Ezekiel 7:17

This chapter, which also forms a distinct prophecy, foretells the dreadful destruction of the land of Israel, or Judah, (for after the captivity of the ten tribes these terms are often used indiscriminately for the Jews in general), on account of the heinous sins of its inhabitants, Eze 7:1-15 ; and the great distress of the small remnant that should escape, Eze 7:16-19 . The temple itself, which they had polluted with idolatry, is devoted to destruction, Eze 7:20-22 ; and the prophet is directed to make a chain, as a type of that captivity, in which both king and people should be led in bonds to Babylon, Eze 7:23-27 . The whole chapter abounds in bold and beautiful figures, flowing in an easy and forcible language. Verse 2 An end, the end is come - Instead of קץ בא הקץ kets ba hakkets, one MS. of Kennicott's, one of De Rossi's, and one of my own, read קץ בא בא הקץ kets ba, ba hakkets,"The end cometh, come is the end." This reading is supported by all the ancient Versions, and is undoubtedly genuine. The end Cometh: the termination of the Jewish state is coming, and while I am speaking, it is come. The destruction is at the door. The later hand, who put the vowel points to the ancient MS. that has the above reading, did not put the points to the first בא ba, but struck his pen gently across it, and by a mark in the margin intimated that it should be blotted out. All my ancient MSS. were without the points originally; but they have been added by modern hands, with a different ink; and they have in multitudes of instances corrected, or rather changed, important readings, to make them quadrate with the masora. But the original reading, in almost every case, is discernible. The end is come upon the four corners of the land - This is not a partial calamity; it shall cover and sweep the whole land. The cup of your iniquity is full, and my forbearing is at an end. This whole chapter is poetical. Verse 4 Thine abominations shall be in the midst of thee - They shall ever stare thee in the face, upbraid thee with thy ingratitude and disobedience, and be witnesses against thee. Verse 5 An evil, an only evil - The great, the sovereign, the last exterminating evil, is come: the sword, the pestilence, the famine, and the captivity. Many MSS. read אחר achar, after. So evil cometh after evil; one instantly succeeds another. Verse 6 An end is come, the end is come: it watcheth for thee - This is similar to the second verse; but there is a paronomasia, or play upon letters and words, which is worthy of note. קץ בא בא הקץ הקץ אליך kets ba, ba hakkets, hekits elayich. קצה katsah signifies to make an end or extremity, by cutting off something, and יקץ yakats signifies to awake from sleep: hence קיץ kits, the summer, as the earth and its productions seem then to awake from the sleep of winter. The end or final destruction is here personified; and represented as an executioner who has arisen early from his sleep, and is waiting for his orders to execute judgment upon these offenders. Hence it is said: - Verse 7 The morning is come unto thee - Every note of time is used in order to show the certainty of the thing. The morning that the executioner has watched for is come; the time of that morning, in which it should take place, and the day to which that time, precise hour of that morning, belongs in which judgment shall be executed. All, all is come. And not the sounding again of the mountains - The hostile troops are advancing! Ye hear a sound, a tumultuous noise; do not suppose that this proceeds from festivals upon the mountains; from the joy of harvestmen, or the treaders of the wine-press. It is the noise of those by whom ye and your country are to fall. ולא הד הרים veto hed harim, and not the reverberation of sound, or reflected sound, or reechoing from the mountains. "Now will I shortly pour out," Eze 7:8 . Here they come! Verse 10 Behold the day - The same words are repeated, sometimes varied, and pressed on the attention with new figures and new circumstances, in order to alarm this infatuated people. Look at the day! It is come! The morning is gone forth - It will wait no longer. The rod that is to chastise you hath blossomed; it is quite ready. Pride hath budded - Your insolence, obstinacy, and daring opposition to God have brought forth their proper fruits. Verse 11 Violence is risen, up into a rod of wickedness - The prophet continues his metaphor: "Pride has budded." - And what has it brought forth? Violence and iniquity. To meet these, the rod of God cometh. There is such a vast rapidity of succession in the ideas of the prophet that he cannot wait to find language to clothe each. Hence we have broken sentences; and, consequently, obscurity. Something must be supplied to get the sense, and most critics alter words in the text. Houbigant, who rarely acknowledges himself to be puzzled, appears here completely nonplussed. He has given a meaning; it is this: "Violence hath burst forth from the rod; salvation shall not proceed from them, nor from their riches, nor from their turbulence: there shall be no respite for them." Calmet has given no less than five interpretations to this verse. The simple meaning seems to be, that such and so great is their wickedness that it must be punished; and from this punishment, neither their multitude nor struggles shall set them free. They may strive to evade the threatened stroke; but they shall not succeed, nor shall they have any respite. Our Version is to be understood as saying, - None of the people shall be left; all shall be slain, or carried into captivity: nor shall any of theirs, their princes, priests, wives, or children, escape. And so deserved shall their desolation appear, that none shall lament them. This may be as good a sense as any, and it is nearest to the letter. Verse 12 Let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn - Such is now the state of public affairs, that he who through want has been obliged to sell his inheritance, need not mourn on the account; as of this the enemy would soon have deprived him. And he who has bought it need not rejoice in his bargain, as he shall soon be stripped of his purchase, and either fall by the sword, or be glad to flee for his life. Verse 13 For the seller shall not return - In the sale of all heritages among the Jews, it was always understood that the heritage must return to the family on the year of jubilee, which was every fiftieth year; but in this case the seller should not return to possess it, as it was not likely that he should be alive when the next jubilee should come, and if he were even to live till that time, he could not possess it, as he would then be in captivity. And the reason is particularly given; for the vision - the prophetic declaration of a seventy years' captivity, regards the whole multitude of the people; and it shall not return, i.e., it will be found to be strictly true, without any abatement. Verse 14 They have blown the trumpet - Vain are all the efforts you make to collect and arm the peoples and stand on your own defense; for all shall be dispirited, and none go to the battle. Verse 15 The sword is without - War through all the country, and pestilence and famine within the city, shall destroy the whole, except a small remnant. He who endeavors to flee from the one shall fall by the other. Verse 16 They - shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys - Rather, like mourning doves הגאיות haggeayoth, chased from their dove-cotes, and separated from their mates. Verse 17 All knees shall be weak as water - Calmet understands this curiously: La frayeur dont on sera saisi, fera qu'on ne pourra retenir son urine. D'autres l'expliquent d'une autre souillure plus honteuse. I believe him to be nearly about right. St. Jerome is exactly the same: Pavoris magnitudine, urina polluet genua, nec valebit profluentes aquas vesica prohibere. This and other malretentions are often the natural effect of extreme fear or terror. Verse 19 They shall cast their silver in the streets - Their riches can be of no use; as in a time of famine there is no necessary of life to be purchased, and gold and silver cannot fill their bowels. It is the stumbling-block of their iniquity - They loved riches, and placed in the possession of them their supreme happiness. Now they find a pound of gold not worth an ounce of bread. Verse 20 As for the beauty of his ornament - Their beautiful temple was their highest ornament, and God made it majestic by his presence. But they have even taken its riches to make their idols, which they have brought into the very courts of the Lord's house; and therefore God hath set it - the temple, from him - given it up to pillage. Some say it means, "They took their ornaments, which were their pride, and made them into images to worship." Verse 22 The robbers shall enter into it - The Chaldeans shall not only destroy the city; but they shall enter the temple, deface it, plunder it, and burn it to the ground. Verse 23 Make a chain - Point out the captivity; show them that it shall come, and show them the reason: "Because the land is full of bloody crimes," etc. Verse 24 The worst of the heathen - The Chaldeans; the most cruel and idolatrous of all nations. Verse 25 They shall seek peace - They see now that their ceasing to pay the tribute to the king of Babylon has brought the Chaldeans against them; and now they sue for peace in vain. He will not hear: he is resolved on their destruction. Verse 26 Then shall they seek a vision - Vision shall perish from the prophet, the law from the priest, and counsel from the ancients. Previously to great national judgments, God restrains the influences of his Spirit. His word is not accompanied with the usual unction; and the wise men of the land, the senators and celebrated statesmen, devise foolish schemes; and thus, in endeavoring to avert it, they hasten on the national ruin. How true is the saying, Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. "Those whom God designs to destroy, he first infatuates." Introduc

e Desolation of Israel. ( b. c. 594.) 16 But they that escape of them shall escape, and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one for his iniquity. 17 All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water. 18 They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads. 19 They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord : they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it is the stumbling-block of their iniquity. 20 As for the beauty of his ornament, he set it in majesty: but they made the images of their abominations and of their detestable things therein: therefore have I set it far from them. 21 And I will give it into the hands of the strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall pollute it. 22 My face will I turn also from them, and they shall pollute my secret place: for the robbers shall enter into it, and defile it. We have attended the fate of those that are cut off, and are now to attend the flight of those that have an opportunity of escaping the danger; some of them shall escape ( v. 16 ), but what the better? As good die once as, in a miserable life, die a thousand deaths, and escape only like Cain to be fugitives and vagabonds, and afraid of being slain by every one they meet; so shall these be. I. They shall have no comfort or satisfaction in their own minds, but be in continual anguish and terror; for, wherever they go, they carry about with them guilty consciences, which make them a burden to themselves. 1. They shall be always solitary and under prevailing melancholy; they shall not be in the cities, or places of concourse, but all alone upon the mountains, not caring for society, but shy of it, as being ashamed of the low circumstances to which they are reduced. 2. They shall be always sorrowful. Those have reason to be so that are under the tokens of God's displeasure; and God can make those so that have been most jovial and have set sorrow at defiance. Those that once thought themselves as the lions of the mountains, so daring were they, now become as the doves of the valleys, so timid are they, and so dispirited, ready to flee when none pursues and to tremble at the shaking of a leaf. They are all of them mourning (not with a godly sorrow, but with the sorrow of the world, which works death), every one for his iniquity, that is, for those calamities which they now see their iniquity has brought upon them, not only the iniquity of the land, but their own: they shall then be brought to acknowledge what they have each of them contributed to the national guilt. Note, Sooner or later sin will have sorrow of one kind or other; and those that will not repent of their iniquity may justly be left to pine away in it; those that will not mourn for it as it is an offence to God shall be made to mourn for it as it is a shame and ruin to themselves, to mourn at the last, when the flesh and the body are consumed, and to say, How have I hated instruction! Prov. v. 11, 12 . 3. They shall be deprived of all their strength of body and mind ( v. 17 ): All hands shall be feeble, so that they shall not be able to fight, or defend themselves, and all knees shall be weak as water, so that they shall neither be able to flee nor to stand their ground; they shall feel a universal colliquation: their knees shall flow as water, so that they must fall of course. Note, It is folly for the strong man to glory in his strength, for God can soon weaken it. 4. They shall be deprived of all their hopes and shall abandon themselves to despair ( v. 18 ); they shall have nothing to hold up their spirits with; their aspects shall show what are their prospects, all dreadful, for they shall gird themselves with sackcloth, as having no expectation ever to wear better clothing. Horror shall cover them, and shame, and baldness, all the expressions of a desperate sorrow, Isa. xvii. 11 . Note, Those that will not be kept from sin by fear and shame shall by fear and shame be punished for it; such is the confusion that sin will end in. II. They shall have no benefit from their wealth and riches, but shall be perfectly sick of them, v. 19 . Those that were reduced to this distress were such as had had abundance of silver and gold, money, and plate, and jewels, and other valuable goods, from which they promised themselves a great deal of advantage in times of public trouble. They thought their wealth would be their strong city, that with it they could bribe enemies and buy friends, that it would be the ransom of their lives, that they could never want bread as long as they had money, and that money would answer all things; but see how it proved. 1. Their wealth had been a great temptation to them in the day of their prosperity; they set their affections upon it, and put their confidence in it. By their eager pursuit of it they were drawn into sin, and by their plentiful enjoyment of it they were hardened in sin; and thus it was the stumbling-block of their iniquity; it occasioned their falling into sin and obstructed their return to God. Note, There are many whose wealth is their snare and ruin. The gaining of the world is the losing of their souls; it makes them proud, secure, covetous, oppressive, voluptuous; and that which, if well used, might have been the servant of their piety, being abused, becomes the stumbling-block of their iniquity. 2. It was no relief to them now in the day of their adversity; for, (1.) Their gold and silver could not protect them from the judgments of God. They shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they shall not serve to atone his justice, or turn away his wrath, nor to screen them from the judgments he is bringing upon them. Note, Riches profit not in the day of wrath, Prov. xi. 4 . They neither set them so high that God's judgments cannot reach them nor make them so strong that they cannot conquer them. There is a day of wrath coming, when it will appear that men's wealth is utterly unable to deliver them or do them any service. What the better was the rich man for his full barns when his soul was required of him, or that other rich man for his purple, and scarlet, and sumptuous fare, when in hell he could not procure a drop of water to cool his tongue? Money is no defence against the arrests of death, nor any alleviation to the miseries of the damned. (2.) Their gold and silver could not give them any content under their calamities. [1.] They could not fill their bowels; when there was no bread left in the city, none to be had for love or money, their silver and gold could not satisfy their hunger, nor serve to make one meal's meat for them. Note, We could better be without mines of gold than fields of corn; the products of the earth, which may easily be gathered from the surface of it, are much greater blessings to mankind than its treasures, which are with so much difficulty and hazard dug out of its bowels. If God give us daily bread, we have reason to be thankful, and no reason to complain, though silver and gold we have none. [2.] Much less could they satisfy their souls, or yield them any inward comfort. Note, The wealth of this world has not that in it which will answer the desires of the soul, or be any satisfaction to it in a day of distress. He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver, much less he that loses it. (3.) Their gold and silver shall be thrown into the streets, either by the hands of the enemy, who shall have more spoil than they care for or can carry away (silver shall be nothing accounted of; they shall cast that in the streets; but the gold, which is more valuable, shall be removed and brought to Babylon); or they themselves shall throw away their silver and gold, because it would be an incumbrance to them and retard their flight, or because it would expose them and be a temptation to the enemy to cut their throats for their money, or in indignation at it, because, after all the care and pains they had taken to scrape it together and hoard it up, they found that it would stand them in no stead, but do them a mischief rather. Note, The world passes away, and the lusts thereof, 1 John ii. 17 . The time may come when worldly men will be as weary of their wealth as now they are wedded to it, when those will fare best that have least. III. God's temple shall stand them in no stead, v. 20-22 . This they had prided themselves in, and promised themselves security from ( Jer. vii. 4 ; Mic. iii. 11 ); but this confidence of theirs shall fail them. Observe, 1. The great honour God had done to that people in setting up his sanctuary among them ( v. 20 ): As for the beauty of his ornament, that holy and beautiful house, where they and their fathers praised God ( Isa. lxiv. 11 ), which was therefore beautiful because holy (it was called the beauty of holiness, and holiness is the beauty of its ornament; it was also adorned with gold and gifts)—as for this, he set it in majesty; every thing was contrived to make it magnificent, that it might help to make the people of Israel the more illustrious among their neighbours. He built his sanctuary like high palaces, Ps. lxxviii. 69 . It was a glorious high throne from the beginning, Jer. xvii. 12 . But, 2. Here is the great dishonour they had done to God in profaning his sanctuary; they made the images of their counterfeit deities, which they set up in rivalship with God, and which are here called their abominations and their detestable things (for so they were to God, and so they should have been to them), and these they set up in God's temple, than which a greater affront could not be put upon him. And therefore, 3. It is here threatened that they shall be deprived of the temple, and it shall be no succour to them: Therefore have I set it far from them, that is, sent them far from it, so that it is out of the reach of their services and they are out of the reach of its influences. Note, God's ordinances, and the privileges of a profession of religion, will justly be taken away from those that despise and profane them. Nay, they shall not only be kept at a distance from the temple, but the temple itself shall be involved in the common desolation ( v. 21 ); the Chaldeans, who are strangers, and therefore have no veneration for it, who are the wicked of the earth, and therefore have an antipathy to it, shall have it for a prey and for a spoil; all the ornaments and treasures of it shall fall into their hands, who will make no difference between that and other plunder. This was a grief to the saints in Zion, who complained of nothing so much as of that which the enemy did wickedly in the sanctuary ( Ps. lxxiv. 3 ); but it was the punishment of the sinners in Zion, who, by profaning the temple with strange gods, provoked God to suffer it to be profaned by strange nations, and to turn his face from those that did it as if he had not seen them and their crimes and from those that deprecated it as not regarding them and their prayers. Let the soldiers do as they will; let them enter into the secret place, into the holy of holies, as robbers; let them strip it, let them pollute it; its defence has departed, and then farewell all its glory. Note, Those are unworthy to be honoured with the form of godliness who will not be governed by the power of godliness. The