be heavily guarded by the enemy. See 2 Kings 25:4-6; Jeremiah 39:4-5; Jeremiah 52:7-8 for its fulfilment.

12 “The prince among them will put his things on his shoulder at dusk and leave, and a hole will be dug in the wall for him to go through. He will cover his face so that he cannot see the land.

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GILL, "And the prince that is among them,.... Zedekiah their king that reigned over them, in whom they trusted, and under whose government they thought themselves safe and secure: shall bear upon his shoulder in the twilight, and shall go forth; out of Jerusalem, where his palace and throne were, leaving the main of his riches behind him; only should carry away what he could on his shoulder, a bundle of his most valuable effects, or provisions for his flight: or, as Kimchi and Ben Melech think, his clothes, for lighter march, and more speedy haste: they shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby; it seems by this, that when the king, and his nobles and servants, made their escape, they not only went forth between two walls, but broke through one, in order to get away; which was done, not by the king himself, but by his servants; so the Targum, "in a wall shall they dig to bring him out by it;'' and therefore the number is changed, not "he", but "they, shall dig", &c. though in the following words the singular is again used: he shall cover his face, that he see not the ground with his eyes; either through shame at leaving the city, his palace, and all his grandeur. The Targum is, "he shall cover his face because he hath sinned:'' or that he might not be known and be discovered who he was; and so it was through fear of being betrayed by a false friend, or taken by the enemy: or else this may respect his having his eyes put out at Riblah, so that he could not see with them the land he was carried into; though it rather seems to refer to his first escape out of Jerusalem with a mask or vizor on him, which might hinder his seeing the ground he went upon; and which, in his fright, he could not attend to, looking out here and there, not being able to keep his eye long upon any place. The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and Arabic versions, render it, "that he may not be seen with the eye, and he shall not see the land".

JAMISON, "prince ... among them — literally, “that is in the midst of them,” that is, on whom the eyes of all are cast, and “under whose shadow” they hope to live (Lam_4:20).

shall bear — namely, his “stuff for removing”; his equipments for his journey.cover his face, that he see not the ground — See on Eze_12:6; the symbol in Eze_12:6 is explained in this verse. He shall muffle his face so as not to be recognized: a humiliation for a king!

CALVIN, "We have said that two things were shown, both the people’s exile and their clandestine flight: the Prophet now speaks again about this trembling. He says therefore, that not only the vulgar and the dregs of the people would be so anxious that they would endeavor to escape secretly and carry their own baggage; but the

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prince himself, that is, their king would be subject to such ignominy: the prince himself, says he, shall carry on his shoulder. Many followed him, as we have seen, and at length he was seized with a great company, as the Prophet will shortly subjoin, and being’ caught in the desert of Jericho, he was dragged by the enemy before their king: but here mention is made of the king alone, because it was almost incredible that the enemy could not be reconciled. For surrender often appeases even the most hostile enemies; it often preserves kings, although an extended carnage may take place; and we know that kings are often preserved on account of their dignity, after they have been led in triumph. What therefore the Prophet pronounces concerning king Zedekiah does not imply any escape of the multitude from similar punishment: but because the king himself, together with his subjects in general, would be compelled to escape by stealth, and would be sure to fall into the hands of the enemy.

Next, the prince who is in the midst of them Here the words, the midst of them, are taken in a different sense from that in which the Israelites were lately said to be in the midst of the people who inhabited Jerusalem, because they had been mixed with the Jews from the time when they had dwelt within their territories. But he says their prince was in the midst in another sense, because in truth the eyes of all were turned towards him, as if when a standard is erected, it is beheld by all, and retains the whole multitude in their ranks, so also the king was in the midst, that the people might not disperse, for a miserable dispersion follows when the head is taken away. But the intention of the Holy Spirit must be observed. For the Jews, as we have formerly seen, were hardened in their wickedness by the false pretense that God would always maintain his dwelling among them. For it had been said of the throne of David, that it should stand as long as the sun and moon should shine in the heavens. (Psalms 89:36.) And hence Jeremiah’s lamentable complaint: the Christ, or anointed of God, in whose breath our life consisted. (Lamentations 4:20.) The Prophet does not speak there after the usual mode, and obtrusively remind God of his promise, as hypocrites do, but he has respect to God’s counsel. For David, since he was a type of Christ, was truly the soul of the people, even among the Gentiles, as he is there reckoned to be. For they not only looked to their king for safety while included within the city walls, but although dispersed among the nations, they still hoped to be safe under their monarch’s shadow. But their confidence was perverse, since they had impiously departed from the true worship of God. Hence the Prophet, to deprive them of that vain source of pride and boasting, says, now their king was in the midst of them: but it would not always be so, for God would drive him out, and even compel him to fly into secret hiding-places.

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He afterwards adds, he shall hide his face, that he shall not see the ground with his eyes This also was accomplished, the sacred history narrates. For Zedekiah escaped through the gardens by subterraneous passages: he thought the enemy would be ignorant of his flight, but he was seized. (2 Kings 25:4; and Jeremiah 39:4.) We see, then, the meaning of this concealment of his face or countenance, namely, because Zedekiah distrusted any he might meet. But this was very bitter, and also base and disgraceful, for a king so to conceal himself, and not to dare to look upon the ground with his eyes. And now something far more disastrous follows.

COKE, "Ezekiel 12:12. Shall bear upon his shoulder— Shall be carried upon shoulders, &c. They shall dig through the wall, and he shall go out thereby. Houbigant. Or rather, He shall dig. ο . Ar. Syr. For the fact, see Jeremiah 39:4; Jeremiah 52:7. 2 Kings 25:4. It is probable, that the king and his companions fled through a breach made by themselves in the wall. Or, as Michaelis suggests, the gate through which they fled may have been walled up during the siege.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:12 And the prince that [is] among them shall bear upon [his] shoulder in the twilight, and shall go forth: they shall dig through the wall to carry out thereby: he shall cover his face, that he see not the ground with [his] eyes.

Ver. 12. And the prince that is among them.] Zedekiah, that profane, wicked prince. [Ezekiel 21:25]

Shall bear upon his shoulders in the twilight.] His precious things (see on Ezekiel 12:6). This, though it be not recorded in the holy history, yet that it was so, we are assured by this scripture. Great men in exigents stoop to low offices. This load upon his shoulders might hinder his flight and further his surprise, as it did Bajazet’s, when he was beaten out of the field by Tamerlane, that he stayed to water his horse. The Vulgate rendereth it, but not well, in humeris portabitur, he shall be carried on men’s shoulders. The Pope, indeed, is ordinarily so carried; but he was glad to foot it when forced by the German and Spanish soldiers; A.D. 1527, he was glad to secure himself in his castle St Angelo.

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They shall dig through the wall.] The door haply, or inlet of some underground passage.

He shall cover his face.] See on Ezekiel 12:6. This he did haply through fear, or shame, or for a disguise; but his sin found him out.

WHEDON, "12. The prince… shall bear upon his shoulder, etc. — The king of Israel is represented as carrying upon his own shoulder all the load which his people carries — and is there not also upon him the heavier “burden” of fulfilled prophecy? (See note Ezekiel 12:6; Ezekiel 12:10.)

PARKER, "

"And the prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in the twilight, and shall go forth" ( Ezekiel 12:12).

Princes always lay burdens upon other people. A prince is an incubus. The time comes when princes have to carry burdens; that is the burden of the Lord, that is the prophecy of eternal righteousness. The prince that is among them, who has been heaping burdens upon other people"s shoulders, shall one day stoop to take up his own load, and his eyes—those "inlets of lust"—shall be dug out, and Zedekiah shall accept the fate of a blind slave. Verily there is a God that ruleth in the world. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." You cannot die before harvest-time. Though you physically die, the harvest is still to be reaped. Imagine not that having had a season of seed-sowing you can run away from the harvest, for the harvest will run after you, and you will have to reap it, here or at the antipodes, or in the invisible state. That black harvest must be cut down and garnered, and you must keep the key of the granary. Sometimes it seems as if it were not so. There have arisen in the Church from age to age men who have been troubled by the prosperity of the wicked, saying, They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men; therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment; their eyes stand out with fatness; they have more than

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heart could wish; they live in palaces, they play on harps and viols, and whatsoever they call for, the answer is immediately at hand; the righteous are driven out, and virtue is thrown down in the streets, and the devil is the prince of this world. There is too much immediate reason for saying Song of Solomon , but ultimate reason there is none. Any part of life that we can see is nothing in its relation to the whole mystery and purpose of divine duration. Our life of seventy years all told is a breath, a gasp, a sigh,—sustaining no relation to the duration that is to be. Who is this man who sits as Chief Justice on the king"s bench, and then sits as Lord High Chancellor of England? Who is this Denbigh boy, who has, by unquestionable ability, and by the absence of conscience, worked his way to great eminence? Hear him: how he storms on the bench; how his gaunt eyes express anger, hatred, malice! Hear how he sentences Sidney, and sends Baxter to prison, and turns the gaol key on John Bunyan! He will dine to-night with some of his own company, and in their wine how they will sneer at the puritan fanatics! Surely the Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the righteous are given over to be burned and scourged by wicked hands. Let us travel eastward in London awhile. Who is this man in front of us? He is an attorney. Where was he a little while ago? Before the judge. How was he treated by the judge? Contemptuously, as every honest man was treated. Who is that in the window of a Wapping public-house? A seaman?—no, but a man with a seaman"s clothes on. To whom can those eyes belong? Only to one man. Where are the eyebrows? Shaved off. Who is that? It is the infernal Jeffreys. The populace is maddened; the populace will seize him, and drag him out, and bring him to the Council, and frighten the Lord Mayor of London, and Jeffreys shall beg to be taken to prison, and be thankful for the shelter of a gaol. Let him go to the Tower, and live awhile, and then die within those capacious and to him inhospitable walls. The Lord will look after all issues. Believe not that bad men can have all their own way, and displace the throne and occupy it themselves. It would seem as if providence allowed men to go a long way without punishment, and then made mean men, as well as prophets, signs to their generation and to after ages.

Then the prophet was to be a second sign:—

13 I will spread my net for him, and he will be 66

caught in my snare; I will bring him to Babylonia, the land of the Chaldeans, but he will not see it, and there he will die.

CLARKE, "I will bring - him to Babylon - yet shall he not see it - Because Nebuchadnezzar caused him to have his eyes put out at Riblah. To Babylon he was carried in his blind state, and there he died. In saying, My net also will I spread upon him, there is probably a reference to an ancient manner of fighting. One, who was called the retiarius, had a small casting net, which if he could throw over his antagonist’s head, he then dispatched him with his sword; if he missed his throw, he was obliged to run in order to get his net once more adjusted for another throw. In the mean time the other pursued him with all his speed to prevent this, and to dispatch him; hence he was called secutor: the first the netman, the second the pursuer.

GILL, "My net also will I spread upon him,.... Meaning the Chaldean army, which the Lord raised up, and brought against him, and gave success unto: and he shall be taken in my snare; as a bird is taken in the snare of the fowler; or a wild beast by the hunter. The Jews have a tradition, which is mentioned both by Jarchi, Kimchi, and Abendana on the place, that there was a cave which reached from Zedekiah's house to the plains of Jericho, by the way of which he fled; and that God prepared a deer, which went upon the top of the cave; and the Chaldeans pursued it; and when it came to the mouth of the cave, Zedekiah was coming out, and they took him: and I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it; his eyes being put out at Riblah, Jer_39:7. The Prophet Jeremiah says that his eyes should behold the eyes of the king of Babylon, Jer_34:3; and yet here Ezekiel says that he should not see the land of the Chaldeans. Josephus (u) observes, that Zedekiah thought these two prophecies contradicted each other, and therefore gave credit to neither; but they both proved true; he saw the king of Babylon at Riblah; but his eyes being there put out, he saw not Babylon, whither he was carried captive: though he shall die there; as he did, Jer_52:11.

JAMISON, "My net — the Chaldean army. He shall be inextricably entangled in it, 67

as in the meshes of a net. It is God’s net (Job_19:6). Babylon was God’s instrument (Isa_10:5). Called “a net” (Hab_1:14-16).bring him to Babylon ... ; yet shall he not see it — because he should be deprived of sight before he arrived there (Jer_52:11)

CALVIN, "That was no slight slaughter, when Zedekiah at length, in his desperation, thought of flight, and thus descended into hidden trenches, as if seeking life in the tomb: thus was he reduced to extremities. But the Prophet now adds, that it would be useless, because notwithstanding this he should be taken by his enemies Besides, what God executed by means of the Chaldeans he properly transfers to himself. The Chaldeans laid their snares when advised of the king’s flight: they knew its direction, and hence they apprehended him. So God announces himself as the author: I, says he, will stretch out my net. This we know, that the Chaldeans did not leave their own country of their own accord, nor carry on the war in their own strength, nor take the king by their own counsel; but the whole affair was under the government of heaven. Men lent their aid, and seemed to carry’ on the work by their own labor; but unless God had provided for the event, all their endeavors had proved fruitless. Hence, as God had stirred up the Chaldeans to exact punishment from the king and the people, so he raised their minds to confidence, then he strengthened them to persist in the siege of the city, and afterwards opened their eyes, and sent persons to disclose the plans of the king, so that he might be seized in a cave, as it really happened. The whole of this was done by the secret providence of God. So diligently ought we to observe those places in which God shows that what seems to be the work of men is really his own. Even likeness does not want its weight; for we seem always to have some refuge in perplexity, and on whatever side we look around, some hope deceives us. But God announces that he has nets spread, by which we are surrounded on every side: hence when we seem to have a way of escape, God has hidden nets in which he encloses us. So that this place compares God to a hunter, and ourselves to wild beasts; for when a huntsman follows wild beasts, they seek for a way of escape and rush out there, but they are caught in nets: so also when we endeavor to elude God’s hands, we are entrapped and held by him: because when we wish to withdraw ourselves from his providence, we deserve that blindness which leads us to rush on our own destruction.

Hence I will spread my net for him, and he shall be taken in my snares, I will lead him away, says he, to Babylon The Prophet shows by degrees how formidably God’s vengeance should alight on Zedekiah and the whole people. It was already most miserable to be taken by the enemy and subjected to their lust and cruelty. If he had been slain, this would have been accomplished in a single moment, but God wished

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him to be drawn into exile; meanwhile he says that he should die at Babylon, without seeing the city, both of which were accomplished. Zedekiah then wasted away in exile, for he lay even to his death in filth and defilement. And although he was buried, as we saw in Jeremiah, yet this condition was most sorrowful — to fear through one’s whole lifetime some fresh wrath of an enemy. Then he was barbarously and inhumanly treated: his eyes were put out on the journey; and here it is said, he shall not see Babylon, and yet he shall arrive there and die there. Afterwards he saw his sons strangled in his sight: then his eyes were dug out — a spectacle more grievous than death. Now we may reflect on the kind of life a man must spend in exile, in prison, and in chains — since he was bound with chains, as the sacred narrative informs us — there to consume away by a slow death in a foul prison and in total darkness; yet all this happened to Zedekiah. We see then how God thunders against the Israelites, who thought themselves hardly treated in exile, since they might have remained safe at Jerusalem.

COKE, "Ezekiel 12:13. My net also— "Though Zedekiah flatters himself with escaping the Chaldean army, yet he shall find himself fatally mistaken; for I will bring his enemies upon him, who shall encompass him, and stop his flight, as when a wild beast is entangled in a net." See Jeremiah 37; Jeremiah 38; and Jeremiah 52:10-11.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:13 My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare: and I will bring him to Babylon [to] the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there.

Ver. 13. My net also will I spread upon him.] Princes usually love hunting and fowling. Lo, the Chaldees shall hunt him and overcatch him.

And he shall be taken in my snare.] Snares are set secretly, catch suddenly, hold certainly. A stronghold the Hebrew word here used doth also signify. (a)

Yet shall he not see it.] For his eyes were put out at Riblah. [2 Kings 25:7] And yet, behold, a greater blindness that befell him than this. Josephus (b) testifieth that

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Zedekiah not understanding these words of Ezekiel, and thinking them to be contrary to Jeremiah’s words, he resolved to believe neither of them.

WHEDON, " 13. My net also will I spread upon him — The attempt to escape shall be a failure. The Babylonian king shall capture the fugitives and carry them to Chaldea, but the net in which they are taken is not Nebuchadnezzar’s, but Jehovah’s. These shrewd “captains” might have outwitted Nebuzaradan, but they could not evade the Almighty (Jeremiah 39:4-7; Hosea 7:12; Ezekiel 17:20; Ezekiel 32:3).

Yet shall he not see it — This explicit prophecy, that his eyes should be put out, was literally fulfilled — though Ezekiel himself does not record its fulfillment (2 Kings 25:7; Jeremiah 39:7; Jeremiah 52:11). “Ezekiel had no solicitude to make out the truth of his own predictions.” — Cowles.

PETT, "Verse 13

“My net also will I spread on him, and he will be taken in my snare. And I will bring him to Babylon, to the land of the Chaldeans. Yet he will not see it, even though he will die there.”

The attempted escape will be frustrated, and it will be Yahweh’s doing. Like a hunter He will cast His net over them, and capture them in his snare (compare Hosea 7:12; Lamentations 1:13). They will not be allowed to escape, for they must reap what they had sown. God’s sovereignty over what Nebuchadnezzar was doing is clearly revealed. It is Yahweh Himself Who will bring Zedekiah to Babylon.

‘Yet he will not see it, even though he will die there.’ But though Zedekiah is brought to Babylon, where he will remain for the remainder of his life, he will not see it, for he will have been blinded (2 Kings 25:7).

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PULPIT. "Ezekiel 12:13

My net also will I spread, etc. Compare the same image in Lamentations 1:13. The prediction of Lamentations 1:12 is reiterated with emphasis. Zedekiah shall be in Babylon, yet shall not see. Josephus ('Ant.,' 10. 7.2; 8.2) relates that Ezekiel sent this prophecy to Jerusalem, and that Zedekiah, finding an apparent discrepancy in the words that he should not see Babylon, and those of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 32:4; Jeremiah 34:3), hardened himself in his unbelief. There is no reason, however, for supposing that Josephus had access to any other records than the books of the two prophets, and his narrative looks rather like an imagined history of what might have been.

14 I will scatter to the winds all those around him—his staff and all his troops—and I will pursue them with drawn sword.

GILL, "And I will scatter to every wind all that are about him to help him,.... Either his bodyguards, the men of war that were with him when he fled, Jer_52:7; or his auxiliary troops, the Egyptians, whom he had taken into his pay for his assistance: and all his bands: or "wings" (w); the wings of his army. The Targum interprets it his army; these were all scattered from him when he was taken, Jer_52:8; and I will draw out the sword after them: which fled into Egypt, and other countries; so that they did not escape, though they went not into captivity; see Eze_5:12.

JAMISON, "all ... about him — his satellites: his bodyguard.bands — literally, “the wings” of an army (Isa_8:8).draw out ... sword after them — (See on Eze_5:2; see on Eze_5:12).

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CALVIN, "He confirms the verse above, and says, that although Zedekiah had many soldiers as a garrison, and accustomed the people to bear arms, yet all this would not profit him, since God would disperse all the guards in whom he trusted. He says then, that he would scatter to every wind all who were around Zedekiah For unbelievers were deceived when they saw the king surrounded by auxiliaries, and the people of the city trained to warfare: and since Zedekiah was so armed for the defense of the city, they thought it could never be taken by the Chaldeans. God, therefore, here first of all teaches that the war was carried on under his auspices, and then that there was no doubt of his taking the city. He does not speak of the Chaldeans, lest unbelievers should institute a comparison — “it is true indeed that the Chaldeans are besieging the city with a strong and numerous army, but the city is impregnable, and besides it is defended with great spirit, and the king has forces sufficiently strong for his defense.” Lest this opinion should foolishly deceive the disbelievers, God comes into the field and turns their attention away from the Chaldeans. For this reason he ascribes to himself the conduct of the enemy: hence we gather that profane nations are in God’s hands, since he not only governs them by the spirit of regeneration, but compels even the impious, who desire to abolish his authority, to obey his commands. God does not draw his sword from heaven, nor do angels openly appear with drawn swords; the Chaldeans do that; but as it is said in Isaiah, (Isaiah 10:15,) Shall the ax boast itself against its owner? Since thus the vigor of the Chaldeans was nothing in itself, God armed them and then afforded them the success which he wished. It follows —

COFFMAN, ""And I will scatter to every wind all that are round about him to help him, and all his bands; and I will draw out the word after them. And they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I shall disperse them among the nations, and scatter them though the countries. But I will leave a few men of them from the sword, from the famine, and from the pestilence; that they may declare all their abominations among the nations whither they come; and they shall know that I am Jehovah."

Here it appears that one of God's reasons for leaving any survivors at all was that he might have witnesses unto all generations of the gross sins and abominations of the Chosen People.

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"I will scatter all ... who were there to help Zedekiah... and all of his bands (soldiers) ..." (Ezekiel 12:14). This also happened exactly as prophesied. "But those friends and captains of Zedekiah who had fled with him out of the city, when they saw their enemies near them, they left him and dispersed themselves, some one way, and some another ... so they took Zedekiah alive, when he was deserted by all but a few; and with his children and his wives, they brought him to Nebuchadnezzar."[5]

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:14 And I will scatter toward every wind all that [are] about him to help him, and all his bands; and I will draw out the sword after them.

Ver. 14. And I will scatter toward every wind.] His bodyguard, σοματοφυλακες. Esquires of his body, auxiliaries. I will put him into a helpless condition. [Psalms 146:3] If the Lord do not help thee, whence shall I help thee? said that king to her that cried to him for help. [2 Kings 6:27]

WHEDON, "Verse 14-15

14, 15. See notes Ezekiel 5:1-13. To Ezekiel Jehovah (Lord) was the equivalent of justice and holiness; and when he said, “They shall know Jehovah,” he meant that the divine justice and holiness would then be demonstrated.

PETT, "Verses 14-16

“And I will scatter towards every wind all who are round about him to help him, and all his bands, and I will draw out the sword after them. And they will know that I am Yahweh, when I will disperse them among the nations and scatter them through the countries. But I will leave a few men of them from the sword, from the famine and from pestilence, that they may declare all their abominations among the nations where they go, and they will know that I am Yahweh.”

Those of Zedekiah’s supporters and military units not captured and exiled with him 73

will be scattered in every direction (‘every wind’ means in every direction. It probably refers to the well recognised ‘four winds’ (Ezekiel 37:9; Jeremiah 49:36; Daniel 7:2; Daniel 8:8; Daniel 11:4; Zechariah 2:6), thus in all four directions). They will be dispersed among many nations and countries. They will constantly be harried by enemies, they will suffer famine and pestilence. But some (‘a few men’) will be spared so that they may face up to how they have sinned, may at last recognise Yahweh for what He is, and may then testify to the nations how what has happened to them was deserved because of their own dreadful behaviour. Thus the destruction of Jerusalem will bring honour to Yahweh in the eyes of the nations, instead of revealing Him as weak and unable to do anything. The latter would be the usual interpretation of the defeat.

The fact that ‘a few men’ will survive brings out the awfulness of their situation. It is only a few who will survive what is to come on them. As refugees their lives are going to be very hard, and will result in premature death for the large majority, through violence against them, pestilence and disease, and through continual food shortage. This will be the consequence of the way that Israel has treated Yahweh through the previous centuries. They had been given every chance, for He had constantly protected them, but instead of responding in repentance, they had taken advantage of Yahweh’s continuing mercy, assuming that it would go on for ever. So now His protection would be withdrawn.

‘And they will know that I am Yahweh.’ Twice repeated for emphasis, but with two different slants. Both the refugees and the nations they go among will learn the truth about Yahweh. Both will recognise His holiness, His hatred of sin, and His ability to act.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 12:14, Ezekiel 12:15

And I will scatter. The capture of the king would naturally be followed by the dispersion of his adherents, some of whom would fall by the sword, while a few (Hebrew, men of number, i.e. easily counted) would escape to some neighbouring country, where they might hope to find a refuge. There they would have to tell their tale of shame, and to let the heathen know that Jehovah was thus punishing their

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abominations (comp. Ezekiel 14:22, Ezekiel 14:23). The prophecy ends with the familiar formula, They shall knew that I am the Lord.

15 “They will know that I am the Lord, when I disperse them among the nations and scatter them through the countries.

GILL, "And they shall know that I am the Lord,.... God omniscient, and can and do foresee and foretell future events, when the above things shall come to pass; and omnipotent, able to do what he purposed and declared he would; and true and faithful to his word, and holy and righteous in all his ways and works: when I shall scatter them among the nations, and disperse them in the countries; of Egypt, Babylon, Media, and other places.

CALVIN, "Here God insults both Jews and Israelites who had united themselves. He says that he would so display his power that they should be compelled to acknowledge him, but to their own destruction. Experimental knowledge is sometimes attributed to the faithful; because when we are too slow, God shows us his power by sure proofs. But what is here said ought to be restricted to the reprobate and abandoned, who do not acknowledge God except in death. Yet Zedekiah was not entirely without the fear of God: he reverenced Jeremiah, and the seed of piety was not altogether extinct in his mind. As regards the people, inasmuch as they offered the daily sacrifice, they certainly cherished some opinion of God’s favor, and also of his power. But because they despised the Prophets, they were altogether unsubdued, and made a laughing-stock of their threats, and for this cause they are said not to acknowledge God. And we must diligently notice this. For the impious do not think themselves so stupid as to refuse to God his just honor; but yet when God calls them they turn their backs: when he sets before them his message, even for their own advantage, they are not only deaf and stop their ears, but they

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are even riotous, and deride all his threats like idle stories. But it is certain that no knowledge of God can flourish when such contempt of his doctrine prevails. For this reason he says now, at length the Jews shall know, because this contempt hindered them from ascribing praise to God for his power; for they had been terrified by even his nod. Jeremiah had assiduously instructed them in God’s word, but they were so hardened that they treated it as a thing of nought. The threat then is most grievous: as if God had said, When I smite you with my hand, you shall feel me to be God. Let us learn then to acknowledge God betimes by faith, because this is the fitting opportunity for salutary knowledge. Let us not abuse his patience while he rages against us with a stretched out hand, and pursues us fiercely. Sometimes, indeed, he chastises his own people for their good, but when it comes to pass that there is no hope of repentance to the reprobate, then he reduces them to nothing. Now it follows —

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:15 And they shall know that I [am] the LORD, when I shall scatter them among the nations, and disperse them in the countries.

Ver. 15. And they shall know that I am the Lord.] The Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God. [Nehemiah 1:5] This they shall know magno suo male, his great wrong, who would not take knowledge what was said unto them by the prophets.

16 But I will spare a few of them from the sword, famine and plague, so that in the nations where they go they may acknowledge all their detestable practices. Then they will know that I am the Lord.”

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BARNES, "Few - literally, as in the margin; so few, that they can easily be counted Isa_10:19. The few who should escape destruction should make known to all among whom they should dwell how great had been the wickedness of the people, how just their punishment.

GILL, "But I will leave a few men of them,.... Or, "men of number" (x); of a small number, such as are easily reckoned up; which will require no great skill in numbers, nor trouble to count them: from the sword, from the famine, and from the pestilence; during the siege of Jerusalem, and at the breaking of it up; but then they should be carried captive into other countries: that they may declare all their abominations among the Heathen whither they come; who, observing their calamities, and distresses, would read their sin in their punishment; and conclude they must have been guilty of great enormities, who were punished in such a manner; so that their punishment was a visible and standing declaration to the Heathens of the abominable sins they had been guilty of: or else the end of reserving a few of them from the above capital judgments was, that they being brought to a sense of their sins by their afflictions, might freely confess them, express their repentance for them, and justify God in his proceedings towards them: and they shall know that I am the Lord; not the Heathens, among whom this declaration would be made; but the Jews, brought under a conviction of their sin, and of the justice of God in his dealings with them.

JAMISON, "I will leave a few ... that they may declare ... abominations — God’s purpose in scattering a remnant of Jews among the Gentiles; namely, not only that they themselves should be weaned from idolatry (see Eze_12:15), but that by their own word, as also by their whole state as exiles, they should make God’s righteousness manifest among the Gentiles, as vindicated in their punishment for their sins (compare Isa_43:10; Zec_8:13).

CALVIN, "Some think that God here speaks of the faithful, whom he had determined to preserve in the very midst of death. And certainly there is some mitigation of his former vengeance. But it is not in harmony with the rest to understand the faithful here, for he is speaking of the people in general. But as we have already seen that the slaughter of the city was such that God scattered the remnant to the four winds, and this the Prophet confirms. We must hold, then, first of all, that this promise was not directed peculiarly to the elect or to God’s Church,

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but rather that God is showing that exile will not be the end of woes to the captives, although they will not be directly cut to pieces. Their condition, indeed, might seem preferable, but God pronounces that he would be inexorable towards them. Although all should not perish by the sword, or famine, or pestilence, and some remnant should be left, that will happen, says he, not because I am going to be reconciled to them, but that I may spread their crimes among the Gentiles. For when he says, that they may narrate, he does not mean that they would be witnesses to their own sins, as the pious are accustomed, as we shall see elsewhere, to extol the mercy of God, and candidly to confess their faults before men. He does not mean that kind of confession which is a sign of repentance, but rather a real speech. (257) For that exile uttered with a loud voice, that those men were abandoned whom God treated with such hostility. He had chosen the people, was the guardian of the city, and would have been their perpetual preserver, if their perverseness had not prevented it. Hence their being destitute of his aid, their being deprived of all their goods, their being treated tyrannically by their enemies, this made their extreme wickedness clearly appear. They narrated, then, not by words but by their actual position, their own sins to the Gentiles.

Now, therefore, we understand the intention of God: although some remained alive and unconcerned by either the sword, or famine, or pestilence, yet they were cursed, since their expulsion to a distance served no other purpose than that of spreading their disgrace and rendering them detestable, so flint the profane Gentiles acknowledged that they deserved vengeance for their wickedness. Therefore they shall narrate among the Gentiles all their abominations, and they shall know that I am Jehovah. Again he repeats that sentiment, that they should know too late what they had despised: since God had acted towards them as a father, and they had not acknowledged his favor; and at length they should be compelled to feel him as their judge, even to their eternal destruction.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:16 But I will leave a few men of them from the sword, from the famine, and from the pestilence; that they may declare all their abominations among the heathen whither they come; and they shall know that I [am] the LORD.

Ver. 16. But I will leave a few men.] Heb., Men of number, a company scarce considerable in comparison of the many.

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That they may declare all their abominations.] Give glory to God, take shame to themselves, and thereby do much good to those heathens hardened before by their evil behaviour. Vere magnus est Deus Christianorum, Truly, great is the God of the Christians, said one Calocerius, a heathen.

17 The word of the Lord came to me:

CLARKE, "Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying. Here follows another sign of the desolation of the Jews, which the prophet was unto them; as the former signified their going into captivity, this their famine and distress at the siege of Jerusalem, and the dreadful calamities attending and following that.

GILL, "Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying. Here follows another sign of the desolation of the Jews, which the prophet was unto them; as the former signified their going into captivity, this their famine and distress at the siege of Jerusalem, and the dreadful calamities attending and following that.

HENRY 17-20, "Here again the prophet is made a sign to them of the desolations that were coming on Judah and Jerusalem. 1. He must himself eat and drink in care and fear, especially when he was in company, Eze_12:17, Eze_12:18. Though he was under no apprehension of danger to himself, but lived in safety and plenty, yet he must eat his bread with quaking (the bread of sorrows, Psa_127:2) and drink his water with trembling and with carefulness, that he might express the calamitous condition of those that should be in Jerusalem during the siege; not that he must dissemble and pretend to be in fear and care when really he was not; but having to foretel this judgment, to show that he firmly believed it himself, and yet was far from desiring it, in the prospect of it he was himself affected with grief and fear. Note, When ministers speak of the ruin coming upon impenitent sinners they must endeavour to speak feelingly, as those that know the terrors of the Lord; and they must be content to endure hardness, so that they may but do good. 2. He must tell them that the inhabitants of Jerusalem should in like manner eat and drink with care and fear, Eze_12:19, Eze_12:20. Both those that have their home in Jerusalem and those of the land of Israel that come to shelter themselves there, shall eat their bread with carefulness and drink their water with astonishment, either

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because they are afraid it will not hold out, but they shall want shortly, or because they are continually expecting the alarms of the enemy, their life hanging in doubt before them (Deu_28:66), so that what they have they shall have no enjoyment of nor will it do them any good. Note, Care and fear, if they prevail, are enough to embitter all our comforts and are themselves very sore judgments. They shall be reduced to these straits that thus by degrees, and by the hand of those that thus straiten them, both city and country may be laid in ruins; for it is no less than an utter destruction of both that is aimed at in these judgments - that her land may be desolate from all the fulness thereof, may be stripped of all its ornaments and robbed of all its fruits, and then of course the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, for they are served by the field. This universal desolation was coming upon them, and then no wonder that they eat their bread with care and fear. Now we are here told, (1.) How bad the cause of this judgment was; it is because of the violence of all those that dwell therein, their injustice and oppression, and the mischief they did one another, for which God would reckon with them, as well as for the affronts put upon him in his worship. Note, The decay of virtue in a nation brings on a decay of every thing else; and when neighbours devour one another it is just with God to bring enemies upon them to devour them all. (2.) How good the effect of this judgment should be: You shall know that I am the Lord; and if, by these judgments, they learn to know him aright, that will make up the loss of all they are deprived of by these desolations. Those are happy afflictions, how grievous soever to flesh and blood, that help to introduce us into and improve us in an acquaintance with God.

K&D, 17-20, "Sign Depicting the Terrors and Consequences of the Conquest of JerusalemEze_12:17. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Eze_12:18. Son of man, thou shalt eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and trouble; Eze_12:19. And say to the people of the land, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, in the land of Israel, They will eat their bread in trouble, and drink their water in amazement, because her land is laid waste of all its fulness for the wickedness of all who dwell therein. Eze_12:20. And the inhabited cities become desolate, and the land will be laid waste; that ye may learn that I am Jehovah. - The carrying out of this sign is not mentioned; not that there is any doubt as to its having been done, but that it is simply taken for granted. The trouble and trembling could only be expressed by means of gesture. רעש, generally an earthquake or violent convulsion; here, simply shaking, synonymous with רגזה, trembling. “Bread and water” is the standing expression for food; so that even here the idea of scanty provisions is not to be sought therein. This idea is found merely in the signs of anxiety and trouble with which Ezekiel was to eat his food. אל־אדמת upon the land,” equivalent to “in the“ ,על־אד' =land.” This is appended to show that the prophecy does not refer to those who had already been carried into exile, but to the inhabitants of Jerusalem who were still in the land. For the subject-matter, compare Eze_4:16-17. למען indicates not the intention, “in order that,” but the motive, “because.”

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CALVIN, "The Prophet is now ordered to represent the famine which awaited the Jews in both the siege and exile. But this prophecy ought to be especially referred to the time of the siege; for the Jews were in continual fear, and thought that by means of their garrison they would be impregnable. But as the Lord had often removed this trust from them, so he does now: hence therefore that miserable anxiety and fear, so that they never ate their bread but in fear, nor drank their water but in confusion. For a besieged city always fears for itself, and then the enemy so harasses them that fatigue at length compels the besieged to surrender. And it is probable, since the army of the Chaldees could often attempt to take the city with ease and without any great loss, that the Jews would daily be subject to fresh terrors, so that they could neither eat bread nor drink water except in anxiety and confusion. But because simple and unadorned teaching would not have been effective among the ten tribes and the Jews, hence an outward symbol is added. The Prophet therefore is the image of the besieged people, and hence he is ordered to eat his bread with trembling, that the spectacle might the more affect these slow and slothful men. By and bye the application follows, thou shalt say to the people of the land I do not doubt that he here means the ten tribes: hence the land signifies Chaldea, and those regions through which the exiles were dispersed. As we have before seen, it was to their advantage to hear this, because they thought that the Jews remaining at home were treated well, and themselves miserably. Hence not only their complaint but even their outcry against God and his servants, especially Jeremiah. This then is the reason why the Prophet is obliged to utter his discourse to the captives.

But afterwards it follows, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the inhabitants of Jerusalem concerning the land of Israel, that is, those remaining in the land of Israel. We here see that the land of Israel is distinguished from the other land, of which mention was lately made. Those who dwelt at Jerusalem remained quiet in their own inheritance; and hence their condition was esteemed better, because nothing is more sad than exile and captivity. But God pronounces them more miserable than the captives, who had already been relieved from the principal part of their miseries. They shall eat, says he, their bread in pain, or torture, and shall drink their water in desolation: he does not repeat the same words which he had formerly used, but shortly shows that the Jews boasted in vain that they were still in safety: because very soon the enemy will press upon them, so that they should not be able to eat a mouthful of bread in peace. That the land may be reduced, says he, from plenty to devastation: some translate, after its plenty, which is forced and far-fetched; for the Prophet means that the land would be desert and empty through exhaustion: for plenty, as we well know, means an abundance of all things. Judea

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was then reduced from plenty to want, when the enemies plundered whatever it contained, and so the region was despoiled of its wealth. The reason follows, through the violence of those who dwell in it. Some explain this erroneously of the Chaldees, because they lost the whole land through their rapacity. For the Prophet rather advises that this vengeance of God was just, because in truth all the Jews were given up to violence, cruelty, and rapacity. חמס , chemes, signifies all kinds of injury, but usually means violence and rapine. Hence we understand the Prophet’s intention, namely, that the Jews suffered this slaughter deservedly, because the just reward of their wickedness was measured out to them. And thus Ezekiel represses all complaints, in which they too freely indulged, as if God was treating them too roughly and hardly. Therefore he shortly teaches them that he would not spare them any longer. It follows —

COFFMAN, ""Moreover the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with fearfulness; and say unto the people of the land, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah concerning the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the land of Israel: They shall eat their bread with fearfulness, and drink their water in dismay, that her land may be desolate and despoiled of all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein. And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be a desolation; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah."

This is an enacted prophecy of the hardships of the siege, and it bears a good deal of similarity to the passage in Ezekiel 4:9-17, especially Ezekiel 12:16-17; "But, whereas the earlier passage stresses the scarcity of food and water during the siege, this passage is designed to prophesy the terror and fearfulness of it."[6]

The additional truth here is that all of the outlying cities of Judah will also be destroyed along with Jerusalem itself, as stated in verse 19, the very same verse. As for the notion that Ezekiel could not have addressed people in Judah while he himself was in Babylon, the words of Josephus, quoted above, show clearly that all of Ezekiel's prophecies were also read and studied in Jerusalem.

"The people of the land ..." (Ezekiel 12:19). Some have objected to this expression,

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for it generally meant land-owners of the wealthier class of people; and as Ezekiel was in Babylon, such a term could not be applied to the captives; but the objection has no weight. The message here was to the "the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the land of Israel."

WHEDON, "Verses 17-19

17-19. Eat thy bread with quaking, etc. — This is the same symbolic act, indicating the famished condition of the population of Jerusalem together with their fear and shuddering, which Ezekiel had previously performed during his long and toilsome siege of the mimic city (Ezekiel 4:9-12; Ezekiel 4:16). Recent events may have made the repetition of this picture-sermon more impressive than it had been previously. Desolate from all that is therein [literally, from its fullness], because, etc. — That is, the land now so full of people and of riches shall become desolate, and the reason for this is not agricultural or political, but moral. It is the wickedness and violence of the people that have brought upon them their calamity (Ezekiel 7:11).

PARKER, ""Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of Prayer of Manasseh , eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with carefulness; and say unto the people of the land, Thus saith the Lord God of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and of the land of Israel; They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein. And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be desolate; and ye shall know that I am the Lord "( Ezekiel 12:17-20).

Thus the prophet was to eat bread as if he were shaken by the palsy, and as if the very eating of the bread added to his pain and distress. He was to take up his water and drink it as if it were bitter, yea, as if it were poison, and the people, seeing this palsied Prayer of Manasseh , quaking, white with fear, and alarmed by familiar things, were to say, What is he doing now? what is this madman now about? Thus by outward signs, by physical pictures, by visible demonstrations, the prophet was to call attention to great truths. This would be called sensationalism now: but the Church is ruined for want of it. What sign do we make that the people take heed of?

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The prophet in every age is to represent his own prophecy. What is the prophecy of the good man today? A prophecy of the future. What is the future which he is to represent? He is to show that he has a consciousness of futurity, so that every act he does should be a mysterious action, incomplete in itself, stretched out, tentacle-like, to something beyond. He is to declare plainly that he seeks a country out of sight. Men will say to him, Why do you not sit down and be thankful? Why do you not eat your daily bread, and not distress yourself about tomorrow? Why not eat and drink, and rise up and play? Why not take a short view of life, and make all things as easy as possible? So will they address him in irritating and frivolous questions. But the man who has got a right view of life sees that the earth is only a stepping-stone, that time is only a little link in an endless chain; the man who has right ideas of life, character, duty, power, destiny, says, There is something I have not yet seen, and that other greater invisible something influences me like an aspiration; I endure as seeing the invisible; here I have no continuing city, but I seek one to come: I am a pilgrim, I can tarry but a night; for a night"s lodgment I am grateful to you, but wake me when the first hint of morning whitens the East, for I must be up and off: I am heaven-bound. We are afraid to declare our religion. The late Canon Liddon once told of a dinner that was held in London fifty years ago in one of the finest houses of the prosperous metropolis. The gentlemen of the party had been speaking in terms dishonouring of our Lord: one of the guests was quiet; in a pause of the conversation he asked that the bell might be rung, then he requested that his carriage might be called, and then with the finished polish and courtesy of a gentleman he explained the reason of his departure, saying to his host, "For I am still a Christian." That gentleman was Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister of England. No argument could have been so effective, no eloquence could have gained the point as that one instance of personal faithfulness gained it. We should show to our age that we have some religious conscience, some religious loyalty. To be indifferent is to crucify the Son of God; to let judgment go by default is to betray him and to pierce him with five more wounds, and crush more deeply into his throbbing temples the sharp and cruel thorn. Son of Prayer of Manasseh , prophesy, prophesy! To this high duty, to this splendid responsibility are we called.

What was the effect of this sign-making and prophesying? The effect was mockery:—

PETT, "Verse 17-18

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The Fear Coming On The Land.

‘Moreover the word of Yahweh came to me, saying, “Son of man, eat your bread with quaking, and drink your water with trembling and with carefulness.” ’

This indicates a further word from Yahweh. It may have no direct connection with the previous words. Here Ezekiel was to act out eating and drinking in fear and great wariness, partly depicting great terror at what is coming, and partly the fear lest someone come and take it away. Possibly it includes the desire to preserve with great care as much of the provisions as possible because of the shortage of food. The picture is one of the expectancy of disaster.

18 “Son of man, tremble as you eat your food, and shudder in fear as you drink your water.

BARNES, "Here the sign is the exhibition of such terror as the danger of a siege creates.

CLARKE, "Eat thy bread with quaking - Assume the manner of a person who is every moment afraid of his life, who has nothing but a morsel of bread to eat, and a little water to drink. Thus signifying the siege, and the straits to which they should be reduced. See this explained, Eze_12:19 (note).

GILL, "Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking,.... As one in surprise or fear, or 85

that has got an ague upon him: and drink thy water with trembling and with carefulness; fearing want of it, or as apprehensive of danger of its being taken away; see Eze_4:16.

JAMISON, "Symbolical representation of the famine and fear with which they should eat their scanty morsel, in their exile, and especially at the siege.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:18 Son of man, eat thy bread with quaking, and drink thy water with trembling and with carefulness;

Ver. 18. Eat thy bread with quaking.] With tumult and trepidation, as a frightened and perplexed person that eateth his bread in peril of his life.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 12:18

Eat thy bread with quaking, etc. No special stress is to be laid on the fact that only bread and water are named. The prophet is not dwelling now on the scarcity of food in the besieged city, as he had done in Ezekiel 4:9-17, but on the fear and terror which should haunt the lives of the besieged. Here again we can scarcely doubt that, as in Ezekiel 4:11, Ezekiel was a sign to those among whom he lived. Outwardly and visibly he was seen after his strange flitting, cowering in a corner, as one hunted down and dreading pursuit, with every look and gesture of extremest terror. This was to be the portion of those who escaped and whose life was "given them for a prey." The strange act was to be explained to "the people of the land," i.e. the exiles among whom Ezekiel lived. The short prediction ends with the usual formula. There is another interval, and then another inspiration.

19 Say to the people of the land: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says about those living in

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Jerusalem and in the land of Israel: They will eat their food in anxiety and drink their water in despair, for their land will be stripped of everything in it because of the violence of all who live there.

BARNES, "The people of the land - Chaldaea.Of the inhabitants - In respect to “the inhabitants.”Desolate from, all that is therein - i. e., stripped of all its inhabitants and of all its wealth.At one and the same time, Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem, and Ezekiel in Chaldaea; the prophecies of the former were sent to the exiles, and those of Ezekiel to the dwellers at Jerusalem, that the guiding hand of One God in different places might be made clear (Jerome).

GILL, "And say unto the people of the land,.... Of Chaldea, where the prophet now was; not the natives of the land, but the Israelites, who were captives in it; who were ready to murmur and repine at their own case, as miserable; and at that of the Jews at Jerusalem, as happy; and therefore they are taught by this sign, as well as by the following prophecy, that they were mistaken: thus saith the Lord God of the inhabitants of Jerusalem; or to them, or "concerning" them (y); whom the captives in Chaldea thought lived so happily, and would continue so: and of the land of Israel; or, "upon the land of Israel" (z); inhabitants on it; to this sense the Targum and Septuagint Version interpret it, and also Kimchi: they shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment; meaning at the siege of Jerusalem, when they could not eat and drink in peace; but, while they were eating and drinking, were disturbed and put into fear and surprise by the besiegers; and also, hearing that their provisions would not hold out, were careful how they ate and drank, and were frightened with the thoughts of being reduced to extreme want: that her land may be desolate from all that is therein; or, "from its fulness" (a);

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men and cattle, cities, towns, houses, vineyards, fields, fruits, and plenty of all good things. Jarchi expounds it of riches: because of the violence of all them that dwell therein; not the violence of the Chaldeans, making a prey of all they met with, plundering cities and towns, and making forage of the fruits of the earth, by which means the land was desolate; but the rapine, oppression, and injustice of the Jews, which were the cause of all these calamities which came upon their country.

JAMISON, "people of the land — the Jews “in the land” of Chaldea who thought themselves miserable as being exiles and envied the Jews left in Jerusalem as fortunate.

land of Israel — contrasted with “the people in the land” of Chaldea. So far from being fortunate as the exiles in Chaldea regarded them, the Jews in Jerusalem are truly miserable, for the worst is before them, whereas the exiles have escaped the miseries of the coming siege.land ... desolate from all that is therein — literally, “that the land (namely, Judea) may be despoiled of the fullness thereof”; emptied of the inhabitants and abundance of flocks and corn with which it was filled.because of ... violence — (Psa_107:34).

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:19 And say unto the people of the land, Thus saith the Lord GOD of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, [and] of the land of Israel; They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein.

Ver. 19. They shall eat their bread with carefulness.] Better fast than feed on such bread. Men may sooner by their carking care add a furlong to their grief, than a cubit to their comfort, saith one.

Because of the violence.] The Jews were ever, and are still, a covetous and cruel people.

PETT, "Verse 19-20

“And say to the people of the land, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh concerning the 88

inhabitants of Jerusalem and the land of Israel. They will eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with dismay, because her land will be desolate from all that is in it because of the violence of all those who dwell in it. And the cities that are inhabited will be laid waste, and the land will be a desolation, and you will know that I am Yahweh.’ ”

His actions would depict what was to come on Jerusalem and Judah. ‘The people of the land’ is a regular phrase indicating all the people, the common folk. The lack of administration would result in even more violence in the land, with no one to curb evildoers. Some would desolate the land by their activities. Thus the ordinary people would be burdened with care and would live in constant dismay. It is a picture of constant unrest and lawlessness, with its inevitable consequences. They had ignored Yahweh’s covenant and laws, now they would experience the consequences of doing so.

Both cities and land would be desolated. None would escape. That they might be made to recognise that their God was the God Who made moral demands, and exacted judgment when those moral demands were ignored. They would be made to recognise that it was indeed Yahweh, the living, present God, with Whom they had been dealing and whom they had been ignoring and treating casually.

In Spite of the Apathetic Attitude of the People The Warning Prophecies Will Be Fulfilled.

20 The inhabited towns will be laid waste and the land will be desolate. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

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GILL, "And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste,.... Not only the city of Jerusalem, but the other cities of Judea; as they were by the Chaldeans, which were then full of inhabitants: and the land shall be desolate; the whole land of Judea be destitute of men and cattle, and lie uncultivated, and become barren and unfruitful: and ye shall know that I am the Lord; who were then captives in Babylon, as well as those who should be dispersed among the nations would; see Eze_12:15.

JAMISON, "the cities — left in Judea after the destruction of Jerusalem.

CALVIN, "He pursues the same sentiment. He had threatened destruction to Jerusalem and its citizens: he now adds the other cities of Judah which were still inhabited. Lastly, he speaks of the whole land, as if he said that no single corner should suppose itself free from slaughter, since God’s vengeance should attack it as well as the cruelty of enemies through all regions. Jerusalem was the head of the whole nation; Ezekiel predicts its siege, and after that it became easy to overthrow and spoil other cities, so that the whole region was rendered subject to the lust of the enemies. He afterwards adds what we have noticed previously, ye shall know that I am Jehovah They had heard this instruction from the Prophets, they ought to have been imbued with it from their earliest childhood, for God had borne witness by many proofs that he was the true God. For his power had become sufficiently known and understood by the frequent succors by which that wretched people had been snatched from even immediate death. But as their impiety had stupified them, so that they carelessly despised not only the Prophet’s teaching, but the very judgments of God, when he openly punished them, this knowledge is not mentioned without reason. When therefore God puts forth his hand for the last time to chastise them, he says that his power should be so manifest among them, that it should no longer escape them; but yet they were so hardened in their depravity that they almost entirely forgot God. For a contrast is always to be observed between that knowledge which springs from performance and that arising from utterance; for those who had closed their ears when God invites them to himself as servants, must be compelled to feel him to be God when he is silent and is executing his vengeance upon them. It follows —

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TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:20 And the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste, and the land shall be desolate; and ye shall know that I [am] the LORD.

Ver. 20. And ye shall know.] By woeful experience. [Ezekiel 12:15]

There Will Be No Delay

21 The word of the Lord came to me:

GILL, "And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying. After he had been a sign unto the people, in the two instances above mentioned; and they had hardened themselves against the belief of the things signified by them, because the time of their accomplishment was not yet.

HENRY, "Various methods had been used to awaken this secure and careless people to an expectation of the judgments coming, that they might be stirred up, by repentance and reformation, to prevent them. The prophecies of their ruin were confirmed by visions, and illustrated by signs, and all with such evidence and power that one would think they must needs be wrought upon; but here we are told how they evaded the conviction, and guarded against it, namely, by telling themselves, and one another, that though these judgments threatened should come at last yet they would not come of a long time. This suggestion, with which they bolstered themselves up in their security, is here answered, and shown to be vain and groundless, in two separate messages which God sent to them by the prophet at different times, both to the same purport; such care, such pains, must the prophet take to undeceive them, Eze_12:21, Eze_12:26. Observe,

K&D 21-28, "Declarations to Remove all Doubt as to the Truth of the ThreatThe scepticism of the people as to the fulfilment of these threatening prophecies, which had been made still more emphatic by signs, manifested itself in two different

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ways. Some altogether denied that the prophecies would ever be fulfilled (Eze_12:22); others, who did not go so far as this, thought that it would be a long time before they came to pass (Eze_12:27). These doubts were fed by the lying statements of false prophets. For this reason the refutation of these sceptical opinions (Eze_12:21-28) is followed in the next chapter by a stern reproof of the false prophets and prophetesses who led the people astray. - Eze_12:21. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Eze_12:22. Son of man, what kind of proverb have ye in the land of Israel, that ye say, The days become long, and every prophecy comes to nothing? Eze_12:23. Therefore say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I will put an end to this saying, and they shall say it no more in Israel; but say to them, The days are near, and the word of every prophecy. Eze_12:24. For henceforth there shall be no vain prophecy and flattering soothsaying in the midst of the house of Israel. Eze_12:25. For I am Jehovah; I speak; the word which I speak will come to pass, and no longer be postponed; for in your days, O refractory generation, I speak a word and do it, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. - Mâshâl, a proverb, saying current among the people, and constantly repeated as a truth. “The days become long,” etc., i.e., the time is lengthening out, and yet the prophecy is not being fulfilled. אבד, perire, to come to nothing, to fail of fulfilment, is the opposite of א to come, to be fulfilled. God will put an end to these sayings, by ,בcausing a very speedy fulfilment of the prophecy. The days are near, and every word of the prophecy, i.e., the days in which every word predicted shall come to pass. The reason for this is given in Eze_12:24 and Eze_12:25, in two co-ordinate sentences, both of which are introduced with כי. First, every false prophecy shall henceforth cease in Israel (Eze_12:24); secondly, God will bring about the fulfilment of His own word, and that without delay (Eze_12:25). Different explanations have been given of the meaning of Eze_12:24. Kliefoth proposes to take שוא and מקסם as the predicate to ן no prophecy :חזin Israel shall be vain and flattering soothsaying, but all prophecy shall become true, i.e., be fulfilled. Such an explanation, however, is not only artificial and unnatural, since מקסם would be inserted as a predicate in a most unsuitable manner, but it contains this incongruity, that God would apply the term מקסם, soothsaying, to the predictions of prophets inspired by Himself. On the other hand, there is no force in the objection raised by Kliefoth to the ordinary rendering of the words, namely, that the statement that God was about to put an end to false prophecy in Israel would anticipate the substance of the sixth word of God (i.e., Ezekiel 13). It is impossible to see why a thought should not be expressed here, and then still further expanded in Ezekiel 13. חלק, smooth, i.e., flattering (compare Hos_10:2; and for the prediction, Zec_13:4-5). The same reply serves also to overthrow the sceptical objection raised by the frivolous despisers of the prophet's words. Hence there is only a brief allusion made to them in Eze_12:26-28. - Eze_12:26. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Eze_12:27.Son of man, behold, the house of Israel saith, The vision that he seeth is for many days off, and he prophesies for distant times. Eze_12:28. Therefore say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, All my words shall be no longer postponed: the word which I shall speak shall come to pass, saith the Lord Jehovah. - The words are plain; and after what has already been said, they need no special explanation. Eze_12:20 compare with Eze_12:25.

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CALVIN, "Here God inveighs against that gross ridicule which prevailed everywhere among the Jews. For when the Prophets had been threatening them so long, this their earnestness was so far from leading them to repentance, that they became more obstinate and callous. Since they persisted in this obstinacy, and boasted in their escape, and through confidence in their freedom from punishment, re-belied more and more against God, the Prophet is ordered to repress this their boasting. It was monstrous indeed for a people who had imbibed from childhood the teaching of the law and the Prophets, thus to break forth against God as if he had spoken falsely by his Prophets. For this was their boasting: Oh! the days are prolonged: therefore every vision has passed away and failed From this delay they argued that they had no cause for fear, since whatever Jeremiah and the rest had predicted had passed away. We perceive then how unbelievers turn the patience of God into material for obduracy and stupidity. God spares them, gives them leisure, and invites them to repentance; but what do they do? They count the days and years, and when they see that God does not immediately, execute the judgment which he had uttered by his servants, they laugh at it, and esteem the Prophet’s words as idle fables. Such, then, was the impiety against which the Prophet inveighs, saying, what is this? The question implies detestation, for God here wonders at the sloth, nay fury of the people, because it dared thus to vomit forth its blasphemies with open mouth:’ for what remains when God is supposed to be false both in his promises and his threatenings? In this way all religion is abolished. Nor is it surprising that God detests so monstrous a thing, while he asks how it can happen that the Israelites break forth into such madness: what, says he, is the meaning of this your proverb? He seems to include his servant among the others, because he was one of the people: hence he participates in that which did not belong to him personally. Moreover, this passage must be diligently noticed, when the impious conclude that they have no occasion to fear, because their days are protracted.

This is, as I have said, a sign of extreme folly, but it is not surprising if they imagine God to be false to his word and his threats to be in vain, because his hand does not instantly appear, since they treat his teaching without the slightest respect. Since, therefore, unbelievers are never afraid unless terrified by the power of God, and are never in the slightest degree moved, it is not surprising that they think it entirely illusory, when they see him at rest while his words still resound in men’s ears. Hence the language of the Apostle should come to mind, that Noah built the ark by faith, because he feared the hidden judgment of God of which he had been admonished, as if the whole deluge was before his eyes, in which he saw the whole world immersed.

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(Hebrews 11:7.) Although, therefore, God conceals his hand for the time, let us learn so to fear the whole of his instructions that delay may not lead us into such sloth as this.

Now he adds, Thou shalt tell them, therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah: I will make this proverb cease from the land of Israel Here God shows that his anger was more and more inflamed by their contempt. And the impious, by pretending that he is not true to his word, produce the effect of hastening the accomplishment of those judgments which otherwise God was prepared to suspend. Lastly, the impious stimulate God to exercise his vengeance, while they infer that they have escaped through delay, and that the vision was so fleeting and evanescent that they provoke him purposely to a contest. For the confirmation of this sentiment follows directly, that verily the days were approaching. Since time gave the Jews confidence in escape from punishment, God announces that the end was at hand, that they may feel themselves to have been too long blinded while they abused his continued forbearance. The days then approached: also the word of every vision: “the word” is here taken for the “effect.” We know that דבר , deber, is often taken for “thing,” “business,” “result;” but in this place the Prophet takes the word for the effect of the vision, as if he had said, that whatever the Prophets had spoken should be firm and stable. It follows —

COFFMAN, ""And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Son of man, what is this proverb that ye have in the land of Israel, saying, The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth? Tell them therefore, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah; I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but say to them, The days are at hand, and the fulfillment of every vision. For there shall be no more any false vision, nor any flattering divination within the house of Israel. For I am Jehovah; I will speak, and the word that I shall speak shall be performed; it shall be no more deferred: for in your days, O rebellions house, I will speak the word, and will perform it, saith the Lord Jehovah."

EZEKIEL ANSWERS A FALSE PROVERB

These words and some of the following prophecies deal with the problem of true and

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false prophecy. The unbelievers, encouraged by the false prophets, were saying, "Look, we've heard all this before. Nothing happens; things are going on just the same as always." Very well, the Lord says here, "Your wicked generation is the very one that shall indeed see every vision fulfilled, every prophecy vindicated, and all the predictions against the apostate nation happening just like the true prophets said." This proverb appears in the Hebrew here literally, as, "The days lengthen; the vision fails."[7] In those days, even as today, a catchy proverb can be a very bad influence, if it is founded upon a falsehood.

In all generations, there have been echoes of this same attitude. The apostle Peter declared that, "In the last days, mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for, from the day the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation" (2 Peter 3:3-4).

COKE, "Verses 21-23

Ezekiel 12:21-23. And the word, &c.— The latter part of the 22nd verse is spoken in the person of infidels, who turn the grace of God into wantonness, taking encouragement from his patience and long-suffering to despise his threatenings, as if they never would be fulfilled; and to deride his prophets, as if they had prophesied in vain. Both parts of this objection are obviated in the 23rd and 24th verses. See Waterland's Script. Vind. p. 98. Houbigant reads the clause in the 22nd verse in the future.

REFLECTIONS.—1st, Though many among the captives in Babylon profited under the visitation, yet multitudes were still hardened; flattered by their false prophets with hopes of a speedy return to Jerusalem; and deaf to the admonitions of God's messengers, warning them to repent of their sins, and patiently submit to his will in bearing their appointed seventy years' captivity. They were a rebellious house, and would not see nor hear; and who so blind as those? To affect them therefore, not only by warnings but by the most expressive signs of the certain and terrible destruction of Jerusalem, the prophet is enjoined,

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1. To prepare his stuff for removing, his vessels of captivity, as if going into a far country; and this openly in the sight of the people, removing from place to place as one unsettled, and seeking an abode: in the twilight he must dig through the wall of his house, and carry out thereby his stuff, bearing it upon his own shoulders in a mournful habit, and with a dejected look, as one going into captivity; covering his face, and stealing off in the dark as one ashamed and afraid of discovery. Thus he must be a sign to that rebellious house. It may be they will consider, and, though not moved with what they heard, be affected with what they saw, though they be a rebellious house. God thus tries every method with sinners; and ministers must not despair of repeating their labours with the most hardened and obstinate: it may be they will repent: and the most distant hope should encourage our perseverance in our work.

2. The prophet instantly obeys, however laborious the work, or strange it might appear. They who have God's commands must never hesitate. We must be ready to do or suffer any thing for his glory and the good of men's souls; and count all our worldly stuff not worth a thought, if he call us at any time to remove, knowing that we have in heaven a better and more abiding substance.

3. The Lord the next morning gives the prophet the explication of what he had enjoined, which he is to communicate to the people, who would naturally be inquisitive what he meant by this conduct: or perhaps they ridiculed him at his work, and, bantering, cried, What doest thou? What is this strange fellow about? He must tell them, that this burden of the prophetic word respected the prince Zedekiah and all the house of Israel: Ezekiel is their sign herein; as he hath done, so shall they. Their king, in whom they trusted, and by whose influence they hoped to be set at liberty and restored to their own country, so far from helping them, should be enslaved himself, and follow them to Babylon. Pressed by the besiegers, and the city no longer tenable, he shall attempt to escape by night, breaking through the wall of the city for privacy, and carrying a bundle of his most valuable effects or provision with him; his face covered with shame at his miserable plight, or with a mask to prevent his being known; but vain the attempt; God's net, the Chaldean army, should be spread over him, and he taken as a bird in a snare, led captive into Babylon, and die there; yet doomed never to see the place, his eyes being put out by the conqueror, in just punishment of his perfidy, Jeremiah 39:7. His guards

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scattered, his forces fled, yet pursued by the sword, few shall be suffered to escape, and these dispersed in heathen lands; living monuments of divine vengeance; or perhaps there brought to repentance, acknowledging their abominations, and justifying God in his judgments. Thus, says he, they shall know that I am the Lord, omniscient, just, and almighty. Note; God will make himself known, either in the terrors of his wrath to the impenitent, or in the riches of his grace to the humble.

2nd, Ezekiel is again a sign unto them.

He must eat his bread with quaking, and drink his water with trembling and with carefulness; as if he was in danger of want, or expected that it would be snatched from him; intimating the distress to which the inhabitants of Jerusalem should be reduced during the siege, terrified by their enemies without, dreading the ravages of famine within, and expecting shortly that both their bread and water would fail, and they miserably perish for want; the land being doomed to desolation universal, the cities wasted, the country ravaged, uncultivated, and destitute of man and beast; and this because of the violence therein, the bloodshed, oppression, and injustice exercised among them. And these judgments would teach them that knowledge of God, or that consciousness of his glory and power, which in their prosperity they refused to learn. Note; (1.) They who abuse fulness of bread, are justly punished with pining want. (2.) Those afflictions, on ourselves or others, are singular blessings to us, which lead us to a deeper knowledge of and acquaintance with God.

3rdly, The awful warnings which the prophet gave, were too plain to be mistaken, and the signs too forcible not to make some impression. But we are told what methods they took to evade the conviction. They affirmed, that the time for threatened judgments was prolonged, and would not yet arrive; so that they might hope for peace in their days, and that the prophetic vision looked forward to some very distant season; so that they need not disturb themselves about the event: nay, some dared assert that the evil never would come, every vision faileth or perisheth; so apt are sinners to abuse God's patience, to harden their hearts because judgment is not speedily executed, and to flatter themselves that the terrors of God are mere bug-bears. Nor did the false prophets fail to encourage the delusion, so that the sayings were industriously propagated, and became proverbial: by frequent repetitions they began to believe their own lie. Against this deceit the prophet sets his face, and from God assures them, that their neglect of his judgments shall but

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hasten them.

1. God will silence their false hopes, by bringing on them the threatened punishment, when every vision should take effect, their lying prophets be abashed, and their delusive proverbs confounded. Note; They who will not believe the warnings of God, will too late be terribly convinced by the infliction of his judgments.

2. God will do this certainly and suddenly. I am the Lord, whose truth is inviolable, his power almighty, his justice most sacred; and who will execute all his threatenings. Since he hath spoken, it shall be done. No longer respite shall be granted, but wrath to the uttermost come on the rebellious house of Israel, and that quickly; the days are at hand, even in your days, their eyes shall see the destruction; within five or six years the whole should be accomplished. And the same assurance is repeated to cut off all doubt of the event, since heaven and earth shall sooner pass away than one jot or tittle fail of God's word. Note; It is the folly of sinners, when they hear of death and judgment, to put far from them the evil day, and defer the great work of preparing for eternity to a more convenient season: when, lo! their hour arrives; they bow, they fall, the grave receives them; a warning to others of the madness of procrastination, and a loud call to-day, while it is called to-day, to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.

EBC, "Verses 21-28

PROPHECY AND ITS ABUSES

Ezekiel 12:21 - Ezekiel 14:11

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

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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

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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; [Ezekiel 12:21-28] the second with the character and doom of the false prophets (chapter 13); and the third with the state of mind which made a right use of prophecy impossible. [Ezekiel 14:1-11]

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". [Ezekiel 12:22] 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, Ezekiel 12:27 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.

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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" (Ezekiel 12:24). 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. [Jeremiah 26:1-24] 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

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say unto them, The days are near, and the content [literally word or matter] of every vision" (Ezekiel 12:23). 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" (Ezekiel 12:25). 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 22:5-28] 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

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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" (Ezekiel 13:3). 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 fulfillment of the word" (Ezekiel 13:6). 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,

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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 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." [Micah 3:8] 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 (Ezekiel 13:4-5). 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

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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 (Ezekiel 13:10)-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?" (Ezekiel 13:12).

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" (Ezekiel 13:9).

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 polities. 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 Ezekiel 13:18 are either a professional garb worn by the women, or

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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" (Ezekiel 13:22). 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

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puts his guilty stumbling-block before him, and comes to the prophet, I Jehovah will make Myself intelligible to him: that I may take the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from Me by their idols" (Ezekiel 14:4-5). 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. 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" (Ezekiel 14:11). 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

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the way, walk ye in it." [Isaiah 30:20-21]

PARKER, ""And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of Prayer of Manasseh , what is that proverb that ye have in the land of Israel, saying, The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth?" ( Ezekiel 12:21-22).

Jeremiah has been talking about this upbreaking of the kingdom, and Ezekiel is talking about it; and when the prophecies were delivered to Zedekiah he said they did not sufficiently coincide to confirm one another: for he looked for those literal coincidences which bewilder so many people and which can only satisfy pedantry; he did not see that coincidence is in the purpose, in the substance of the message. So there came up a proverb in Israel, "The days are prolonged," then came a laugh suggestive; "and every vision faileth," then the laugh was prolonged. We have fallen into the mockery of proverb-making. In English we say, "Words are but wind." How foolishly we have lived to believe that: whereas words are the only real life. In the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God; and the word is the Prayer of Manasseh , the soul if he be other than a profane person. We ourselves say in English, "In space comes grace": God does not mean to kill us, or he would not have given us such space for what is called repentance and amendment. We ourselves say, "Every man for himself, and God for us all": a singular mixture of mammon and spirituality, of selfishness and pseudo-religion. Let us not be victimised by our own wit. See to it that we do not slip into hell through the trapdoor of an epigram. There is only one word about this business that is true, namely, "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation."

The Lord says his patience will give way, his longsuffering will come to an end:—

PETT, "Verse 21-22

‘And the word of Yahweh came to me saying, “Son of man, what is this proverb that you have in the land of Israel, saying, ‘Time goes by, and every vision dies’.

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The proverb is literally, ‘The days, they lengthen and every vision, it dies.’ The point being made is that time goes by but none of the prophecies come to fulfilment. Thus when the people hear a prophecy they shrug their shoulders and say, ‘it has never happened, it will not happen now.’ Proverbs can be very valuable, but they can become stilted and meaningless, resulting in apathy.

These people were aware of the prophecies of past prophets, of warnings about the coming ‘day of Yahweh’, and they considered that nothing had happened. How easy it is not to see in present history the fulfilment of God’s warnings. They were here in captivity, having witnessed Nebuchadnezzar’s successful campaign against Judah and Jerusalem, but had not see in it a ‘day of Yahweh’, for Jerusalem still stood.

22 “Son of man, what is this proverb you have in the land of Israel: ‘The days go by and every vision comes to nothing’?

BARNES, "As in Ezek. 7, the nearness of the judgment is foretold.Eze_12:22

The land of Israel - is put generally for the land where the children of Israel dwelt, whether at home, or in exile. There was prevalent a disregard for the true prophets, which is ever followed by a recognition of the false. First, the true prophet is rejected because it is thought that his prophecies fail. Then men persuade themselves that if the prophecy be true it respects some distant time, and that the men of the present generation need not disturb themselves about it. Compare Jer_1:11; Amo_6:3; Mat_24:43; 1Th_5:2; 2Pe_3:4. Against both these delusions Ezekiel is commissioned to protest, and so to lead the way to his condemnation of his countrymen for their blind reliance on false prophets.

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CLARKE, "The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth? - These are the words of the infidels and scoffers, who, because vengeance was not speedily executed on an evil work, set their heart to do iniquity. “These predictions either will not come in our days, or will wholly fail; why then should we disquiet ourselves about them?” Strange, that the very means used by the most gracious God to bring sinners to repentance, should be made by them the very instruments of their own destruction! See 2Pe_3:4.

GILL, "Son of man, what is that proverb that ye have in the land of Israel,.... Which question is put, as ignorant of it, but as filled with indignation at the impiety and boldness of those that used it, and in order to expose the wickedness and folly of it: saying, the days are prolonged; the days of affliction and distress; the time of Jerusalem's destruction, and of the Babylonish captivity, these were not to be of a long time; and therefore they were ready to flatter themselves they would never be, at least in their days; and hence, because judgment was not immediately executed, their hearts were set in them to do evil; and thus they abused the patience and long suffering of God, and they used this and the following expression so often, and so long, that they became proverbial to them: and every vision faileth? or "perishes" (b); every prophecy comes to nothing; no one is fulfilled; at least because not at, once, therefore they concluded it never would, or, however, hoped it never would; and so pleased themselves, and continued in their impenitence and unbelief, and contempt of prophecy.

HENRY, " How they flattered themselves with hopes that the judgments should be delayed. One saying they had, which had become proverbial in the land of Israel, Eze_12:22. They said, “The days are prolonged; the judgments have not come when they were expected to come, but seem to be still put off de die in diem - from day to day, and therefore we may conclude that every vision fails, because it should seem that some do, that because the destruction has not come yet it will never come; we will never trust a prophet again, for we have been more frightened than hurt.” And another saying they had which, if it would not conquer their convictions, yet would cool their affections and abate their concern, and that was, “The vision is for a great while to come; it refers to events at a vast distance, and he prophesies of things which, though they may be true, are yet very far off, so that we need not trouble our heads about them (Eze_12:27); we may die in honour and peace before these troubles come.” And, if indeed the troubles had been thus adjourned, they might have made themselves easy, as Hezekiah did. Is it not well if peace and truth shall be in my days? But it was a great mistake, and they did but deceive themselves into their own ruin; and God is here much displeased at it; for, 1. It was a wretched abuse of the patience of God, who, because for a time he kept silence, was thought to be altogether such a one as themselves, Psa_50:21. That forbearance of God which should have led them to repentance hardened them in sin. They were willing to think their works were not evil because sentence against them was not executed speedily; and therefore concluded the vision itself failed, because the days were

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prolonged. 2. It received countenance form the false prophets that were among them, as should seem from the notice God takes (Eze_12:24) of the vain visions, and flattering divinations, even within the house of Israel, to whom were committed the oracles of God. No marvel if those that deceived themselves by worshipping pretended deities deceived themselves also by crediting pretended prophecies, to which strong delusionsGod justly gave them up for their idolatries. 3. These sayings had become proverbial; they were industriously spread among the people, so that they had got into very one's mouth, and not only so, but were generally assented to, as proverbs usually are, not only the proverbs of the ancients, but those of the moderns too. Note, It is a token of universal degeneracy in a nation when corrupt and wicked sayings have grown proverbial; and it is an artifice of Satan by them to confirm men in their prejudices against the word and ways of God, and a great offence to the God of heaven. It will not serve for an excuse, in saying ill, to plead that it is a common saying.

JAMISON, "proverb — The infidel scoff, that the threatened judgment was so long in coming, it would not come at all, had by frequent repetition come to be a “proverb” with them. This skeptical habit contemporary prophets testify to (Jer_17:15; Jer_20:7; Zep_1:12). Ezekiel, at the Chebar, thus sympathizes with Jeremiah and strengthens his testimony at Jerusalem. The tendency to the same scoff showed itself in earlier times, but had not then developed into a settled “proverb” (Isa_5:19; Amo_5:18). It shall again be the characteristic of the last times, when “faith” shall be regarded as an antiquated thing (Luk_18:8), seeing that it remains stationary, whereas worldly arts and sciences progress, and when the “continuance of all things from creation” will be the argument against the possibility of their being suddenly brought to a standstill by the coming of the Lord (Isa_66:5; 2Pe_3:3, 2Pe_3:4). The very long-suffering of God, which ought to lead men to repentance, is made an argument against His word (Ecc_8:11; Amo_6:3).

days ... prolonged ... vision faileth — their twofold argument: (1) The predictions shall not come to pass till long after our time. (2) They shall fail and prove vain shadows. God answers both in Eze_12:23, Eze_12:25.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:22 Son of man, what [is] that proverb [that] ye have in the land of Israel, saying, The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth?

Ver. 22. What is that proverb.] We have also many profane proverbs common among us, as, Thought is free; Every man for himself, and God for us all; Words are but wind; In space comes grace; Fair and softly goes far, &c. The Greeks had many such ill proverbs, Chrysostom complaineth.

The days are prolonged.] Ludibrium crassum: gross mockery, "Because judgment is not speedily executed," &c.

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PULPIT, "What is that proverb, etc.? The words indicate how the previous messages had been received. Like the men of Jerusalem, the exiles could not believe that the judgment was so near. They said, in words that had become proverbial:

BI 22-25, "The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.Prophecy a living forceRight in the midst of the history of Israel, when Divine purposes of the highest moral and spiritual importance were being wrought out in her, in the very centre of one of her grandest outbursts of revealing thought upon the principles and power of religion, this sceptical proverb took its rise and possessed a certain plausibility, and had its seeming justification in the circumstances of the time: “The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.”I. The proverb and its meaning. The saying may be held to express relief or disappointment. There were doubtless many Israelites who were glad to escape from the consciousness of the ceaseless vigilance of the Keeper of Israel. There are always some minds to whom the thought that “Thou God seest me” is an oppression and a nightmare. Others, however, were bitterly disappointed at what seemed to them the neglect and failure of Jehovah to redeem His promises to His people (Lam_3:1-66). But our proverb is more probably the outcome of a shallow materialism than of either relief or disappointment. The materialist belongs to all ages and peoples, and is always ready to say that visions have nothing in them. Indeed, there had been, as Ezekiel tells us in verse 24, “vain visions” and “flattering divinations within the house of Israel.” And because the true visions had been contingent, conditional on their effect upon the character of the people, they had very often seemed to fail. The desert can never rejoice and blossom as the rose, except for a people who have learnt the joy of unselfish sacrifice and long adorned themselves with the beauty of holiness. Moreover, many of the truest visions never will and never can be realised in such a world as this, because they have in them an element of idealism. Now, the man who lives in a world governed entirely by material standards of value, cannot stand this kind of thing at all. He calls upon his gods—upon actuality, upon reality and common sense—to deliver him out of it; just as many of the exiled Israelites were, at this very time, thinking of abjuring their nation and religion, and becoming the servants of the gods of Babylon. Babylon, at any rate, was no vision. Babylon commanded the big battalions, the scarlet-coated legions which had never known defeat, the mighty engines of war, the inexhaustible resources of the valley of the Euphrates; she had the mastery of all the rich trade routes between East and West; and possessed, in her own queenly magnificence, her towers, her palaces and temples, her wharves and markets, her civilisation and unrivalled power, the assurances of what seemed eternal prosperity. What folly to set up the visions of prophets over against the great heathen power which dominated the world! It is not wonderful if today also there are those who feel orphaned, desolate, forlorn, as though God had left us. “No voices and no visions now! no direct Divine message! no obvious Divine interposition!”—this is the thought that lies behind very much of our public action and private conduct—this is the

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thought most to be dreaded; for its influence tends in national politics to a hard, cynical selfishness in place of any lofty enthusiasm for liberty and philanthropy. It is equally fatal in private life; for if God is really silent to us, if He has left us to our own devices, the times are indeed dull and joyless, and there is nothing for it but for each of us to do the best he can for himself, and, according to the wicked old worldly proverb, let the devil take the hindmost.II. But no! Prophecy is a living force. The Babylon of today is materialism—the materialistic view of the world and of life, in the laboratory of the chemist, the counting house of the merchant, and the abodes of society. Where are the prophets and where the spiritual influences which we can set over against this mighty tyranny? Some people talk of this as a materialistic or prosaic century—feel it to be so—because they themselves lead prosaic and materialistic lives. Yet our age has been blessed with a bright succession of true prophets, or at least prophetic souls—great teachers of the essential spirituality of the universe—men who have spoken, not only words of wisdom, but of wisdom weighted with the power of deep and passionate conviction. It is a question whether the Church of God has ever been blessed with a grander succession of true preachers than in our own day; whilst the authority of the great names outside the Church—of the Carlyles, Ruskins, Tennysons—has been essentially a moral and spiritual authority. Materialism only represents one tendency, one phase, of the life of the age; whilst great fields of life and influence have been occupied by men who have been seekers after God in the temper and spirit of old Hebrew piety, which ever cried, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might even come into His presence!” Such men have wrought in many minds an increased seriousness of thought, a deepened power of feeling, a wider sympathy, a truer spiritual insight. Then, again, the great influences which come from science are now being recognised as not necessarily materialistic. The eternal power and Godhead are more clearly, not less clearly, seen today than ever, in the majestic order of creation as revealed by the telescope and the microscope. The God of the infinitely great and infinitely little, the God who presides over the slow development of human society, from whom come the influences which form character and which move the world forward age by age, from whom comes the unconquerable tendency in things which makes for righteousness, never was, to the seeing heart and eye, more manifestly present than in the thought and life of our time. The silent, ceaseless activities of a Deity whose being is everywhere, who crowds the waters of a stagnant pool with myriads upon myriads of tiny inhabitants, and fills the vast spaces of the heavens above us with stars, suns, systems innumerable, are being recognised as still more impressive than the ancient manifestations; whilst, as our science begins to hear in many directions the “Thus far shalt thou go and no further” which limits discovery, a sense of awe in presence of the encompassing mysteries of our lot gathers about us; and signs are not wanting—the very nature of some of the more recent discoveries warrants the impression—that science herself will come to be our teacher of reverence, and her text books, which conduct us to the limits of the known, will become more and more suggestive of awe and wonder in presence of the unknown. The great Master of the unseen, the eternal, now, as ever, is Christ. Who can doubt that He has ruled the thought of the nineteenth century as of the first, or that His majestic figure will dominate the twentieth? As to the Babylon of our day, He is but waiting to smite it down. For us, at ally rate, to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, that surely is enough to banish materialism out of our life forever, to save us utterly from the dull and joyless inability to see life’s greater meanings. (W. Burkitt Dalby.)

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Ungodly proverbsJeremiah has been talking about this upbreaking of the kingdom, and Ezekiel is talking about it; and when the prophecies were delivered to Zedekiah he said they did not sufficiently coincide to confirm one another; for he looked for those literal coincidences which bewilder so many people and which can only satisfy pedantry; he did not see that coincidence is in the purpose, in the substance of the message. So there came up a proverb in Israel, “The days are prolonged,” then came a laugh suggestive; and “Every vision faileth,” then the laugh was prolonged. We have fallen into the mockery of proverb making. In English we say, “Words are but wind.” How foolishly we have lived to believe that: whereas words are the only real life. In the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the word is the man, the soul if he be other than a profane person. We ourselves say in English, “In space comes grace”: God does not mean to kill us, or He would not have given us such space for what is called repentance and amendment. We ourselves say, “Every man for himself, and God for us all”: a singular mixture of mammon and spirituality, of selfishness and pseudo-religion. Let us not be victimised by our own wit. See to it that we do not slip into hell through the trapdoor of an epigram. There is only one word about this business that is true, namely, “Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” The Lord says His patience will give way, His long-suffering will come to an end,—“There shall be no more any vain vision nor flattering divination within the house of Israel. For I am the Lord: I will speak, and the word that I shall speak shall come to pass; it shall be no more prolonged: for in your days, O rebellious house, will I say the word, and will perform it, saith the Lord God.” Better believe this. All the ages have testified to it; all philosophies point in this direction. “He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” (J. C. Parker.)

The days are at hand.—Death and eternity at handI. The tidings here announced to the Jews. Similar tidings to you, but you have disregarded them as the Jews of old; set the days are at hand.II. The sign by which they were confirmed. Apply—

1. It may be that some of you will consider;2. But the great mass of you will not. (C. Simeon, M. A.)

23 Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord 114

says: I am going to put an end to this proverb, and they will no longer quote it in Israel.’ Say to them, ‘The days are near when every vision will be fulfilled.

CLARKE, "The days are at hand - Far from failing or being prolonged, time is posting on, and the destruction threatened is at the door.

GILL, "Tell them therefore,.... Plainly and boldly, with the greatest assurance and confidence, as from God himself: thus saith the Lord God, I will make this proverb to cease; by quickly accomplishing the things which they, by this proverb, represented as at a great distance, and what would never be brought about: and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; when the things predicted shall take place: but say unto them, the days are at hand, and the effect of every vision; the time is hastening on, and will quickly come, when every prophecy shall be fulfilled: it was in the sixth year of Jehoiachin's captivity that these prophecies were delivered out; and in the ninth year Nebuchadnezzar came with his army, and besieged Jerusalem; so that the days were at hand; in three years' time there began an accomplishment of the above predictions, which were scoffed at in the proverb used.

HENRY, "How they are assured that they do but deceive themselves, for the judgments shall be hastened, these profane proverbs shall be confronted: Tell them, therefore, The days are at hand (Eze_12:23), and again, There shall none of my words be prolonged any more, Eze_12:28. Their putting the evil day far from them does but provoke God to bring it the sooner upon them; and it will be so much the sorer, so much the heavier, so much the more a surprise and terror to them when it does come. He must tell them,

JAMISON, "effect — literally, “the word,” namely, fulfilled; that is, the effective fulfillment of whatever the prophets have spoken is at hand.

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TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:23 Tell them therefore, Thus saith the Lord GOD I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but say unto them, The days are at hand, and the effect of every vision.

Ver. 23. The days are at hand.] Opponit aliud dictum fere tot syllabarum; a plain and plenary confutation.

WHEDON, "Verses 23-25

23-25. I will make this proverb to cease — The execution of the prophetic threat has so often been withheld, because of the repentance of a few righteous men or the long-suffering of Jehovah (33; Jeremiah 18:7-8; Jeremiah 26:17-19), that the failure of the prophetic judgment had become a proverb. The mercy of God in postponing chastisement is used as a proof that God did not and could not rule in the affairs of men. (It is the same spirit which says that God is always on the side of the heaviest guns. But did not that general die in exile?) Besides this there were many, who claimed to be seers, who prophesied according to the wishes of the people, and painted Israel’s future as bright and prosperous (Ezekiel 12:24). This made the work of the true prophet more difficult. But now “the effect” (literally, word) of every vision “is at hand” and will not again be delayed. Soon everyone will be able to discriminate between the false divination and the true prophecy (Ezekiel 21:21; Deuteronomy 18:10; Jeremiah 14:14; Jeremiah 28:3; Isaiah 30:10).

PETT, "Verse 23

“Tell them therefore, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh, I will make this proverb to cease, and they will no more use it as a proverb in Israel.’ But say to them, ‘The days are at hand and the word (i.e. carrying out of the word - effective fulfilment) of every vision.’

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Israel are to be made to realise that the proverb is now no longer true. Indeed it will cease to exist. For the opposite is about to prove true. The prophecies of Ezekiel and Jeremiah are about to come to their final awful fulfilment. And the people will see it and realise how foolish they were. ‘The days are at hand.’ That is, are about to burst on them with unexpected speed.

There is a warning to us all here of the danger of assuming that the warnings of God are simply empty threats which can safely be ignored because ‘God is love’, or of thinking that judgment is far off and therefore does not really matter.

PULPIT, "The prophet meets the current proverb with a counter proverb of his own: "The days are not far off, but have come near." Compare the language of the Baptist (Matthew 3:2), of our Lord (Matthew 4:17), of St. Paul (Romans 13:11). For the true prophet there is always a near fulfilment, though there may be also an ultimate and more complete reality of which that is the pledge and earnest. The "vision" shall not fail; every word (so in the Hebrew) shall become a reality.

24 For there will be no more false visions or flattering divinations among the people of Israel.

GILL, "For there shall be no more any vain vision,.... Or prophecy; such as the false prophets had given out, that the people should be in peace and safety, and not be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon; which they gave heed to, and so encouraged the lying prophets to go on prophesying smooth things; when the prophecies of the true prophets were accomplished, then the false ones were rejected, and their prophecies no more regarded; nor could there be any more a place for them, or a reception of them:

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nor flattering divination within the house of Israel; the Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Arabic versions, read, "in the midst of the children of Israel"; and so the Targum; but Kimchi says, that copies that so read are wrong; and which is confirmed by the Masora, which observes, that the reading is so in all places but in this. The Syriac version renders it "doubtful prediction"; and the Vulgate Latin version, "ambiguous divination"; like the prophecies and answers of the Heathen oracles, which were delivered in terms of doubtful signification, and might be taken in more senses than one. The Septuagint version is, "he that divines for grace"; in order to ingratiate himself into the people, to gain their good will, or their money, or both; and therefore divines smooth things, and flatters them with that which is most agreeable to their inclination; but when they shall see the city taken, and themselves carried captive, they will no more regard such soothing diviners, who pretended from the stars to tell what shall come to pass, as the Arabic version suggests.

HENRY, ". That God will certainly silence the lying proverbs, and the lying prophecies, with which they buoyed up their vain hopes, and will make them ashamed of both: (1.) I will make this proverb to cease; for when they find the days of vengeance have come, and not one iota or tittle of the prediction falls to the ground, they will be ashamed to use it as a proverb in Israel, The days are prolonged, and the vision fails.Note, Those that will not have their eyes opened and their mistakes rectified, by the word of God, shall be undeceived by his judgments: for every mouth that speaks perverse things shall be stopped. (2.) There shall be no more any vain vision, Eze_12:24. The false prophets, who told the people they should have peace and should soon see an end of their troubles, shall be disproved by the event, and then shall be ashamed of their pretensions, and shall hide their heads and impose silence upon themselves. Note, As truth was older than error, so it will survive it; it got the start, and it will get the race. The true prophets' visions and predictions stand, and are in full force, power, and virtue; they give law, and receive credit, when the vain visions, and the flattering divinations, are lost and forgotten, and shall be no more in the house of Israel; for great is the truth, and will prevail.

JAMISON, "no more ... vain vision ... flattering divination — All those false prophets (Lam_2:14), who “flattered” the people with promises of peace and safety, shall be detected and confounded by the event itself.

CALVIN, "Here God deprives the Jews of another source of confidence; for they flattered themselves, and had their own agitators, that is false Prophets, who puffed them up with flatteries: hence when they heard prophecies of sadness they despised them, and afterwards hardened themselves as if the Prophets had frightened them needlessly. Every one was too much inclined to this besotted confidence, but, as I have said, enticements were added, by which the flatterers deceived them. For the false Prophets said, that God would not be so severe, and that those predictions about the destruction of the city and temple were at variance with many promises.

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We see then that the Prophets were despised by the voluntary contumacy of the people, and also by the perverse acts of the false Prophets. Afterwards God asserted, that the days approached: now he adds, that there should be no more vision of vanity, not that the false Prophets were altogether removed, but because their mouth was stopped, since the event had proved their wickedness. Since then the people were made ashamed by slaughter, in this sense and for this reason it is said, that prophecies of vanity must be taken away: afterwards, divination of flattery from the midst of the house of Israel For in ease and shade they promised themselves a prosperous delivery from their miseries. For when the people were dragged out of the city into exile, some were slain, others spoiled of their fortunes and treated ignominiously, then the character of those Prophets appeared who had nursed the perverse confidence of the people by their vain enticements. Now we understand the Prophet’s genuine sense. It follows —

PARKER, ""There shall be no more any vain vision nor flattering divination within the house of Israel. For I am the Lord: I will speak, and the word that I shall speak shall come to pass; it shall be no more prolonged: for in your days, O rebellious house, will I say the word, and will perform it, saith the Lord God" ( Ezekiel 12:24-25).

Better believe this. All the ages have testified to it; all philosophies point in this direction. "He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Do not enter a fool"s paradise; do not enter upon vain imaginations, saying, As it was yesterday, so it will be tomorrow,—for there is a moment which changes all things. Study the action of time, and you will see how many critical moments there are. It is only a moment that separates the night from the day, the day from the not-day, the positive from the negative—an almost incalculable line, so minute, so infinitesimal. God can work wonders in a moment. He may take eternity for some works, but in many a moment he strikes men blind, and turns men into perdition. There is but a step between thee and death. Thy breath is in thy nostrils: a puncture in the right place, and life is gone. One touch, and the balance is lost, and he who was strong an hour since will be buried next week. Seizing these realities, grasping them with the whole mind and heart, the Church ought not to be other than in dead earnest

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PETT, "Verse 24-25

“For there will no more be any vain vision nor flattering divination within the house of Israel. For I am Yahweh. I will speak, and the word I speak will be performed. It will not be deferred any longer. For in your days, O rebellious house, will I speak the word and will perform it, says the Lord Yahweh.”

The great problem for Israel was that of conflicting voices. There were the prophets who prophesied peace and security, words pleasing to men’s ears (Jeremiah 28:2-4; Jeremiah 28:11). And there were those like Jeremiah and Ezekiel who spoke dire warnings of what was shortly to come. And the people as a whole preferred the former.

But now, said Yahweh, this would cease. Once the horror came on them, prophecies of peace and security would be in vain. They would be obviously untrue. Those who spoke with meaningless promises, and flattered with pleasant words through divination, would be shown up and would cease. For what Yahweh had said, He would do. He had spoken, and He would bring it about. Indeed in the very days of Ezekiel’s listeners all he had warned about would come about. Yahweh would perform it.

PULPIT, "Flattering divination. The word is the same as the "smooth things" of Isaiah 30:10, the "flattering lips" of Psalms 12:2, Psalms 12:3. LXX; μαντευόμενος τὰ πρὸς χάριν; Vulgate, ambigua. The "divinations" (the Hebrew word is found only here and in Ezekiel 13:7, though cognate words are found elsewhere) are so described, not without a touch of scorn in the use of a word which is not applied to the utterance of the true prophets, because they promised a speedy deliverance, even within "two full years" (Jeremiah 28:3).

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25 But I the Lord will speak what I will, and it shall be fulfilled without delay. For in your days, you rebellious people, I will fulfill whatever I say, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”

GILL, "For I am the Lord: I will speak,.... A sovereign Being, immutable and eternal; who will speak by his prophets what is his mind and will shall be done: and the word that I shall speak shall come to pass; the word of prophecy delivered out in his nature by the true prophets never fails, but is always accomplished; as that was which respected the siege or Jerusalem, and captivity of the Jews: it shall be no more prolonged: the judgment threatened shall be inflicted, and that in a very short time: for in your days, O rebellious house; while they were living; which they hoped would never be, at least not till after their death; whereas, within live or six years after this, all came to pass: will I say the word, and will perform it, saith the Lord God of hosts; not only the prophecy of their ruin should be given out in their days, but accomplished in that time; which they might depend upon, since he who said it is the mighty God, the Lord of armies in heaven and in earth.

HENRY 25-28, " That God will certainly, and very shortly, accomplish every word that he has spoken. With what majesty does he say it (Eze_12:25): I am the Lord! I am Jehovah! That glorious name of his speaks him a God giving being to his word by the performance of it, and therefore to the patriarchs, who lived by faith in a promise not yet performed, he was not known by his name Jehovah, Exo_6:3. But, as he is Jehovah in making good his promise, so he is in making good his threatenings. Let them know then that God, with whom they have to do, is the great Jehovah, and therefore, (1.) He will speak, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear: I am the Lord, I will speak.God will have his saying, whoever gainsays it. God's oracles are called lively ones, for they still speak when the pagan oracles are long ago struck dumb. There has been, and shall be, a succession of God's ministers to the end of the world, by whom he will speak; and, though contempt may be put upon them, that shall not put a period to their ministration: In your days, O rebellious house! will I say the word. Even in the worst

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ages of the church God left not himself without witness, but raised up men that spoke for him, that spoke from him. I will say the word, the word that shall stand. (2.) The word that he speaks shall come to pass; it shall infallibly be accomplished according to the true intent and meaning of it, and according to the full extent and compass of it: I will say the word and will perform it (Eze_12:25), for his mind is never changed, nor his arm shortened, nor is Infinite Wisdom ever nonplussed. With men saying and doing are two things, but they are not so with God; with him it is dictum, factum - said, and done. In the works of providence, as in those of creation, he speaks and it is done; for he said, Let there be light, and there was light - Let there be a firmament, and there was a firmament, Num_23:19; 1Sa_15:29. Whereas they had said, Every vision fails (Eze_12:22), God says, “No, there shall be the effect of every vision (Eze_12:23); it shall not return void, but every sign shall be answered by the thing signified.” Those that see the visions of the Almighty do not see vain visions; God confirms the word of his servantsby performing it. (3.) It shall be accomplished very shortly: “The days are at hand when you shall see the effect of every vision, Eze_12:23. It is said, it is sworn, that delay shall be no longer (Rev_10:6); the year of God's patience has now just expired, and he will no longer defer the execution of the sentence. It shall be no more prolonged (Eze_12:25); he has borne with you a great while, but he will not bear always. In your days, O rebellious house! shall the word that is said be performed, and you shall see the threatened judgments and share in them. Behold, the Judge stands at the door. The righteous are taken away from the evil to come, but this rebellious house shall not be so quietly taken away; no, they shall live to be hurried away, to be chased out of the world.” This is repeated (Eze_12:28): “There shall none of my words be prolonged any more,but judgment shall now hasten on apace; and the longer the bow has been in the drawing the deeper shall the arrow pierce.” When we tell sinners of death and judgment, heaven and hell, and think by them to persuade them to a holy life, though we do not find them downright infidels (they will own that they do believe there is a state of rewards and punishments in the other world), yet they put by the force of those great truths, and void the impressions of them, by looking upon the things of the other world as very remote; they tell us, “The vision you see is for many days to come, and you prophesy of the times that are very far off; it will be time enough to think of them when they come nearer,” whereas really there is but a step between us and death, between us and an awful eternity; yet a little while and the vision shall speak and not lie, and therefore it concerns us to redeem time, and get ready with all speed for a future state; for, though it is future, it is very near, and while impenitent sinners slumber their damnation slumbers not.

JAMISON, "word ... shall come to pass — in opposition to their scoff “the vision faileth” (Eze_12:22). The repetition, “I will speak ... speak,” etc. (or as Fairbairn, “For I, Jehovah, will speak whatever word I shall speak, and it shall be done”) implies that whenever God speaks, the effect must follow; for God, who speaks, is not divided in Himself (Eze_12:28; Isa_55:11; Dan_9:12; Luk_21:33).

no more prolonged — in opposition to the scoff (Eze_12:22), “The days are prolonged.”in your days — while you are living (compare Mat_24:34).

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CALVIN, "He confirms the last verse. there is some obscurity in the context of the words, but as to the general sense, the Prophet wishes to teach simply that what even God had spoken should be shortly accomplished, since God wishes to assert his own fidelity by the execution of the vengeance which he had threatened by his servants. The Prophet here means, that it is not right to separate God’s word from its effect, because God who speaks is not divided against himself. Whenever he opens his mouth, he stretches out his hand to fulfill his words. Now we understand the Prophet’s meaning; and hence we may collect the usefulness of this teaching. For, because God’s word seems cold to us and to be dissipated into air, we must always consider his hand. Whenever the Prophets speak, let God come before our eyes, and let him come not merely with bare words, but armed with his power, as if his hand was in some way included in his word. This is the meaning of the whole verse, I Jehovah will utter a word, and whatever I shall utter that will I do: it shall be no lower delayed, but, as I have often said, it shall return, nay in your days, O rebellious house, I will do what I have spoken by my servants. Here he expresses what might yet appear doubtful. For since a thousand years are with God as one day, the time might be thought near, even if the city had not been taken and destroyed with the temple for thirty years. But now God, after the manner of men, defines the time to be near, because those who were then alive should see the accomplishment of the prophecies which they had despised. It follows —

TRAPP, 'Ezekiel 12:25 For I [am] the LORD: I will speak, and the word that I shall speak shall come to pass; it shall be no more prolonged: for in your days, O rebellious house, will I say the word, and will perform it, saith the Lord GOD.

Ver. 25. For I am the Lord.] And that you shall shortly feel to your small comfort. What I have uttered with my mouth, I will perform with my hand without fail.

For in your days.] Within six years.

PULPIT, "The thought of verse 93 is reiterated with emphasis. The rebellious house, whether at Tel-Abib or in Jerusalem (probably the word is used with special reference to the former), should see the word of Jehovah fulfilled in their own days.

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One notes how the prophet dwells on the word prolonged, as though that had specially stirred his indignation. So again—

26 The word of the Lord came to me:

CLARKE, "In your days - will I say the word, and will perform it - Even these mockers shall live to see and feel this desolation. This is more particularly intimated in the following verses.

GILL, "Again, the word of the Lord came to me, saying. This is repeated to confirm what was before spoken, and that they might assure themselves that there would be a certain and speedy accomplishment of what the Lord had said by his prophet.CALVIN, "Here indeed such detestable blasphemy as we lately heard is not condemned in the Jews: but oblique ridicule, the tendency of which was first of all to weaken all confidence in Prophecy, and then to get rid of all heavenly doctrine. Those who are now condemned by the Prophet did not dare to bluster against God with swollen cheeks, but when others concluded the Prophecies to be vain and frivolous, because the time was put off, they said — it may happen that God will accomplish what he has denounced against us by his servant: meanwhile let us feast securely as we shall be dead before these things can happen. We see, therefore, that there were two classes of men: some who utterly rejected God’s Prophets, and wantonly derided their threats: this gross impiety has been already exposed. But others neither openly nor distinctly pronounced God to be a liar, but put far away from them the performance of the prophetic announcement. We see that the former were so abandoned, that they all but openly derided God, so as to turn away all fear from their own feelings since God prorogued the time. For Jeremiah had spent his strength in vain for many years in daily summoning them by a loud trumpet to God’s tribunal, and in setting the Chaldeans before their eyes. Since he effected nothing, Ezekiel is chosen, and after he has inveighed against a fouler impudence in

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despising God, he now attacks the hypocrite who had not yet proceeded so far as to vilify God by the use of words. But as I have just remarked, the gliding down from this security to open contempt of God is easy. Those then who feign themselves quiet and without danger, since God patiently delays his judgments, at length determine him to be content with his own ease, and not to regard human affairs. Let us then be on our guard against the snares of Satan; and not only abhor the foul blasphemy of which the Prophet speaks, but as soon as God threatens us, let us prevent his judgment, and not promise ourselves a long period of escape, which may render us so stupid as to deprive us of all fear.

The house of Israel then said, he prophesies for many days. They did not openly assert that Ezekiel was speaking rashly and arrogating to himself the prophetic name, but they said that he prophesied for many days and a long period. Now he adds, thou shalt say unto them, it shall not be any lower put off Some thus interpret these words — all my discourses shall not be put off. They prefer a change of number, and resolve it thus — each of my words shall not be put. off. But the other view seems to suit the context better: it shall not be put off any lower, for the words which I utter I will execute Here again he confirms what we formerly saw: that God would not speak in vain, since he is not divided in opinion. It belongs to men to lie, and to utter vainly what they cannot perform, and to change their; nothing of the kind ought to be imagined of God, for his hand is always in union with his speech. (271)

COFFMAN, ""Again the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Son of man, behold, they of the house of Israel say, The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of times that are far off. Therefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: There shall none of my words be deferred any more, but the word which I shall speak shall be performed, saith the Lord Jehovah."

ANOTHER FALSE PROVERB REFUTED

Although the problem created by this false proverb was very similar to the one addressed in the previous paragraph, "There is a slight variation. The gainsayers are not saying here that, `The vision faileth'; they indeed recognize Ezekiel as a

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prophet; but they throw the fulfillment of his words into the far distant future."[8]

The refutation of such false views would appear in the complete fulfilment of the prophecies in the very near future. From the time of this chapter until the total ruin of Jerusalem and all Judah, along with the slaughter of most of the people, the burning of the temple, the capture, blinding, and captivity of their king, and the deportation of the pitiful remnant to Babylon where they would join their other unbelieving brethren in their captivity until it was all fulfilled was only a matter of four or five years. When? All of this, the last ugly detail of it, happened within a time-frame of only four or five years. Allowing some eighteen months for the siege, the events prophesied in this very chapter began to unfold only three and one half years after the prophecies were given to Ezekiel.

WHEDON, "Verses 26-28

26-28. Some who still retained their faith in prophecy, and were even inclined to accept Jeremiah and Ezekiel as true prophets, yet comforted themselves in their disobedience by saying that the times of trouble and judgment of which the prophet spoke were far in the future (Isaiah 39:8). Perhaps, as in other cases, the people would repent and the prophecy be averted (Jonah; Jeremiah 18:8; Joel 2:14). But against this Ezekiel replies that Jehovah has explicitly declared that the fulfillment of his threatening shall not be postponed longer, “but the word which I shall speak [Ezekiel 12:25] shall be done, saith Jehovah Elohim.”

PETT, "Verse 26-27

‘Again the word of Yahweh came to me saying, “Son of man, behold, those of the house of Israel are saying, ‘The vision that he sees is for many days to come, and he prophecies of times that are far off.’ ” ’

Yahweh well knew the hearts of some of the men to whom Ezekiel prophesied. They considered his prophecies interesting, and similar to the warnings of past prophets.

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They did not deny that they would happen, but they assured themselves that they applied to well in the future. The ‘day of Yahweh’ was well in the future. For the present it was irrelevant. Such things could not happen now. How easily we too can so dismiss the warnings of the Bible. Life goes on, and seemingly nothing disturbs it. But for us too God will one day say, ‘The time has come’.

PULPIT, "Ezekiel 12:26, Ezekiel 12:27

The words imply another interval of silence, meditation, and then a fresh utterance to the same effect as before. In this case (Ezekiel 12:27) we trace a slight modification in the language of the gainsayers. They recognize Ezekiel both as a seer and a prophet. They do not say that his vision "faileth." They content themselves with throwing the fulfilment into the distant future. Their thought is that of the proverb which has been ascribed to more than one king or statesman, Apres moi le deluge. To these his answer is nearly in the same terms as before. Still harping on the offensive word, he tells them that nothing that he has spoken shall be "prolonged." The destruction of the temple and the holy city, the departure of the Divine Presence from the sanctuary, these were already within measurable distance

27 “Son of man, the Israelites are saying, ‘The vision he sees is for many years from now, and he prophesies about the distant future.’

GILL, "Son of man, behold, they of the house of Israel say,.... Either they of the ten tribes in Babylon, or the Jews in Judea, who were also Israelites: these the Lord directs the prophet to take notice of, and be a witness of what they said; since he himself, as a prophet, was concerned in it:

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the vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are afar off; that is, according to them, the vision that Ezekiel the prophet saw concerning their ruin; and the prophecy which he delivered out relating to that was not to be fulfilled as yet; there were many days and years still to come; it was at a great distance, and so they put away this evil day far from them; they own that he had a vision and prophecy, but it respected future times, and distant ages; and therefore they did not trouble themselves with it; it gave them no great concern, because they considered it as afar off.

JAMISON, "Not a mere repetition of the scoff (Eze_12:22); there the scoffersasserted that the evil was so often threatened and postponed, it must have no reality; here formalists do not go so far as to deny that a day of evil is coming, but assert it is still far off (Amo_6:3). The transition is easy from this carnal security to the gross infidelity of the former class.BI, "The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off.Now(a sermon for young men and young women):—One would have thought that if the glorious Lord condescended to send His servants to speak to men of the way of salvation, all mankind would delight to hear the message. But, alas! it has not been so. Man’s opposition to God is too deep, too stubborn for that. Men display great ingenuity in making excuses for rejecting the message of God’s love. The evil argument which is mentioned in the text has been used from Ezekiel’s day right down to the present moment, and it has served Satan’s turn in ten thousand cases. The sons of men, when they hear of the great atonement made upon the cross by the Lord Jesus, and are bidden to lay hold upon eternal life in Him, still say concerning the Gospel, “The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of times that are far off.” That is to say, they pretend that the matters whereof we speak are not of immediate importance, and may safely be postponed. They meet our pressing invitation, “All things are now ready, come ye to the supper,” with the reply, “Religion is meant to prepare us for eternity, but we are far off from it as yet, and are still in the hey-day of our being; there is plenty of time for those dreary preparations for death.” They put off the day of conversion, as if it were a day of tempest and terror, and not, as it really is, a day most calm, most bright, the bridal of the soul with heaven.I. Granted for a moment that the message ww bring to you has most to do with the future state, yet even then the day is not far off, neither is there so great a distance between now and then, that you can afford to wait. You, perhaps, think seventy years a long period, but those who are seventy, in looking back, will tell you that their age is an hand’s breadth. Man is short-lived compared with his surroundings; he comes into the world and goes out of it, as a meteor flashes through yonder skies which have remained the same for ages. Look at yonder venerable oak, which has for five hundred years battled with the winds, and what an infant one seems when reclining beneath its shade! Stand by some giant rock, which has confronted the tempests of the ages, and you feel like the insect of an hour. Therefore do not say, “These things are for a far-off time”; for even if we could guarantee to you the whole length of human existence, it is but a span.

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But there comes upon the heels of this a reflection never to be forgotten—that not one man among us can promise himself, with anything like certainty, that he shall ever see threescore years and ten. Nay more, we cannot promise that we shall see half that length of time. Let me check myself! What am I talking of? You cannot be certain that you will see this year out, and hear the bells ring in a new year. Ay, and this very night, when you close your eyes and rest your head upon your pillow, reckon not too surely that you shall ever again look on that familiar chamber, or go forth from it to the pursuits of life. It is clear, then, that the things which make for your peace are not matters for a far-off time, the frailty of life makes them necessities of this very hour.II. Our message really deals with the present. For observe, first, we are sent to plead with you, young men and young women, and tenderly to remind you that you are at this hour acting unjustly and unkindly towards your God. He made you, and you do not serve Him; He has kept you alive, and you are not obedient to Him, “Will a man rob God?” You would not rob your employer. You would not like to be thought unfaithful or dishonest towards man; and yet your God, your God, your God—is He to be treated so basely, notwithstanding all His goodness? Again, our message has to do with the present, for we would affectionately remind you that you are now at enmity with your best friend—the Friend to whose love you owe everything. I have to remind you, however, of much more than this, namely, that you are this night in danger. Are you content to abide for a single hour in peril of eternal punishment? Many other reasons tend to make this weighty matter exceedingly pressing; and among them is this, that there is a disease in your heart, the disease of sin, and it needs immediate cure. Surely a sick mar can never be cured too soon? The gospel which we preach to you will also bring you present blessings. In addition to present pardon and present justification, it will give you present regeneration, present adoption, present sanctification, present access to God, present peace through believing, and present help in time of trouble, and it will make you even for this life doubly happy. It will be wisdom for your way, strength for your conflict, and comfort for your sorrow.III. I shall not deny, but I shall glory rather in admitting, that the Gospel has to do with the future. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has to do with the whole of a young man’s life. Dear young friends, if you are saved while yet you are young, you will find religion to be a great preventive of sin. What a blessing it is not to have been daubed with the slime of Sodom, never to have had our bones broken by actual vice. Prevention is better than cure, and grace gives both. Grace will also act as a preservative as well as a preventive. The good thing which God will put in you will keep you. Whosoever believeth in Him has passed from death unto life; he shall not live in sin, but he shall be preserved in holiness even to the end. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The far-off looks insignificant“Look at the stars, those vast globes of light, by reason of the distance between us and them, do seem but as so many spangles; so we have but a weak sight of things which are set at a great distance, and their operation upon us is usually but small.”—Manton. A far-off hell is the dread of no man, and a far-off heaven is scarce desired by anyone. God Himself, while thought of as far away, is not feared or reverenced as He should be. If we did but use our thoughts upon the matter, we should soon see that a mere span of time divides us from the eternal world, while the Lord our God is nearer to us than our souls are to our bodies. Strange that the brief time which intervenes between us and eternity

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should appear to be so important, while eternity itself they regard as a trifling matter. Men use the microscope to magnify the small concerns of time. Oh, that they would use the telescope upon the vast matters of eternity! (C. H. Spurgeon.)

A common mistake and lame excuseI. The saying of my text, in the application which I now want to make of it, is a truth, but it is only half a truth. The neglect of God’s solemn message by a great many people is based, more or less consciously, upon the notion that the message of Christianity—or, if you like to call it so, of the Gospel; or, if you like to call it more vaguely, religion—has to do mainly with blessings and woes beyond the grave. So there is plenty of time to attend to it when we get near the end. Now, is it true that “he prophesies of times that are far off”? Yes! and No! Yes! it is true, and it is the great glory of Christianity, that it shifts the centre of gravity, so to speak, from this poor, transient, contemptible present, and sets it away out yonder in an august and infinite future. But is that all that you have to say about Christianity? I want you to remember that all that prophesying of times that are far off has the closest bearing upon this transient, throbbing moment, because, for one thing, the characteristic of the Christian revelation about the future is that my eternity and yours is the child of time; and that just as the child is father of the man, so the man here is the progenitor and determiner of all the infinite spaces that lie beyond the grave. Therefore, when Christian truth prophesies of times that are afar off, it is prophesying of present time, between which and the most distant eternity there is an iron nexus: a band which cannot be broken. Igor is that all. Not only is the truth in my text but a half truth, if it is supposed that the main business of the Gospel is to talk to us about heaven and hell, and not about the earth by which we secure and procure the one or the other, but also it is a half truth, because, large and transcendent, eternal in their duration, and blessed beyond all thought in their sweetness as are the possibilities, the certainties that are opened by the risen and ascended Christ, and tremendous beyond all words that men can speak as are the alternative possibilities, yet these are not all the contents of the Gospel message; but those blessings and penalties, joys and miseries, exaltations and degradations, which attend upon righteousness and sin, godliness and irreligion today are a large part of its theme and of its effects.II. So, then, my text gives a very good reason for prizing and attending to the prophecy. People do not usually kick over their telescopes and neglect to look through them, because they are so powerful that they show them the craters in the moon and turn faint specks into blazing suns. People do not usually neglect a word of warning or guidance in reference to the ordering of their earthly lives, because it is so comprehensive, and covers so large a ground, and is so certain and absolutely true. Surely there can be no greater sign of Divine loving kindness, of a Saviour’s tenderness and care for us, than that He should come to each of us, as He does come, and say to each of us, “Thou art to live forever; and if thou wilt take Me for thy light thou shalt live forever, blessed, calm, and pure.” And we listen, and say, “He prophesies of times that are far off.” Oh! is that not rather a reason for coming very close to, and for grappling to our hearts, and living always by the power of, that great revelation? Surely to announce the consequences of evil, and to announce them so long beforehand that there is plenty of time to avoid them, and to falsify the prediction, is the token of love.III. It is a very common and a very bad reason for neglecting. It does operate as a reason for giving little heed to the prophet, as I have been saying. In the old men-of-war, when

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an engagement was impending, they used to bring up the hammocks from the bunks and stick them into the nettings at the side of the ship, to defend it from boarders and bullets. And then, after these had served the purpose of repelling, they were taken down again and the crew went to sleep upon them. That is exactly what some of my friends do with that misconception of the genius of Christianity, that it is concerned mainly with another world. They put it up as a screen between them and God, between them and what you know to be their duty—namely, the acceptance of Christ as their Saviour. It is your hammock that you put between the bullets and yourself; and many a good sleep you get upon it! Now, that strange capacity that men have of ignoring a certain future is seen at work all round about us in every region of life. The peasants on the slopes of Vesuvius live very merry lives, and they have their little vineyards and their olives. Yes, and every morning, when they come out, they can look up and see the thin wreath of smoke going up in the dazzling blue, and they know that some time or other there will he a roar and a rush, and down will come the lava. But “a short life and a merry one” is the creed of a good many of us, though we do not like to confess it. Some of you will remember the strange way in which ordinary habits survived in prisons in the dreadful times of the French Revolution, and how ladies and gentlemen, who were going to have their heads chopped off next morning, danced and flirted, and sat at entertainments, just as if there was no such thing in the world as the public prosecutor and the tumbril, and the gaoler going about with a bit of chalk to mark each door where the condemned were for next day. The same strange power of ignoring a known future, which works so widely and so disastrously round about us, is especially manifested in regard to religion. Surely it is not wise for a man to ignore a future that is certain simply because it is distant. So long as it is certain, what, in the name of common sense, has the time when it begins to be a present to do with our wisdom in regard to it? Surely it is not wise to ignore a future which is so incomparably greater than this present, and which also is so connected with this present as that life here is only intelligible as the vestibule and preparation for that great world beyond? Surely it is not wise to ignore a future because you fancy it is far away, when it may burst upon you at any time? What would you think of the crew and passengers of some ship lying in harbour, waiting for its sailing orders, who had got leave on shore, and did not know but that at any moment the blue peter might be flying at the fore—the signal to weigh anchor—if they behaved themselves in the port as if they were never going to embark, and made no preparations for the voyage? Let me beseech you to rid yourselves of that most unreasonable of all reasons for neglecting the Gospel, that its most solemn revelations refer to the eternity beyond the grave. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

God’s predictions will be fulfilledThose who receive intelligence from the almanac that the tide is to turn at a given moment, never think of doubting the prediction. Those who read in the kindling page of night that an eclipse will occur at a particular moment are as sure of it as if it had already taken place. “On 9th August 1869,” says one, “at four o’clock in the afternoon, I stood at the door, smoked glass in hand, waiting. When a boy, I had read of this very eclipse, and of the moment when it should begin; it did begin at the precise second predicted forty years ago.” What we read in God’s own handwriting makes the student able to determine the path of the star, the point of an eclipse, to the fraction of a second; and is His word to be less trusted in the sphere of grace than in the sphere of nature’s operations? (R.

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Venting.).

MACLAREN, "A COMMON MISTAKE AND LAME EXCUSE

Ezekiel 12:27.

Human nature was very much the same in the exiles that listened to Ezekiel on the banks of the Chebar and in Manchester to-day. The same neglect of God’s message was grounded then on the same misapprehension of its bearings which profoundly operates in the case of many people now. Ezekiel had been proclaiming the fall of Jerusalem to the exiles whose captivity preceded it by a few years; and he was confronted by the incredulity which fancied that it had a great many facts to support it, and so it generalised God’s long-suffering delay in sending the threatened punishment into a scoffing proverb which said, ‘The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.’ To translate it into plain English, the prophets had cried ‘Wolf! wolf!’ so long that their alarms were disbelieved altogether.

Even the people that did not go the length of utter unbelief in the prophetic threatening took the comfortable conclusion that these threatenings had reference to a future date, and they need not trouble themselves about them. And so they said, according to my text, ‘They of the house of Israel say, The vision that he sees is for many days to come, and he prophesieth of the times that are far off.’ ‘It may be all quite true, but it lies away in the distant future there; and things will last our time, so we do not need to bother ourselves about what he says.’

So the imagined distance of fulfilment turned the edge of the plainest denunciations, and was like wool stuffed in the people’s ears to deaden the reverberations of the thunder.

I wonder if there is anybody here now whom that fits, who meets the preaching of the gospel with a shrug, and with this saying, ‘He prophesies of the times that are

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far off.’ I fancy that there are a few; and I wish to say a word or two about this ground on which the widespread disregard of the divine message is based.

I. First, then, notice that the saying of my text-in the application which I now seek to make of it-is a truth, but it is only half a truth.

Of course, Ezekiel was speaking simply about the destruction of Jerusalem. If it had been true, as his hearers assumed, that that was not going to happen for a good many years yet, the chances were that it had no bearing upon them, and they were right enough in neglecting the teaching. And, of course, when I apply such a word as this in the direction in which I wish to do now, we do bring in a different set of thoughts; but the main idea remains the same. The neglect of God’s solemn message by a great many people is based, more or less consciously, upon the notion that the message of Christianity-or, if you like to call it so, of the gospel; or, if you like to call it more vaguely, religion-has to do mainly with blessings and woes beyond the grave, and that there is plenty of time to attend to it when we get nearer the end.

Now is it true that ‘he prophesies of times that are far off’? Yes! and No! Yes! it is true, and it is the great glory of Christianity that it shifts the centre of gravity, so to speak, from this poor, transient, contemptible present, and sets it away out yonder in an august and infinite future. It brings to us not only knowledge of the future, but certitude, and takes the conception of another life out of the region of perhapses, possibilities, dreads, or hopes, as the case may be, and sets it in the sunlight of certainty. There is no more mist. Other faiths, even when they have risen to the height of some contemplation of a future, have always seen it wrapped in nebulous clouds of possibilities, but Christianity sets it clear, definite, solid, as certain as yesterday, as certain as to-day.

It not only gives us the knowledge and the certitude of the times that are afar off, and that are not times but eternities, but it gives us, as the all-important element in that future, that its ruling characteristic is retribution. It ‘brings life and immortality to light,’ and just because it does, it brings the dark orb which, like some of the double stars in the heavens, is knit to the radiant sphere by a necessary band. It brings to light, with life and immortality, death and woe. It is true-’he

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prophesies of times that are far off’ and it is the glory of the gospel of Christ’s revelation, and of the religion that is based thereon, that its centre is beyond the grave, and that its eye is so often turned to the clearly discerned facts that lie there.

But is that all that we have to say about Christianity? Many representations of it, I am free to confess, from pulpits and books and elsewhere, do talk as if that was all, as if it was a magnificent thing to have when you came to die. As the play has it, ‘I said to him that I hoped there was no need that he should think about God yet,’ because he was not going to die. But I urge you to remember, dear brethren, that all that prophesying of times that are far off has the closest bearing upon this transient, throbbing moment, because, for one thing, one solemn part of the Christian revelation about the future is that Time is the parent of Eternity, and that, in like manner as in our earthly course ‘the child is father of the man,’ so the man as he has made himself is the author of himself as he will be through the infinite spaces that lie beyond the grave. Therefore, when a Christian preacher prophesies of times that are afar off, he is prophesying of present time, between which and the most distant eternity there is an iron nexus-a band which cannot be broken.

Nor is that all. Not only is the truth in my text but a half truth, if it is supposed that the main business of the gospel is to talk to us about heaven and hell, and not about the earth on which we secure and procure the one or the other; but also it is a half truth because, large and transcendent, eternal in their duration, and blessed beyond all thought in their sweetness as are the possibilities, the certainties that are opened by the risen and ascended Christ, and tremendous beyond all words that men can speak as are the alternative possibilities, yet these are not all the contents of the gospel message; but those blessings and penalties, joys and miseries, exaltations and degradations, which attend upon righteousness and sin, godliness and irreligion to-day are a large part of its theme and of its effects. Therefore, whilst on the one hand it is true, blessed be Christ’s name! that ‘he prophesies of times that are far off’; on the other hand it is an altogether inadequate description of the gospel message and of the Christian body of truth to say that the future is its realm, and not the present.

II. So, then, in the second place, my text gives a very good reason for prizing and attending to the prophecy.

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If it is true that God, speaking through the facts of Christ’s death and Resurrection and Ascension, has given to us the sure and certain hope of immortality, and has declared to us plainly the conditions upon which that immortality may be ours, and the woful loss and eclipse into the shadow of which we shall stumble darkling if it is not ours, then surely that is a reason for prizing and laying to heart, and living by the revelation so mercifully made. People do not usually kick over their telescopes, and neglect to look through them, because they are so powerful that they show them the craters in the moon and turn faint specks into blazing suns. People do not usually neglect a word of warning or guidance in reference to the ordering of their earthly lives because it is so comprehensive, and covers so large a ground, and is so certain and absolutely true. Surely there can be no greater sign of divine loving-kindness, of a Saviour’s tenderness and care for us, than that He should come to each of us, as He does come, and say to each of us, ‘Thou art to live for ever; and if thou wilt take Me for thy Life, thou shalt live for ever, blessed, calm, and pure.’ And we listen, and say, ‘He prophesies of times that are far off!’ Oh! is that not rather a reason for coming very close to, and for grappling to our hearts and living always by the power of, that great revelation? Surely to announce the consequences of evil, and to announce them so long beforehand that there is plenty of time to avoid them and to falsify the prediction, is the token of love.

Now I wish to lay it on the hearts of you people who call yourselves Christians, and who are so in some imperfect degree, whether we do at all adequately regard, remember, and live by this great mercy of God, that He should have prophesied to us ‘of the times that are far off.’ Perhaps I am wrong, but I cannot help feeling that, for this generation, the glories of the future rest with God have been somewhat paled, and the terrors of the future unrest away from God have been somewhat lightened. I hope I am wrong, but I do not think that the modern average Christian thinks as much about heaven as his father did. And I believe that his religion has lost something of its buoyancy, of its power, of its restraining and stimulating energy, because, from a variety of reasons, the bias of this generation is rather to dwell upon, and to realise, the present social blessings of Christianity than to project itself into that august future. The reaction may be good. I have no doubt it was needed, but I think it has gone rather too far, and I would beseech Christian men and women to try and deserve more the sarcasm that is flung at us that we live for another world. Would God it were true-truer than it is! We should see better work done in this world if it were. So I say, that ‘he prophesieth of times that are far off’

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is a good reason for prizing and obeying the prophet.

III. Lastly, this is a very common and a very bad reason for neglecting the prophecy.

It does operate as a reason for giving little heed to the prophet, as I have been saying. In the old men-of-war, when an engagement was impending, they used to bring up the hammocks from the bunks and pile them into the nettings at the side of the ship, to defend it from boarders and bullets. And then, after these had served their purpose of repelling, they were taken down again and the crew went to sleep upon them. That is exactly what some of my friends do with that misconception of the genius of Christianity which supposes that it is concerned mainly with another world. They put it up as a screen between them and God, between them and what they know to be their duty-viz., the acceptance of Christ as their Saviour. It is their hammock that they put between the bullets and themselves; and many a good sleep they get upon it!

Now, that strange capacity that men have of ignoring a certain future is seen at work all round about us in every region of life. I wonder how many young men there are in Manchester to-day that have begun to put their foot upon the wrong road, and who know just as well as I do that the end of it is disease, blasted reputation, ruined prospects, perhaps an early death. Why! there is not a drunkard in the city that does not know that. Every man that takes opium knows it. Every unclean, unchaste liver knows it; and yet he can hide the thought from himself, and go straight on as if there was nothing at all of the sort within the horizon of possibility. It is one of the most marvellous things that men have that power; only beaten by the marvel that, having it, they should be such fools as to choose to exercise it. The peasants on the slopes of Vesuvius live very careless lives, and they have their little vineyards and their olives. Yes, and every morning when they come out, they can look up and see the thin wreath of smoke going up in the dazzling blue, and they know that some time or other there will be a roar and a rush, and down will come the lava. But ‘a short life and a merry one’ is the creed of a good many of us, though we do not like to confess it. Some of you will remember the strange way in which ordinary habits survived in prisons in the dreadful times of the French Revolution, and how ladies and gentlemen, who were going to have their heads chopped off next morning, danced and flirted, and sat at entertainments, just as if there was no such thing in the world as the public prosecutor and the tumbril, and

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the gaoler going about with a bit of chalk to mark each door where were the condemned for next day.

That same strange power of ignoring a known future, which works so widely and so disastrously round about us, is especially manifested in regard to religion. The great bulk of English men and women who are not Christians, and the little sample of such that I have in my audience now, as a rule believe as fully as we do the truths which they agree to neglect. Let me speak to them individually. You believe that death will introduce you into a world of two halves-that if you have been a good, religious man, you will dwell in blessedness; that if you have not, you will not-yet you never did a single thing, nor refrained from a single thing, because of that belief. And when I, and men of my profession, come and plead with you and try to get through that strange web of insensibility that you have spun round you, you listen, and then you say, with a shrug, ‘He prophesies of things that are far off.’ and you turn with relief to the trivialities of the day. Need I ask you whether that is a wise thing or not?

Surely it is not wise for a man to ignore a future that is certain simply because it is distant. So long as it is certain, what in the name of common-sense has the time when it begins to be a present to do with our wisdom in regard to it? It is the uncertainty in future anticipations which makes it unwise to regulate life largely by them, and if you can eliminate that element of uncertainty-which you can do if you believe in Jesus Christ-then the question is not when is the prophecy going to be fulfilled, but is it true and trustworthy? The man is a fool who, because it is far off, thinks he can neglect it.

Surely it is not wise to ignore a future which is so incomparably greater than this present, and which also is so connected with this present as that life here is only intelligible as the vestibule and preparation for that great world beyond.

Surely it is not wise to ignore a future because you fancy it is far away, when it may burst upon you at any time. These exiles to whom Ezekiel spoke hugged themselves in the idea that his words were not to be fulfilled for many days to come; but they were mistaken, and the crash of the fall of Jerusalem stunned them before many

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months had passed by. We have to look forward to a future which must be very near to some of us, which may be nearer to others than they think, which at the remotest is but a little way from us, and which must come to us all. Oh, dear friends, surely it is not wise to ignore as far off that which for some of us may be here before this day closes, which will probably be ours in some cases before the fresh young leaves now upon the trees have dropped yellow in the autumn frosts, which at the most distant must be very near us, and which waits for us all.

What would you think of the crew and passengers of some ship lying in harbour, waiting for its sailing orders, who had got leave on shore, and did not know but that at any moment the blue-peter might be flying at the fore-the signal to weigh anchor-if they behaved themselves in the port as if they were never going to embark, and made no preparations for the voyage? Let me beseech you to rid yourselves of that most unreasonable of all reasons for neglecting the gospel, that its most solemn revelations refer to the eternity beyond the grave.

There are many proofs that man on the whole is a very foolish creature, but there is not one more tragical than the fact that believing, as many of you do, that ‘the wages of sin is death, and the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ,’ you stand aloof from accepting the gift, and risk the death.

The ‘times far off’ have long since come near enough to those scoffers. The most distant future will be present to you before you are ready for it, unless you accept Jesus Christ as your All, for time and for eternity. If you do, the time that is near will be pure and calm, and the times that are far off will be radiant with unfading bliss.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:27 Son of man, behold, [they of] the house of Israel say, The vision that he seeth [is] for many days [to come], and he prophesieth of the times [that are] far off.

Ver. 27. For many days.] Either it is nothing, or long hence.

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28 “Therefore say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: None of my words will be delayed any longer; whatever I say will be fulfilled, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”

CLARKE, "There shall none of my words be prolonged any more - He had waited to be gracious; they abused his mercy; and at last the protracted wrath rushed upon them with irresistible force.

GILL, "Therefore say unto them, thus saith the Lord God,.... Carry this message to them from me, whether they will hear it or not; so shall it be: there shall none of my words be prolonged any more; the fulfilment of prophecies delivered in the name of the Lord by the prophets shall be no longer deferred, but shall quickly be: but the word which I have spoken shall be done, saith the Lord God: one jot and tittle of it shall not pass away till all be fulfilled; sooner may heaven and earth pass away than that shall; it is for ever settled in heaven, and shall be fulfilled on earth; he that has said it is of one mind, and none can turn him; and is able to do whatsoever he pleases.

TRAPP, "Ezekiel 12:28 Therefore say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD There shall none of my words be prolonged any more, but the word which I have spoken shall be done, saith the Lord GOD.

Ver. 28. There shall none of my words be prolonged.] Abused mercy turneth into

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fury.

PETT, "Verse 28

“Therefore say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord Yahweh, None of my words will be deferred any more, but the word which I will speak will be performed, says the Lord Yahweh.’ ”

For them the hour was present. There would be no more deferment. Judgment would come. The day of Yahweh was here. All the dire things He had spoken of would happen. It ‘will be performed’, for Yahweh Himself would see to its performing. And these were the words, not of a minor god, but of ‘the Lord Yahweh’.

The church today faces a similar position with regard to the second coming. It can easily be seen as something that will not happen yet. But one day there will be a generation when all these things will happen, and in the light of the troubles facing the world it may well be our generation. We must watch, lest coming suddenly He find us sleeping.

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