EZEKIEL the prophet was the son of Buzi; and was of the sacerdotal race, as himself informs us, Ezekiel 1:3, and was born at a place called Saresa, as the pseudo-Epiphanius tells us in his Lives of the Prophets. He was carried captive by Nebuchadnezzar into Babylon, with Jeconiah king of Judah, and three thousand other captives of the principal inhabitants, and was sent into Mesopotamia, where he received the prophetic gift; which is supposed, from an obscure expression in his prophecies, Ezekiel 1:1, to have taken place in the thirtieth year of his age. He had then been in captivity five years; and continued to prophesy about twenty-two years, from A.M. 3409 to A.M. 3430, which answers to the fourteenth year after the destruction of Jerusalem.
About three months and ten days after this conquest of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar made another descent, and again besieged the city; and Jehoiachin, who succeeded his father Jehoiakim, was obliged to surrender. The victorious Chaldeans carried off all the inhabitants of note into Babylon, leaving none behind but the very poorest of the people. See 2 Kings 24:8-16. These captives were fixed at Tel-abib, and other places on the river Chebar, which flows into the east side of the Euphrates at Carchemish, nearly two hundred miles northward of Babylon. There, as Archbishop Newcome observes, he was present in body, though, in visionary representation, he was sometimes taken to Jerusalem. With this same learned writer I am of opinion that, the better to understand the propriety and force of these Divine revelations, the circumstances and dispositions of the Jews in their own country, and in their state of banishment, and the chief historical events of that period, should be stated and considered. Most writers on this Prophet have adopted this plan; and Archbishop Newcome’s abstract of this history is sufficient for every purpose.
“Zedekiah, uncle to the captive king Jehoiachin, was advanced by Nebuchadnezzar to the kingdom of Judah; and the tributary king bound himself to subjection by a solemn oath in the name of Jehovah, Ezekiel 17:18. But notwithstanding the Divine judgments which had overwhelmed Judah during the reigns of his two immediate predecessors, he did evil in the sight of God, 2 Chronicles 36:12. Jerusalem became so idolatrous, impure, oppressive, and blood-thirsty, that God is represented as smiting his hands together through astonishment at such a scene of iniquity, Ezekiel 22:13. The Prophet Jeremiah was insulted, rejected, and persecuted; false prophets abounded, whose language was, ‘Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon,’ Jeremiah 27:9. ‘I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon,’ Jeremiah 28:2. They even limited the restoration of the sacred vessels, and the return of Jehoiachin and his fellow captives, to so short an interval as two years, Jeremiah 28:3, 4. Zedekiah, blinded by his vices and these delusions, flattered by the embassies which he had received from Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon, Jeremiah 27:3, and probably submitting with his accustomed timidity to the advice of evil counsellors, Jeremiah 28:15, rebelled against his powerful conquerors, and sent ambassadors into Egypt for assistance, Ezekiel 17:15. Hence arose a third invasion of the Chaldeans. Pharaoh-hophra, king of Egypt, did not advance to the assistance of Zedekiah till Jerusalem was besieged, Jeremiah 37:5. The Babylonians raised the siege with the design of distressing the Egyptians in their march, and of giving battle when advantage offered: but Pharaoh, with perfidy and pusillanimity, returned to his own country; and left the rebellious and perjured king of Judah to the rage of his enemies, Jeremiah 37:7. Before the siege was thus interrupted, Zedekiah endeavoured to conciliate the favour of God by complying so far with the Mosaic law as to proclaim the sabbatical year a year of liberty to Hebrew servants, Exodus 21:2. But such was his impiety and so irresolute and fluctuating were his counsels, that, on the departure of the Chaldeans, he revoked his edict, Jeremiah 34:11; upon which God, by the Prophet Jeremiah, proclaimed liberty to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and commissioned these messengers of his wrath to avenge himself on his people, Jeremiah 34:17. When the siege was resumed, we have a farther instance of Zedekiah’s extreme infatuation; his rejection of Jeremiah’s counsel, given him by the authority of God, to preserve himself, his family, and his city, by a surrender to the Chaldeans. Thus, after a siege of eighteen months, Jerusalem was stormed and burnt, Jeremiah 39:1, 2; Zedekiah was taken in his flight; his sons were slain before his eyes; his eyes were afterwards put out, agreeably to the savage custom of eastern conquerors; and he was carried in chains to Babylon, Jeremiah 39:5-7. “The exiles on the river Chebar were far from being awakened to a devout acknowledgment of God’s justice by the punishment inflicted on them: they continued rebellious and idolatrous, Ezekiel 2:3; 20:39, they hearkened to false prophets and prophetesses, Ezekiel 13:2, 17; and they were so alienated that he refused to be inquired of by them. In vain did Ezekiel endeavour to attract and win them by the charms of his flowing and insinuating eloquence; in vain did he assume a more vehement tone to awe and alarm them by heightened scenes of calamity and terror. “We know few particulars concerning the Jews at Babylon. They enjoyed the instruction and example of the Prophet Daniel, who was carried away captive to that city in the third year of Jehoiakim, eight years before the captivity of Ezekiel, Daniel 1:1. Jeremiah cautioned them not to be deceived by their false prophets and diviners, Jeremiah 29:8, 9, 15, 21; against some of whom he denounced fearful judgments. He exhorted them to seek the peace of the city where they dwelt; to take wives, build houses, and plant gardens, till their restoration after seventy years, Jeremiah 29:5-7, 10. He also comforted them by a prediction of all the evil which God designed to inflict on Babylon: he assured them that none should remain in that proud city, but that it should be desolate for ever. The messenger, when he had read the book containing these denunciations, was commanded ‘to bind a stone to it, and cast it into the Euphrates, and say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil which I will bring on her,’ Jeremiah 51:59-64. It farther appears, by Divine hymns now extant, see Psa. 79, 102, 106, and 137, that God vouchsafed to inspire some of these Babylonian captives with his Holy Spirit. Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah ruler of the people that remained in Judea, 2 Kings 25:23; Jeremiah 40:5; and the scattered military commanders and their men, together with other Jews who had taken refuge in the neighbouring countries, Jeremiah 40:7, 11, submitted to his government on the departure of the Chaldeans. The Jews employed themselves in gathering the fruits of the earth, Jeremiah 40:12, and a calm succeeded the tempest of war: but it was soon interrupted by the turbulence of this devoted people. Ishmael slew Gedaliah; and compelled the wretched remains of the Jews in Mizpah, the seat of Gedaliah’s government, to retire with him towards the country of the Ammonites, Jeremiah 41:10; a people hostile to the Chaldeans, Jeremiah 27:3. Johanan raised a force to revenge this mad and cruel act, Jeremiah 41:11-15; pursued Ishmael, overtook him, and recovered from him the people whom he had forced to follow him: but the assassin himself escaped with eight men to his place of refuge. The succeeding event furnishes another signal instance of human infatuation. Johanan, through fear of the Chaldeans, many of whom Ishmael had massacred, together with Gedaliah, Jeremiah 41:3, conceived a design of retreating to Egypt, Jeremiah 41:17; but before he executed this resolution, he formally consulted the Prophet Jeremiah. The prophet answered him in the name of Jehovah, Jeremiah 42:9-22, that if Johanan and the people abode in Judea, God would ‘build them, and not pull them down: would plant them, and not pluck them up;’ but if they went to sojourn in Egypt, they should ‘die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence;’ and should become an ‘execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach.’ Notwithstanding this awful assurance, and the many prophecies of Jeremiah, which the most calamitous events had lately verified, Johanan defied the living God and his prophet, and madly adhered to his determination. Not long after the destruction of Jerusalem, the siege of Tyre was undertaken by Nebuchadnezzar. It continued for the space of thirteen years; and many think that the conquest of the Sidonians, Philistines, Ammonites, Moabites, and Idumeans, coincided with this period, the Chaldean being able to make powerful detachments from his vast forces. See the prophecies, Jeremiah 27:2, 3; 48:1-46; 49:1-38, and Ezekiel 25:1-17. After the reduction of that famous city, Nebuchadnezzar made his descent on Egypt, which he subdued and ravaged throughout; and at this time Johanan and his Jewish colonists experienced the vengeance of the conqueror, together with the Egyptians. So widely did Nebuchadnezzar spread his victories and devastations, that, according to the learned chronologer Marsham, Lond. edit. 1672, fol. p. 556, s. 18, this might justly be called the era of the subversion of cities. —————— Omnis eo terrore Ægyptus, et Indi,
Omnis Arabs, omnes vertebant terga Sabæi.
VIRG. Æn. viii. 705.
‘The trembling Indians and Egyptians yield:
Arabs and soft Sabæans quit the field.”’
I may add that the stroke fell upon no people so heavily as upon the Jews, for no other nation possessed privileges like them, and no other nation had sinned so deeply against God. Their crimes were seen in their punishment. The principal design of this prophet was to comfort his companions in tribulation during their captivity, and to render it light by the most positive promises of their restoration to their own land, the re-building of the temple, and the re-establishment of the Divine worship, all their enemies being finally destroyed.
That Ezekiel is a very obscure writer, all have allowed who have attempted to explain his prophecies. The Jews considered him inexplicable. There is a tradition that the rabbins held a consultation whether they should admit Ezekiel into the sacred canon. And it was likely to be carried in the negative, when Rabbi Ananias rose up and said he would undertake to remove every difficulty from the account of Jehovah’s chariot, Ezekiel 1:4-25, which is confessedly the most difficult part in the whole book. His proposal was received; and to assist him in his work, and that he might complete it to his credit, they furnished him with three hundred barrels of oil to light his lamp during the time he might be employed in the study of this part of his subject! This extravagant grant proved at once the conviction the rabbins had of the difficulty of the work; and it is not even intimated that Rabbi Ananias succeeded in any tolerable degree, if indeed he undertook the task; and they believe that to this hour the chariot mentioned in Ezekiel 1:4-25, and the account of the temple described at the conclusion of the book, have not been explained.
I believe it may be affirmed with truth that these parts of the prophecy have had as many different explanations as there have been expositors! Yet each has been sanguine in the hope that he had removed all difficulties; while every successor felt that the whole work was yet to be done, and that the Gordian knot was not likely to be untied unless by himself. And it is to be lamented that in these circumstances the work still remains as to its principal difficulties; and I certainly do not attempt to add another to Ezekiel’s commentators with the most distant hope of being able to solve those particular difficulties.
After all, with the exception of the chariot, Gog and Magog, the peculiarities in the description of the temple, and some matters of this kind, the major part of the prophecy is very intelligible, and highly edifying; and does not present more difficulties than have been found in the preceding prophets, and may be found in those which follow. I have in the following notes done what I could, as a help to a better understanding of this part of the sacred writings.
The ancient Versions give some help; but it is astonishing how difficult it is to settle the text by a collation of MSS. This has not yet been properly done; and we cannot know the true meaning till we can ascertain the true reading. But after having laboured in this way, I must express myself as the learned professor of the oriental tongues at Parma, J. B. De Rossi: Tanta hic in suffixis præsertim pronominibus codicum inconstantia ac varietas, ut tæduerit me laboris mei, ac verius ego quod olim de uno Zachariæ versu (xi. 5) dolens inquiebat Norzius, de toto Ezechielis libro usurpare possim, angustiatam fuisse animam meam ob varietates multas, et avertisse faciem meam ab eis. “That there is so much inconstancy and variation among the MSS., especially in the suffixed pronouns, that I was weary of my labour; and I could more truly say of the whole book of Ezekiel, than Norzius did relative to one passage in Zechariah, who, bitterly complaining of the many variations he met with, said, ‘My soul was perplexed with them, and I turned away my face from them.’” As most of our printed editions have been taken from a very inadequate collation of MSS., especially of this prophet, much remains to be done to restore the text to a proper state of purity. When this is done it is presumed that several of the difficulties in this book will be removed. In many instances Abp. Newcome has been very successful.
On the famous controversy relative to GOG and MAGOG, I must refer the reader to the notes on Ezekiel 38, and 39, where the best accounts I have met with are detailed. There are only two schemes that appear at all probable; that which makes Gog Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Assyria, and that which makes him Cambyses, king of Persia. The former, as being the most probable, and the best supported in all its parts by the marks given in the prophecy, I have in a certain measure adopted, for want of one more satisfactory to my own mind.
The character of Ezekiel as a poet has been drawn at large by some of the most eminent critics of these and other countries. Lowth, Michaelis, and Eichhorn, are the chief. Abp. Newcome has quoted largely from the latter; and from his work, which is now very scarce and extremely dear, I shall present my readers with the following extracts:—
“The two first visions are so accurately polished, chap. i.-vii., viii.-xi., and demanded so much art to give them their last perfection and proportion, that they cannot possibly be an unpremeditated work. And if, according to the commonly received opinion, they were publicly read by Ezekiel as we read them now, he must have seriously designed them as a picture, and finished them in form. The intention of his visions might make this necessary. He designed no doubt to make deep impressions upon the people whom he was to guide; and by highly labouring the Divine appearances, to open their ears for his future oracles and representations. The more complete, divine, and majestic the Divine appearances were which he represented, the deeper veneration was impressed upon the mind towards the prophet to whom such high visions were communicated. Most of the parts which compose Ezekiel, as they are generally works of art, are full of artificial and elaborate plans.
“The peculiarities of language in the first chapter are to be found in the middle and end of the book. The same enthusiasm which in the beginning of his prophecies produced the magnificent Divine appearances, must also have built the temple of God at the conclusion. As in the beginning every thing is first proposed in high allegorical images, and afterwards the same ideas are repeated in plain words, thus also in the middle and at the end in every piece, allegorical representation is succeeded by literal. Throughout the style is rather prose than verse; and rough, hard, and mixed with the Chaldee.
“The division of Ezekiel into two parts has been adopted by several writers. They continue the former part to the thirty-ninth chapter, and consider the last nine chapters from the fortieth as a separate book. This division is possible. From the eleventh chapter a new elevated scene commences. Before there was nothing but oracles, full of misfortunes, punishments, death, and ruin; visions concerning the destruction of the government, and concerning the flight and state of the last king; and pictures of the universal corruption, idolatry, and superstition of Israel. From the fortieth chapter a new temple rises before the eyes of the holy seer; he walks round about it in Palestine; he measures the city and country for their new inhabitants; he orders sacrifices, feasts, and customs. In short, a Magna Charta is planned for priests, kings, and people, in future and better times. Lastly, from hence prosaic expressions predominate; at least the prophet elevates himself by poetical colouring much more rarely than before.
“A generally acknowledged character of Ezekiel is, that he minutely distinguishes every thing in its smallest parts. What the more ancient prophets brought together in one single picture, and to which they only alluded, and what they explained with the utmost brevity, and showed only from one side, that he explains and unfolds formally, and represents from all possible sides.
“Another character, and a principal one, which distinguishes his oracle is, that no other prophet has given so free a course to his imagination. Almost every thing is dressed in symbolical actions, in fables, narrations, allegories, or in the still higher poetry of visions. And as they are very complicate, there resound from all sides complaints of darkness. Whoever can look on these things with the eye of an eagle, and is not disturbed from the principal object by what is not essential; he alone is able to comprehend the sense of the whole composition, and he scarcely conceives how any one can complain of obscurity. Meanwhile, how different soever the species of composition are which he hazards, they are all worked out in the same general form. What he represents in one image, picture, or vision, in allegory, parable, or narration, is explained in a short speech, which God, who is at his right hand, enables him to pronounce.
“It is evident that he has shown an inexhaustible imagination and power of invention throughout all the pages of his book. He uses all sorts of prophetical poetry to appear always great and magnificent; and it cannot be denied that he has given all kinds, excellent pieces, both in design and execution. Particularly, he is so used to ecstasies and visions that he adopts the language proper to these, where he has no visions to describe. “If the dress of vision fitted any prophet, it was certainly Ezekiel: he was even naturally led to it by his situation, and by the subjects which he was to represent. He was to describe and foretell to his fellow captives several facts which happened in Palestine, in Jerusalem, and in the king’s palace. A narration and description in simple prose could not possibly suit a prophet; he must give his object the requisite prophetic dignity, by a particular dress. “He therefore brought the scene of events nearer. For this purpose he chose high ecstasies, such as the Greek and Roman poets pretended to in their flights of enthusiasm; the hand of Jehovah came upon him, and carried him to that place where what he intended to propose to his countrymen in their exile might be seen and considered. All ecstasies in my opinion are nothing but dresses, nothing but poetical fictions; and a poet of another age, and of another tone, of an inferior imagination and poetical endowments, would have given the same ideas quite another dress. “Accustomed to this kind of poetry, he represented the restitution of the Jewish state in a sublime vision. His imagination placed him upon graves, where he stood on the dried bones of the dead. He saw how the graves opened, the bones were clothed with flesh, and the dead came forth by a new creation. Could there be a more lively fiction for this case? Another poet would have represented the restoration of the Jews in simple words; and would only have compared it to a resurrection, or give it some other ornamental delineation. To view this intuitively in an example, compare Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Isaiah 26:19.
‘Thy dead shall live, their dead bodies shall rise:
Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust:
For thy dew is as the dew of herbs,
And the earth shall cast forth the mighty dead.’
“And, however numerous the fictions of Ezekiel are, they all appear in magnificent dress, and each in its peculiar splendid one. Lustre shines in him on every side; and if the poet has here and there overloaded his subject with ornaments, we shall be unable to refuse our admiration to his genius, notwithstanding these defects.
“The first part of his book may be an instance. The barren genius of Moses was gone when God appeared only in a fiery bush in the wilderness; and as the world improved in cultivation, a more luxuriant one succeeded in his place, which in process of time demanded wonderful figures and giant forms, that the representation of the Divine appearance might please. Isaiah had already appeared in a higher style than Moses. To him God manifested himself in the pomp of an oriental king; and this piece makes a strong impression by its unity and gains on us by its elevated simplicity, majesty, and dignity, Isaiah 6:1-5. But Ezekiel differs widely. Before him stands the chariot-throne of God, with wonderful forms; he summons all the pomp which nature and art can furnish; he abundantly employs fiction and composition to give his Divine appearance dignity, elevation, and majesty; and thus to make a suitable expression. The whole creation must lend him its most noble forms. Men, oxen, lions, and eagles support the throne: the Hebrew history must furnish all its most wonderful scenes, to surround the chariot-throne with the greatest pomp imaginable. I admire the master-hand of the artist, who knew how to compose in such a manner. I am astonished at the richness of his imagination, that could give dignity to all the exalted scenes of the Hebrew history, and could combine them in one body. But, notwithstanding this, the scene in Ezekiel is far from making the same deep and heart-striking impression with that of Isaiah. A short view of the whole in Isaiah does wonders; in Ezekiel the prospect is dispersed; and as it is not rounded, it astonishes rather than impresses. In Isaiah there is a majestic silence, which is only interrupted by the heavenly cry of the seraphs, Isaiah 6:3; in Ezekiel, the noise of the restless wheels and moving wings confounds us. In Isaiah, the eye is delighted with artless majesty; in Ezekiel, it is consumed by the brightness of the fire which shines round about the chariot-throne.
“The author of the Revelation, whose poetry is in the same style with that of Ezekiel, and full of imagination, has for the most part avoided the rocks upon which his predecessor struck; and, happily for the most part, has cut off the wild shoots of a heated imagination. He also has fictions of wonders and giant forms; but he has produced them only so far as to give the reader a full image before his eyes. He does not pursue them minutely, and he does not distract or pain his reader.
“On the contrary, it was a happy invention that his lofty poems are sometimes interrupted by short speeches; they are not only useful for the illustration of his symbols, but also for the repose of the mind. By this change, his readers are agreeably entertained; and their imagination finds resting places, so as to soar more easily after the imagination of the poet. “Ezekiel is a great poet, full of originality; and, in my opinion, whoever censures him as if he were only an imitator of the old prophets, can never have felt his power. He must not in general be compared with Isaiah and the rest of the old prophets. Those are great, Ezekiel is also great; those in their manner of poetry, Ezekiel in his; which he had invented for himself, if we may form our judgment from the Hebrew monuments still extant.” Thus far a judicious critic, who but indirectly admits the prophet’s inspiration.
Bp. Lowth, who has done so much to elucidate the Hebrew poetry, has also given fine critical judgments on the comparative merits of the prophets. Isaiah is his favorite and him he places always at the head, and with him all others are compared. Of Ezekiel, his character is very high and accurately drawn; and my readers will naturally expect that I should produce what he says on this subject, rather than attempt any thing of my own; for this would resemble the attempt to write an Iliad after Homer. “Ezekiel,” says this learned prelate, “is inferior to Jeremiah in elegance, but is equal to Isaiah in SUBLIMITY, though in a different species of the sublime. He is bold, vehement, tragical, and deals very much in amplification. His SENTIMENTS are lofty, animated, poignant, and full of indignation. His IMAGES are fertile, magnificent, and sometimes rather bordering on indelicacy. His DICTION is grand, weighty, austere, rough, and sometimes uncultivated. He abounds in repetitions, not for the sake of beauty or grace, but from vehemence and indignation. Whatever his subject be, he keeps it always in his eye, without the least deviation, and is so much taken up with it that he has scarcely any regard to order or connection. In other things he may be perhaps exceeded by the other prophets, but in that species for which he was particularly turned, that is, force, impetuosity, weight, and grandeur, no writer ever equalled him. His diction is clear enough; almost all his obscurity arises from his subjects. His VISIONS are particularly obscure; which, however, as in Hosea, Amos, and Zechariah, are delivered in a plain historical narration. “The greater part of the book, particularly the middle of it, is poetical; whether we regard the matter or the language. But some passages are so rough and unpolished, that we are frequently at a loss to what species of writing we ought to refer them. As to STYLE, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel may be placed with propriety enough in the same rank among the Hebrews, as Homer, Simonides, and Æschylus among the Greeks.”
Nothing need be added, and indeed nothing can be added, to this character; it is as fairly as it is fully drawn; and every paragraph in the book will show its propriety. But could we satisfactorily fathom the prophet’s meaning in those places where he is peculiarly obscure, we should feel the force and propriety of the bishop’s character still more, as in those very places the prophet is peculiarly sublime. The prophecy was delivered that it might be understood and be profitable; and no doubt it was fully apprehended by those to whom it was originally given, and for whose sake it was sent from heaven. As to the portions which respect a very remote futurity, they will be understood when the events take place; which will, in such times, be an additional argument in favour of Divine revelation, when it is seen with what precision and accuracy prophets have foreseen and described such very remote and apparently contingent events.
To the general reader the following table, taken from Calmet, may be useful:—
A Chronological Table of the Prophecies of Ezekiel
A.M.
3405.
Ezekiel is led captive to Babylon with King Jeconiah. From this year the epoch of these prophecies must be taken.
3409 The first vision by the river Chebar, Ezekiel 1:1-28. The circumstances which followed Ezekiel’s vocation to the
He draws upon a tile or bed of clay the plan of Jerusalem, and the siege that it was about to endure; and he remains lying on this plan, on his left side, three hundred and ninety days, Ezekiel 4:1-5. See under A.M. 3420.
3410 He turns on his right side, and lies forty days, which point out the forty years of the sins of Judah, To this time Ezekiel 4:6; 5:1-17; 6:1-14; 7:1-27 refer.
About the month of September, this being the sixth year of the captivity of Jeconiah, he had the visions related, Ezekiel 8:1-18; 9:1-11; 10:1-22; 11:1-25.
3411 Prophecies and figurative actions by which he points out the flight, capture, and blinding of Zedekiah, Ezekiel 12:1-28 and the seven following.
Zedekiah rebels against Nebuchadnezzar, Ezekiel 17:15, 17.
The prophet charges the elders of Judah with hypocrisy, who came to consult him, Ezekiel 20:1-49; 21:1-32; 22:1-31; 23:1-49.
3414 The siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. This was a sabbatic year, Jeremiah 24:8, &c. The siege did not begin till about the middle of the winter, 2 Kings 25:1. The prophet’s wife dies on the same day of the siege, and he is forbidden to mourn for her, Ezekiel 24:1, 2, 15-18. 3415 Predictions against EGYPT, Ezekiel 29:16.
Nebuchadnezzar puts to flight Pharaoh-hophra, and returns to the siege of Jerusalem three hundred and ninety days before it was taken.
3416 Predictions against Tyre, Ezekiel 26:1-28:26, the first day of the first month.
In the seventh day of the same month, God shows the prophet the miseries to be brought on Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar,
In the third month of the same year, the prophet had another vision against Egypt, Ezekiel 31:1-2, &c.
Jerusalem is taken the ninth of the fourth month. Zedekiah was taken prisoner near Jericho. He is brought to Riblah, where, after seeing his children slain, his eyes are put out, he is laden with chains and led to Babylon. Thus were fulfilled and reconciled the seemingly contradictory prophecies
concerning him.
3417 Ezekiel being informed of the taking of Jerusalem the fifth day of the tenth month, he predicts the ruin of the remnant that was left there under Gedaliah, Ezekiel 34:21-29. He afterwards foretells the ruin of Egypt, Ezekiel 32:1, 16, 32; and that of the Idumeans, Ezekiel 25:12. 3419 The commencement of the siege of Tyre, which lasted thirteen years.
To the same time we must refer the miseries of the Sidonians, the Amalekites, the Moabites, and the Idumeans, pointed out by Jeremiah, Jeremiah 27:1-22; 48:1-47; 49:1-39; Ezekiel 25:1-17.
3420 End of the forty years mentioned Ezekiel 4:5, 6, and of the three hundred and ninety years from the separation of Israel and Judah The forty years commence with the renewal of the covenant under Josiah.
3430 The vision in which God showed the prophet the rebuilding of the city and the temple, and the restoration of the kingdom of Israel, Ezekiel 40:1 to the end of the book This vision took place on the tenth of the first month, fourteen years after the taking of Jerusalem..
3432 Taking of the city of Tyre, by Nebuchadnezzar, to whom God promises the spoils of Egypt, as a compensation for the trouble and loss he sustained before Tyre, Ezekiel 29:17-20. Nebuchadnezzar enters Egypt. Amasis had been made king by the Cyrenians, who had rebelled against Pharaoh-hophra.
Herodotus, lib. iv. c. 159, and lib. ii. cc. 161, 162.
3433 The king of Babylon overruns and subdues the whole of Egypt; commits the greatest outrages; and carries off captives the inhabitants, the Jews, and others whom he found there. See Jeremiah 43:1-13; 44:1-30; 46:1-28; Ezekiel 29:1-21; 30:1-26; 31:1-18.
Nebuchadnezzar leaves Amasis king of Lower Egypt; Hophra, or Apries, having escaped to the Thebais.
3442. Death of Nebuchadnezzar.
Evil-merodach succeeds him; and sets Jeconiah at liberty, and makes him his companion, 2 Kings 15:27 and
Chronological Notes relative to the commencement of Ezekiel’s prophesying
-Year from the Creation, according to Archbishop Usher, 3409. -Year of the Jewish era of the world, 3166.
-Year from the Deluge, 1753.
-Second year of the forty-sixth Olympiad.
-Year from the building of Rome, according to the Varronian or generally received account, 159.
-Year from the building of Rome, according to Cato and the Fasti Consulares, 158.
-Year from the building of Rome, according to Polybius the historian, 157. -Year from the building of Rome, according to Fabius Pictor, 153. -Year of the Julian Period, 4119.
-Year of the era of Nabonassar, 153.
-Year from the foundation of Solomon’s temple, 409.
-Year since the destruction of the kingdom of Israel by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, 126.
-Second year after the third Sabbatic year after the seventeenth Jewish jubilee, according to Helvicus.
-Year before the birth of Christ, 591.
-Year before the vulgar era of Christ’s nativity, 595.
-Cycle of the Sun, 3.
-Cycle of the Moon, 15.
-Twenty-second year of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of the Romans: this was the eighty-sixth year before the consulship of Lucius Junius Brutus, and Publius Valerius Poplicola.
-Thirty-first year of Cyaxares, or Cyaraxes, the fourth king of Media. -Eleventh year of Agasicles, king of Lacedæmon, of the family of the Proclidæ.
-Thirteenth year of Leon, king of Lacedæmon, of the family of the Eurysthenidæ.
-Twenty-fifth year of Alyattes II., king of Lydia, and father of the celebrated Crœsus.
-Eighth year of Æropas, the seventh king of Macedon.
-Sixth and last year of Psammis, king of Egypt, according to Helvicus, an accurate chronologer. This Egyptian king was the immediate predecessor of the celebrated Apries, called Vaphres by Eusebius, and Pharaoh-hophra by Jeremiah, Jeremiah 44:30.
-First year of Baal, king of the Tyrians.
-Twelfth year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
-Fourth year of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah.
Joseph Benson
Argument
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THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET
EZEKIEL.
ARGUMENT.
EZEKIEL, being the son of Buzi, of the house of Aaron, was consequently a priest, as well as a prophet. He was carried to Babylon, with many other Jews, in Jehoiachin’s captivity, and therefore dates his prophecies by the years of that captivity. He began his prophetic office in the fifth year after it, and continued to prophesy about twenty years, namely, from the year of the world 3409 to 3430. His name, happily expressive of his character, signifies the power, strength, or courage of God. It appears he did not reside at or near Babylon, but by the river Chebar, many miles north of that city, great numbers of the captives being placed there. These, his fellow-exiles, as St. Jerome observes in his preface to this book, being disposed to repine at their condition, as more wretched, they supposed, than that of their brethren who had been suffered to remain in Judea; a principal part of the prophet’s design seems to have been to check these murmurings, by removing the cause of them, and showing them how preferable their circumstances were to those of their countrymen who had not yet been carried into captivity as they had been. For this purpose he sets before them that terrible scene of calamities which God was about to bring upon Judea and Jerusalem, which should end in the utter destruction of the city and temple: recounting and painting, in strong and lively colours, the heinous provocations of the Jews, which were bringing down these heavy judgments upon them. Jeremiah, it must be observed, was at the same time employed to the like purpose at Jerusalem, in persuading the inhabitants left there, and in the other parts of Judea, not to think themselves more the favourites of God than their brethren who had been carried into captivity, for that more grievous calamities would soon befall them, while those who were at present captives should experience God’s peculiar favour and protection. But these prophets were neither of them duly regarded by those to whom they addressed themselves; for the Jews who remained in Judea gave no credit to Jeremiah’s predictions against them, but thought meanly of those who had been carried into captivity, and believed themselves to be the peculiar favourites of God, and that they only should possess the land of Canaan, while their captive brethren should be for ever excluded from it. And the Prophet Ezekiel was little more regarded by those in captivity; for, notwithstanding all his declarations, they murmured against God, and thought themselves more hardly dealt by than their brethren who remained in their own land.
Although some frivolous objections, grounded on gross mistakes, have been started against the authenticity of this book, the prophecies contained in it, which have been very surprisingly fulfilled, and are fulfilling at this day, are a demonstration both of its truth, and that it was written by inspiration of God; especially the prophecies concerning Tyre and Egypt, chapters 26.-32. And as to the many predictions contained in it, which are not yet fulfilled, relating to the restoration of Israel, and the triumphs of the church over all her enemies, these, upon a careful investigation, will be found to coincide so entirely with many parts of Isaiah’s and Daniel’s prophecies, and those contained in the Revelation by St. John, that we can neither doubt their being given by divine inspiration, nor that they will be fulfilled at the proper season.
It appears from many parts of Ezekiel’s writings that, exclusive of his prophetic gift, he was a man of considerable learning and talents. “He had great erudition and genius,” says Grotius, in the Introduction to his Commentary on this prophet, “so that, setting aside his gift of prophecy, which is incomparable, he may deservedly be compared with Homer on account of his beautiful conceptions, his illustrious comparisons, and his extensive knowledge of various matters, particularly of architecture.” Rapin, in his Treatise on Eloquence, calls his style THE TERRIBLE, as having something in it which strikes the reader with a holy dread and astonishment. Bishop Lowth’s character of him is as follows: “Ezekiel is inferior to Jeremiah in elegance, but is equal to Isaiah in sublimity, though in a different species of the sublime. He is bold, vehement, tragical, and deals very much in amplification. His sentiments are lofty, animated, poignant, and full of indignation. His images are fertile, magnificent, and sometimes rather bordering on indelicacy. His diction is sounding, grave, austere, rough, and sometimes uncultivated. He abounds in repetitions, not for the sake of beauty or grace, but from vehemence and indignation. Whatever his subject be, he keeps it always in his eye, without the least deviation, and is so much taken up with it that he has scarcely any regard to order or connection. In other things he may perhaps be exceeded by the other prophets; but in that species for which he was particularly turned, that is, in force, impetuosity, weight, grandeur, no writer ever equalled him. His diction is clear enough; almost all his obscurity arises from his subjects. His visions are particularly obscure; which, however, as in Hosea, Amos, and Zechariah, are delivered in a plain and historical narration. The greater part of this book, but especially the middle of it, is poetical: but some passages are so rough and unpolished, that we are frequently at a loss to what species of writing we ought to refer them.” — De Sacra Poesi Hebræorum, Prælec. 21. A learned German professor, Eichhorn, quoted by Bishop Newcome, having, in his Introduction to the Old Testament, spoken of Ezekiel as a writer “distinguished by much originality; adding dignity to his relations, by lively fictions of his inexhaustible imagination;” and as “creating great artificial images, and by such means new worlds;” and having represented the prophet’s first two visions as being “accurately polished with much art,” and therefore “could not possibly be an unpremeditated work;” the bishop, with a reference to these sentiments, delivers his own judgment of Ezekiel as follows: “I do not consider him as the framer of those august and astonishing visions, and of those admirable poetical representations, which he committed to writing; but as an instrument in the hands of God, who vouchsafed to reveal himself through a long succession of ages, not only in divers parts, constituting a magnificent and uniform whole, but also in divers manners, as by a voice, by dreams, by inspiration, and by plain or enigmatical vision. If he is circumstantial in describing the wonderful scenes which were presented to him in the visions of God, he should be regarded as a faithful representer of the divine revelations for the purpose of information and instruction; and not as exhausting an exuberant fancy, in minutely filling up an ideal picture. It is probable that Buzi, his father, had preserved his own family from the taint of idolatry; and had educated his son, for the priestly office, in all the learning of the Hebrews, and particularly in the study of their sacred books. Josephus says, that he was a youth at the time of his captivity; and his first revelation was made to him only five years after that period. This is a season of life when a fervour of imagination is natural in men of superior endowments. His genius led him to amplification; like that of Ovid, Lucan, and Juvenal, among the Roman poets; though he occasionally shows himself capable of the austere and concise manner, of which the seventh chapter is a remarkable instance. But the Divine Spirit did not overrule the natural bent of his mind. Variety is thus produced in the sacred writings. Nahum sounds the trumpet of war, Hosea is sententious, Isaiah sublime, Jeremiah pathetic, Ezekiel copius. This diffuseness of manner in mild and affectionate exhortation, this vehement enlarging on the guilt and consequent sufferings of his countrymen, seems wisely adapted to their capacities and circumstances; and must have had a forcible tendency to awaken them from their lethargy.” It has been observed, as an apology for the roughness and incorrectness which appear in the style of this prophet, “that he lived in an age when the beauty, purity, and majesty of the Hebrew language were upon the decline, and that it would argue a great absurdity to expect the vigour of youth in the imbecilities of old age.” — See Michaelis’s Notes, p. 110. St. Jerome hath more than once observed, that the beginning and latter part of this prophecy are more than ordinarily difficult and obscure, and may justly be reckoned among the things in Scripture which are δυσνοητα, hard to be understood.
In the first three chapters, Ezekiel describes a wonderful vision, whereby God confirmed and instructed him in his prophetic office. In the following chapters, to the twenty-fifth, he describes the horrible sins of the Jews, especially of those remaining in Jerusalem and Judea, and their approaching punishments. From thence to the thirty-third chapter he foretels the ruin of many neighbouring nations who were enemies to the Jews, as the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Philistines, the Tyrians, Sidonians, and Egyptians. From the thirty-third to the fortieth chapter, the murmurings and hypocrisies of the Jews, who were captives in Chaldea, are severely censured, with an exhortation to true repentance, and to a firm expectation of an approaching salvation; in which not only the deliverance from the Babylonish captivity, but the far greater deliverance of all the world from the bondage of SIN and IGNORANCE by Jesus Christ, was signified. In the last nine chapters is related a grand vision of the building of a new temple. The liberty with which Ezekiel treated the idolatry of his countrymen is said to have so highly irritated the chief of them, as to have occasioned his being put to death: and in the time of Epiphanius it was a current opinion that his remains were deposited in the same sepulchre with those of Shem and Arphaxad; that his tomb was then to be seen; and that the Jews kept a lamp burning in it; who likewise pretended that they had this prophecy written by the prophet’s own hand which they read every year on the day of expiation. — Calmet’s Preface to this book.
Preliminary Observations on Chapters 40.- 48
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PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON
CHAPTERS 40.-48.
WE are now entering upon a portion of the Holy Scriptures which is justly looked upon to be one of the most, difficult in all the book of God. The Jews will not allow any to read it till they are thirty years of age, and they tell those who do read it, that though they cannot understand every thing in it, yet when Elias comes he will explain it. Many commentators, both ancient and modern, have acknowledged themselves to be at a loss how to interpret it. But because it is hard to be understood, we must not therefore throw it aside as useless, but must humbly search into its meaning, and advance as far as we can in the knowledge thereof; and when we despair of finding satisfaction in every difficulty we meet with, we must bless God that our salvation does not depend upon it, but that things necessary are sufficiently plain; and we must wait till God shall reveal even this unto us. These chapters are the more to be regarded because the two last chapters of the Revelation seem to have a plain allusion to them, as Revelation 20. has to the foregoing prophecy of Gog and Magog.
The contents of this prophecy are as follows: In this and the two following chapters we have the vision of a glorious temple. In chap. 43. God is represented as taking possession of it. In chap. 44. orders are given concerning the priests that are to minister in this temple. Chap. 45. directs concerning the division of the land, what portion should be allotted for the sanctuary, what for the city, and what for the prince, both with respect to his government of the people, and his worship of God. Chap. 46. contains further instructions for him and the people. And after the vision of the holy waters, we have the borders of the holy land, the portions assigned to the tribes, and the dimensions and gates of the holy city, in chap. 47. 48. Some suppose that the following description of the temple was intended to show how glorious Solomon’s temple had been, during the flourishing state of the Jewish Church, in order that the captives might see what they had lost by sin, and might be the more humbled. Others consider it as intended for a model according to which the new colonists were to erect a temple on their return to their own land; observing, at the same time, the customs and usages which Ezekiel here orders, and dividing the country as he directs. Perhaps the general scope of the vision might be two-fold: 1st, To assure the captives that they should not only return to their own land and be settled there, which had been often promised in the foregoing chapters, but that they should have, and therefore ought to be encouraged to build another temple which God would own, and where he would meet and bless them: that the ordinances of their worship should be revived, and the sacred priesthood should there attend; and, though they should not have a king to live in such splendour as formerly, yet they should have a prince, or ruler, (who is often spoken of in this vision,) that should countenance the worship of God among them, and should himself be an example of a diligent attendance upon it: and that prince, priests, and people should have a very comfortable settlement in their own land. 2d, To direct them to look further than all this, and to expect the coming of the Messiah, who had before been prophesied of, under the name David, (the man that projected the building of the first temple,) and who should set up a spiritual temple, even the gospel church, the glory of which should far exceed that of Solomon’s temple, and which should continue to the end of time. And the gospel temple, erected by Christ and his apostles, was so closely connected with the second material temple, and was erected so carefully just at the time when that temple fell into decay, being designed to receive its glories when it resigned them, that it was proper enough they should both be referred to in one and the same vision; which vision, under the type and figure of a temple and altar, priest and sacrifices, foreshowed the spiritual worship that should be performed in gospel times, as being more agreeable to the nature both of God and man, and that worship perfected at last in the kingdom of glory, in which, doubtless, these visions will have their full accomplishment; if not, as some think, in a glorious and happy state of the gospel church, to take place on earth in the latter days. The grand outlines of the description here given, as Mr. Scott observes, might be taken from Solomon’s temple, with the additions made to its courts and out-buildings in after ages; and Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the other Jews, who returned from Babylon, might have respect to it in rebuilding the temple after the captivity; but “there are several circumstances which evidently show that something vastly superior to either the first or second temple was intended; and that the external description must be considered as a figure and emblem of spiritual blessings. This will appear, in many particulars, as we proceed; but especially the dimensions of the temple, city, and land; and the division of the land to the prince, priests, and tribes; and the river of water springing from the threshold of the temple, enlarging till it reached the Dead sea, and sweetening its waters; with the trees growing on the banks of the river, bearing fruit every month, cannot be literally interpreted, or made to accord with any thing which has yet taken place.”
A late writer gives the following character of this part of Ezekiel’s prophecy: “From the fortieth chapter a new elevated scene commences. Before, there was nothing but oracles full of misfortunes, of punishments, of death and ruin; visions concerning the destruction of the government, and concerning the flight and state of the last king; and pictures of the universal corruption, idolatry, and superstition of Israel. From the fortieth chapter a new temple rises before the eyes of the holy seer, he walks round about it in Palestine, he measures the city and country for their new inhabitants, he orders sacrifices, feasts, and customs. In short, a Magna Charta is planned for priests, kings, and people, in future ages and latter times. Lastly, from hence prosaic expression predominates: at least, the prophet elevates himself by poetical colouring much more rarely than before.”
Joseph Sutcliffe
The Book of Ezekiel.
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THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL.
EZEKIEL, a name equivalent to the strength or fortitude of God, was son of Buzi, a name of respect, and of the priestly line. For learning and genius, elevation of thought and beauty of figures, he has often been compared to Homer. He was carried away with Jeconiah, in the fifth year of that prince, about two years after Daniel and other illustrious men had been removed to Babylon, leaving the devoted city without any ruler of probity and honour. Jeremiah 5:1. His commission and call to the high and holy charge of a prophet was by the appearance of Messiah, riding in his ancient chariot, for it pleased the Lord to support his people by repeating the former indications of his presence. Psalm 68:17. The luminous characters of Ezekiel’s prophecies shine out in explicit declarations of the burning of Jerusalem and its temple, for the wickedness of the people; the bloody and victorious wars of the Chaldeans against Tyre and Egypt, and all the southern nations. At the same time he cheered his fellow exiles by assurances of a return, in his parable of the dry bones. Above all, he foretold the establishment of the new covenant, the conversion of the gentiles, and the glory of the new-testament church, under the figure of a new temple, in magnitude and glory surpassing credibility. For though the Jews may yet have a material temple in Jerusalem and sacrifices, it can never be more than a faint figure of better things to come. Other illustrious traits of his ministry will occur in the work. After running a course of twenty, or as others say, of twenty two years, we lose sight of his exit in the regions of captivity. One says that he died in the course of nature, another that he was put to death by his prince, for preaching against the idols of the captives.
Daniel Whedon
Table of Contents.
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EZEKIEL
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION:
I. Date, Authorship, and Canonicity
II. The Text
III. The Style of Ezekiel
IV. Ezekiel’s Personality and Work
V. Ezekiel’s Alleged Historical Mistakes
VI. The Book of Ezekiel and the Levitical Priestly Law VII. The Exiled Jews in Babylon
Source illustration accompanying Ezekiel. WHD_CO08.PDF, PDF page 3.Open full-size figure
VIII. The Language of Symbolism
Analysis of the Book
NOTES AND COMMENTS
Preface.
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PREFACE.
THESE comments on Ezekiel and Daniel have been written under the pressure of pastoral duty in two of the largest and most important charges in American Methodism. Great debts have been raised, large plans of institutional church work projected, and many hundreds admitted to the church on confession of faith while this work was being carried forward. No one can be more sensible than the writer of the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of doing one’s best critical work under such circumstances. Yet, on the other hand, there is at least one advantage in a preacher engaged in the active work of the ministry attempting to interpret these prophecies; while he may not be able to use the apparatus of the study with the same facility as some expositors, yet the whole thought and purpose of his life lead him into sympathetic relation with the men whose processes of argument he seeks to explain.
The Old Testament prophets were not professors, they were preachers. They were not students of the smoky lamp, they were seers of God — spiritual interpreters of history, expositors of the ancient writings, teachers of morality — men who came into close touch with the needs and sins of their fellow-men, and who sought to give help and comfort and salvation by bringing God, and the truth which he had revealed, close to those needy, sinful hearts. The aim of the present writer is to make plain such points in these old sermons and ecstatic visions as may seem obscure to the modern reader.
Unfortunately, some things which seemed perfectly clear to the congregations which they addressed cannot now be understood at all; yet in the opening, by recent excavations, of the Babylonian life of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., the meaning of many statements previously not understood, or misunderstood, has been made plain. In these comments the writer has freely used the results of cuneiform scholarship whenever they seemed to explain or illustrate the text, while occasionally his own Egyptian studies have not been without a certain value.
In conclusion, he would express his sense of obligation to the librarians who have afforded special courtesies — to those particularly of the British Museum, the University of Michigan, and Harvard University — and,
Introduction to the Book of Ezekiel.
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Editorial note: The supplied edition prints “Ezekiel 18:59” here (WHD_CO08.PDF, physical PDF page 20). The surrounding discussion of the just man keeping God's statutes and judgments corresponds to Ezekiel 18:5–9 in the King James Version. The origin of the printed numbering is not established here; the historical wording is retained. WHD_CO08.PDF, PDF page 20.
above all, to the literary helpmeet in his own home, whose encouragement and assistance have been invaluable. Her patience and skill in verifying English and French references, as well as in preparing the manuscript for the press, have made the completion of this work possible. INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL.
ONE of the most celebrated German professors of theology began a recent course of lectures on the prophecy of Ezekiel by saying: “Of all the biblical books there is probably not one so little known to laymen and clergy as this. He must indeed be an enthusiastic Bible reader who knows more of Ezekiel than the mere name. Even among theologians there are very few who have read him wholly, or even in part. Nor is this mere chance. He is one of the most difficult, obscure, and dark prophets of the Old Testament. Already the Church fathers call his book the ‘abyss of Holy Scripture’ and ‘a maze of divine secrets’” (Cornill, Der Prophet Ezechiel). Yet this same scholar, who confesses that he began the examination of this book expecting “scientific martyrdom,” was able to say, after fifteen months of careful study, “It is a masterpiece which can only be paralleled by the Book of Job.”
We do wisely to sit at the feet of this banished prophet who for over two thousand years has been talking to the wisest of earth’s wise. As John Wesley wrote, “There is much in the book which is very mysterious, especially in the beginning and latter end of it; but, though the visions are intricate, the sermons are plain, and the design of them is to show God’s people their transgressions” (Notes on the Old Testament). I. Date, Authorship, and Canonicity.
This is one of the very few books of the prophets — indeed the only one — which is universally allowed by the destructive critics to have left the prophet’s own hand in exactly the same condition in which we find it. The objections of a very few critics — Zunz (1873), Wettstein and Seinecke (1884), Vernes and Havet (1890) — have only made the general decision more sure. Kuenen (Onderzoek, 1889, ii, p. 304) emphatically declares: “There exists not one good reason for affirming that this collection of oracles was not gathered by Ezekiel himself. These prophecies are, without exception, from his own hand.” Konig in his most critical and trustworthy work (Einleitung in das Alt Testament, 1893, pp. 344, 354), affirms that the authenticity of the book is undoubted, and its unity is “not attacked nor attackable.”
The dates at which the various prophecies were delivered are fixed by the book itself. The first was in the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s captivity, 592-593 B.C. (Ezekiel 1:2), followed by others in the sixth year (Ezekiel 8:1), seventh year (Ezekiel 20:1), ninth year (Ezekiel 24:1), tenth year (Ezekiel 29:1), eleventh year (Ezekiel 31:1), twelfth year (Ezekiel 32:1), twenty-fifth year (Ezekiel 40:1), and twenty-seventh year of the captivity (Ezekiel 29:17).
It is curious that the book of whose canonicity the modern criticism is most assured was, according to the Talmud, the one book which almost lost its place in the Jewish canon owing to a suspicion of the Jewish doctors that it contradicted the law. Fortunately Hananiah, son of Hezekiah, after burning three hundred measures of oil in his midnight studies was able satisfactorily to explain these seeming discrepancies. Though it was retained, the book seemed so mysterious that no Jew was permitted to read it until he had reached the age of thirty years.
II. The Text.
The text of no other equally ancient work is so certain as that of the Bible prophets, yet it is by no means perfect. No manuscript can be copied by hand, century after century, without error. There are many passages in Ezekiel which, notwithstanding the careful study of such scholars as Smend, Cornill, Ginsburg, Toy, and others, still baffle all attempts to critically translate them.
III. The Style of Ezekiel.
Gregory of Nazianzum calls Ezekiel “the most wonderful and exalted of the prophets,” and this appears to have been the general impression among Hebrew scholars down to the present generation. Some recent critics, however, without any too great reverence for Jehovah’s messenger, have bluntly expressed a different opinion, declaring that he totally lacked both imagination and originality (Smend); his was chiefly “borrowed treasure,” taken from “the desolate fields of the Levitical law” (Arndt); he has simply swallowed a book and given it out again (Wellhausen); his prophecies are “neither edifying nor attractive,” while some of his illustrations are quite “shocking” (Kuenen), and his style “uncouth and labored” (Toy). But surely St. John and the Teacher of Nazareth were as good judges of Hebrew style and spiritual visions as any modern professor, and their judgment is not so severe. There can be no doubt that, of all the prophets, this is the one which the Beloved Disciple loved best. In St. John’s highest hour of rapture he saw the vision which Ezekiel had seen six centuries before, and described it in phrases strikingly similar, while the rich music of his parables, like that of the Vine and the Shepherd (17, 34) is also heard again in the notes struck by the Good Shepherd himself. We ask, then, what was the style of this favorite author of the exile of Patmos and his Lord?
Professor Kautzsch (1896) has voiced the highest modern learning in his statement that Ezekiel’s style “shows a grand scale of variation from the simplest and most naive utterances to the most artistic and most complicated.” Ewald has declared that he “excels all former prophets as a writer in point of skill, beauty, and perfection of treatment,” his style being enriched by “charming and telling metaphors… full of new turns and surprises, often very beautifully elaborated.”
Ezekiel was celebrated as a maker of parables (Ezekiel 20:49), and his writings are full of riddles, proverbs, and allegories. In the heat of his stormy exhortations he would seize upon the most familiar and common objects and turn them to account. Israel is a vine; Jerusalem is a pot; the kingdom of Judah is a lioness, and the royal family are her whelps; Nebuchadnezzar is an eagle; the false prophets, instead of standing guard at the breaches in the city walls, are foxes burrowing under them; or, again, they are dumb and greedy dogs, hunters and murderers of souls; Egypt is a crocodile pulled out of the river by a hook and dying on the shore, or it is a splinter wounding the hand that leans upon it for support. Every sentence sparkles and gleams with brilliant figures of speech. It has been said that Ezekiel has furnished more striking expressions for liturgy and sermon than any other prophet.
Sometimes these metaphors are savage, sometimes full of exquisite tenderness, sometimes strangely fantastic, but in any case never to be forgotten. Some of his allegories are made as disgusting as possible; like that of the foundling child who became the adulterous wife, picturing Israel’s unfaithfulness. He rendered his sermons more dramatic by his action. It is not to be forgotten that gestures were the main part of primitive language; very often, even in ancient law, they took the place of technical phraseology (Maine, Ancient Law). Orientals have always been particularly partial to their use, and Ezekiel, like the early Methodist preachers, adapted himself to his audience. These symbolic actions may be repugnant to us, but that they were just fitted to influence the men to whom he spoke is seen by the result. The mimic siege (4), the shaving of his beard (5), the seeming paralysis, the carefulness of diet, and the disgusting method of cooking his food (Ezekiel 4:8, 12, 13), the sighing and quaking (Ezekiel 12:18; 21:6), all were picture sermons which covered lessons of tremendous importance.
The visions, too, in which all the majesties and splendors of earth and heaven are thrown together, forming, as Jerome says, “a labyrinth of the mysteries of God,” each had its divine, far-reaching message. Ezekiel’s entire philosophy of history and philosophy of religion can be discovered in the vision of Jehovah’s glory, which is indeed the key to this whole prophecy. (See notes chaps. Ezekiel 1:10.) He explains all history by the controlling hand of Jehovah. The sternness of his own words is fully explained by the fact that he had felt upon him the weight of the hand which he had himself seen underneath the mechanism of the universe (Ezekiel 1:8, 26; 3:14), while his quenchless hope for the future, when all others were in despair, was grounded upon the faithfulness and mercifulness of the ever-present and all-powerful One.
We cannot understand the meaning of every part of his vision, but as we come better to understand the language of oriental symbolism we see that to his auditors there was nothing forced or artificial in these descriptions, but that every detail contained some rich spiritual suggestion. It must also be remembered that Ezekiel was a poet, and only the soul of a poet can appreciate his wealth of imagery. His songs of war and his dirges over fallen heroes and fallen nations are worthy to be compared with those of any age or any race. Herder has called him the AEschylus and Shakespeare of the Hebrews, while Schiller wished to study Hebrew chiefly because he longed to read Ezekiel in his own language.
IV. Ezekiel’s Personality and Work.
It has been said that since Ezekiel has told us nothing of himself, we must be content to remain wholly ignorant of what manner of man he was. But this is not correct. There are a few significant circumstances related concerning him, and various necessary inferences from his customary speech and life, which throw not a little light upon the character of this silent prophet. The very fact that he does not make his own personality prominent, but forgets himself in his absorption in his lifework, speaks louder than words concerning his modesty and the intensity of his devotion to God. Even Duhm, his most severe critic, styles him the “prophet of humility.” There is a positive sublimity in his self-forgetfulness and silence. His life was quiet and withdrawn. He seems rarely, if ever, to have left his own home. He was a “man of the Spirit,” given up to holy thoughts and heavenly dreams.
That he was “the priest, the son of Buzi” (Ezekiel 1:3), proves that he belonged to the highest aristocracy of Israel and that he lived either in or just outside the temple. As a boy he stepped beside his father along those echoing aisles and toward those smoking altars, gazing with familiar eyes at the splendors which Solomon three hundred years before had dedicated to the God of ages. This was his home, where he “sucked in love for the temple with his mother’s milk.” (Compare Alexander Duff, Old Testament Theology; Cornill, Das Buch des Prophet Ezechiel.) His young poet-soul must have been thrilled with the nearness of Jehovah to his people and with the awfulness of the blasphemy when he saw even the priests themselves staggering to the sacrifices and filling the holy place with the noise of their drunken orgies. (See Isaiah 28.) This young student of the truth, whose memory was stored from his earliest childhood with the teachings of the law, doubtless listened many times with breathless interest to the warnings and cries of Jeremiah, that most tender-hearted prophet, who during all his boyhood stood up in the holy city as the chief representative of Jehovah’s will. He remembered well his master’s teachings, and often in his later sermons reproduced even his very words.
How old Ezekiel was when carried into captivity (598-597 B.C.) is not known. Josephus declares he was still but a youth (Antiquities, 10:63). The fact that he began his prophetic work only five years later would suggest — since no one sneered at the “boy prophet” — that he must have been at least twenty-five years of age when the captivity began. The maturity of his style, which never changed for over twenty years, also leads to the conclusion that he was of ripe age when he entered captivity (Kuenen), and was born, therefore, not later than 622 B.C. He had witnessed the most horrible national apostasies, had been impressed with Josiah’s attempted reformation (621-608 B.C.), and had felt the authority of his newly found “book of the law” (2 Kings 22:8). That he was well acquainted with the Jewish law books, particularly Leviticus and Deuteronomy, is proved by constant reference and frequent quotation.
For at least twenty-two years he was a prophet in Babylon (Ezekiel 29:17), and distinguished scholars have pointed out the influence that the Babylonian learning had upon his literary style. That he always remained a great student is conceded, and if his library is ever discovered at Tel-abib, it is not unlikely that some cuneiform writings may be found upon its shelves side by side with the great works of Hebrew literature. (Compare note Ezekiel 5:12.)
So vividly has he described the harbor of Tyre that modern archaeologists have been irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that he must have visited it at some time in his life, probably before his exile from Jerusalem. If so, in addition to the best training that the schools of Jerusalem could have given him, which at that period were no doubt largely influenced by Egyptian and even Greek learning (see Introduction to Daniel, III, 3), he would also have possessed the culture which comes only from travel. That Jehovah chose this young man for one of the most delicate and dangerous tasks ever committed to a prophet is proof of his nobility and courage and many other high qualities. This alone ought to show the error of those critics who are constrained by their theories to count this man hard, narrow, and bigoted, a distorter of history and defamer of his own countrymen.
Poor Ezekiel! How much he had to suffer while he lived, and though he has been long dead the thorns still continue to prick him. He is a “fanatic” (Renan), a “dogmatist” with all “the coldness of a criminal judge,” in whom “human sympathy and original inspiration are alike wanting” (Duhm); he has “no kindness of heart,” “knows no mercy,” and is “without attractiveness” (Kuenen), while his description of God’s justice is “absolutely frightful,” since he would solve the problem of theology, by “a theory of revenge” (Th. Arndt).
How little these critics know of the man with whom Jehovah loved to talk. He was naturally reticent and afraid of the words of others (Ezekiel 3:6); but controlled by the hand of Jehovah he spoke without faltering the hardest message which ever fell from the lips of man. It was not till the weight of the omnipotent Hand fell upon him that he uttered the harsh truths which the people so needed to know. He was so sensitive that the mockery and jests of certain nameless persons, even when the elders were showing him utmost respect, wounded him like the sting of nettles and scorpions. His face was not stone, but tender human flesh till God made it hard (Ezekiel 3:8).
He did speak stern words, yet his love for his native land was such that Jerusalem could be pictured by Jehovah as the desire of his eyes whose destruction would fall as heavily upon him as did the death of his wife — that wife who was the excellency of his strength, the joy of his glory (Ezekiel 24:16, 21, 25). His patriotism and his love for his countrymen, are also seen by his bitterness and hot anger when he first learns the message of woe and fiery scorn he is given to speak (Ezekiel 3:14). That he did not flee his duty shows the strength and conscientiousness of his nature. He was called to be the “conscience of the state.” The hand of the Lord was heavy upon him, compelling him to dissipate illusions and crush false hopes. That he held the respect of the elders, notwithstanding his withering reproaches, proves their faith in his thorough manhood and uttermost sincerity. He may have lacked politeness, as Renan claims; but even Renan acknowledges that this was a “martyr spirit,” “fascinated by justice,” while Kuenen speaks of him as “scrupulously conscientious,” “passionately in earnest to the very bone,” and Cornill says, “that for holy earnestness and deep piety Ezekiel stands first and foremost among the prophets.” Such admissions from such men go far to overthrow certain theories that these same critics have tenaciously held. Such a pious prophet could hardly have been guilty of originating a system of legislation and imposing it upon his countrymen as the ancient authority of Judaism, nor ought we to charge a man of such “scrupulous conscientiousness” with describing visions which he never really saw, and recording conversations with elders who never really honored him with a visit! It is rather evident that Ezekiel’s whole life was a listening for God’s voice and a looking for his glory. His life task was a struggle to tell the unspeakable things he had seen and heard. His definition of the false prophet is one who does not speak as he is moved by the strong Spirit of God, but utters his prophecies out of his own heart (Ezekiel 13:3).
Nor was this pious prophet a weak character. He was a mighty man, even his enemies being the judges. As we become better acquainted with him “the more mighty and grand he appears as a true man of God equipped with vast powers” (Cornill). “He was a man of action and extraordinary success” (Kautzsch). “Power went out from him;… without him Judaism would not have fulfilled her mission and Christianity would not have been born” (Kuenen). “How great is he in his solitude, how heroic in his captivity, how sublime in his desolation.… During more than twenty years this extraordinary man was the center of that fiery preaching which saved the conscience of Israel from a storm in which every other national conscience would have perished.… Christianity owes more to Ezekiel than to any other prophet, perhaps excepting the second Isaiah” (Renan). Such are the testimonies forced from the lips of men who have tried in many ways to belittle him. Cornill, as well as Gautier, has seen a spiritual relationship between this Babylonian prophet and St. Paul. Kamrath has styled him, because of his far-reaching influence and mental grasp of vast problems, the Jewish Calvin. He was indeed a powerful personality, who has left his mark on everything he touched. No one doubts that this colossal figure, this organizer and lawgiver of captive Israel, was the “spiritual director of the exile, the father of Judaism” (Cornill), and the “preserver of the Jewish commonwealth” (Konig). Without his teaching Israel would have been buried in its Babylonian grave forever (37). He furnished the impulse which culminated in the edict of Cyrus and the return of his people to the Holy Land “with songs of rejoicing on their lips.” He lived in an evil hour, but his majestic personality mastered all adverse circumstances. As a priest he restored the past; as a prophet he created the future. He stands large and unique among the great men of his race. His was a vast mission: to save the Israelites from becoming Babylonians; to transform those faithless, hopeless, idol-worshiping exiles into an ardent, hopeful, believing Church, and with serene audacity to prepare them for their second Exodus. The exodus from Babylon was as epochal an event as the exodus from Egypt, and the man elected by Providence to be spiritual leader of that exodus must have been a mighty prophet “like unto” Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15). His very name is significant — Ezekiel: “Strong is God” (Ewald), or “God makes strong” (Gesenius). The second exodus was accomplished not by miracles, but by the transforming power of the preached word. Ezekiel was a preacher. His exposures of the awful sin and inexcusable guilt of his countrymen cut like a two-edged sword, for he felt that the prophet who does not warn the lost is a murderer of souls (xxxiii). He showed the necessary and eternal connection between sin and penalty. He was “a powerful preacher of repentance” (Pfleiderer), because he believed that God had no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but was ready to forgive when the wicked man turned from his wickedness. Nowhere in the Old Testament is it so clearly taught that the real object of divine punishment is that the sinner may turn from his evil ways and live. Amos had emphasized man’s sinfulness and God’s righteousness; Hosea had felt the need of forgiveness, and, therefore, God’s need to forgive; Isaiah had seen Jehovah himself coming as the weary world’s great Deliverer; but Ezekiel, his lips touched by a coal from the holy altar, was able to speak out “another sentence from the eternal tale of love, and men gained a new depth of vision into the infinite heart of God.” No one before in human history had so emphasized the blessed truth that “man’s holiest hope and God’s holiest purpose is forgiveness.” Ezekiel, too, as no other prophet, emphasized the enormous value of a human soul and the individual need of forgiveness and salvation if the nation were to be saved. Even Isaiah had taught that Zion’s sanctuary could not be harmed, for Zion is “the place of our tryst with Jehovah;” but Ezekiel saw that the true Zion was not in any earthly city, but wherever Jehovah’s glorious chariot rested, and that the humblest “son of man” and the one farthest from the Holy City, if only truly righteous, could meet with God and find close to him a “little sanctuary.” (Compare Alexander Duff, Old Testament Theology.) The character of this preacher may be truly seen in his horror of sin and in his method of preaching repentance and the need of a new heart. His anathemas seem almost pitiless until we hear sounding through it all, as the chief note of every sermon, “Will ye die, O house of Israel?” The crowning thought of every warning was to bring men to repentance, and thus to holiness, and to turn their eyes from the black past to a new future which shall open to men who have new hearts. His high humanitarianism, far in advance of his age, is seen not merely from his deep interest in all nationalities, but in the honor he paid to women and the marriage covenant, actually counting this relation of husband and wife so sacred that it could image the relation of Jehovah and Israel (23). The sins which he condemned were not the sins of ritualism, merely (Stade), but of morals (Ezekiel 7:23; 18:3-15; 22:3-16; 24:7; 33:25; 36:17); the holiness which he commended was not ceremonial, merely, but spiritual. The lofty morality of Ezekiel is shown everywhere by his precepts as well as his actions (Ezekiel 18:6-9). His was a religion of justice and truth. While Ezekiel was in Babylon it was the moral capital of the world. Justice, righteousness, holiness, according to Ezekiel, were not cold abstractions and formalities. He told the elders to their faces that they were no better than the heathen, because, though they outwardly worshiped Jehovah, they had set up idols “in their hearts,” and they could claim no special favor from him because they were children of Abraham, since God’s favor was not obtained through birth, but through a new birth (Ezekiel 11:19-21, etc.).
The deep spirituality of this man is seen also from his conception of the Deity. He was not like one who —
With a shudder feels his naked soul
In the great black world face to face with God.
He loved to find “the secret place of the Most High.” Like the scientist of to-day, he had discovered an omnipresent, invisible energy, working like a living spirit behind the mechanism of this universe, but he did not call it the Unknowable. He knew the name of this invisible omnipotency: Jehovah! That this son of a priest knew well the ancient meaning of this name of God, which he so often uses, cannot be doubted. His every prophecy is based upon the fundamental thought that God is “merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:6, 7; Deuteronomy 5:9, 10). Jehovah is just and holy, but possesses also the tenderness and passion of a father and a husband (16, 18, etc.).
It is noticeable that Ezekiel is the first prophet who represents God as the Shepherd seeking his lost sheep (34). Every man becomes like the God he worships, and the chief characteristic of Ezekiel is the searching and saving love by which he sought to bring his people to a new life, and did, in fact, prepare them for the future Messianic Gospel. He was a watchman. He stood in his place, as sentinel on the Babylonian canal, and with undaunted voice proclaimed the downfall of Jerusalem unless the people repented; but when the awful calamity at length became realized, and his countrymen were crushed by the blow, his voice grew tender as he cheered them with the promise that, though the holy city had fallen, the God of the city still lived and was able to protect and deliver his people. By his words he awoke the spirit of the nation. He opened to them a wealth of unfathomably rich comfort. Though his nation had fallen into ruin this lonely mystic cast himself upon the future with a great hope, a radiant vision of a better day, when a new Jerusalem should arise in which Jehovah would be honored by all as King, and there would be no war, no injustice, no inequality, no unrighteousness.
It was the dream of a seer! As has been well said, he was “tyrannized by Conscience and the Ideal.” (Compare Darmsteter, Les Prophetes D’Israel.) Ezekiel was a dreamer, but, unlike the authors of modern and ancient Utopias, his dream became a reality. His vision of God and of the future led to Israel’s resurrection and to the building of the walls of a New Jerusalem. We make bold to call this man the St. John of the Old Testament, not only because of his sublime thunderings and apocalyptic visions, but because Jesus, by his sympathetic and tender use of this book, proved that its author was the beloved one among the seers of the Old Covenant. (Compare, e.g., Ezekiel 15 and John 15.) Certain modern critics do not like this prophet. They think him “cold” and “heartless,” and his book “grotesque and repulsive” (e.g., Kuenen, Onderzoek). Are these scholars more fastidious than the Teacher of Nazareth, or have they not yet become acquainted with this “maker of parables” (Ezekiel 20:49) whom Jesus loved? The prophet whose writings the Master used more, perhaps, than those of any other, and whose method of teaching he adopted, must have been a man after his own heart.
As one sympathetically studies these obscure prophecies he may catch many a glimpse of the man who writes them. What self-restraint! What self-conquest! What awfulness of silence! What domination of conscience! What absolute submission to God’s will! With its unrivaled vividness of coloring, its maze of symbols, and blaze of divine visions, this book is not only a prototype of the splendors of the Apocalypse, but its author, the lonely man, this thorn-pierced man of sorrows, is a prototype of the coming Christ. The One whose name is above every name chose as his title Ezekiel’s name, “the Son of man.” There must be some deep spiritual meaning in the book honored by St. John and his Master. If it seem barren and unfruitful, woe to the eyes that look! If its author seem narrow and harsh of speech, he is only placed the nearer to the One who was despised and rejected of men, who saw no beauty in him (Isaiah liii). V. Ezekiel’s Alleged Historical Mistakes.
Ezekiel’s prophetic dignity has not saved him from various severe criticisms from certain scholars of the new school. Even his word is disbelieved, and he is declared to have written out and revised his prophecies to fit the facts after they were spoken, or probably never to have spoken them at all; certainly not at the dates which he gives. This is a most unholy suspicion of a man whose every act and word proves his uprightness. Via, Veritas, Vita seem almost as vitally connected in the Gospel which Ezekiel preached as in that proclaimed by his great Namesake six centuries afterward. The main reason for suspecting the prophet of untruthfulness is that some of these prophecies contain clear statements of political conditions which were in the future at the time when he claims to have uttered them, and “therefore Ezekiel could not have written them at the period given” (Kuenen, Onderzoek, 2:304-312). It is evident that this argument can only weigh heavily with one who disbelieves in any predictive revelation from God. The attack upon the prophet’s trustworthiness in other directions seems to be made for less reason than any modern writer would require to make such a charge against a contemporary — even one who had no particular reputation for saintliness. There are two specific “blunders,” plainly so called by our critics, which have received much enthusiastic mention as proving that a prophet cannot be trusted when he attempts to foretell important events. One of these refers to the conquest of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar (Ezekiel 26:7-14). It is denied that Nebuchadnezzar ever captured Tyre; and it is even claimed that Ezekiel himself afterward acknowledges this when he says that the Babylonian king and his army received no “wages” for Tyre, notwithstanding their long siege (Ezekiel 39:18, 19). But, if, indeed, Ezekiel acknowledges the failure of his own prophecy, certainly this clearly displays his utter frankness and honesty. A disingenuous person who was accustomed to revise his prophecies to suit the facts would not have left such a passage. Only a true and honest prophet, recognizing the fact that few prophecies were unconditional, and that God was always quick to forgive, or to postpone promised punishment (Ezekiel 12:21-28; Jonah 4), could possibly have left on record both the prediction and its failure without any attempt at harmonization.
But it is by no means proved that Nebuchadnezzar did not capture the Phoenician capital. The sufficient answer to this criticism ought to be, first, that while no ancient non-biblical writer has said that Nebuchadnezzar captured Tyre, none has denied this, and Ezekiel, as a contemporary, ought by any just criticism to be allowed to have known the facts; and second, Ezekiel has not distinctly said (Ezekiel 29:18, 19) that he failed to capture the city, but only that he failed to receive from the city sufficient reward for his enormous expenditure of time and treasure. It is suggestive that Professor Fritz Hommel, of Munich, who formerly held that Nebuchadnezzar merely blockaded Tyre, failing to capture it though he finally brought it again under tribute (Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, 1888, and in Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 1:1898), has now revised his former critical judgment sufficiently to say, that while “Tyre could not be taken by Nebuchadrezzar, it passed notwithstanding after a fruitless blockade of thirteen years (by a voluntary surrender) into the hands of the Babylonian monarch” (Exp. Times, 1899). Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne 605-604 B.C.; the siege of Tyre occurred, probably, 585-573 B.C.; it is certain that a little later than this (565 B.C.) Nebuchadnezzar was king of Tyre, since he is so recognized in a legal contract which was drawn up in that city (Records of the Past, vol. iv, pp. 99-101). All of this harmonizes beautifully with Ezekiel’s statements.
The other alleged “blunder” of Ezekiel has reference to Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest in Egypt as prophesied in chapter 32. Although Josephus had sustained the Bible account, yet, as Herodotus was silent concerning this campaign, several writers were very confident that we have here a very plain mistake of a biblical writer. In his Prophets and Prophecy (1877) Dr. Kuenen gave much space to this matter. Very soon, however, a fragment of Nebuchadnezzar’s annals was discovered, in which he declared without equivocation that he did invade Egypt in the thirty-seventh year of his reign — just the year that this prophecy required (568-567 B.C.) — and achieved a great victory over the king [Ama]sis. More than this, a hieroglyphic inscription written by a famous Egyptian governor of this same era, named Nes-Hor, was found, in which he described the horrors of an invasion which swept Egypt without opposition clear to Syene. (Compare Ezekiel 30:16, Greek.) So strongly did these contemporaneous inscriptions confirm Ezekiel’s account, that archaeologists and biblical historians of the most critical school conceded his trustworthiness on this point; for instance, Sayce, Pinches, Tiele, Wiedemann, etc.
It is to be regretted, however, that Dr. Kuenen, in his Historisch-critisch Onderzoek (1889, pp. 265-318), declined to acknowledge that Ezekiel’s accuracy had been vindicated. He objected, first, that Nes-Hor in his inscription did not definitely call his opponents Babylonians, and that, while the term used referred undoubtedly to Asiatics and Ionians, these might have been Egyptian mercenaries who had revolted and not
Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers; second, that the fragment of Nebuchadnezzar’s annals describing his Egyptian campaign did not affirm how far his troops had pressed into Egypt, and therefore they might not have gone as far as Syene; third, the Egyptian tablet of Nes-Hor mentioned Hophra as king, while the Babylonian inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar mentioned [Ama]sis as the reigning king, and therefore these writings evidently alluded to different campaigns; fourth, that even if it should be proved that Nebuchadnezzar did invade Egypt and raid the country as far as Ezekiel claimed, certainly there was no literal fulfillment of the prophecy concerning Pharaoh (Ezekiel 29:1-12).
Taking the last objection first, let it be noticed that the prophecy is full of symbolic numbers and poetic figures, and it is no more just to demand a bald, prosaic fulfillment of it than it would have been for St. Peter to demand such a fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy concerning the time when the sun should be turned into darkness and the moon into blood (Joel 2:30, 31; Acts 2:16-20). From the standpoint of the oriental — who understood better than we the symbolic sense of the expressions used — both prophecies were truly, though not literally, fulfilled. As to the third objection, let it also be noted that no scholar doubts that Amasis and Hophra were contemporaries. They were, indeed, brothers-in-law, and the most critical living authorities on Egyptian history declare them to have been co-rulers. Their pictures may be seen, even to this day, portrayed side by side upon the same royal monument. There would seem to be no contradiction, therefore, in Nebuchadnezzar winning victories such as he narrates over Amasis, in Lower Egypt, in the very same campaign in which his forces might have had a severe struggle with Hophra in Upper Egypt. Dr. Kuenen’s other arguments are no more weighty. That these captors and plunderers of the whole country were revolting Egyptian mercenaries I think the hieroglyphic text makes clear; but does not this suggest a condition of national weakness which is most easily accounted for by such an invasion as Ezekiel claims? Even if the Nes-Hor text has no connection whatever with Nebuchadnezzar or his invasion, as Dr. Adolph Erman, of Berlin, believes — who in a recent letter has favored me with a new translation of the inscription — yet the statement of Nebuchadnezzar himself concerning his invasion of Egypt remains as a remarkable contemporaneous corroboration of Ezekiel’s accuracy. It is evident, therefore, that the most generous conclusion open to the critical examiner of these documents would be that, notwithstanding these texts, it still remains barely possible that Dr. Kuenen may be right and Ezekiel may be wrong. But is this the correct principle of exegesis? Is the old principle which affirms that a Scripture writer shall not be declared wrong when any consistent interpretation of the documents allows him to be in the right, not more in accordance with justice?
VI. The Book of Ezekiel and the Levitical Priestly Law.
No one can doubt the close relationship between Ezekiel and certain portions of the Pentateuch, particularly Leviticus.*
[* Stanley Leathes, in The Law in the Prophets, believes he has traced references in Ezekiel to every book of the Pentateuch and almost every chapter in Leviticus.]
Over eighty of Ezekiel’s characteristic expressions are to be found in Leviticus, chiefly in chapters xvii-xxvi, and many of these nowhere else in Scripture. These phrases sound like verbal quotations. But who quotes? This question was never raised previous to this century. It was universally accepted as natural that Ezekiel’s vocabulary should be that of a priest whose memory was filled with the exact wording of the authoritative Mosaic law. (Compare Deuteronomy 6:6-9; 30:11.) A new school of biblical criticism, however, which denies the ancient authorship of the Pentateuch, or any considerable section of it, explains these similarities in a very different manner. Some critics, like Graf and Kayser, boldly theorize that Ezekiel wrote the Levitical laws himself. Others like Dillmann, think that, while he was not personally its author certain portions of this law must have been worked over during the exile under his eye. Still others, like Smend and Wellhausen and Kuenen and Robertson Smith, representing the most popular wing of the new school, believe that the priest code of Leviticus was prepared considerably later than the time of Ezekiel, and that the laws, even to their phraseology, were copied from him. Ezekiel himself first made the sketch of the written priestly law, and originated much of the ritual which was afterward supposed by the Jews to have been in existence from ancient times.
Of course this theory contradicts such writers as Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Chronicler, but the answer to this is that these Bible writers are “very independent of historic perspective.” Indeed, these leaders of the new school have been so confident that their theory concerning Ezekiel’s priority to the priestly law was correct that they have spoken of it as the “stronghold” of their entire hypothesis and “the key to the criticism of the Old Testament.” Recently, however, not to mention the arguments of recognized opponents such as Green, Cave, Delitzsch, Orelli, Gautier, Zahn, etc., serious objections to this theory have been developed within the new school itself by such scholars as Noldeke, Dillmann, Klostermann, Baudissin, Riehm, Hofmann, etc. Klostermann even attempts to show that the Levitical law was so well known in Ezekiel’s day that it was used by the people in exile as a sort of catechism, which accounts for Ezekiel’s frequent use of it.
Driver, in his Introduction (1892), gives much weight to these objections, and decides that at least the principal and most characteristic of the Levitical laws must have been much older than Ezekiel, although the parenthetic framework may not have been ancient, while Konig (Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 1894) strongly emphasizes the fact that we cannot explain Ezekiel without remembering that he used a religious phraseology, and appealed to a religious conscience already existing. He constantly appealed to a law already known in codified and written form (Ezekiel 18:59), a law which was accepted by the people as their religious constitution and legitimate court of appeal. Ezekiel’s idea of a just man was one who acted according to the written law. He even uses the very word for law which is used in the Jewish law book (Ezekiel 20:11; Deuteronomy 12); which law, he says, they had from the beginning. Criticism has changed front to a marked extent in the few years since W. Robertson Smith could write: “In every point Ezekiel’s Torah prepares the way for the Levitical law.… Ezekiel makes no appeal to a previous law of ritual; like Jeremiah, he knew of no such written law;” and Wellhausen could declare that Amos (786-741 B.C.) was the first Hebrew author, and without literary predecessors.
The point upon which the new criticism has been most certain for many years, regarding it, indeed, as the starting point of every argument, has been the distinction which, as was claimed, the prophet Ezekiel made for the first time in history, between the priests and Levites. Kittel (Geschichte der Hebraer, 1888) quotes Kuenen as saying that “anyone who does not see that Ezekiel regards the degradation of the Levites (Ezekiel 44:6-16) as something entirely new, and previously unknown, is more to be pitied than contradicted.” Yet Kittel himself and many critical scholars since have continued to show extreme doubtfulness of this fundamental conclusion of the new school, that up to the time of Ezekiel, according to Hebrew law, every Levite was a priest, and that it was Ezekiel who first limited to the house of Zadok the priestly functions. Even Dr. Driver, while he accepts as certain the contention that in primitive times every member of the tribe of Levi “enjoyed the right of exercising priestly offices,” sees that “there is nothing in this incompatible with the pre-eminence of a particular family — that of Aaron (Deuteronomy 10:6) — which in the line of Zadok held the chief rank in the central sanctuary” (Int., p. 146). Dr. Driver attempts to prove, however, from the fact that certain terms are used in Deuteronomy to describe the service of the Levites, which very terms are also used to describe the priests’ services, that therefore no distinction was recognized between priests and Levites. But these references by no means prove that every Levite was a priest and exercised the functions of the priesthood. No one doubts that every priest was a Levite, and that therefore certain functions, such as those referred to by Dr. Driver, were common to both of these orders of the clergy. Every Levite as well as every priest “ministered” and “stood before Jehovah” and “stood before the congregation” (see Driver’s list, Int., p. 77, N. 2); but certain specific priestly duties, such as giving the lot and doing service in the offering tent, are never ascribed to the Levites as a tribe. Deuteronomy itself — which is now acknowledged by all writers to be earlier than Ezekiel, and by some of the most recent critics (such as Westphal, Le Deuteronomy, 1891; A. von Hoonacker, Le Museon, 1892, 1893; Klostermann, Der Pent., 1893; Konig, Einleitung, 1893; and A. Harper, Deuteronomy, 1895) to contain the very ancient Hebrew legislation — makes some distinction between priests and Levites (for example, Ezekiel 18:1, 3, 6; 27:9, 14), while other biblical books make this distinction very sharply (Joshua 21:4; 1 Samuel 6:15; 2 Samuel 15:24; 1 Kings 8:4; Ezra 1:5, 62; 2:36, 40; 3:8, 10; 6:20; Nehemiah 7:39, 43; 12:1-8; 1 Chronicles 9:2, etc.), representing the pre-eminence of the Aaronites to extend back even to the Mosaic era. It is suggestive that the general term, the use of which some have supposed to indicate in Deuteronomy a lack of knowledge of any difference in rank between the priest and the Levite, is also used in Chronicles, where this distinction is clearly recognized (2 Chronicles 5:5). It is not strange if for various reasons certain Bible books fail to make the technical distinctions which were always recognized in greater or less degree between priests and Levites. Deuteronomy seems to have been the “people’s book,” in which ecclesiastical distinctions were not made prominent and the Levites and priests were generally classed together, without reference to rank, as men dedicated to holy service. So the Chronicles fuse together Levites, singers, and doorkeepers, and while the distinction between the priests and Levites is not obliterated it is not emphasized. The historic books rarely allude to the differences of rank among the clergy, and yet these differences are definitely recognized (1 Samuel 6:15; 2 Samuel 15:24; 1 Kings 8:4). There can be no doubt, if the Hebrew ecclesiasticism followed the same course as that of all other nations, that it would become with time more complex, and that the separation between the people and the priesthood and between the different orders of the clergy would become more plainly marked. The technical meaning of a term such as “priest” and “Levite” might change in the course of time, and the duties of each might change as the religious ceremonial became more elaborate.
Dr. Hilprecht has just pointed out that in old Babylonian the term patesi (priest) had such a broad meaning that it could be applied to the civil as well as the religious ruler (Recent Research, 1896). Dr. Lansing long ago showed that originally this was also true of the Hebrew kohen; e.g., 2 Samuel 8:17 (Expositor, vol. viii). The recently discovered Carthage inscription proves the same to be true of the holats, or priests of Baal. Baudissin (Die Geschichte Alt Testament Priesterthums, 1889) calls attention to the use of this word priest, not only in Hebrew, but in Arabic and Phoenician, and draws the conclusion that it originally meant “standing before Jehovah,” while the term Levite meant “followed,” or “ministered.” As the ritual became more complex it was only natural that the title of priest should become more honorable and the separation between priest and Levite more distinct.
It is perfectly in accordance with a natural order of development to find in early Hebrew history civil rulers such as Joshua, Gideon, and Samuel exercising ecclesiastical functions, and to find certain Levites, though not of the house of Aaron, taking upon them priestly offices. Those were days when the strict enforcement of law, either civil or religious, seems to have been the exception rather than the rule. After the building of Solomon’s temple, and the centralization of an elaborate worship at Jerusalem, a stronger attempt was made to enforce ecclesiastical discipline, subject, however, to the bias of the reigning prince, with the natural result of alienating to a considerable extent the priesthood of the rural sanctuaries from the worship of Jehovah. It was these rebellious and apostate priests, the “Levites that went astray,” whom Ezekiel relegated to the subordinate offices of the ministry. (See notes Ezekiel 6:3; 44:9-16.) He did not degrade the entire body of Levites — this would indeed have been, as the new school itself calls it, “an ignoble procedure” (Kuenen) and “very unjust” (Max Kamrath) — but he exercised discipline upon insubordinates. That there is a marked difference in the manner of reference to the priests and Levites in different biblical books cannot be doubted, but there is no necessary contradiction. The standpoint of the author, the aim of the book, and the era in which it was written might largely account for this. It could not be expected, for example, that technical phraseology would ordinarily be employed in a book written for popular and practical religious instruction, such as Deuteronomy, while such language would seem perfectly natural in a book like Leviticus. Just as the bishops, priests, and deacons of the English Church are continually spoken of, even by those perfectly acquainted with these distinctions, as “the clergy,” so in Deuteronomy the priests and Levites are spoken of under one general designation.
In Ezekiel, a book written by a priest, these distinctions are naturally not made as frequently as in the Levitical law book, but more frequently than in Deuteronomy. The fact which Dr. Kuenen has himself acknowledged, that the system of worship seen in Ezekiel — the distribution of priestly functions, enumeration of sacrifices, treatment of feasts, etc. — is more complex than that of the Levitical law, is an almost conclusive argument that Ezekiel’s legislation did not precede, but followed, that simpler and less developed code. It is to be noticed, also, that, even when the phrases of Ezekiel and the Levitical law are most closely paralleled, Ezekiel exhibits a greater fullness of expression, which indicates that he has amplified the holy code. (See Patton, Presbyterian and Reformed Review, January, 1896.)
Only one other point need be raised here. If the Levitical law preceded Ezekiel as a well-known system of legislation, why did he differ from it in so many particulars? (40-48.) Ezekiel’s temple, altar, feasts, sacrifices, etc., differ from the institutions of Leviticus in a marked degree. This is hard to explain. It is difficult for the conservative school to explain why Ezekiel should differ from Moses, and it is almost equally difficult for the new school to explain why the Levitical legislation should differ so widely and unnecessarily from the Ezekiel legislation, upon which, according to this view, it was based. It has been quite generally admitted by conservative writers that Ezekiel intended to change the old legislation, and some, as Delitzsch, have suggested that the reason why Ezekiel’s prophecy of a new ritual was not fulfilled was because the conditions of the prophecy were not fulfilled (Ezekiel 43:9, 10). But to the present writer it seems clear that Ezekiel never intended that his vision should be taken as a “politico-ecclesiastical program.” His miraculous river, his healing trees, his impossible dimensions, all lead us into the region of symbol. It is wrong to say that he did not reaffirm the Levitical institutions because he was not acquainted with them, for he does not mention the high priest, nor the day of atonement, nor the feast of Pentecost, nor the Sabbatic year of rest, and yet these were undoubtedly — according to the new criticism — parts of the oldest Hebrew legislation. Ezekiel seems to have had no intention of repeating what the people already knew. Rather, this St. John of the Old Testament symbolized the old legislation and set forth its meaning with vivid strokes. Just as in his description of the cherubim he differed both from the ancient Hebrew and the Babylonian pictures, and thus drew special attention to the symbolic lessons taught, so he here differs from the old forms in his description of the Hebrew worship, and for a similar reason. (See notes chaps. 1, 10, and 40.)
VII. The Exiled Jews in Babylon.
The startling discovery of Dr. Hilprecht at Nippur — which lies only a few hours southeast of Babylon, quite near where the traditional grave of Ezekiel is still shown at Kepel — of a “Jewish quarter,” with its narrow streets, and low, poorly built houses (compare Ezekiel 12:17), put side by side with Professor Petrie’s discovery at Tel Nebesheh, in Egypt, of various signs indicating that in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. the Jews were living in an isolated district in that city, throws a picturesque light on the condition of the so-called “captives;” the fellow-countrymen and fellow-exiles of Ezekiel. It is now made certain that Tel-abib (Ezekiel 3:15) was situated on the kabaru (the Chebar, Ezekiel 1:3), a large navigable canal not far from Nippur, and it is altogether certain that there was close communication between the colony in Nippur and that with which Ezekiel was connected at Tel-abib; for the news even from Jerusalem, three or four months distant, came to the prophet regularly.
It is seen by these new discoveries that even then the Jews were “children of the Ghetto,” and no doubt in the White-chapel and Petticoat Lanes of the Jewish quarter in Babylon and Nippur and Tel-abib they maintained their national prejudices and customs as they ever since have done. This was certainly true of those whose children of the next generation went back to rebuild the holy city. They carried back with them a love for the old traditions, the old customs, the old faiths, which had only been intensified by their absence from the temple. They scorned and ridiculed the idolatry by which they were surrounded.
A very high authority has ventured the statement that “the Chaldeans exercised no influence whatever on the Old Testament religion” (Schultz, Old Test. Rel., 2:330). But such a statement must not be misunderstood. While it is true that “Babylon in the sixth century B.C. was not capable of giving lessons of purified theology” (Renan, Hist., 3:367), yet the form and expression of the Hebrews’ faith were modified. No one can live for a generation in a foreign land without being affected by his environment. Of this Ezekiel himself is a striking proof. His illustrations and figures of speech are often plainly Babylonian. He had lived in Babylon during half his life. He was probably familiar with its libraries (Kautzsch, Toy, Muller), he was certainly acquainted with its complex symbolic figures, with its methods of divination, and with everything which such a good student of the dress and habits and peculiarities of foreign nations would notice. Kuenen has called attention to the fact that Ezekiel’s language was affected by his long residence in Chaldea, and that he does not write his native Hebrew as easily as other prophets (Onderzoek), while another scholar, in an exhaustive treatise, has proved that Ezekiel and Daniel and other Bible writers have used illustrative material even from the myths of Babylon (Gunkel), and still another has declared that Ezekiel’s poetry closely resembles, even in rhythm and meter, that of his contemporaries in Babylonia, and traces in detail the similarity of phraseology (Muller, Die Propheten in ihren ursprung-lichen Form, 1896, pp. 56-58). These are novel opinions, but recent discoveries prove that centuries before Ezekiel’s day the cuneiform literature had taken a firm foothold even in Palestine itself. It may be calmly and positively affirmed, on the highest authority, that in Ezekiel’s day the literature of western Asia had the same influence on those times as the European has upon us to-day (ibid., p. 56). It has been suggested that perhaps the reason Ezekiel does not attack the worship) of Bel and Nebo and Marduk, as other prophets do (e.g., Jeremiah xxv), and as he himself does the worship of the gods of Canaan and Egypt, was because of local influences. He would not stir up servant against master and master against servant. (See Toy, Society Biblical Literature and Exegesis, December, 1881.) The Bible itself is a constant protest against the superstition that the Jewish people were shielded by the fourfold wings of protecting angels from the laws of human nature and the touch of surrounding nations. It was not Jehovah’s purpose to make a monk of Beni-Israel, but a missionary. Phoenician artisans were imported to build the temple, an Ammonite guard assisted in the temple ritual, the greatest king of Israel was descended from a Hittite ancestry, and Babylon was the schoolmaster employed by Providence to teach the Jews the power of the one God in any land and to show them that there could be a vital, personal relationship with Jehovah apart from the temple sacrifices, and especially to bring the all-conquering monotheism in close touch with the heathen idolatry. The pious “remnant” learned their lesson well. That many of the exiles apostatized, however, there is no doubt, even apart from the testimony of Josephus. Dr. Hilprecht’s discovery of a Jewish colony in Babylon a century or more after Ezra’s day would alone be sufficient proof, but it is also shown by other archaeological finds that numbers of men with Hebrew names were doing business in the leading cities of Babylon long after the return to Jerusalem of the “pure.” Hundreds of contracts and sales in which these men appear as principals or witnesses have been dug up. These business transactions can be traced back to the very years in which Ezekiel was penning his prophecy. Indeed the leading banking firm in Babylon from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign to that of Darius Hystaspes bears a name strikingly Jewish. These “captives” in Babylon were not slaves. While they were exported from their native land, according to the usual policy of the Babylonian government to take away from them all idea of insurrection, they were given most, if not all, of the privileges of native citizenship in the new home to which they were removed. They had houses of their own (Ezekiel 8:1), could retain their manservants and maids, keep up their old titles and honors, and hold high offices in the state (Nehemiah 2:1; 7:5, 67; Daniel 2:48; 6:3; Ezra 1:8). A cuneiform tablet found in 1889 even indicates that they may have had especial privileges, such as freedom from tribute and compulsory service. It seems quite probable that the Jews first commenced their career as a commercial people during their captivity. Previous to their exile they were almost exclusively agriculturists and cattle men. This was the national ideal (Isaiah 66; Zechariah 3:10). They were not born merchants and bankers. The pressure of events advised them of the necessity of putting everything into cash at short notice. From the time of the Babylonian captivity down to the present century that has been true (Isidore Loeb, Revue Etudes Juives, January-June, 1894). The strange kindness of Cyrus to this people suggests the possibility that the Rothschilds of Babylon may have influenced legislation in those times somewhat as their successors have so often done. It is certain that this very thing did happen in Egypt, into which Jeremiah and his friends fled at this very period (Jeremiah 43), and where shortly after the Jews are seen engaged in large financial enterprises, administering the customs and having surveillance of all the navigation of the Nile (Mahaffy, Empire of the Ptolemies, 1895, pp. 86, 217). It is not strange under these circumstances that many exiles, encouraged by their financial prosperity, refused to return to the desolate and now hostile land which their fathers had left a generation before (Ezra 4, 5; Nehemiah 4-6). The Jews have always easily become citizens of the country where they have resided. The Prussian Diet, the German Reichstag, and the French Chamber have all complimented their patriotism.
The prophets themselves had encouraged those carried into Babylon to build houses and plant gardens and pray to the Lord for the peace of the city into which they were carried captive (Jeremiah 29:7). No doubt at first they were homesick. Born among the mountains, their eyes were weary of the sand plains. But, perhaps honestly believing that in the destruction of Jerusalem the God of Israel had been conquered by the gods of Babylon, many Israelites gave up their ancestral faith when the possibilities of the temple worship were removed, and soon became Babylonians in all essentials of life and spirit. Their fellow-countrymen who still believed in Jehovah as the all-powerful Father, and who still hoped for deliverance from exile, seemed to them like dreamers intoxicated with deceptive visions. They doubtless, took Babylonian names,* and married Babylonian wives, and, certainly, when venturing upon some new speculation, offered sacrifices and libations to the Babylonian deities of fortune and good luck (Isaiah 65:11), and when at last the unexpected edict was issued, authorizing their return to their native land, they felt no ardent desire to take advantage of it. At the best, Jerusalem had been a small, poor town compared with the magnificent cities of their adopted land, and it was now lying in ruins and there was no possibility of business success or literary advantage, or perhaps even of social distinctions such as they now enjoyed.
[* This was done even by the loyal princes of Judah who returned, for Hoonacker has proved that Sheshbazzar (Ezra 1:8) is a genuine Babylonian name (Wellhausen, Israelitische Geschichte, 1894, N. p. 120).] But a holy remnant of the people through all their calamities held their trust in Jehovah. The very stones and dust of Mount Zion remained precious in their sight. Their food tasted like ashes, and their drink was salt with tears, and they were reduced almost to skeletons (Psalm 102). The ancestors of Mendelssohn and Mozart must sing, but they could not sing one of the old happy temple songs in a strange land (Psalm 137). Their attempts to sing were pitiful: —
My heart is smitten, and withered like grass;
So that I forget to eat my bread.
I am like a pelican of the wilderness:
I am like an owl of the desert (Psalm 102).
It must not be forgotten that all around the Israelites were representations of other nationalities who could sympathize with their grief. There has been digged up in Babylon a cuneiform text containing a lamentation written by a fellow-captive brought from the land of Ur, shortly before Ezekiel and his friends were transported: —
He raises lamentation to heaven day and night:
Day and night he raises, he raises his voice,
Crying day and night, he is not comforted.
— Babylonian and Oriental Record, vol. 2.
The cry of the pious Hebrews during this terrible epoch, and especially after the destruction of the temple (see Ezekiel 37:11), is still voiced every year on the day of atonement: —
Work for me, I beseech thee, marvels now,
O Lord of hosts! in mercy lull our fears;
Answer with potent signs; and be not thou
Silent unto my tears.
Beauty’s perfection lieth fallen low,
Broken and waste which stood in majesty,
The glory passed away and fled, for woe!
The One went out from me. — Baruch ben Samuel.
But the time came when the wails were turned to hosannas and paeans of triumph; for the great news reached the ears of the exiles that Cyrus had put the royal seal to an edict permitting every Jew to go back to his home, and commanding that the glorious temple should be rebuilt.* It was almost too good to be believed. They were bewildered with joy.
[* With such a distinguished historical critic and archaeologist as Ed. Meyer defending not only the general truthfulness of the narrative in Ezra and Nehemiah, but their minute correspondence to what ought to be expected in official documents of that period from which they claim to proceed, it is not necessary to discuss here the doubts of Kosters, etc.]
When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,
We were like unto them that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
And our tongue with singing (Psalm 126).
It was only by “a miracle of faith and hope unparalleled in history” (Renan) that those “sublime madmen,” the prophets, defying all military and diplomatic decisions, brought about the return of the Jews from the banks of the Euphrates and the river Kebar and the re-establishment of Jehovah’s worship at Jerusalem. The power of Jehovah and the truth of prophecy were demonstrated in a way that was never forgotten.
All the wealth carried by that little caravan of less than five thousand souls was not given to them by Mithredath, the king’s treasurer (Ezra 1:8), nor by sympathizing Israelites who remained in Babylon, preferring business prosperity to a dangerous pilgrimage to the ruins of a fallen temple. All the wealth of hope and faith with which Judaism and Christianity have enriched the world lay hidden among their treasures. Perhaps the Jews were not the only nation to whom the Persian king gave the privilege of returning to their home and reinstating the old forms of worship. A cylinder of Cyrus which came from Babylon, now in the British Museum, says that Marduk “granted the return of all lands.” It seems to have been the Persian policy to keep the allegiance of their conquered subjects, not by transplanting them, as did the Assyrians and Babylonians, but by showing them and their gods special favors; thus Cyrus worshiped the gods of Egypt and Darius brought back certain Elamite captives and reorganized the old worship. (See Ed. Meyer, Die Entstehung des Judenthums, 1896, p. 70.)
But, in any case, the Jews are the only nation carried into Babylonia that the world has heard from since. Twenty nations peopled the streets of those great cities on the Euphrates, but to only one did the edict of Cyrus bring a new life. Babylon was the grave where twenty religions were buried without hope of a resurrection; but one religion came forth from that stinking grave refreshed and strong like some Lazarus awakened from his sleep by a divine voice. As had been prophesied, the captivity brought to them not death but a new birth (37). Those who returned to the Holy Land were more truly “Hebrews” than ever their forefathers had been. Instead of denationalizing them, the captivity had more conspicuously separated them unto Jehovah as a peculiar people. Being scattered among the nations they were drawn closer to each other. They came out from their half century of enforced quietude and meditation with a new faith in the one Jehovah and in prophecy; with a greater devotion to the Sabbath, and all other institutions which differentiated them from the surrounding peoples; and with a new missionary spirit such as their fathers had never known. Wellhausen has profoundly said, “The exile marks the transition from a national religion to world religion.”
Ezekiel was the greatest human force in accomplishing this astonishing reformation and transformation. He was the “bridge” between the old Israel and the new. “We must honor and understand Ezekiel if we wish to understand the history of Israel” (Max Kamrath).
VIII. The Language of Symbolism.
The most ancient speech of man was undoubtedly a picture language. It is now known that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, even those which stand for the deepest and most abstract conceptions, were originally pictures of articles of apparel, or other commonplace objects. When illuminated and interpreted by the oriental imagination the girdle could become the symbol of life; the uas stick the symbol of power; a row of temple columns the symbol of stability; the common Egyptian beetle the symbol of divine creation, while wings and horns and coiling snakes all spoke a lofty spiritual language. Indeed, as Detzel has said (Christliche Ikonographie, 1894), “symbolism is as old as the world itself and is founded on the revelation of God in the nature of man. Man can only think of God and the highest spiritual realities in pictures.” Even our stiff Western vocabularies and modern scientific literature would be reduced to small dimensions if all symbolism and figures of speech were eliminated, while the teaching of the early Christian fathers and those of the Middle Ages would have to be almost wholly obliterated. The Christian art of the past centuries has well been described as a “picture book, a mirror of salvation, a biblical hieroglyphic papyrus” (Detzel).
In every age deeply spiritual or poetic natures have thus expressed themselves. Birds and animals, rivers and seas, appear in Dante and Goethe, in Carlyle and Tennyson, in this symbolic sense. The beasts and reptiles on the earth and the stars and planets in the sky all spoke to the ancients of mysterious spiritual truths. So every vessel and every color in the temple ritual had a symbolic meaning. This was true of the Egyptians and Babylonians, and in fact of every religious ritual of the times in which Ezekiel and Daniel lived. That the Hebrews, even from their earliest beginnings as a nation, had emphasized this method of teaching visibly the deep truths of their religion no one doubts. The colors used in the construction of the tabernacle and temple, and the relation of the various parts to each other, together with every detail of the sacrifices, have always been quite correctly understood as representing the “shadows,” or feeble reflections of unseen realities. The prophets are all symbolists, but none of them use this method of teaching so constantly and effectively as Daniel and Ezekiel. It is upon these that the later apocalyptics, such as Baruch and Enoch — and especially our canonical book of Revelation — are based. The Jewish Kabbala, or book of secret symbols, was founded largely upon these books with added Babylonian features. This does not mean that the Kabbalistic method was originated by these prophets. There are one or two cases in which Jeremiah seems to use it (see notes, Cambridge Bible, on Jeremiah 25:26), and there is absolute proof of its customary use in Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s age, by the Egyptian and Babylonian scribes, in their comments upon their sacred texts; but Ezekiel, perhaps being influenced here as elsewhere by Babylonian surroundings (see Introduction, “III. Style of Ezekiel”), gave a tremendous initial influence to the use of secret names and numerical values in the presentation of spiritual lessons. Nor was any object too commonplace for him to use as a symbol. The fox, the rusty pot, the broken reed by the riverside are seized upon. Every chapter and almost every paragraph is a series of pictures of common objects set in relation to each other that they may symbolize spiritual truths, while in his loftier visions the highest powers of life, and even the heathen gods themselves, are used to picture the powers of Jehovah. (See notes on “cherubim,” chaps. i, 10.)
Some have thought that Ezekiel’s last nine chapters contain simply dry mathematical formulae and are barren of imagination; but to say this would seem almost equivalent to detaching them from the book and assigning them to a separate writer. The first thirty-nine chapters are filled with an overflowing abundance of symbolic pictures. To interpret the last nine chapters — the close and crown of the prophecy — as literal architectural details, without any hidden symbolic meaning, would be to disown their authorship by the same hand which wrote the rest of the book. Ezekiel was both a priest and a mystic, and could not have failed to know that Solomon’s temple, as well as the tabernacle, was a building in which not only the ground plan, but the numbers, measurements, and form, expressed religious lessons. This was true of all ancient sanctuaries. As Bahr proved of the Hebrew tabernacle, so Brugsch has proved of the Egyptian, and Maspero of the Babylonian temples, that they were “miniature reproductions of the arrangement of the universe,” and aimed to teach the people visibly — as did also the later “mysteries” — of the future life and how to enter it in safety. These buildings gave the same teachings through the eye which the Book of the Dead (literally, “Coming out by Day”) and the Descent of Ishtar into Hades gave through the ear. The Labyrinth, with its twelve vaulted halls and three thousand (3x10x100) apartments, one half below and one half above ground, no doubt served a like purpose — as was recognized by the early Christians, who decorated the floors of their basilicas with these labyrinths, considering them symbols of the temple in Jerusalem and therefore of the heavenly Jerusalem (Oneil, Night of the Gods, 2:675).
Numbers were used symbolically from very ancient times. In a papyrus at Turin we find the numbers dedicated to the Egyptian deities, as follows: 1, Ra; 2, Shu; 4, Seb; 5, Nut; 6, Osiris; 7, Isis; 8, Set; 10, Horus; 25, Horus the Bull, etc. Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that such numbers are met with as early as 1500 B.C., or earlier, but that there is a great want of agreement between them; which would be exactly what we might expect if the numbers represented some spiritual quality and therefore might be applied to gods having the same nature. The Babylonian gods also were represented by numbers: 10, Nebo; 12, Nergal; 15, Ishtar; 25, Merodach; 30, Sin; 20, Shamash; 50, Bel; 60, Anu (Maspero, Dawn of History, p. 673; compare Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia, p. 465). Muss Arnoldt quotes from an ancient text an attempted explanation of why Bel took for himself the number 50: “With the name 50 (Xansa) the great god proclaimed his 50 names, his all-surpassing positions” (Dictionary of Assyrian Language, part vi). It is quite in accordance with this view to find that the number 10, for example, was associated with many gods of the Babylonian pantheon — gods who at other times, when other phases of their character were being thought of, were identified with other numbers. (See Jastrow, ibid., p. 466, note.) An ancient text from Edfu explains every dimension of the temple there as expressing some mysterious meaning. Why is the length of this chamber twenty-five ells? “Because one utters words.” Why is this room fifty ells long? “Because one prays.” These explanations are based on the numerical value of the letters used in writing these numbers (Brugsch, Steininschrift und Bibelwort). There may be no evidence that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet had a numerical meaning in Ezekiel’s day (Brown, Hebrew and English Lexicon), but there is abundant proof that many numbers had with the Hebrews, as with other ancient peoples, a symbolic meaning. This has long been recognized with such numbers as 3 and 7, which in all these nations are peculiarly sacred and divine; but it seems equally true of other numbers, such as 4, 10, 50, etc. Four seems to be the cosmic number, which takes in every point of the compass and expresses the whole. So there are four living creatures, and four world powers, etc. So in Egypt the farthest limits of the earth were “the four supports of heaven” and of Ramses II it was said, “He has conquered even unto the four pillars of the earth.” The sacred temples in almost every land are square, quadrangular, or octagonal (the double four). So 12, the triple four, is everywhere a heavenly number. The number 10 is found to be a fundamental symbolic number among all nations acquainted with the decimal system. In the Scriptures it seems to be used to express perfection or completion. The ten commandments are all that are needed; the ten plagues symbolize the full outpouring of God’s wrath; not to enter the congregation to the tenth generation means never to enter (Deuteronomy 23:3; Nehemiah 13:1); the tribulation for ten days is woe to the end; the ten horns denote the fullness of power of the universal world kingdom. In close connection with this is the number 50 and its multiples. The fiftieth year was the year of emancipation and jubilee among the Hebrews, and 50 seems to be the base of many of Ezekiel’s calculations, as 5 was the base number of the tabernacle. But it must be acknowledged that the definite symbolic meaning of the numbers used by Ezekiel in his new temple, as of those used in the old temple, are matters of inference with us and cannot be pressed too far. What we may be sure of is that these numbers as used by Ezekiel did have, to those who listened to him, a well-known spiritual significance. This is as certain as that the one thousand years of Revelation has a definite symbolic meaning. As Dr. Milligan well says, “We are not to imagine that the numbers, in the allegorical or spiritual use made of them by the Jews, might be tossed about at their pleasure or shuffled like a pack of cards. They were a language; and the bond between them and the ideas that are involved was quite as close as it is between the words of ordinary speech and the speaker’s thought” (Book of Revelation, p. 345). And it should also be remembered that, at the very time when Ezekiel wrote, the mystery of numbers was engaging the attention of the learned world as never before. The Pythagorian philosophy, which even in Greece dates back to Thales (640 B.C.), and which the Greeks themselves recognized as a foreign export, was coming into flower — a philosophy which not only explained all natural phenomena in mathematical formulae, fire being composed of pyramids, air of octahedrons, the earth of cubes, and the cosmos being thought of as a dodecahedron; but the loftiest ethical and spiritual conceptions were expressed in the same way. In this system the numbers 4 and 10 occupied the most prominent place.
To us the Pythagorian symbols seem often inexplicable or absurd; but to those who understood better their secret meaning they expressed the profoundest and deepest thought. It ought not therefore to be doubted that much of the stiff literality of Ezekiel’s architectural descriptions would be illuminated with a new meaning if we understood more perfectly the numerical symbolism common in his day. Ezekiel was a draughtsman (iv, 1), and he used his skill in this direction to express in a language well known to his contemporaries certain spiritual conceptions. No one doubts that the dimensions of the Babylonian temples contained a symbolic teaching, and the figures which are given of the temple of Be1 are curiously similar to those of Ezekiel’s temple. Its foundation platform was a square three ku in length and three ku in breadth. Its four walls faced the cardinal points, and there were four outer gates. There were twelve cubits in the gar, and the inner building was ten gar long by ten wide. The great ziggaret, or heavenly tower, was composed of seven stages, each probably painted a symbolic color, and, no doubt, making visible by its dimensions a symbolic revelation. The first platform was a square 15 by 15 gar; the second, 13 by 13; the third, 10 by 10; the fourth, 8½ by 8½; the fifth, 7 by 7; the sixth, 5½ by 5½; the seventh, 4 by 4½; the entire height being 15 gar; exactly equal to the breadth of the base (Appendix to Sayce’s Hibbert Lectures; compare Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia, p. 619, etc.). It is evident from this that Ezekiel’s temple would have been recognized, even by his Babylonian neighbors as containing a secret religious teaching and the symbolic meaning of many of his numbers would have been understood by them.
This language has always been attractive to mystics. A Jewish poet who lived about 950 A.D., in the midst of his sobs because of the downfall of his people, breaks forth: —
Lo, of the one am I.
Lo, of the six hundred thousand and of twelve.
Yea, behold me of the seventy-one.
— Jewish Quarterly Review, January, 1897.
And even in our generation Rosetti has sung of his lost love: — She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
On ancient symbolism see especially John Oneil, Night of the Gods, 1893-97; Brugsch, Steininschrift und Bibelwort, Sacred Books of the East, 4 and 31; Malcom White, Symbolic Numbers of Scripture; and on modern symbolic teaching in China, Asiatic Quarterly Review, January, 1895. Analysis of the Book.
Introduction. — Ezekiel’s Account of His Call to the Prophetic Office. Chaps. 1-3.
THE VISION OF JEHOVAH AND HIS CHARIOT. APPENDIX ON THE MEANING OF SYMBOLISM USED EZEKIEL RECEIVES HIS COMMISSION FROM JEHOVAH Ezekiel 2:1-8
IN SYMBOL AND BY DIRECT INSTRUCTION THE PREACHER IS TAUGHT THAT HE MUST NOT SPEAK HIS OWN WORDS Ezekiel 2:9-3:11 THE PREACHER’S BITTERNESS OF SPIRIT, AND HIS UTTER DISCOMFITURE IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS FIRST CONGREGATION 12-15
EZEKIEL IS RECOMMISSIONED WITH INCREASED SOLEMNITY 16-21 THE SECOND VISION OF THE “GLORY OF THE LORD” 22-27
Book I. — Symbols and Oracles Concerning the Wickedness and Doom of the Chosen People and the Holy City. Chaps. 4-14. SIEGE OF JERUSALEM SYMBOLIZED BY THE PICTURED TILE Ezekiel 4:1-8 THE PROPHET’S FOOD SYMBOLIZING THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE IN EXILE 9-17
SCATTERING AND DESTRUCTION OF THE NATION SYMBOLIZED BY THE TREATMENT OF THE PROPHET’S HAIR Ezekiel 5
PROPHECY OF ISRAEL’S CAPTIVITY AND THE LAND’S UTTER DESOLATION BECAUSE OF IDOLATRY 6, 7
THE THIRD “VISION OF GOD” (IN JERUSALEM) Ezekiel 8:1-4 EZEKIEL SEES IN VISION THE WICKEDNESS OF THE CITY, AND HEARS THE SENTENCE OF JEHOVAH UPON IT 5-18
THE PROPHET SEES IN VISION THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM WHO HAVE NOT THE SAVING T UPON THEIR FOREHEADS Ezekiel 9
THE FOURTH “VISION OF GOD” Ezekiel 10
THE POLITICAL LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE GIVE WICKED COUNSEL, AND ARE INVOLVED IN THE CITY’S RUIN Ezekiel 11:1-21
JEHOVAH LEAVES JERUSALEM 22, 23
COMING OUT OF HIS TRANCE, EZEKIEL DESCRIBES HIS VISION TO HIS FELLOW-CAPTIVES 24, 25
SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CAPTIVITY WHICH IS TO COME SPEEDILY UPON THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM Ezekiel 12
REPROOF OF THE LYING PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES IN JERUSALEM WHO DECEIVE THE PEOPLE WITH DELUSIVE HOPES Ezekiel 13
THE ELDERS OF ISRAEL (IN BABYLONIA), WHO ARE IN THEIR HEARTS IDOL WORSHIPERS, INQUIRE IN VAIN OF JEHOVAH CONCERNING THE FUTURE Ezekiel 14:1-5
STATEMENT OF THE DIVINE LAW WHICH CONTROLS EVEN FALSE PROPHECY 6-11
THE CERTAINTY OF PUNISHMENT PROPHESIED AND A STATEMENT OF THE DIVINE LAW GOVERNING IT 12-21
THE JUSTICE AND BENEFICENCE OF THE PUNISHMENT PROVED BY ITS EFFECTS 22, 23
UNFAVORABLE COMPARISON OF THE “VINE TREE” (JERUSALEM) WITH OTHER TREES Ezekiel 15
JERUSALEM’S UNFAITHFULNESS AND PUNISHMENT SET FORTH UNDER THE FIGURE OF THE ADOPTED CHILD-WIFE Ezekiel 16:1-43 THE LOATHSOMENESS OF JERUSALEM, THE SPIRITUAL SISTER OF SODOM AND SAMARIA, DESCRIBED 44-59
NEVERTHELESS, THE “EVERLASTING COVENANT” OF JEHOVAH STANDETH SURE 60-63
THE RIDDLE OF THE GREAT EAGLE Ezekiel 17
THE LAW OF DIVINE RETRIBUTION AND MORAL FREEDOM Ezekiel 18 DIRGE OVER THE THREE PRINCES OF JUDAH (JEHOAHAZ, JEHOIACHIN, AND ZEDEKIAH) Ezekiel 19
THE ELDERS OF ISRAEL AGAIN INQUIRE IN VAIN OF JEHOVAH. (COMPARE Ezekiel 14:1-5) 20:1-4
THE PROPHET RECITES BEFORE THE ELDERS THE IDOLATROUS HISTORY OF THEIR FATHERS 5-29
THE SONS HAVE FOLLOWED THE EXAMPLE OF THEIR FATHERS; YET JEHOVAH STILL RULES, AND THE FUTURE, AS THE PAST, SHALL DISPLAY HIS POWER AND GOODNESS 30-44
BY VIVID SYMBOL AND WITH STRONG CRIES EZEKIEL PROPHESIES THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM WITH FIRE AND SWORD. (ODE OF THE GLITTERING SWORD) Ezekiel 20:45-49; 21:1-27
THE AMMONITES, REJOICING IN JERUSALEM’S CALAMITY, SHALL
THEMSELVES SUFFER EVEN MORE BITTERLY 28-32
DESCRIPTION OF THE GROSS SINS OF THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM, INCLUDING EVEN THE PROPHETS AND PRIESTS OF JEHOVAH Ezekiel 22 STORY OF THE LEWD SISTERS, AHOLAH AND AHOLIBAH Ezekiel 23 PARABLE OF THE RUSTED POT Ezekiel 24:1-14
THE DEATH OF EZEKIEL’S WIFE AND ITS PROPHETIC LESSONS 15-27 Book II. — Threatenings Concerning the Enemies of God’s People. Chaps. 25-32.
AGAINST AMMON, MOAB, EDOM, AND PHILISTIA Ezekiel 25
AGAINST TYRE AND SIDON Ezekiel 26-28
AGAINST EGYPT Ezekiel 29-32
APPENDIX TO CHAP. 32, “THE BABYLONIAN AND HEBREW UNDERWORLD.” Book III. — The Book of Consolations. Chaps. 33-39.
DUTIES OF A PROPHET TO WARN MEN AND NATIONS OF THEIR SINS Ezekiel 33:1-6
A CHANGE OF HEART CAN AVERT JEHOVAH’S WRATH. THE PRINCIPLES OF GOD’S MORAL GOVERNMENT WHICH ENABLES HIM TO BE JUST AND YET TO SAVE THE PENITENT 7-20
JERUSALEM IS TAKEN, AND THE BABYLONIAN EXILES LISTEN WITH REPENTANT HEARTS TO THE WORDS OF HIM WHOM THEY HAD SCORNED, BUT WHOSE PROPHECIES HAD NOW COME TRUE 21-33
REPROOF OF THE SELFISH SHEPHERDS, WHO FOR GAIN HAVE PROPHESIED SMOOTH THINGS, AND BROUGHT RUIN UPON THE PEOPLE Ezekiel 34:1-19
JEHOVAH IS THE “GOOD SHEPHERD,” AND WILL NOT FORGET HIS SMITTEN AND SCATTERED FLOCK, BUT WILL MAKE WITH REPENTANT ISRAEL A “COVENANT OF PEACE” 20-31
FATE OF EDOM, AND EXALTATION OF ISRAEL OVER THE HEATHEN BECAUSE OF THE NAME OF JEHOVAH Ezekiel 35:1-15; 36:1-23 GOD’S PROMISE TO RESURRECT THE DEAD NATION, AND TO PUT WITHIN IT A NEW SPIRIT, AND GIVE BACK ITS BEAUTIFUL LAND Ezekiel 36:24-38; 37
OVERTHROW OF GOG AND MAGOG, THE DREADFUL HEATHEN POWERS OF THE NORTH Ezekiel 38, 39
Book IV. — The Prophetic Vision of the New Sanctuary, and its Orders in Messianic Time. Chaps. 40-48.
THE TEMPLE DESCRIBED Ezekiel 40-42
RETURN OF JEHOVAH TO HIS NEW TEMPLE, AND ITS CONSECRATION TO HIS SERVICE Ezekiel 43
SERVANTS OF THE SANCTUARY Ezekiel 44; 45:1-8
THE SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS Ezekiel 45:9-25; 46 THE HOLY LAND (THE TEMPLE, SPRING, BOUNDARIES OF THE LAND). PORTIONS OF THE TWELVE TRIBES, CITY AND SUBURBS, DIMENSIONS AND ENTRANCES OF THE CITY. THE CITY’S NEW NAME Ezekiel 47, 48
Adam Clarke
Introduction to the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel
CLA_EZE.PDF, source PDF p. 3
INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF THE
PROPHET EZEKIEL
EZEKIEL the prophet was the son of Buzi; and was of the sacerdotal race, as himself informs us, Ezekiel 1:3, and was born at a place called Saresa, as the pseudo-Epiphanius tells us in his Lives of the Prophets. He was carried captive by Nebuchadnezzar into Babylon, with Jeconiah king of Judah, and three thousand other captives of the principal inhabitants, and was sent into Mesopotamia, where he received the prophetic gift; which is supposed, from an obscure expression in his prophecies, Ezekiel 1:1, to have taken place in the thirtieth year of his age. He had then been in captivity five years; and continued to prophesy about twenty-two years, from A.M. 3409 to A.M. 3430, which answers to the fourteenth year after the destruction of Jerusalem.
About three months and ten days after this conquest of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar made another descent, and again besieged the city; and Jehoiachin, who succeeded his father Jehoiakim, was obliged to surrender. The victorious Chaldeans carried off all the inhabitants of note into Babylon, leaving none behind but the very poorest of the people. See 2 Kings 24:8-16. These captives were fixed at Tel-abib, and other places on the river Chebar, which flows into the east side of the Euphrates at Carchemish, nearly two hundred miles northward of Babylon. There, as Archbishop Newcome observes, he was present in body, though, in visionary representation, he was sometimes taken to Jerusalem. With this same learned writer I am of opinion that, the better to understand the propriety and force of these Divine revelations, the circumstances and dispositions of the Jews in their own country, and in their state of banishment, and the chief historical events of that period, should be stated and considered. Most writers on this Prophet have adopted this plan; and Archbishop Newcome’s abstract of this history is sufficient for every purpose.
“Zedekiah, uncle to the captive king Jehoiachin, was advanced by Nebuchadnezzar to the kingdom of Judah; and the tributary king bound himself to subjection by a solemn oath in the name of Jehovah, Ezekiel 17:18. But notwithstanding the Divine judgments which had overwhelmed Judah during the reigns of his two immediate predecessors, he did evil in the sight of God, 2 Chronicles 36:12. Jerusalem became so idolatrous, impure, oppressive, and blood-thirsty, that God is represented as smiting his hands together through astonishment at such a scene of iniquity, Ezekiel 22:13. The Prophet Jeremiah was insulted, rejected, and persecuted; false prophets abounded, whose language was, ‘Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon,’ Jeremiah 27:9. ‘I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon,’ Jeremiah 28:2. They even limited the restoration of the sacred vessels, and the return of Jehoiachin and his fellow captives, to so short an interval as two years, Jeremiah 28:3, 4. Zedekiah, blinded by his vices and these delusions, flattered by the embassies which he had received from Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon, Jeremiah 27:3, and probably submitting with his accustomed timidity to the advice of evil counsellors, Jeremiah 28:15, rebelled against his powerful conquerors, and sent ambassadors into Egypt for assistance, Ezekiel 17:15. Hence arose a third invasion of the Chaldeans. Pharaoh-hophra, king of Egypt, did not advance to the assistance of Zedekiah till Jerusalem was besieged, Jeremiah 37:5. The Babylonians raised the siege with the design of distressing the Egyptians in their march, and of giving battle when advantage offered: but Pharaoh, with perfidy and pusillanimity, returned to his own country; and left the rebellious and perjured king of Judah to the rage of his enemies, Jeremiah 37:7. Before the siege was thus interrupted, Zedekiah endeavoured to conciliate the favour of God by complying so far with the Mosaic law as to proclaim the sabbatical year a year of liberty to Hebrew servants, Exodus 21:2. But such was his impiety and so irresolute and fluctuating were his counsels, that, on the departure of the Chaldeans, he revoked his edict, Jeremiah 34:11; upon which God, by the Prophet Jeremiah, proclaimed liberty to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and commissioned these messengers of his wrath to avenge himself on his people, Jeremiah 34:17. When the siege was resumed, we have a farther instance of Zedekiah’s extreme infatuation; his rejection of Jeremiah’s counsel, given him by the authority of God, to preserve himself, his family, and his city, by a surrender to the Chaldeans. Thus, after a siege of eighteen months, Jerusalem was stormed and burnt, Jeremiah 39:1, 2; Zedekiah was taken in his flight; his sons were slain before his eyes; his eyes were afterwards put out, agreeably to the savage custom of eastern conquerors; and he was carried in chains to Babylon, Jeremiah 39:5-7. “The exiles on the river Chebar were far from being awakened to a devout acknowledgment of God’s justice by the punishment inflicted on them: they continued rebellious and idolatrous, Ezekiel 2:3; 20:39, they hearkened to false prophets and prophetesses, Ezekiel 13:2, 17; and they were so alienated that he refused to be inquired of by them. In vain did Ezekiel endeavour to attract and win them by the charms of his flowing and insinuating eloquence; in vain did he assume a more vehement tone to awe and alarm them by heightened scenes of calamity and terror. “We know few particulars concerning the Jews at Babylon. They enjoyed the instruction and example of the Prophet Daniel, who was carried away captive to that city in the third year of Jehoiakim, eight years before the captivity of Ezekiel, Daniel 1:1. Jeremiah cautioned them not to be deceived by their false prophets and diviners, Jeremiah 29:8, 9, 15, 21; against some of whom he denounced fearful judgments. He exhorted them to seek the peace of the city where they dwelt; to take wives, build houses, and plant gardens, till their restoration after seventy years, Jeremiah 29:5-7, 10. He also comforted them by a prediction of all the evil which God designed to inflict on Babylon: he assured them that none should remain in that proud city, but that it should be desolate for ever. The messenger, when he had read the book containing these denunciations, was commanded ‘to bind a stone to it, and cast it into the Euphrates, and say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil which I will bring on her,’ Jeremiah 51:59-64. It farther appears, by Divine hymns now extant, see Psa. 79, 102, 106, and 137, that God vouchsafed to inspire some of these Babylonian captives with his Holy Spirit. Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah ruler of the people that remained in Judea, 2 Kings 25:23; Jeremiah 40:5; and the scattered military commanders and their men, together with other Jews who had taken refuge in the neighbouring countries, Jeremiah 40:7, 11, submitted to his government on the departure of the Chaldeans. The Jews employed themselves in gathering the fruits of the earth, Jeremiah 40:12, and a calm succeeded the tempest of war: but it was soon interrupted by the turbulence of this devoted people. Ishmael slew Gedaliah; and compelled the wretched remains of the Jews in Mizpah, the seat of Gedaliah’s government, to retire with him towards the country of the Ammonites, Jeremiah 41:10; a people hostile to the Chaldeans, Jeremiah 27:3. Johanan raised a force to revenge this mad and cruel act, Jeremiah 41:11-15; pursued Ishmael, overtook him, and recovered from him the people whom he had forced to follow him: but the assassin himself escaped with eight men to his place of refuge. The succeeding event furnishes another signal instance of human infatuation. Johanan, through fear of the Chaldeans, many of whom Ishmael had massacred, together with Gedaliah, Jeremiah 41:3, conceived a design of retreating to Egypt, Jeremiah 41:17; but before he executed this resolution, he formally consulted the Prophet Jeremiah. The prophet answered him in the name of Jehovah, Jeremiah 42:9-22, that if Johanan and the people abode in Judea, God would ‘build them, and not pull them down: would plant them, and not pluck them up;’ but if they went to sojourn in Egypt, they should ‘die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence;’ and should become an ‘execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach.’ Notwithstanding this awful assurance, and the many prophecies of Jeremiah, which the most calamitous events had lately verified, Johanan defied the living God and his prophet, and madly adhered to his determination. Not long after the destruction of Jerusalem, the siege of Tyre was undertaken by Nebuchadnezzar. It continued for the space of thirteen years; and many think that the conquest of the Sidonians, Philistines, Ammonites, Moabites, and Idumeans, coincided with this period, the Chaldean being able to make powerful detachments from his vast forces. See the prophecies, Jeremiah 27:2, 3; 48:1-46; 49:1-38, and Ezekiel 25:1-17. After the reduction of that famous city, Nebuchadnezzar made his descent on Egypt, which he subdued and ravaged throughout; and at this time Johanan and his Jewish colonists experienced the vengeance of the conqueror, together with the Egyptians. So widely did Nebuchadnezzar spread his victories and devastations, that, according to the learned chronologer Marsham, Lond. edit. 1672, fol. p. 556, s. 18, this might justly be called the era of the subversion of cities. —————— Omnis eo terrore Ægyptus, et Indi,
Omnis Arabs, omnes vertebant terga Sabæi.
VIRG. Æn. viii. 705.
‘The trembling Indians and Egyptians yield:
Arabs and soft Sabæans quit the field.”’
I may add that the stroke fell upon no people so heavily as upon the Jews, for no other nation possessed privileges like them, and no other nation had sinned so deeply against God. Their crimes were seen in their punishment. The principal design of this prophet was to comfort his companions in tribulation during their captivity, and to render it light by the most positive promises of their restoration to their own land, the re-building of the temple, and the re-establishment of the Divine worship, all their enemies being finally destroyed.
That Ezekiel is a very obscure writer, all have allowed who have attempted to explain his prophecies. The Jews considered him inexplicable. There is a tradition that the rabbins held a consultation whether they should admit Ezekiel into the sacred canon. And it was likely to be carried in the negative, when Rabbi Ananias rose up and said he would undertake to remove every difficulty from the account of Jehovah’s chariot, Ezekiel 1:4-25, which is confessedly the most difficult part in the whole book. His proposal was received; and to assist him in his work, and that he might complete it to his credit, they furnished him with three hundred barrels of oil to light his lamp during the time he might be employed in the study of this part of his subject! This extravagant grant proved at once the conviction the rabbins had of the difficulty of the work; and it is not even intimated that Rabbi Ananias succeeded in any tolerable degree, if indeed he undertook the task; and they believe that to this hour the chariot mentioned in Ezekiel 1:4-25, and the account of the temple described at the conclusion of the book, have not been explained.
I believe it may be affirmed with truth that these parts of the prophecy have had as many different explanations as there have been expositors! Yet each has been sanguine in the hope that he had removed all difficulties; while every successor felt that the whole work was yet to be done, and that the Gordian knot was not likely to be untied unless by himself. And it is to be lamented that in these circumstances the work still remains as to its principal difficulties; and I certainly do not attempt to add another to Ezekiel’s commentators with the most distant hope of being able to solve those particular difficulties.
After all, with the exception of the chariot, Gog and Magog, the peculiarities in the description of the temple, and some matters of this kind, the major part of the prophecy is very intelligible, and highly edifying; and does not present more difficulties than have been found in the preceding prophets, and may be found in those which follow. I have in the following notes done what I could, as a help to a better understanding of this part of the sacred writings.
The ancient Versions give some help; but it is astonishing how difficult it is to settle the text by a collation of MSS. This has not yet been properly done; and we cannot know the true meaning till we can ascertain the true reading. But after having laboured in this way, I must express myself as the learned professor of the oriental tongues at Parma, J. B. De Rossi: Tanta hic in suffixis præsertim pronominibus codicum inconstantia ac varietas, ut tæduerit me laboris mei, ac verius ego quod olim de uno Zachariæ versu (xi. 5) dolens inquiebat Norzius, de toto Ezechielis libro usurpare possim, angustiatam fuisse animam meam ob varietates multas, et avertisse faciem meam ab eis. “That there is so much inconstancy and variation among the MSS., especially in the suffixed pronouns, that I was weary of my labour; and I could more truly say of the whole book of Ezekiel, than Norzius did relative to one passage in Zechariah, who, bitterly complaining of the many variations he met with, said, ‘My soul was perplexed with them, and I turned away my face from them.’” As most of our printed editions have been taken from a very inadequate collation of MSS., especially of this prophet, much remains to be done to restore the text to a proper state of purity. When this is done it is presumed that several of the difficulties in this book will be removed. In many instances Abp. Newcome has been very successful.
On the famous controversy relative to GOG and MAGOG, I must refer the reader to the notes on Ezekiel 38, and 39, where the best accounts I have met with are detailed. There are only two schemes that appear at all probable; that which makes Gog Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Assyria, and that which makes him Cambyses, king of Persia. The former, as being the most probable, and the best supported in all its parts by the marks given in the prophecy, I have in a certain measure adopted, for want of one more satisfactory to my own mind.
The character of Ezekiel as a poet has been drawn at large by some of the most eminent critics of these and other countries. Lowth, Michaelis, and Eichhorn, are the chief. Abp. Newcome has quoted largely from the latter; and from his work, which is now very scarce and extremely dear, I shall present my readers with the following extracts:—
“The two first visions are so accurately polished, chap. i.-vii., viii.-xi., and demanded so much art to give them their last perfection and proportion, that they cannot possibly be an unpremeditated work. And if, according to the commonly received opinion, they were publicly read by Ezekiel as we read them now, he must have seriously designed them as a picture, and finished them in form. The intention of his visions might make this necessary. He designed no doubt to make deep impressions upon the people whom he was to guide; and by highly labouring the Divine appearances, to open their ears for his future oracles and representations. The more complete, divine, and majestic the Divine appearances were which he represented, the deeper veneration was impressed upon the mind towards the prophet to whom such high visions were communicated. Most of the parts which compose Ezekiel, as they are generally works of art, are full of artificial and elaborate plans.
“The peculiarities of language in the first chapter are to be found in the middle and end of the book. The same enthusiasm which in the beginning of his prophecies produced the magnificent Divine appearances, must also have built the temple of God at the conclusion. As in the beginning every thing is first proposed in high allegorical images, and afterwards the same ideas are repeated in plain words, thus also in the middle and at the end in every piece, allegorical representation is succeeded by literal. Throughout the style is rather prose than verse; and rough, hard, and mixed with the Chaldee.
“The division of Ezekiel into two parts has been adopted by several writers. They continue the former part to the thirty-ninth chapter, and consider the last nine chapters from the fortieth as a separate book. This division is possible. From the eleventh chapter a new elevated scene commences. Before there was nothing but oracles, full of misfortunes, punishments, death, and ruin; visions concerning the destruction of the government, and concerning the flight and state of the last king; and pictures of the universal corruption, idolatry, and superstition of Israel. From the fortieth chapter a new temple rises before the eyes of the holy seer; he walks round about it in Palestine; he measures the city and country for their new inhabitants; he orders sacrifices, feasts, and customs. In short, a Magna Charta is planned for priests, kings, and people, in future and better times. Lastly, from hence prosaic expressions predominate; at least the prophet elevates himself by poetical colouring much more rarely than before.
“A generally acknowledged character of Ezekiel is, that he minutely distinguishes every thing in its smallest parts. What the more ancient prophets brought together in one single picture, and to which they only alluded, and what they explained with the utmost brevity, and showed only from one side, that he explains and unfolds formally, and represents from all possible sides.
“Another character, and a principal one, which distinguishes his oracle is, that no other prophet has given so free a course to his imagination. Almost every thing is dressed in symbolical actions, in fables, narrations, allegories, or in the still higher poetry of visions. And as they are very complicate, there resound from all sides complaints of darkness. Whoever can look on these things with the eye of an eagle, and is not disturbed from the principal object by what is not essential; he alone is able to comprehend the sense of the whole composition, and he scarcely conceives how any one can complain of obscurity. Meanwhile, how different soever the species of composition are which he hazards, they are all worked out in the same general form. What he represents in one image, picture, or vision, in allegory, parable, or narration, is explained in a short speech, which God, who is at his right hand, enables him to pronounce.
“It is evident that he has shown an inexhaustible imagination and power of invention throughout all the pages of his book. He uses all sorts of prophetical poetry to appear always great and magnificent; and it cannot be denied that he has given all kinds, excellent pieces, both in design and execution. Particularly, he is so used to ecstasies and visions that he adopts the language proper to these, where he has no visions to describe. “If the dress of vision fitted any prophet, it was certainly Ezekiel: he was even naturally led to it by his situation, and by the subjects which he was to represent. He was to describe and foretell to his fellow captives several facts which happened in Palestine, in Jerusalem, and in the king’s palace. A narration and description in simple prose could not possibly suit a prophet; he must give his object the requisite prophetic dignity, by a particular dress. “He therefore brought the scene of events nearer. For this purpose he chose high ecstasies, such as the Greek and Roman poets pretended to in their flights of enthusiasm; the hand of Jehovah came upon him, and carried him to that place where what he intended to propose to his countrymen in their exile might be seen and considered. All ecstasies in my opinion are nothing but dresses, nothing but poetical fictions; and a poet of another age, and of another tone, of an inferior imagination and poetical endowments, would have given the same ideas quite another dress. “Accustomed to this kind of poetry, he represented the restitution of the Jewish state in a sublime vision. His imagination placed him upon graves, where he stood on the dried bones of the dead. He saw how the graves opened, the bones were clothed with flesh, and the dead came forth by a new creation. Could there be a more lively fiction for this case? Another poet would have represented the restoration of the Jews in simple words; and would only have compared it to a resurrection, or give it some other ornamental delineation. To view this intuitively in an example, compare Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Isaiah 26:19.
‘Thy dead shall live, their dead bodies shall rise:
Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust:
For thy dew is as the dew of herbs,
And the earth shall cast forth the mighty dead.’
“And, however numerous the fictions of Ezekiel are, they all appear in magnificent dress, and each in its peculiar splendid one. Lustre shines in him on every side; and if the poet has here and there overloaded his subject with ornaments, we shall be unable to refuse our admiration to his genius, notwithstanding these defects.
“The first part of his book may be an instance. The barren genius of Moses was gone when God appeared only in a fiery bush in the wilderness; and as the world improved in cultivation, a more luxuriant one succeeded in his place, which in process of time demanded wonderful figures and giant forms, that the representation of the Divine appearance might please. Isaiah had already appeared in a higher style than Moses. To him God manifested himself in the pomp of an oriental king; and this piece makes a strong impression by its unity and gains on us by its elevated simplicity, majesty, and dignity, Isaiah 6:1-5. But Ezekiel differs widely. Before him stands the chariot-throne of God, with wonderful forms; he summons all the pomp which nature and art can furnish; he abundantly employs fiction and composition to give his Divine appearance dignity, elevation, and majesty; and thus to make a suitable expression. The whole creation must lend him its most noble forms. Men, oxen, lions, and eagles support the throne: the Hebrew history must furnish all its most wonderful scenes, to surround the chariot-throne with the greatest pomp imaginable. I admire the master-hand of the artist, who knew how to compose in such a manner. I am astonished at the richness of his imagination, that could give dignity to all the exalted scenes of the Hebrew history, and could combine them in one body. But, notwithstanding this, the scene in Ezekiel is far from making the same deep and heart-striking impression with that of Isaiah. A short view of the whole in Isaiah does wonders; in Ezekiel the prospect is dispersed; and as it is not rounded, it astonishes rather than impresses. In Isaiah there is a majestic silence, which is only interrupted by the heavenly cry of the seraphs, Isaiah 6:3; in Ezekiel, the noise of the restless wheels and moving wings confounds us. In Isaiah, the eye is delighted with artless majesty; in Ezekiel, it is consumed by the brightness of the fire which shines round about the chariot-throne.
“The author of the Revelation, whose poetry is in the same style with that of Ezekiel, and full of imagination, has for the most part avoided the rocks upon which his predecessor struck; and, happily for the most part, has cut off the wild shoots of a heated imagination. He also has fictions of wonders and giant forms; but he has produced them only so far as to give the reader a full image before his eyes. He does not pursue them minutely, and he does not distract or pain his reader.
“On the contrary, it was a happy invention that his lofty poems are sometimes interrupted by short speeches; they are not only useful for the illustration of his symbols, but also for the repose of the mind. By this change, his readers are agreeably entertained; and their imagination finds resting places, so as to soar more easily after the imagination of the poet. “Ezekiel is a great poet, full of originality; and, in my opinion, whoever censures him as if he were only an imitator of the old prophets, can never have felt his power. He must not in general be compared with Isaiah and the rest of the old prophets. Those are great, Ezekiel is also great; those in their manner of poetry, Ezekiel in his; which he had invented for himself, if we may form our judgment from the Hebrew monuments still extant.” Thus far a judicious critic, who but indirectly admits the prophet’s inspiration.
Bp. Lowth, who has done so much to elucidate the Hebrew poetry, has also given fine critical judgments on the comparative merits of the prophets. Isaiah is his favorite and him he places always at the head, and with him all others are compared. Of Ezekiel, his character is very high and accurately drawn; and my readers will naturally expect that I should produce what he says on this subject, rather than attempt any thing of my own; for this would resemble the attempt to write an Iliad after Homer. “Ezekiel,” says this learned prelate, “is inferior to Jeremiah in elegance, but is equal to Isaiah in SUBLIMITY, though in a different species of the sublime. He is bold, vehement, tragical, and deals very much in amplification. His SENTIMENTS are lofty, animated, poignant, and full of indignation. His IMAGES are fertile, magnificent, and sometimes rather bordering on indelicacy. His DICTION is grand, weighty, austere, rough, and sometimes uncultivated. He abounds in repetitions, not for the sake of beauty or grace, but from vehemence and indignation. Whatever his subject be, he keeps it always in his eye, without the least deviation, and is so much taken up with it that he has scarcely any regard to order or connection. In other things he may be perhaps exceeded by the other prophets, but in that species for which he was particularly turned, that is, force, impetuosity, weight, and grandeur, no writer ever equalled him. His diction is clear enough; almost all his obscurity arises from his subjects. His VISIONS are particularly obscure; which, however, as in Hosea, Amos, and Zechariah, are delivered in a plain historical narration. “The greater part of the book, particularly the middle of it, is poetical; whether we regard the matter or the language. But some passages are so rough and unpolished, that we are frequently at a loss to what species of writing we ought to refer them. As to STYLE, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel may be placed with propriety enough in the same rank among the Hebrews, as Homer, Simonides, and Æschylus among the Greeks.”
Nothing need be added, and indeed nothing can be added, to this character; it is as fairly as it is fully drawn; and every paragraph in the book will show its propriety. But could we satisfactorily fathom the prophet’s meaning in those places where he is peculiarly obscure, we should feel the force and propriety of the bishop’s character still more, as in those very places the prophet is peculiarly sublime. The prophecy was delivered that it might be understood and be profitable; and no doubt it was fully apprehended by those to whom it was originally given, and for whose sake it was sent from heaven. As to the portions which respect a very remote futurity, they will be understood when the events take place; which will, in such times, be an additional argument in favour of Divine revelation, when it is seen with what precision and accuracy prophets have foreseen and described such very remote and apparently contingent events.
To the general reader the following table, taken from Calmet, may be useful:—
A Chronological Table of the Prophecies of Ezekiel
A.M.
3405.
Ezekiel is led captive to Babylon with King Jeconiah. From this year the epoch of these prophecies must be taken.
3409 The first vision by the river Chebar, Ezekiel 1:1-28. The circumstances which followed Ezekiel’s vocation to the
prophetic office, Ezekiel 1:1-2:10.
He draws upon a tile or bed of clay the plan of Jerusalem, and the siege that it was about to endure; and he remains lying on this plan, on his left side, three hundred and ninety days, Ezekiel 4:1-5. See under A.M. 3420.
3410 He turns on his right side, and lies forty days, which point out the forty years of the sins of Judah, To this time Ezekiel 4:6; 5:1-17; 6:1-14; 7:1-27 refer.
About the month of September, this being the sixth year of the captivity of Jeconiah, he had the visions related, Ezekiel 8:1-18; 9:1-11; 10:1-22; 11:1-25.
3411 Prophecies and figurative actions by which he points out the flight, capture, and blinding of Zedekiah, Ezekiel 12:1-28 and the seven following.
Zedekiah rebels against Nebuchadnezzar, Ezekiel 17:15, 17.
The prophet charges the elders of Judah with hypocrisy, who came to consult him, Ezekiel 20:1-49; 21:1-32; 22:1-31; 23:1-49.
3414 The siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. This was a sabbatic year, Jeremiah 24:8, &c. The siege did not begin till about the middle of the winter, 2 Kings 25:1. The prophet’s wife dies on the same day of the siege, and he is forbidden to mourn for her, Ezekiel 24:1, 2, 15-18. 3415 Predictions against EGYPT, Ezekiel 29:16.
Nebuchadnezzar puts to flight Pharaoh-hophra, and returns to the siege of Jerusalem three hundred and ninety days before it was taken.
3416 Predictions against Tyre, Ezekiel 26:1-28:26, the first day of the first month.
In the seventh day of the same month, God shows the prophet the miseries to be brought on Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar,
Ezekiel 30:1-26.
In the third month of the same year, the prophet had another vision against Egypt, Ezekiel 31:1-2, &c.
Jerusalem is taken the ninth of the fourth month. Zedekiah was taken prisoner near Jericho. He is brought to Riblah, where, after seeing his children slain, his eyes are put out, he is laden with chains and led to Babylon. Thus were fulfilled and reconciled the seemingly contradictory prophecies
concerning him.
3417 Ezekiel being informed of the taking of Jerusalem the fifth day of the tenth month, he predicts the ruin of the remnant that was left there under Gedaliah, Ezekiel 34:21-29. He afterwards foretells the ruin of Egypt, Ezekiel 32:1, 16, 32; and that of the Idumeans, Ezekiel 25:12. 3419 The commencement of the siege of Tyre, which lasted thirteen years.
To the same time we must refer the miseries of the Sidonians, the Amalekites, the Moabites, and the Idumeans, pointed out by Jeremiah, Jeremiah 27:1-22; 48:1-47; 49:1-39; Ezekiel 25:1-17.
3420 End of the forty years mentioned Ezekiel 4:5, 6, and of the three hundred and ninety years from the separation of Israel and Judah The forty years commence with the renewal of the covenant under Josiah.
3430 The vision in which God showed the prophet the rebuilding of the city and the temple, and the restoration of the kingdom of Israel, Ezekiel 40:1 to the end of the book This vision took place on the tenth of the first month, fourteen years after the taking of Jerusalem..
3432 Taking of the city of Tyre, by Nebuchadnezzar, to whom God promises the spoils of Egypt, as a compensation for the trouble and loss he sustained before Tyre, Ezekiel 29:17-20. Nebuchadnezzar enters Egypt. Amasis had been made king by the Cyrenians, who had rebelled against Pharaoh-hophra.
Herodotus, lib. iv. c. 159, and lib. ii. cc. 161, 162.
3433 The king of Babylon overruns and subdues the whole of Egypt; commits the greatest outrages; and carries off captives the inhabitants, the Jews, and others whom he found there. See Jeremiah 43:1-13; 44:1-30; 46:1-28; Ezekiel 29:1-21; 30:1-26; 31:1-18.
Nebuchadnezzar leaves Amasis king of Lower Egypt; Hophra, or Apries, having escaped to the Thebais.
3442. Death of Nebuchadnezzar.
Evil-merodach succeeds him; and sets Jeconiah at liberty, and makes him his companion, 2 Kings 15:27 and
Jeremiah 52:31.
THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL
Chronological Notes relative to the commencement of Ezekiel’s prophesying
-Year from the Creation, according to Archbishop Usher, 3409. -Year of the Jewish era of the world, 3166.
-Year from the Deluge, 1753.
-Second year of the forty-sixth Olympiad.
-Year from the building of Rome, according to the Varronian or generally received account, 159.
-Year from the building of Rome, according to Cato and the Fasti Consulares, 158.
-Year from the building of Rome, according to Polybius the historian, 157. -Year from the building of Rome, according to Fabius Pictor, 153. -Year of the Julian Period, 4119.
-Year of the era of Nabonassar, 153.
-Year from the foundation of Solomon’s temple, 409.
-Year since the destruction of the kingdom of Israel by Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, 126.
-Second year after the third Sabbatic year after the seventeenth Jewish jubilee, according to Helvicus.
-Year before the birth of Christ, 591.
-Year before the vulgar era of Christ’s nativity, 595.
-Cycle of the Sun, 3.
-Cycle of the Moon, 15.
-Twenty-second year of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of the Romans: this was the eighty-sixth year before the consulship of Lucius Junius Brutus, and Publius Valerius Poplicola.
-Thirty-first year of Cyaxares, or Cyaraxes, the fourth king of Media. -Eleventh year of Agasicles, king of Lacedæmon, of the family of the Proclidæ.
-Thirteenth year of Leon, king of Lacedæmon, of the family of the Eurysthenidæ.
-Twenty-fifth year of Alyattes II., king of Lydia, and father of the celebrated Crœsus.
-Eighth year of Æropas, the seventh king of Macedon.
-Sixth and last year of Psammis, king of Egypt, according to Helvicus, an accurate chronologer. This Egyptian king was the immediate predecessor of the celebrated Apries, called Vaphres by Eusebius, and Pharaoh-hophra by Jeremiah, Jeremiah 44:30.
-First year of Baal, king of the Tyrians.
-Twelfth year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
-Fourth year of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah.
Joseph Benson
Argument
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THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET
EZEKIEL.
ARGUMENT.
EZEKIEL, being the son of Buzi, of the house of Aaron, was consequently a priest, as well as a prophet. He was carried to Babylon, with many other Jews, in Jehoiachin’s captivity, and therefore dates his prophecies by the years of that captivity. He began his prophetic office in the fifth year after it, and continued to prophesy about twenty years, namely, from the year of the world 3409 to 3430. His name, happily expressive of his character, signifies the power, strength, or courage of God. It appears he did not reside at or near Babylon, but by the river Chebar, many miles north of that city, great numbers of the captives being placed there. These, his fellow-exiles, as St. Jerome observes in his preface to this book, being disposed to repine at their condition, as more wretched, they supposed, than that of their brethren who had been suffered to remain in Judea; a principal part of the prophet’s design seems to have been to check these murmurings, by removing the cause of them, and showing them how preferable their circumstances were to those of their countrymen who had not yet been carried into captivity as they had been. For this purpose he sets before them that terrible scene of calamities which God was about to bring upon Judea and Jerusalem, which should end in the utter destruction of the city and temple: recounting and painting, in strong and lively colours, the heinous provocations of the Jews, which were bringing down these heavy judgments upon them. Jeremiah, it must be observed, was at the same time employed to the like purpose at Jerusalem, in persuading the inhabitants left there, and in the other parts of Judea, not to think themselves more the favourites of God than their brethren who had been carried into captivity, for that more grievous calamities would soon befall them, while those who were at present captives should experience God’s peculiar favour and protection. But these prophets were neither of them duly regarded by those to whom they addressed themselves; for the Jews who remained in Judea gave no credit to Jeremiah’s predictions against them, but thought meanly of those who had been carried into captivity, and believed themselves to be the peculiar favourites of God, and that they only should possess the land of Canaan, while their captive brethren should be for ever excluded from it. And the Prophet Ezekiel was little more regarded by those in captivity; for, notwithstanding all his declarations, they murmured against God, and thought themselves more hardly dealt by than their brethren who remained in their own land.
Although some frivolous objections, grounded on gross mistakes, have been started against the authenticity of this book, the prophecies contained in it, which have been very surprisingly fulfilled, and are fulfilling at this day, are a demonstration both of its truth, and that it was written by inspiration of God; especially the prophecies concerning Tyre and Egypt, chapters 26.-32. And as to the many predictions contained in it, which are not yet fulfilled, relating to the restoration of Israel, and the triumphs of the church over all her enemies, these, upon a careful investigation, will be found to coincide so entirely with many parts of Isaiah’s and Daniel’s prophecies, and those contained in the Revelation by St. John, that we can neither doubt their being given by divine inspiration, nor that they will be fulfilled at the proper season.
It appears from many parts of Ezekiel’s writings that, exclusive of his prophetic gift, he was a man of considerable learning and talents. “He had great erudition and genius,” says Grotius, in the Introduction to his Commentary on this prophet, “so that, setting aside his gift of prophecy, which is incomparable, he may deservedly be compared with Homer on account of his beautiful conceptions, his illustrious comparisons, and his extensive knowledge of various matters, particularly of architecture.” Rapin, in his Treatise on Eloquence, calls his style THE TERRIBLE, as having something in it which strikes the reader with a holy dread and astonishment. Bishop Lowth’s character of him is as follows: “Ezekiel is inferior to Jeremiah in elegance, but is equal to Isaiah in sublimity, though in a different species of the sublime. He is bold, vehement, tragical, and deals very much in amplification. His sentiments are lofty, animated, poignant, and full of indignation. His images are fertile, magnificent, and sometimes rather bordering on indelicacy. His diction is sounding, grave, austere, rough, and sometimes uncultivated. He abounds in repetitions, not for the sake of beauty or grace, but from vehemence and indignation. Whatever his subject be, he keeps it always in his eye, without the least deviation, and is so much taken up with it that he has scarcely any regard to order or connection. In other things he may perhaps be exceeded by the other prophets; but in that species for which he was particularly turned, that is, in force, impetuosity, weight, grandeur, no writer ever equalled him. His diction is clear enough; almost all his obscurity arises from his subjects. His visions are particularly obscure; which, however, as in Hosea, Amos, and Zechariah, are delivered in a plain and historical narration. The greater part of this book, but especially the middle of it, is poetical: but some passages are so rough and unpolished, that we are frequently at a loss to what species of writing we ought to refer them.” — De Sacra Poesi Hebræorum, Prælec. 21. A learned German professor, Eichhorn, quoted by Bishop Newcome, having, in his Introduction to the Old Testament, spoken of Ezekiel as a writer “distinguished by much originality; adding dignity to his relations, by lively fictions of his inexhaustible imagination;” and as “creating great artificial images, and by such means new worlds;” and having represented the prophet’s first two visions as being “accurately polished with much art,” and therefore “could not possibly be an unpremeditated work;” the bishop, with a reference to these sentiments, delivers his own judgment of Ezekiel as follows: “I do not consider him as the framer of those august and astonishing visions, and of those admirable poetical representations, which he committed to writing; but as an instrument in the hands of God, who vouchsafed to reveal himself through a long succession of ages, not only in divers parts, constituting a magnificent and uniform whole, but also in divers manners, as by a voice, by dreams, by inspiration, and by plain or enigmatical vision. If he is circumstantial in describing the wonderful scenes which were presented to him in the visions of God, he should be regarded as a faithful representer of the divine revelations for the purpose of information and instruction; and not as exhausting an exuberant fancy, in minutely filling up an ideal picture. It is probable that Buzi, his father, had preserved his own family from the taint of idolatry; and had educated his son, for the priestly office, in all the learning of the Hebrews, and particularly in the study of their sacred books. Josephus says, that he was a youth at the time of his captivity; and his first revelation was made to him only five years after that period. This is a season of life when a fervour of imagination is natural in men of superior endowments. His genius led him to amplification; like that of Ovid, Lucan, and Juvenal, among the Roman poets; though he occasionally shows himself capable of the austere and concise manner, of which the seventh chapter is a remarkable instance. But the Divine Spirit did not overrule the natural bent of his mind. Variety is thus produced in the sacred writings. Nahum sounds the trumpet of war, Hosea is sententious, Isaiah sublime, Jeremiah pathetic, Ezekiel copius. This diffuseness of manner in mild and affectionate exhortation, this vehement enlarging on the guilt and consequent sufferings of his countrymen, seems wisely adapted to their capacities and circumstances; and must have had a forcible tendency to awaken them from their lethargy.” It has been observed, as an apology for the roughness and incorrectness which appear in the style of this prophet, “that he lived in an age when the beauty, purity, and majesty of the Hebrew language were upon the decline, and that it would argue a great absurdity to expect the vigour of youth in the imbecilities of old age.” — See Michaelis’s Notes, p. 110. St. Jerome hath more than once observed, that the beginning and latter part of this prophecy are more than ordinarily difficult and obscure, and may justly be reckoned among the things in Scripture which are δυσνοητα, hard to be understood.
In the first three chapters, Ezekiel describes a wonderful vision, whereby God confirmed and instructed him in his prophetic office. In the following chapters, to the twenty-fifth, he describes the horrible sins of the Jews, especially of those remaining in Jerusalem and Judea, and their approaching punishments. From thence to the thirty-third chapter he foretels the ruin of many neighbouring nations who were enemies to the Jews, as the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Philistines, the Tyrians, Sidonians, and Egyptians. From the thirty-third to the fortieth chapter, the murmurings and hypocrisies of the Jews, who were captives in Chaldea, are severely censured, with an exhortation to true repentance, and to a firm expectation of an approaching salvation; in which not only the deliverance from the Babylonish captivity, but the far greater deliverance of all the world from the bondage of SIN and IGNORANCE by Jesus Christ, was signified. In the last nine chapters is related a grand vision of the building of a new temple. The liberty with which Ezekiel treated the idolatry of his countrymen is said to have so highly irritated the chief of them, as to have occasioned his being put to death: and in the time of Epiphanius it was a current opinion that his remains were deposited in the same sepulchre with those of Shem and Arphaxad; that his tomb was then to be seen; and that the Jews kept a lamp burning in it; who likewise pretended that they had this prophecy written by the prophet’s own hand which they read every year on the day of expiation. — Calmet’s Preface to this book.
Preliminary Observations on Chapters 40.- 48
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PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON
CHAPTERS 40.-48.
WE are now entering upon a portion of the Holy Scriptures which is justly looked upon to be one of the most, difficult in all the book of God. The Jews will not allow any to read it till they are thirty years of age, and they tell those who do read it, that though they cannot understand every thing in it, yet when Elias comes he will explain it. Many commentators, both ancient and modern, have acknowledged themselves to be at a loss how to interpret it. But because it is hard to be understood, we must not therefore throw it aside as useless, but must humbly search into its meaning, and advance as far as we can in the knowledge thereof; and when we despair of finding satisfaction in every difficulty we meet with, we must bless God that our salvation does not depend upon it, but that things necessary are sufficiently plain; and we must wait till God shall reveal even this unto us. These chapters are the more to be regarded because the two last chapters of the Revelation seem to have a plain allusion to them, as Revelation 20. has to the foregoing prophecy of Gog and Magog.
The contents of this prophecy are as follows: In this and the two following chapters we have the vision of a glorious temple. In chap. 43. God is represented as taking possession of it. In chap. 44. orders are given concerning the priests that are to minister in this temple. Chap. 45. directs concerning the division of the land, what portion should be allotted for the sanctuary, what for the city, and what for the prince, both with respect to his government of the people, and his worship of God. Chap. 46. contains further instructions for him and the people. And after the vision of the holy waters, we have the borders of the holy land, the portions assigned to the tribes, and the dimensions and gates of the holy city, in chap. 47. 48. Some suppose that the following description of the temple was intended to show how glorious Solomon’s temple had been, during the flourishing state of the Jewish Church, in order that the captives might see what they had lost by sin, and might be the more humbled. Others consider it as intended for a model according to which the new colonists were to erect a temple on their return to their own land; observing, at the same time, the customs and usages which Ezekiel here orders, and dividing the country as he directs. Perhaps the general scope of the vision might be two-fold: 1st, To assure the captives that they should not only return to their own land and be settled there, which had been often promised in the foregoing chapters, but that they should have, and therefore ought to be encouraged to build another temple which God would own, and where he would meet and bless them: that the ordinances of their worship should be revived, and the sacred priesthood should there attend; and, though they should not have a king to live in such splendour as formerly, yet they should have a prince, or ruler, (who is often spoken of in this vision,) that should countenance the worship of God among them, and should himself be an example of a diligent attendance upon it: and that prince, priests, and people should have a very comfortable settlement in their own land. 2d, To direct them to look further than all this, and to expect the coming of the Messiah, who had before been prophesied of, under the name David, (the man that projected the building of the first temple,) and who should set up a spiritual temple, even the gospel church, the glory of which should far exceed that of Solomon’s temple, and which should continue to the end of time. And the gospel temple, erected by Christ and his apostles, was so closely connected with the second material temple, and was erected so carefully just at the time when that temple fell into decay, being designed to receive its glories when it resigned them, that it was proper enough they should both be referred to in one and the same vision; which vision, under the type and figure of a temple and altar, priest and sacrifices, foreshowed the spiritual worship that should be performed in gospel times, as being more agreeable to the nature both of God and man, and that worship perfected at last in the kingdom of glory, in which, doubtless, these visions will have their full accomplishment; if not, as some think, in a glorious and happy state of the gospel church, to take place on earth in the latter days. The grand outlines of the description here given, as Mr. Scott observes, might be taken from Solomon’s temple, with the additions made to its courts and out-buildings in after ages; and Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the other Jews, who returned from Babylon, might have respect to it in rebuilding the temple after the captivity; but “there are several circumstances which evidently show that something vastly superior to either the first or second temple was intended; and that the external description must be considered as a figure and emblem of spiritual blessings. This will appear, in many particulars, as we proceed; but especially the dimensions of the temple, city, and land; and the division of the land to the prince, priests, and tribes; and the river of water springing from the threshold of the temple, enlarging till it reached the Dead sea, and sweetening its waters; with the trees growing on the banks of the river, bearing fruit every month, cannot be literally interpreted, or made to accord with any thing which has yet taken place.”
A late writer gives the following character of this part of Ezekiel’s prophecy: “From the fortieth chapter a new elevated scene commences. Before, there was nothing but oracles full of misfortunes, of punishments, of death and ruin; visions concerning the destruction of the government, and concerning the flight and state of the last king; and pictures of the universal corruption, idolatry, and superstition of Israel. From the fortieth chapter a new temple rises before the eyes of the holy seer, he walks round about it in Palestine, he measures the city and country for their new inhabitants, he orders sacrifices, feasts, and customs. In short, a Magna Charta is planned for priests, kings, and people, in future ages and latter times. Lastly, from hence prosaic expression predominates: at least, the prophet elevates himself by poetical colouring much more rarely than before.”
Joseph Sutcliffe
The Book of Ezekiel.
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THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL.
EZEKIEL, a name equivalent to the strength or fortitude of God, was son of Buzi, a name of respect, and of the priestly line. For learning and genius, elevation of thought and beauty of figures, he has often been compared to Homer. He was carried away with Jeconiah, in the fifth year of that prince, about two years after Daniel and other illustrious men had been removed to Babylon, leaving the devoted city without any ruler of probity and honour. Jeremiah 5:1. His commission and call to the high and holy charge of a prophet was by the appearance of Messiah, riding in his ancient chariot, for it pleased the Lord to support his people by repeating the former indications of his presence. Psalm 68:17. The luminous characters of Ezekiel’s prophecies shine out in explicit declarations of the burning of Jerusalem and its temple, for the wickedness of the people; the bloody and victorious wars of the Chaldeans against Tyre and Egypt, and all the southern nations. At the same time he cheered his fellow exiles by assurances of a return, in his parable of the dry bones. Above all, he foretold the establishment of the new covenant, the conversion of the gentiles, and the glory of the new-testament church, under the figure of a new temple, in magnitude and glory surpassing credibility. For though the Jews may yet have a material temple in Jerusalem and sacrifices, it can never be more than a faint figure of better things to come. Other illustrious traits of his ministry will occur in the work. After running a course of twenty, or as others say, of twenty two years, we lose sight of his exit in the regions of captivity. One says that he died in the course of nature, another that he was put to death by his prince, for preaching against the idols of the captives.
Daniel Whedon
Table of Contents.
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EZEKIEL
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION:
I. Date, Authorship, and Canonicity
II. The Text
III. The Style of Ezekiel
IV. Ezekiel’s Personality and Work
V. Ezekiel’s Alleged Historical Mistakes
VI. The Book of Ezekiel and the Levitical Priestly Law VII. The Exiled Jews in Babylon
VIII. The Language of Symbolism
Analysis of the Book
NOTES AND COMMENTS
Preface.
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PREFACE.
THESE comments on Ezekiel and Daniel have been written under the pressure of pastoral duty in two of the largest and most important charges in American Methodism. Great debts have been raised, large plans of institutional church work projected, and many hundreds admitted to the church on confession of faith while this work was being carried forward. No one can be more sensible than the writer of the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of doing one’s best critical work under such circumstances. Yet, on the other hand, there is at least one advantage in a preacher engaged in the active work of the ministry attempting to interpret these prophecies; while he may not be able to use the apparatus of the study with the same facility as some expositors, yet the whole thought and purpose of his life lead him into sympathetic relation with the men whose processes of argument he seeks to explain.
The Old Testament prophets were not professors, they were preachers. They were not students of the smoky lamp, they were seers of God — spiritual interpreters of history, expositors of the ancient writings, teachers of morality — men who came into close touch with the needs and sins of their fellow-men, and who sought to give help and comfort and salvation by bringing God, and the truth which he had revealed, close to those needy, sinful hearts. The aim of the present writer is to make plain such points in these old sermons and ecstatic visions as may seem obscure to the modern reader.
Unfortunately, some things which seemed perfectly clear to the congregations which they addressed cannot now be understood at all; yet in the opening, by recent excavations, of the Babylonian life of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., the meaning of many statements previously not understood, or misunderstood, has been made plain. In these comments the writer has freely used the results of cuneiform scholarship whenever they seemed to explain or illustrate the text, while occasionally his own Egyptian studies have not been without a certain value.
In conclusion, he would express his sense of obligation to the librarians who have afforded special courtesies — to those particularly of the British Museum, the University of Michigan, and Harvard University — and,
Introduction to the Book of Ezekiel.
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Editorial note: The supplied edition prints “Ezekiel 18:59” here (WHD_CO08.PDF, physical PDF page 20). The surrounding discussion of the just man keeping God's statutes and judgments corresponds to Ezekiel 18:5–9 in the King James Version. The origin of the printed numbering is not established here; the historical wording is retained. WHD_CO08.PDF, PDF page 20.
above all, to the literary helpmeet in his own home, whose encouragement and assistance have been invaluable. Her patience and skill in verifying English and French references, as well as in preparing the manuscript for the press, have made the completion of this work possible. INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL.
ONE of the most celebrated German professors of theology began a recent course of lectures on the prophecy of Ezekiel by saying: “Of all the biblical books there is probably not one so little known to laymen and clergy as this. He must indeed be an enthusiastic Bible reader who knows more of Ezekiel than the mere name. Even among theologians there are very few who have read him wholly, or even in part. Nor is this mere chance. He is one of the most difficult, obscure, and dark prophets of the Old Testament. Already the Church fathers call his book the ‘abyss of Holy Scripture’ and ‘a maze of divine secrets’” (Cornill, Der Prophet Ezechiel). Yet this same scholar, who confesses that he began the examination of this book expecting “scientific martyrdom,” was able to say, after fifteen months of careful study, “It is a masterpiece which can only be paralleled by the Book of Job.”
We do wisely to sit at the feet of this banished prophet who for over two thousand years has been talking to the wisest of earth’s wise. As John Wesley wrote, “There is much in the book which is very mysterious, especially in the beginning and latter end of it; but, though the visions are intricate, the sermons are plain, and the design of them is to show God’s people their transgressions” (Notes on the Old Testament). I. Date, Authorship, and Canonicity.
This is one of the very few books of the prophets — indeed the only one — which is universally allowed by the destructive critics to have left the prophet’s own hand in exactly the same condition in which we find it. The objections of a very few critics — Zunz (1873), Wettstein and Seinecke (1884), Vernes and Havet (1890) — have only made the general decision more sure. Kuenen (Onderzoek, 1889, ii, p. 304) emphatically declares: “There exists not one good reason for affirming that this collection of oracles was not gathered by Ezekiel himself. These prophecies are, without exception, from his own hand.” Konig in his most critical and trustworthy work (Einleitung in das Alt Testament, 1893, pp. 344, 354), affirms that the authenticity of the book is undoubted, and its unity is “not attacked nor attackable.”
The dates at which the various prophecies were delivered are fixed by the book itself. The first was in the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s captivity, 592-593 B.C. (Ezekiel 1:2), followed by others in the sixth year (Ezekiel 8:1), seventh year (Ezekiel 20:1), ninth year (Ezekiel 24:1), tenth year (Ezekiel 29:1), eleventh year (Ezekiel 31:1), twelfth year (Ezekiel 32:1), twenty-fifth year (Ezekiel 40:1), and twenty-seventh year of the captivity (Ezekiel 29:17).
It is curious that the book of whose canonicity the modern criticism is most assured was, according to the Talmud, the one book which almost lost its place in the Jewish canon owing to a suspicion of the Jewish doctors that it contradicted the law. Fortunately Hananiah, son of Hezekiah, after burning three hundred measures of oil in his midnight studies was able satisfactorily to explain these seeming discrepancies. Though it was retained, the book seemed so mysterious that no Jew was permitted to read it until he had reached the age of thirty years.
II. The Text.
The text of no other equally ancient work is so certain as that of the Bible prophets, yet it is by no means perfect. No manuscript can be copied by hand, century after century, without error. There are many passages in Ezekiel which, notwithstanding the careful study of such scholars as Smend, Cornill, Ginsburg, Toy, and others, still baffle all attempts to critically translate them.
III. The Style of Ezekiel.
Gregory of Nazianzum calls Ezekiel “the most wonderful and exalted of the prophets,” and this appears to have been the general impression among Hebrew scholars down to the present generation. Some recent critics, however, without any too great reverence for Jehovah’s messenger, have bluntly expressed a different opinion, declaring that he totally lacked both imagination and originality (Smend); his was chiefly “borrowed treasure,” taken from “the desolate fields of the Levitical law” (Arndt); he has simply swallowed a book and given it out again (Wellhausen); his prophecies are “neither edifying nor attractive,” while some of his illustrations are quite “shocking” (Kuenen), and his style “uncouth and labored” (Toy). But surely St. John and the Teacher of Nazareth were as good judges of Hebrew style and spiritual visions as any modern professor, and their judgment is not so severe. There can be no doubt that, of all the prophets, this is the one which the Beloved Disciple loved best. In St. John’s highest hour of rapture he saw the vision which Ezekiel had seen six centuries before, and described it in phrases strikingly similar, while the rich music of his parables, like that of the Vine and the Shepherd (17, 34) is also heard again in the notes struck by the Good Shepherd himself. We ask, then, what was the style of this favorite author of the exile of Patmos and his Lord?
Professor Kautzsch (1896) has voiced the highest modern learning in his statement that Ezekiel’s style “shows a grand scale of variation from the simplest and most naive utterances to the most artistic and most complicated.” Ewald has declared that he “excels all former prophets as a writer in point of skill, beauty, and perfection of treatment,” his style being enriched by “charming and telling metaphors… full of new turns and surprises, often very beautifully elaborated.”
Ezekiel was celebrated as a maker of parables (Ezekiel 20:49), and his writings are full of riddles, proverbs, and allegories. In the heat of his stormy exhortations he would seize upon the most familiar and common objects and turn them to account. Israel is a vine; Jerusalem is a pot; the kingdom of Judah is a lioness, and the royal family are her whelps; Nebuchadnezzar is an eagle; the false prophets, instead of standing guard at the breaches in the city walls, are foxes burrowing under them; or, again, they are dumb and greedy dogs, hunters and murderers of souls; Egypt is a crocodile pulled out of the river by a hook and dying on the shore, or it is a splinter wounding the hand that leans upon it for support. Every sentence sparkles and gleams with brilliant figures of speech. It has been said that Ezekiel has furnished more striking expressions for liturgy and sermon than any other prophet.
Sometimes these metaphors are savage, sometimes full of exquisite tenderness, sometimes strangely fantastic, but in any case never to be forgotten. Some of his allegories are made as disgusting as possible; like that of the foundling child who became the adulterous wife, picturing Israel’s unfaithfulness. He rendered his sermons more dramatic by his action. It is not to be forgotten that gestures were the main part of primitive language; very often, even in ancient law, they took the place of technical phraseology (Maine, Ancient Law). Orientals have always been particularly partial to their use, and Ezekiel, like the early Methodist preachers, adapted himself to his audience. These symbolic actions may be repugnant to us, but that they were just fitted to influence the men to whom he spoke is seen by the result. The mimic siege (4), the shaving of his beard (5), the seeming paralysis, the carefulness of diet, and the disgusting method of cooking his food (Ezekiel 4:8, 12, 13), the sighing and quaking (Ezekiel 12:18; 21:6), all were picture sermons which covered lessons of tremendous importance.
The visions, too, in which all the majesties and splendors of earth and heaven are thrown together, forming, as Jerome says, “a labyrinth of the mysteries of God,” each had its divine, far-reaching message. Ezekiel’s entire philosophy of history and philosophy of religion can be discovered in the vision of Jehovah’s glory, which is indeed the key to this whole prophecy. (See notes chaps. Ezekiel 1:10.) He explains all history by the controlling hand of Jehovah. The sternness of his own words is fully explained by the fact that he had felt upon him the weight of the hand which he had himself seen underneath the mechanism of the universe (Ezekiel 1:8, 26; 3:14), while his quenchless hope for the future, when all others were in despair, was grounded upon the faithfulness and mercifulness of the ever-present and all-powerful One.
We cannot understand the meaning of every part of his vision, but as we come better to understand the language of oriental symbolism we see that to his auditors there was nothing forced or artificial in these descriptions, but that every detail contained some rich spiritual suggestion. It must also be remembered that Ezekiel was a poet, and only the soul of a poet can appreciate his wealth of imagery. His songs of war and his dirges over fallen heroes and fallen nations are worthy to be compared with those of any age or any race. Herder has called him the AEschylus and Shakespeare of the Hebrews, while Schiller wished to study Hebrew chiefly because he longed to read Ezekiel in his own language.
IV. Ezekiel’s Personality and Work.
It has been said that since Ezekiel has told us nothing of himself, we must be content to remain wholly ignorant of what manner of man he was. But this is not correct. There are a few significant circumstances related concerning him, and various necessary inferences from his customary speech and life, which throw not a little light upon the character of this silent prophet. The very fact that he does not make his own personality prominent, but forgets himself in his absorption in his lifework, speaks louder than words concerning his modesty and the intensity of his devotion to God. Even Duhm, his most severe critic, styles him the “prophet of humility.” There is a positive sublimity in his self-forgetfulness and silence. His life was quiet and withdrawn. He seems rarely, if ever, to have left his own home. He was a “man of the Spirit,” given up to holy thoughts and heavenly dreams.
That he was “the priest, the son of Buzi” (Ezekiel 1:3), proves that he belonged to the highest aristocracy of Israel and that he lived either in or just outside the temple. As a boy he stepped beside his father along those echoing aisles and toward those smoking altars, gazing with familiar eyes at the splendors which Solomon three hundred years before had dedicated to the God of ages. This was his home, where he “sucked in love for the temple with his mother’s milk.” (Compare Alexander Duff, Old Testament Theology; Cornill, Das Buch des Prophet Ezechiel.) His young poet-soul must have been thrilled with the nearness of Jehovah to his people and with the awfulness of the blasphemy when he saw even the priests themselves staggering to the sacrifices and filling the holy place with the noise of their drunken orgies. (See Isaiah 28.) This young student of the truth, whose memory was stored from his earliest childhood with the teachings of the law, doubtless listened many times with breathless interest to the warnings and cries of Jeremiah, that most tender-hearted prophet, who during all his boyhood stood up in the holy city as the chief representative of Jehovah’s will. He remembered well his master’s teachings, and often in his later sermons reproduced even his very words.
How old Ezekiel was when carried into captivity (598-597 B.C.) is not known. Josephus declares he was still but a youth (Antiquities, 10:63). The fact that he began his prophetic work only five years later would suggest — since no one sneered at the “boy prophet” — that he must have been at least twenty-five years of age when the captivity began. The maturity of his style, which never changed for over twenty years, also leads to the conclusion that he was of ripe age when he entered captivity (Kuenen), and was born, therefore, not later than 622 B.C. He had witnessed the most horrible national apostasies, had been impressed with Josiah’s attempted reformation (621-608 B.C.), and had felt the authority of his newly found “book of the law” (2 Kings 22:8). That he was well acquainted with the Jewish law books, particularly Leviticus and Deuteronomy, is proved by constant reference and frequent quotation.
For at least twenty-two years he was a prophet in Babylon (Ezekiel 29:17), and distinguished scholars have pointed out the influence that the Babylonian learning had upon his literary style. That he always remained a great student is conceded, and if his library is ever discovered at Tel-abib, it is not unlikely that some cuneiform writings may be found upon its shelves side by side with the great works of Hebrew literature. (Compare note Ezekiel 5:12.)
So vividly has he described the harbor of Tyre that modern archaeologists have been irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that he must have visited it at some time in his life, probably before his exile from Jerusalem. If so, in addition to the best training that the schools of Jerusalem could have given him, which at that period were no doubt largely influenced by Egyptian and even Greek learning (see Introduction to Daniel, III, 3), he would also have possessed the culture which comes only from travel. That Jehovah chose this young man for one of the most delicate and dangerous tasks ever committed to a prophet is proof of his nobility and courage and many other high qualities. This alone ought to show the error of those critics who are constrained by their theories to count this man hard, narrow, and bigoted, a distorter of history and defamer of his own countrymen.
Poor Ezekiel! How much he had to suffer while he lived, and though he has been long dead the thorns still continue to prick him. He is a “fanatic” (Renan), a “dogmatist” with all “the coldness of a criminal judge,” in whom “human sympathy and original inspiration are alike wanting” (Duhm); he has “no kindness of heart,” “knows no mercy,” and is “without attractiveness” (Kuenen), while his description of God’s justice is “absolutely frightful,” since he would solve the problem of theology, by “a theory of revenge” (Th. Arndt).
How little these critics know of the man with whom Jehovah loved to talk. He was naturally reticent and afraid of the words of others (Ezekiel 3:6); but controlled by the hand of Jehovah he spoke without faltering the hardest message which ever fell from the lips of man. It was not till the weight of the omnipotent Hand fell upon him that he uttered the harsh truths which the people so needed to know. He was so sensitive that the mockery and jests of certain nameless persons, even when the elders were showing him utmost respect, wounded him like the sting of nettles and scorpions. His face was not stone, but tender human flesh till God made it hard (Ezekiel 3:8).
He did speak stern words, yet his love for his native land was such that Jerusalem could be pictured by Jehovah as the desire of his eyes whose destruction would fall as heavily upon him as did the death of his wife — that wife who was the excellency of his strength, the joy of his glory (Ezekiel 24:16, 21, 25). His patriotism and his love for his countrymen, are also seen by his bitterness and hot anger when he first learns the message of woe and fiery scorn he is given to speak (Ezekiel 3:14). That he did not flee his duty shows the strength and conscientiousness of his nature. He was called to be the “conscience of the state.” The hand of the Lord was heavy upon him, compelling him to dissipate illusions and crush false hopes. That he held the respect of the elders, notwithstanding his withering reproaches, proves their faith in his thorough manhood and uttermost sincerity. He may have lacked politeness, as Renan claims; but even Renan acknowledges that this was a “martyr spirit,” “fascinated by justice,” while Kuenen speaks of him as “scrupulously conscientious,” “passionately in earnest to the very bone,” and Cornill says, “that for holy earnestness and deep piety Ezekiel stands first and foremost among the prophets.” Such admissions from such men go far to overthrow certain theories that these same critics have tenaciously held. Such a pious prophet could hardly have been guilty of originating a system of legislation and imposing it upon his countrymen as the ancient authority of Judaism, nor ought we to charge a man of such “scrupulous conscientiousness” with describing visions which he never really saw, and recording conversations with elders who never really honored him with a visit! It is rather evident that Ezekiel’s whole life was a listening for God’s voice and a looking for his glory. His life task was a struggle to tell the unspeakable things he had seen and heard. His definition of the false prophet is one who does not speak as he is moved by the strong Spirit of God, but utters his prophecies out of his own heart (Ezekiel 13:3).
Nor was this pious prophet a weak character. He was a mighty man, even his enemies being the judges. As we become better acquainted with him “the more mighty and grand he appears as a true man of God equipped with vast powers” (Cornill). “He was a man of action and extraordinary success” (Kautzsch). “Power went out from him;… without him Judaism would not have fulfilled her mission and Christianity would not have been born” (Kuenen). “How great is he in his solitude, how heroic in his captivity, how sublime in his desolation.… During more than twenty years this extraordinary man was the center of that fiery preaching which saved the conscience of Israel from a storm in which every other national conscience would have perished.… Christianity owes more to Ezekiel than to any other prophet, perhaps excepting the second Isaiah” (Renan). Such are the testimonies forced from the lips of men who have tried in many ways to belittle him. Cornill, as well as Gautier, has seen a spiritual relationship between this Babylonian prophet and St. Paul. Kamrath has styled him, because of his far-reaching influence and mental grasp of vast problems, the Jewish Calvin. He was indeed a powerful personality, who has left his mark on everything he touched. No one doubts that this colossal figure, this organizer and lawgiver of captive Israel, was the “spiritual director of the exile, the father of Judaism” (Cornill), and the “preserver of the Jewish commonwealth” (Konig). Without his teaching Israel would have been buried in its Babylonian grave forever (37). He furnished the impulse which culminated in the edict of Cyrus and the return of his people to the Holy Land “with songs of rejoicing on their lips.” He lived in an evil hour, but his majestic personality mastered all adverse circumstances. As a priest he restored the past; as a prophet he created the future. He stands large and unique among the great men of his race. His was a vast mission: to save the Israelites from becoming Babylonians; to transform those faithless, hopeless, idol-worshiping exiles into an ardent, hopeful, believing Church, and with serene audacity to prepare them for their second Exodus. The exodus from Babylon was as epochal an event as the exodus from Egypt, and the man elected by Providence to be spiritual leader of that exodus must have been a mighty prophet “like unto” Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15). His very name is significant — Ezekiel: “Strong is God” (Ewald), or “God makes strong” (Gesenius). The second exodus was accomplished not by miracles, but by the transforming power of the preached word. Ezekiel was a preacher. His exposures of the awful sin and inexcusable guilt of his countrymen cut like a two-edged sword, for he felt that the prophet who does not warn the lost is a murderer of souls (xxxiii). He showed the necessary and eternal connection between sin and penalty. He was “a powerful preacher of repentance” (Pfleiderer), because he believed that God had no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but was ready to forgive when the wicked man turned from his wickedness. Nowhere in the Old Testament is it so clearly taught that the real object of divine punishment is that the sinner may turn from his evil ways and live. Amos had emphasized man’s sinfulness and God’s righteousness; Hosea had felt the need of forgiveness, and, therefore, God’s need to forgive; Isaiah had seen Jehovah himself coming as the weary world’s great Deliverer; but Ezekiel, his lips touched by a coal from the holy altar, was able to speak out “another sentence from the eternal tale of love, and men gained a new depth of vision into the infinite heart of God.” No one before in human history had so emphasized the blessed truth that “man’s holiest hope and God’s holiest purpose is forgiveness.” Ezekiel, too, as no other prophet, emphasized the enormous value of a human soul and the individual need of forgiveness and salvation if the nation were to be saved. Even Isaiah had taught that Zion’s sanctuary could not be harmed, for Zion is “the place of our tryst with Jehovah;” but Ezekiel saw that the true Zion was not in any earthly city, but wherever Jehovah’s glorious chariot rested, and that the humblest “son of man” and the one farthest from the Holy City, if only truly righteous, could meet with God and find close to him a “little sanctuary.” (Compare Alexander Duff, Old Testament Theology.) The character of this preacher may be truly seen in his horror of sin and in his method of preaching repentance and the need of a new heart. His anathemas seem almost pitiless until we hear sounding through it all, as the chief note of every sermon, “Will ye die, O house of Israel?” The crowning thought of every warning was to bring men to repentance, and thus to holiness, and to turn their eyes from the black past to a new future which shall open to men who have new hearts. His high humanitarianism, far in advance of his age, is seen not merely from his deep interest in all nationalities, but in the honor he paid to women and the marriage covenant, actually counting this relation of husband and wife so sacred that it could image the relation of Jehovah and Israel (23). The sins which he condemned were not the sins of ritualism, merely (Stade), but of morals (Ezekiel 7:23; 18:3-15; 22:3-16; 24:7; 33:25; 36:17); the holiness which he commended was not ceremonial, merely, but spiritual. The lofty morality of Ezekiel is shown everywhere by his precepts as well as his actions (Ezekiel 18:6-9). His was a religion of justice and truth. While Ezekiel was in Babylon it was the moral capital of the world. Justice, righteousness, holiness, according to Ezekiel, were not cold abstractions and formalities. He told the elders to their faces that they were no better than the heathen, because, though they outwardly worshiped Jehovah, they had set up idols “in their hearts,” and they could claim no special favor from him because they were children of Abraham, since God’s favor was not obtained through birth, but through a new birth (Ezekiel 11:19-21, etc.).
The deep spirituality of this man is seen also from his conception of the Deity. He was not like one who —
With a shudder feels his naked soul
In the great black world face to face with God.
He loved to find “the secret place of the Most High.” Like the scientist of to-day, he had discovered an omnipresent, invisible energy, working like a living spirit behind the mechanism of this universe, but he did not call it the Unknowable. He knew the name of this invisible omnipotency: Jehovah! That this son of a priest knew well the ancient meaning of this name of God, which he so often uses, cannot be doubted. His every prophecy is based upon the fundamental thought that God is “merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:6, 7; Deuteronomy 5:9, 10). Jehovah is just and holy, but possesses also the tenderness and passion of a father and a husband (16, 18, etc.).
It is noticeable that Ezekiel is the first prophet who represents God as the Shepherd seeking his lost sheep (34). Every man becomes like the God he worships, and the chief characteristic of Ezekiel is the searching and saving love by which he sought to bring his people to a new life, and did, in fact, prepare them for the future Messianic Gospel. He was a watchman. He stood in his place, as sentinel on the Babylonian canal, and with undaunted voice proclaimed the downfall of Jerusalem unless the people repented; but when the awful calamity at length became realized, and his countrymen were crushed by the blow, his voice grew tender as he cheered them with the promise that, though the holy city had fallen, the God of the city still lived and was able to protect and deliver his people. By his words he awoke the spirit of the nation. He opened to them a wealth of unfathomably rich comfort. Though his nation had fallen into ruin this lonely mystic cast himself upon the future with a great hope, a radiant vision of a better day, when a new Jerusalem should arise in which Jehovah would be honored by all as King, and there would be no war, no injustice, no inequality, no unrighteousness.
It was the dream of a seer! As has been well said, he was “tyrannized by Conscience and the Ideal.” (Compare Darmsteter, Les Prophetes D’Israel.) Ezekiel was a dreamer, but, unlike the authors of modern and ancient Utopias, his dream became a reality. His vision of God and of the future led to Israel’s resurrection and to the building of the walls of a New Jerusalem. We make bold to call this man the St. John of the Old Testament, not only because of his sublime thunderings and apocalyptic visions, but because Jesus, by his sympathetic and tender use of this book, proved that its author was the beloved one among the seers of the Old Covenant. (Compare, e.g., Ezekiel 15 and John 15.) Certain modern critics do not like this prophet. They think him “cold” and “heartless,” and his book “grotesque and repulsive” (e.g., Kuenen, Onderzoek). Are these scholars more fastidious than the Teacher of Nazareth, or have they not yet become acquainted with this “maker of parables” (Ezekiel 20:49) whom Jesus loved? The prophet whose writings the Master used more, perhaps, than those of any other, and whose method of teaching he adopted, must have been a man after his own heart.
As one sympathetically studies these obscure prophecies he may catch many a glimpse of the man who writes them. What self-restraint! What self-conquest! What awfulness of silence! What domination of conscience! What absolute submission to God’s will! With its unrivaled vividness of coloring, its maze of symbols, and blaze of divine visions, this book is not only a prototype of the splendors of the Apocalypse, but its author, the lonely man, this thorn-pierced man of sorrows, is a prototype of the coming Christ. The One whose name is above every name chose as his title Ezekiel’s name, “the Son of man.” There must be some deep spiritual meaning in the book honored by St. John and his Master. If it seem barren and unfruitful, woe to the eyes that look! If its author seem narrow and harsh of speech, he is only placed the nearer to the One who was despised and rejected of men, who saw no beauty in him (Isaiah liii). V. Ezekiel’s Alleged Historical Mistakes.
Ezekiel’s prophetic dignity has not saved him from various severe criticisms from certain scholars of the new school. Even his word is disbelieved, and he is declared to have written out and revised his prophecies to fit the facts after they were spoken, or probably never to have spoken them at all; certainly not at the dates which he gives. This is a most unholy suspicion of a man whose every act and word proves his uprightness. Via, Veritas, Vita seem almost as vitally connected in the Gospel which Ezekiel preached as in that proclaimed by his great Namesake six centuries afterward. The main reason for suspecting the prophet of untruthfulness is that some of these prophecies contain clear statements of political conditions which were in the future at the time when he claims to have uttered them, and “therefore Ezekiel could not have written them at the period given” (Kuenen, Onderzoek, 2:304-312). It is evident that this argument can only weigh heavily with one who disbelieves in any predictive revelation from God. The attack upon the prophet’s trustworthiness in other directions seems to be made for less reason than any modern writer would require to make such a charge against a contemporary — even one who had no particular reputation for saintliness. There are two specific “blunders,” plainly so called by our critics, which have received much enthusiastic mention as proving that a prophet cannot be trusted when he attempts to foretell important events. One of these refers to the conquest of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar (Ezekiel 26:7-14). It is denied that Nebuchadnezzar ever captured Tyre; and it is even claimed that Ezekiel himself afterward acknowledges this when he says that the Babylonian king and his army received no “wages” for Tyre, notwithstanding their long siege (Ezekiel 39:18, 19). But, if, indeed, Ezekiel acknowledges the failure of his own prophecy, certainly this clearly displays his utter frankness and honesty. A disingenuous person who was accustomed to revise his prophecies to suit the facts would not have left such a passage. Only a true and honest prophet, recognizing the fact that few prophecies were unconditional, and that God was always quick to forgive, or to postpone promised punishment (Ezekiel 12:21-28; Jonah 4), could possibly have left on record both the prediction and its failure without any attempt at harmonization.
But it is by no means proved that Nebuchadnezzar did not capture the Phoenician capital. The sufficient answer to this criticism ought to be, first, that while no ancient non-biblical writer has said that Nebuchadnezzar captured Tyre, none has denied this, and Ezekiel, as a contemporary, ought by any just criticism to be allowed to have known the facts; and second, Ezekiel has not distinctly said (Ezekiel 29:18, 19) that he failed to capture the city, but only that he failed to receive from the city sufficient reward for his enormous expenditure of time and treasure. It is suggestive that Professor Fritz Hommel, of Munich, who formerly held that Nebuchadnezzar merely blockaded Tyre, failing to capture it though he finally brought it again under tribute (Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, 1888, and in Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 1:1898), has now revised his former critical judgment sufficiently to say, that while “Tyre could not be taken by Nebuchadrezzar, it passed notwithstanding after a fruitless blockade of thirteen years (by a voluntary surrender) into the hands of the Babylonian monarch” (Exp. Times, 1899). Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne 605-604 B.C.; the siege of Tyre occurred, probably, 585-573 B.C.; it is certain that a little later than this (565 B.C.) Nebuchadnezzar was king of Tyre, since he is so recognized in a legal contract which was drawn up in that city (Records of the Past, vol. iv, pp. 99-101). All of this harmonizes beautifully with Ezekiel’s statements.
The other alleged “blunder” of Ezekiel has reference to Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest in Egypt as prophesied in chapter 32. Although Josephus had sustained the Bible account, yet, as Herodotus was silent concerning this campaign, several writers were very confident that we have here a very plain mistake of a biblical writer. In his Prophets and Prophecy (1877) Dr. Kuenen gave much space to this matter. Very soon, however, a fragment of Nebuchadnezzar’s annals was discovered, in which he declared without equivocation that he did invade Egypt in the thirty-seventh year of his reign — just the year that this prophecy required (568-567 B.C.) — and achieved a great victory over the king [Ama]sis. More than this, a hieroglyphic inscription written by a famous Egyptian governor of this same era, named Nes-Hor, was found, in which he described the horrors of an invasion which swept Egypt without opposition clear to Syene. (Compare Ezekiel 30:16, Greek.) So strongly did these contemporaneous inscriptions confirm Ezekiel’s account, that archaeologists and biblical historians of the most critical school conceded his trustworthiness on this point; for instance, Sayce, Pinches, Tiele, Wiedemann, etc.
It is to be regretted, however, that Dr. Kuenen, in his Historisch-critisch Onderzoek (1889, pp. 265-318), declined to acknowledge that Ezekiel’s accuracy had been vindicated. He objected, first, that Nes-Hor in his inscription did not definitely call his opponents Babylonians, and that, while the term used referred undoubtedly to Asiatics and Ionians, these might have been Egyptian mercenaries who had revolted and not
Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers; second, that the fragment of Nebuchadnezzar’s annals describing his Egyptian campaign did not affirm how far his troops had pressed into Egypt, and therefore they might not have gone as far as Syene; third, the Egyptian tablet of Nes-Hor mentioned Hophra as king, while the Babylonian inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar mentioned [Ama]sis as the reigning king, and therefore these writings evidently alluded to different campaigns; fourth, that even if it should be proved that Nebuchadnezzar did invade Egypt and raid the country as far as Ezekiel claimed, certainly there was no literal fulfillment of the prophecy concerning Pharaoh (Ezekiel 29:1-12).
Taking the last objection first, let it be noticed that the prophecy is full of symbolic numbers and poetic figures, and it is no more just to demand a bald, prosaic fulfillment of it than it would have been for St. Peter to demand such a fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy concerning the time when the sun should be turned into darkness and the moon into blood (Joel 2:30, 31; Acts 2:16-20). From the standpoint of the oriental — who understood better than we the symbolic sense of the expressions used — both prophecies were truly, though not literally, fulfilled. As to the third objection, let it also be noted that no scholar doubts that Amasis and Hophra were contemporaries. They were, indeed, brothers-in-law, and the most critical living authorities on Egyptian history declare them to have been co-rulers. Their pictures may be seen, even to this day, portrayed side by side upon the same royal monument. There would seem to be no contradiction, therefore, in Nebuchadnezzar winning victories such as he narrates over Amasis, in Lower Egypt, in the very same campaign in which his forces might have had a severe struggle with Hophra in Upper Egypt. Dr. Kuenen’s other arguments are no more weighty. That these captors and plunderers of the whole country were revolting Egyptian mercenaries I think the hieroglyphic text makes clear; but does not this suggest a condition of national weakness which is most easily accounted for by such an invasion as Ezekiel claims? Even if the Nes-Hor text has no connection whatever with Nebuchadnezzar or his invasion, as Dr. Adolph Erman, of Berlin, believes — who in a recent letter has favored me with a new translation of the inscription — yet the statement of Nebuchadnezzar himself concerning his invasion of Egypt remains as a remarkable contemporaneous corroboration of Ezekiel’s accuracy. It is evident, therefore, that the most generous conclusion open to the critical examiner of these documents would be that, notwithstanding these texts, it still remains barely possible that Dr. Kuenen may be right and Ezekiel may be wrong. But is this the correct principle of exegesis? Is the old principle which affirms that a Scripture writer shall not be declared wrong when any consistent interpretation of the documents allows him to be in the right, not more in accordance with justice?
VI. The Book of Ezekiel and the Levitical Priestly Law.
No one can doubt the close relationship between Ezekiel and certain portions of the Pentateuch, particularly Leviticus.*
[* Stanley Leathes, in The Law in the Prophets, believes he has traced references in Ezekiel to every book of the Pentateuch and almost every chapter in Leviticus.]
Over eighty of Ezekiel’s characteristic expressions are to be found in Leviticus, chiefly in chapters xvii-xxvi, and many of these nowhere else in Scripture. These phrases sound like verbal quotations. But who quotes? This question was never raised previous to this century. It was universally accepted as natural that Ezekiel’s vocabulary should be that of a priest whose memory was filled with the exact wording of the authoritative Mosaic law. (Compare Deuteronomy 6:6-9; 30:11.) A new school of biblical criticism, however, which denies the ancient authorship of the Pentateuch, or any considerable section of it, explains these similarities in a very different manner. Some critics, like Graf and Kayser, boldly theorize that Ezekiel wrote the Levitical laws himself. Others like Dillmann, think that, while he was not personally its author certain portions of this law must have been worked over during the exile under his eye. Still others, like Smend and Wellhausen and Kuenen and Robertson Smith, representing the most popular wing of the new school, believe that the priest code of Leviticus was prepared considerably later than the time of Ezekiel, and that the laws, even to their phraseology, were copied from him. Ezekiel himself first made the sketch of the written priestly law, and originated much of the ritual which was afterward supposed by the Jews to have been in existence from ancient times.
Of course this theory contradicts such writers as Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Chronicler, but the answer to this is that these Bible writers are “very independent of historic perspective.” Indeed, these leaders of the new school have been so confident that their theory concerning Ezekiel’s priority to the priestly law was correct that they have spoken of it as the “stronghold” of their entire hypothesis and “the key to the criticism of the Old Testament.” Recently, however, not to mention the arguments of recognized opponents such as Green, Cave, Delitzsch, Orelli, Gautier, Zahn, etc., serious objections to this theory have been developed within the new school itself by such scholars as Noldeke, Dillmann, Klostermann, Baudissin, Riehm, Hofmann, etc. Klostermann even attempts to show that the Levitical law was so well known in Ezekiel’s day that it was used by the people in exile as a sort of catechism, which accounts for Ezekiel’s frequent use of it.
Driver, in his Introduction (1892), gives much weight to these objections, and decides that at least the principal and most characteristic of the Levitical laws must have been much older than Ezekiel, although the parenthetic framework may not have been ancient, while Konig (Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 1894) strongly emphasizes the fact that we cannot explain Ezekiel without remembering that he used a religious phraseology, and appealed to a religious conscience already existing. He constantly appealed to a law already known in codified and written form (Ezekiel 18:59), a law which was accepted by the people as their religious constitution and legitimate court of appeal. Ezekiel’s idea of a just man was one who acted according to the written law. He even uses the very word for law which is used in the Jewish law book (Ezekiel 20:11; Deuteronomy 12); which law, he says, they had from the beginning. Criticism has changed front to a marked extent in the few years since W. Robertson Smith could write: “In every point Ezekiel’s Torah prepares the way for the Levitical law.… Ezekiel makes no appeal to a previous law of ritual; like Jeremiah, he knew of no such written law;” and Wellhausen could declare that Amos (786-741 B.C.) was the first Hebrew author, and without literary predecessors.
The point upon which the new criticism has been most certain for many years, regarding it, indeed, as the starting point of every argument, has been the distinction which, as was claimed, the prophet Ezekiel made for the first time in history, between the priests and Levites. Kittel (Geschichte der Hebraer, 1888) quotes Kuenen as saying that “anyone who does not see that Ezekiel regards the degradation of the Levites (Ezekiel 44:6-16) as something entirely new, and previously unknown, is more to be pitied than contradicted.” Yet Kittel himself and many critical scholars since have continued to show extreme doubtfulness of this fundamental conclusion of the new school, that up to the time of Ezekiel, according to Hebrew law, every Levite was a priest, and that it was Ezekiel who first limited to the house of Zadok the priestly functions. Even Dr. Driver, while he accepts as certain the contention that in primitive times every member of the tribe of Levi “enjoyed the right of exercising priestly offices,” sees that “there is nothing in this incompatible with the pre-eminence of a particular family — that of Aaron (Deuteronomy 10:6) — which in the line of Zadok held the chief rank in the central sanctuary” (Int., p. 146). Dr. Driver attempts to prove, however, from the fact that certain terms are used in Deuteronomy to describe the service of the Levites, which very terms are also used to describe the priests’ services, that therefore no distinction was recognized between priests and Levites. But these references by no means prove that every Levite was a priest and exercised the functions of the priesthood. No one doubts that every priest was a Levite, and that therefore certain functions, such as those referred to by Dr. Driver, were common to both of these orders of the clergy. Every Levite as well as every priest “ministered” and “stood before Jehovah” and “stood before the congregation” (see Driver’s list, Int., p. 77, N. 2); but certain specific priestly duties, such as giving the lot and doing service in the offering tent, are never ascribed to the Levites as a tribe. Deuteronomy itself — which is now acknowledged by all writers to be earlier than Ezekiel, and by some of the most recent critics (such as Westphal, Le Deuteronomy, 1891; A. von Hoonacker, Le Museon, 1892, 1893; Klostermann, Der Pent., 1893; Konig, Einleitung, 1893; and A. Harper, Deuteronomy, 1895) to contain the very ancient Hebrew legislation — makes some distinction between priests and Levites (for example, Ezekiel 18:1, 3, 6; 27:9, 14), while other biblical books make this distinction very sharply (Joshua 21:4; 1 Samuel 6:15; 2 Samuel 15:24; 1 Kings 8:4; Ezra 1:5, 62; 2:36, 40; 3:8, 10; 6:20; Nehemiah 7:39, 43; 12:1-8; 1 Chronicles 9:2, etc.), representing the pre-eminence of the Aaronites to extend back even to the Mosaic era. It is suggestive that the general term, the use of which some have supposed to indicate in Deuteronomy a lack of knowledge of any difference in rank between the priest and the Levite, is also used in Chronicles, where this distinction is clearly recognized (2 Chronicles 5:5). It is not strange if for various reasons certain Bible books fail to make the technical distinctions which were always recognized in greater or less degree between priests and Levites. Deuteronomy seems to have been the “people’s book,” in which ecclesiastical distinctions were not made prominent and the Levites and priests were generally classed together, without reference to rank, as men dedicated to holy service. So the Chronicles fuse together Levites, singers, and doorkeepers, and while the distinction between the priests and Levites is not obliterated it is not emphasized. The historic books rarely allude to the differences of rank among the clergy, and yet these differences are definitely recognized (1 Samuel 6:15; 2 Samuel 15:24; 1 Kings 8:4). There can be no doubt, if the Hebrew ecclesiasticism followed the same course as that of all other nations, that it would become with time more complex, and that the separation between the people and the priesthood and between the different orders of the clergy would become more plainly marked. The technical meaning of a term such as “priest” and “Levite” might change in the course of time, and the duties of each might change as the religious ceremonial became more elaborate.
Dr. Hilprecht has just pointed out that in old Babylonian the term patesi (priest) had such a broad meaning that it could be applied to the civil as well as the religious ruler (Recent Research, 1896). Dr. Lansing long ago showed that originally this was also true of the Hebrew kohen; e.g., 2 Samuel 8:17 (Expositor, vol. viii). The recently discovered Carthage inscription proves the same to be true of the holats, or priests of Baal. Baudissin (Die Geschichte Alt Testament Priesterthums, 1889) calls attention to the use of this word priest, not only in Hebrew, but in Arabic and Phoenician, and draws the conclusion that it originally meant “standing before Jehovah,” while the term Levite meant “followed,” or “ministered.” As the ritual became more complex it was only natural that the title of priest should become more honorable and the separation between priest and Levite more distinct.
It is perfectly in accordance with a natural order of development to find in early Hebrew history civil rulers such as Joshua, Gideon, and Samuel exercising ecclesiastical functions, and to find certain Levites, though not of the house of Aaron, taking upon them priestly offices. Those were days when the strict enforcement of law, either civil or religious, seems to have been the exception rather than the rule. After the building of Solomon’s temple, and the centralization of an elaborate worship at Jerusalem, a stronger attempt was made to enforce ecclesiastical discipline, subject, however, to the bias of the reigning prince, with the natural result of alienating to a considerable extent the priesthood of the rural sanctuaries from the worship of Jehovah. It was these rebellious and apostate priests, the “Levites that went astray,” whom Ezekiel relegated to the subordinate offices of the ministry. (See notes Ezekiel 6:3; 44:9-16.) He did not degrade the entire body of Levites — this would indeed have been, as the new school itself calls it, “an ignoble procedure” (Kuenen) and “very unjust” (Max Kamrath) — but he exercised discipline upon insubordinates. That there is a marked difference in the manner of reference to the priests and Levites in different biblical books cannot be doubted, but there is no necessary contradiction. The standpoint of the author, the aim of the book, and the era in which it was written might largely account for this. It could not be expected, for example, that technical phraseology would ordinarily be employed in a book written for popular and practical religious instruction, such as Deuteronomy, while such language would seem perfectly natural in a book like Leviticus. Just as the bishops, priests, and deacons of the English Church are continually spoken of, even by those perfectly acquainted with these distinctions, as “the clergy,” so in Deuteronomy the priests and Levites are spoken of under one general designation.
In Ezekiel, a book written by a priest, these distinctions are naturally not made as frequently as in the Levitical law book, but more frequently than in Deuteronomy. The fact which Dr. Kuenen has himself acknowledged, that the system of worship seen in Ezekiel — the distribution of priestly functions, enumeration of sacrifices, treatment of feasts, etc. — is more complex than that of the Levitical law, is an almost conclusive argument that Ezekiel’s legislation did not precede, but followed, that simpler and less developed code. It is to be noticed, also, that, even when the phrases of Ezekiel and the Levitical law are most closely paralleled, Ezekiel exhibits a greater fullness of expression, which indicates that he has amplified the holy code. (See Patton, Presbyterian and Reformed Review, January, 1896.)
Only one other point need be raised here. If the Levitical law preceded Ezekiel as a well-known system of legislation, why did he differ from it in so many particulars? (40-48.) Ezekiel’s temple, altar, feasts, sacrifices, etc., differ from the institutions of Leviticus in a marked degree. This is hard to explain. It is difficult for the conservative school to explain why Ezekiel should differ from Moses, and it is almost equally difficult for the new school to explain why the Levitical legislation should differ so widely and unnecessarily from the Ezekiel legislation, upon which, according to this view, it was based. It has been quite generally admitted by conservative writers that Ezekiel intended to change the old legislation, and some, as Delitzsch, have suggested that the reason why Ezekiel’s prophecy of a new ritual was not fulfilled was because the conditions of the prophecy were not fulfilled (Ezekiel 43:9, 10). But to the present writer it seems clear that Ezekiel never intended that his vision should be taken as a “politico-ecclesiastical program.” His miraculous river, his healing trees, his impossible dimensions, all lead us into the region of symbol. It is wrong to say that he did not reaffirm the Levitical institutions because he was not acquainted with them, for he does not mention the high priest, nor the day of atonement, nor the feast of Pentecost, nor the Sabbatic year of rest, and yet these were undoubtedly — according to the new criticism — parts of the oldest Hebrew legislation. Ezekiel seems to have had no intention of repeating what the people already knew. Rather, this St. John of the Old Testament symbolized the old legislation and set forth its meaning with vivid strokes. Just as in his description of the cherubim he differed both from the ancient Hebrew and the Babylonian pictures, and thus drew special attention to the symbolic lessons taught, so he here differs from the old forms in his description of the Hebrew worship, and for a similar reason. (See notes chaps. 1, 10, and 40.)
VII. The Exiled Jews in Babylon.
The startling discovery of Dr. Hilprecht at Nippur — which lies only a few hours southeast of Babylon, quite near where the traditional grave of Ezekiel is still shown at Kepel — of a “Jewish quarter,” with its narrow streets, and low, poorly built houses (compare Ezekiel 12:17), put side by side with Professor Petrie’s discovery at Tel Nebesheh, in Egypt, of various signs indicating that in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. the Jews were living in an isolated district in that city, throws a picturesque light on the condition of the so-called “captives;” the fellow-countrymen and fellow-exiles of Ezekiel. It is now made certain that Tel-abib (Ezekiel 3:15) was situated on the kabaru (the Chebar, Ezekiel 1:3), a large navigable canal not far from Nippur, and it is altogether certain that there was close communication between the colony in Nippur and that with which Ezekiel was connected at Tel-abib; for the news even from Jerusalem, three or four months distant, came to the prophet regularly.
It is seen by these new discoveries that even then the Jews were “children of the Ghetto,” and no doubt in the White-chapel and Petticoat Lanes of the Jewish quarter in Babylon and Nippur and Tel-abib they maintained their national prejudices and customs as they ever since have done. This was certainly true of those whose children of the next generation went back to rebuild the holy city. They carried back with them a love for the old traditions, the old customs, the old faiths, which had only been intensified by their absence from the temple. They scorned and ridiculed the idolatry by which they were surrounded.
A very high authority has ventured the statement that “the Chaldeans exercised no influence whatever on the Old Testament religion” (Schultz, Old Test. Rel., 2:330). But such a statement must not be misunderstood. While it is true that “Babylon in the sixth century B.C. was not capable of giving lessons of purified theology” (Renan, Hist., 3:367), yet the form and expression of the Hebrews’ faith were modified. No one can live for a generation in a foreign land without being affected by his environment. Of this Ezekiel himself is a striking proof. His illustrations and figures of speech are often plainly Babylonian. He had lived in Babylon during half his life. He was probably familiar with its libraries (Kautzsch, Toy, Muller), he was certainly acquainted with its complex symbolic figures, with its methods of divination, and with everything which such a good student of the dress and habits and peculiarities of foreign nations would notice. Kuenen has called attention to the fact that Ezekiel’s language was affected by his long residence in Chaldea, and that he does not write his native Hebrew as easily as other prophets (Onderzoek), while another scholar, in an exhaustive treatise, has proved that Ezekiel and Daniel and other Bible writers have used illustrative material even from the myths of Babylon (Gunkel), and still another has declared that Ezekiel’s poetry closely resembles, even in rhythm and meter, that of his contemporaries in Babylonia, and traces in detail the similarity of phraseology (Muller, Die Propheten in ihren ursprung-lichen Form, 1896, pp. 56-58). These are novel opinions, but recent discoveries prove that centuries before Ezekiel’s day the cuneiform literature had taken a firm foothold even in Palestine itself. It may be calmly and positively affirmed, on the highest authority, that in Ezekiel’s day the literature of western Asia had the same influence on those times as the European has upon us to-day (ibid., p. 56). It has been suggested that perhaps the reason Ezekiel does not attack the worship) of Bel and Nebo and Marduk, as other prophets do (e.g., Jeremiah xxv), and as he himself does the worship of the gods of Canaan and Egypt, was because of local influences. He would not stir up servant against master and master against servant. (See Toy, Society Biblical Literature and Exegesis, December, 1881.) The Bible itself is a constant protest against the superstition that the Jewish people were shielded by the fourfold wings of protecting angels from the laws of human nature and the touch of surrounding nations. It was not Jehovah’s purpose to make a monk of Beni-Israel, but a missionary. Phoenician artisans were imported to build the temple, an Ammonite guard assisted in the temple ritual, the greatest king of Israel was descended from a Hittite ancestry, and Babylon was the schoolmaster employed by Providence to teach the Jews the power of the one God in any land and to show them that there could be a vital, personal relationship with Jehovah apart from the temple sacrifices, and especially to bring the all-conquering monotheism in close touch with the heathen idolatry. The pious “remnant” learned their lesson well. That many of the exiles apostatized, however, there is no doubt, even apart from the testimony of Josephus. Dr. Hilprecht’s discovery of a Jewish colony in Babylon a century or more after Ezra’s day would alone be sufficient proof, but it is also shown by other archaeological finds that numbers of men with Hebrew names were doing business in the leading cities of Babylon long after the return to Jerusalem of the “pure.” Hundreds of contracts and sales in which these men appear as principals or witnesses have been dug up. These business transactions can be traced back to the very years in which Ezekiel was penning his prophecy. Indeed the leading banking firm in Babylon from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign to that of Darius Hystaspes bears a name strikingly Jewish. These “captives” in Babylon were not slaves. While they were exported from their native land, according to the usual policy of the Babylonian government to take away from them all idea of insurrection, they were given most, if not all, of the privileges of native citizenship in the new home to which they were removed. They had houses of their own (Ezekiel 8:1), could retain their manservants and maids, keep up their old titles and honors, and hold high offices in the state (Nehemiah 2:1; 7:5, 67; Daniel 2:48; 6:3; Ezra 1:8). A cuneiform tablet found in 1889 even indicates that they may have had especial privileges, such as freedom from tribute and compulsory service. It seems quite probable that the Jews first commenced their career as a commercial people during their captivity. Previous to their exile they were almost exclusively agriculturists and cattle men. This was the national ideal (Isaiah 66; Zechariah 3:10). They were not born merchants and bankers. The pressure of events advised them of the necessity of putting everything into cash at short notice. From the time of the Babylonian captivity down to the present century that has been true (Isidore Loeb, Revue Etudes Juives, January-June, 1894). The strange kindness of Cyrus to this people suggests the possibility that the Rothschilds of Babylon may have influenced legislation in those times somewhat as their successors have so often done. It is certain that this very thing did happen in Egypt, into which Jeremiah and his friends fled at this very period (Jeremiah 43), and where shortly after the Jews are seen engaged in large financial enterprises, administering the customs and having surveillance of all the navigation of the Nile (Mahaffy, Empire of the Ptolemies, 1895, pp. 86, 217). It is not strange under these circumstances that many exiles, encouraged by their financial prosperity, refused to return to the desolate and now hostile land which their fathers had left a generation before (Ezra 4, 5; Nehemiah 4-6). The Jews have always easily become citizens of the country where they have resided. The Prussian Diet, the German Reichstag, and the French Chamber have all complimented their patriotism.
The prophets themselves had encouraged those carried into Babylon to build houses and plant gardens and pray to the Lord for the peace of the city into which they were carried captive (Jeremiah 29:7). No doubt at first they were homesick. Born among the mountains, their eyes were weary of the sand plains. But, perhaps honestly believing that in the destruction of Jerusalem the God of Israel had been conquered by the gods of Babylon, many Israelites gave up their ancestral faith when the possibilities of the temple worship were removed, and soon became Babylonians in all essentials of life and spirit. Their fellow-countrymen who still believed in Jehovah as the all-powerful Father, and who still hoped for deliverance from exile, seemed to them like dreamers intoxicated with deceptive visions. They doubtless, took Babylonian names,* and married Babylonian wives, and, certainly, when venturing upon some new speculation, offered sacrifices and libations to the Babylonian deities of fortune and good luck (Isaiah 65:11), and when at last the unexpected edict was issued, authorizing their return to their native land, they felt no ardent desire to take advantage of it. At the best, Jerusalem had been a small, poor town compared with the magnificent cities of their adopted land, and it was now lying in ruins and there was no possibility of business success or literary advantage, or perhaps even of social distinctions such as they now enjoyed.
[* This was done even by the loyal princes of Judah who returned, for Hoonacker has proved that Sheshbazzar (Ezra 1:8) is a genuine Babylonian name (Wellhausen, Israelitische Geschichte, 1894, N. p. 120).] But a holy remnant of the people through all their calamities held their trust in Jehovah. The very stones and dust of Mount Zion remained precious in their sight. Their food tasted like ashes, and their drink was salt with tears, and they were reduced almost to skeletons (Psalm 102). The ancestors of Mendelssohn and Mozart must sing, but they could not sing one of the old happy temple songs in a strange land (Psalm 137). Their attempts to sing were pitiful: —
My heart is smitten, and withered like grass;
So that I forget to eat my bread.
I am like a pelican of the wilderness:
I am like an owl of the desert (Psalm 102).
It must not be forgotten that all around the Israelites were representations of other nationalities who could sympathize with their grief. There has been digged up in Babylon a cuneiform text containing a lamentation written by a fellow-captive brought from the land of Ur, shortly before Ezekiel and his friends were transported: —
He raises lamentation to heaven day and night:
Day and night he raises, he raises his voice,
Crying day and night, he is not comforted.
— Babylonian and Oriental Record, vol. 2.
The cry of the pious Hebrews during this terrible epoch, and especially after the destruction of the temple (see Ezekiel 37:11), is still voiced every year on the day of atonement: —
Work for me, I beseech thee, marvels now,
O Lord of hosts! in mercy lull our fears;
Answer with potent signs; and be not thou
Silent unto my tears.
Beauty’s perfection lieth fallen low,
Broken and waste which stood in majesty,
The glory passed away and fled, for woe!
The One went out from me. — Baruch ben Samuel.
But the time came when the wails were turned to hosannas and paeans of triumph; for the great news reached the ears of the exiles that Cyrus had put the royal seal to an edict permitting every Jew to go back to his home, and commanding that the glorious temple should be rebuilt.* It was almost too good to be believed. They were bewildered with joy.
[* With such a distinguished historical critic and archaeologist as Ed. Meyer defending not only the general truthfulness of the narrative in Ezra and Nehemiah, but their minute correspondence to what ought to be expected in official documents of that period from which they claim to proceed, it is not necessary to discuss here the doubts of Kosters, etc.]
When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion,
We were like unto them that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
And our tongue with singing (Psalm 126).
It was only by “a miracle of faith and hope unparalleled in history” (Renan) that those “sublime madmen,” the prophets, defying all military and diplomatic decisions, brought about the return of the Jews from the banks of the Euphrates and the river Kebar and the re-establishment of Jehovah’s worship at Jerusalem. The power of Jehovah and the truth of prophecy were demonstrated in a way that was never forgotten.
All the wealth carried by that little caravan of less than five thousand souls was not given to them by Mithredath, the king’s treasurer (Ezra 1:8), nor by sympathizing Israelites who remained in Babylon, preferring business prosperity to a dangerous pilgrimage to the ruins of a fallen temple. All the wealth of hope and faith with which Judaism and Christianity have enriched the world lay hidden among their treasures. Perhaps the Jews were not the only nation to whom the Persian king gave the privilege of returning to their home and reinstating the old forms of worship. A cylinder of Cyrus which came from Babylon, now in the British Museum, says that Marduk “granted the return of all lands.” It seems to have been the Persian policy to keep the allegiance of their conquered subjects, not by transplanting them, as did the Assyrians and Babylonians, but by showing them and their gods special favors; thus Cyrus worshiped the gods of Egypt and Darius brought back certain Elamite captives and reorganized the old worship. (See Ed. Meyer, Die Entstehung des Judenthums, 1896, p. 70.)
But, in any case, the Jews are the only nation carried into Babylonia that the world has heard from since. Twenty nations peopled the streets of those great cities on the Euphrates, but to only one did the edict of Cyrus bring a new life. Babylon was the grave where twenty religions were buried without hope of a resurrection; but one religion came forth from that stinking grave refreshed and strong like some Lazarus awakened from his sleep by a divine voice. As had been prophesied, the captivity brought to them not death but a new birth (37). Those who returned to the Holy Land were more truly “Hebrews” than ever their forefathers had been. Instead of denationalizing them, the captivity had more conspicuously separated them unto Jehovah as a peculiar people. Being scattered among the nations they were drawn closer to each other. They came out from their half century of enforced quietude and meditation with a new faith in the one Jehovah and in prophecy; with a greater devotion to the Sabbath, and all other institutions which differentiated them from the surrounding peoples; and with a new missionary spirit such as their fathers had never known. Wellhausen has profoundly said, “The exile marks the transition from a national religion to world religion.”
Ezekiel was the greatest human force in accomplishing this astonishing reformation and transformation. He was the “bridge” between the old Israel and the new. “We must honor and understand Ezekiel if we wish to understand the history of Israel” (Max Kamrath).
VIII. The Language of Symbolism.
The most ancient speech of man was undoubtedly a picture language. It is now known that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, even those which stand for the deepest and most abstract conceptions, were originally pictures of articles of apparel, or other commonplace objects. When illuminated and interpreted by the oriental imagination the girdle could become the symbol of life; the uas stick the symbol of power; a row of temple columns the symbol of stability; the common Egyptian beetle the symbol of divine creation, while wings and horns and coiling snakes all spoke a lofty spiritual language. Indeed, as Detzel has said (Christliche Ikonographie, 1894), “symbolism is as old as the world itself and is founded on the revelation of God in the nature of man. Man can only think of God and the highest spiritual realities in pictures.” Even our stiff Western vocabularies and modern scientific literature would be reduced to small dimensions if all symbolism and figures of speech were eliminated, while the teaching of the early Christian fathers and those of the Middle Ages would have to be almost wholly obliterated. The Christian art of the past centuries has well been described as a “picture book, a mirror of salvation, a biblical hieroglyphic papyrus” (Detzel).
In every age deeply spiritual or poetic natures have thus expressed themselves. Birds and animals, rivers and seas, appear in Dante and Goethe, in Carlyle and Tennyson, in this symbolic sense. The beasts and reptiles on the earth and the stars and planets in the sky all spoke to the ancients of mysterious spiritual truths. So every vessel and every color in the temple ritual had a symbolic meaning. This was true of the Egyptians and Babylonians, and in fact of every religious ritual of the times in which Ezekiel and Daniel lived. That the Hebrews, even from their earliest beginnings as a nation, had emphasized this method of teaching visibly the deep truths of their religion no one doubts. The colors used in the construction of the tabernacle and temple, and the relation of the various parts to each other, together with every detail of the sacrifices, have always been quite correctly understood as representing the “shadows,” or feeble reflections of unseen realities. The prophets are all symbolists, but none of them use this method of teaching so constantly and effectively as Daniel and Ezekiel. It is upon these that the later apocalyptics, such as Baruch and Enoch — and especially our canonical book of Revelation — are based. The Jewish Kabbala, or book of secret symbols, was founded largely upon these books with added Babylonian features. This does not mean that the Kabbalistic method was originated by these prophets. There are one or two cases in which Jeremiah seems to use it (see notes, Cambridge Bible, on Jeremiah 25:26), and there is absolute proof of its customary use in Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s age, by the Egyptian and Babylonian scribes, in their comments upon their sacred texts; but Ezekiel, perhaps being influenced here as elsewhere by Babylonian surroundings (see Introduction, “III. Style of Ezekiel”), gave a tremendous initial influence to the use of secret names and numerical values in the presentation of spiritual lessons. Nor was any object too commonplace for him to use as a symbol. The fox, the rusty pot, the broken reed by the riverside are seized upon. Every chapter and almost every paragraph is a series of pictures of common objects set in relation to each other that they may symbolize spiritual truths, while in his loftier visions the highest powers of life, and even the heathen gods themselves, are used to picture the powers of Jehovah. (See notes on “cherubim,” chaps. i, 10.)
Some have thought that Ezekiel’s last nine chapters contain simply dry mathematical formulae and are barren of imagination; but to say this would seem almost equivalent to detaching them from the book and assigning them to a separate writer. The first thirty-nine chapters are filled with an overflowing abundance of symbolic pictures. To interpret the last nine chapters — the close and crown of the prophecy — as literal architectural details, without any hidden symbolic meaning, would be to disown their authorship by the same hand which wrote the rest of the book. Ezekiel was both a priest and a mystic, and could not have failed to know that Solomon’s temple, as well as the tabernacle, was a building in which not only the ground plan, but the numbers, measurements, and form, expressed religious lessons. This was true of all ancient sanctuaries. As Bahr proved of the Hebrew tabernacle, so Brugsch has proved of the Egyptian, and Maspero of the Babylonian temples, that they were “miniature reproductions of the arrangement of the universe,” and aimed to teach the people visibly — as did also the later “mysteries” — of the future life and how to enter it in safety. These buildings gave the same teachings through the eye which the Book of the Dead (literally, “Coming out by Day”) and the Descent of Ishtar into Hades gave through the ear. The Labyrinth, with its twelve vaulted halls and three thousand (3x10x100) apartments, one half below and one half above ground, no doubt served a like purpose — as was recognized by the early Christians, who decorated the floors of their basilicas with these labyrinths, considering them symbols of the temple in Jerusalem and therefore of the heavenly Jerusalem (Oneil, Night of the Gods, 2:675).
Numbers were used symbolically from very ancient times. In a papyrus at Turin we find the numbers dedicated to the Egyptian deities, as follows: 1, Ra; 2, Shu; 4, Seb; 5, Nut; 6, Osiris; 7, Isis; 8, Set; 10, Horus; 25, Horus the Bull, etc. Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that such numbers are met with as early as 1500 B.C., or earlier, but that there is a great want of agreement between them; which would be exactly what we might expect if the numbers represented some spiritual quality and therefore might be applied to gods having the same nature. The Babylonian gods also were represented by numbers: 10, Nebo; 12, Nergal; 15, Ishtar; 25, Merodach; 30, Sin; 20, Shamash; 50, Bel; 60, Anu (Maspero, Dawn of History, p. 673; compare Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia, p. 465). Muss Arnoldt quotes from an ancient text an attempted explanation of why Bel took for himself the number 50: “With the name 50 (Xansa) the great god proclaimed his 50 names, his all-surpassing positions” (Dictionary of Assyrian Language, part vi). It is quite in accordance with this view to find that the number 10, for example, was associated with many gods of the Babylonian pantheon — gods who at other times, when other phases of their character were being thought of, were identified with other numbers. (See Jastrow, ibid., p. 466, note.) An ancient text from Edfu explains every dimension of the temple there as expressing some mysterious meaning. Why is the length of this chamber twenty-five ells? “Because one utters words.” Why is this room fifty ells long? “Because one prays.” These explanations are based on the numerical value of the letters used in writing these numbers (Brugsch, Steininschrift und Bibelwort). There may be no evidence that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet had a numerical meaning in Ezekiel’s day (Brown, Hebrew and English Lexicon), but there is abundant proof that many numbers had with the Hebrews, as with other ancient peoples, a symbolic meaning. This has long been recognized with such numbers as 3 and 7, which in all these nations are peculiarly sacred and divine; but it seems equally true of other numbers, such as 4, 10, 50, etc. Four seems to be the cosmic number, which takes in every point of the compass and expresses the whole. So there are four living creatures, and four world powers, etc. So in Egypt the farthest limits of the earth were “the four supports of heaven” and of Ramses II it was said, “He has conquered even unto the four pillars of the earth.” The sacred temples in almost every land are square, quadrangular, or octagonal (the double four). So 12, the triple four, is everywhere a heavenly number. The number 10 is found to be a fundamental symbolic number among all nations acquainted with the decimal system. In the Scriptures it seems to be used to express perfection or completion. The ten commandments are all that are needed; the ten plagues symbolize the full outpouring of God’s wrath; not to enter the congregation to the tenth generation means never to enter (Deuteronomy 23:3; Nehemiah 13:1); the tribulation for ten days is woe to the end; the ten horns denote the fullness of power of the universal world kingdom. In close connection with this is the number 50 and its multiples. The fiftieth year was the year of emancipation and jubilee among the Hebrews, and 50 seems to be the base of many of Ezekiel’s calculations, as 5 was the base number of the tabernacle. But it must be acknowledged that the definite symbolic meaning of the numbers used by Ezekiel in his new temple, as of those used in the old temple, are matters of inference with us and cannot be pressed too far. What we may be sure of is that these numbers as used by Ezekiel did have, to those who listened to him, a well-known spiritual significance. This is as certain as that the one thousand years of Revelation has a definite symbolic meaning. As Dr. Milligan well says, “We are not to imagine that the numbers, in the allegorical or spiritual use made of them by the Jews, might be tossed about at their pleasure or shuffled like a pack of cards. They were a language; and the bond between them and the ideas that are involved was quite as close as it is between the words of ordinary speech and the speaker’s thought” (Book of Revelation, p. 345). And it should also be remembered that, at the very time when Ezekiel wrote, the mystery of numbers was engaging the attention of the learned world as never before. The Pythagorian philosophy, which even in Greece dates back to Thales (640 B.C.), and which the Greeks themselves recognized as a foreign export, was coming into flower — a philosophy which not only explained all natural phenomena in mathematical formulae, fire being composed of pyramids, air of octahedrons, the earth of cubes, and the cosmos being thought of as a dodecahedron; but the loftiest ethical and spiritual conceptions were expressed in the same way. In this system the numbers 4 and 10 occupied the most prominent place.
To us the Pythagorian symbols seem often inexplicable or absurd; but to those who understood better their secret meaning they expressed the profoundest and deepest thought. It ought not therefore to be doubted that much of the stiff literality of Ezekiel’s architectural descriptions would be illuminated with a new meaning if we understood more perfectly the numerical symbolism common in his day. Ezekiel was a draughtsman (iv, 1), and he used his skill in this direction to express in a language well known to his contemporaries certain spiritual conceptions. No one doubts that the dimensions of the Babylonian temples contained a symbolic teaching, and the figures which are given of the temple of Be1 are curiously similar to those of Ezekiel’s temple. Its foundation platform was a square three ku in length and three ku in breadth. Its four walls faced the cardinal points, and there were four outer gates. There were twelve cubits in the gar, and the inner building was ten gar long by ten wide. The great ziggaret, or heavenly tower, was composed of seven stages, each probably painted a symbolic color, and, no doubt, making visible by its dimensions a symbolic revelation. The first platform was a square 15 by 15 gar; the second, 13 by 13; the third, 10 by 10; the fourth, 8½ by 8½; the fifth, 7 by 7; the sixth, 5½ by 5½; the seventh, 4 by 4½; the entire height being 15 gar; exactly equal to the breadth of the base (Appendix to Sayce’s Hibbert Lectures; compare Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia, p. 619, etc.). It is evident from this that Ezekiel’s temple would have been recognized, even by his Babylonian neighbors as containing a secret religious teaching and the symbolic meaning of many of his numbers would have been understood by them.
This language has always been attractive to mystics. A Jewish poet who lived about 950 A.D., in the midst of his sobs because of the downfall of his people, breaks forth: —
Lo, of the one am I.
Lo, of the six hundred thousand and of twelve.
Yea, behold me of the seventy-one.
— Jewish Quarterly Review, January, 1897.
And even in our generation Rosetti has sung of his lost love: — She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
On ancient symbolism see especially John Oneil, Night of the Gods, 1893-97; Brugsch, Steininschrift und Bibelwort, Sacred Books of the East, 4 and 31; Malcom White, Symbolic Numbers of Scripture; and on modern symbolic teaching in China, Asiatic Quarterly Review, January, 1895. Analysis of the Book.
Introduction. — Ezekiel’s Account of His Call to the Prophetic Office. Chaps. 1-3.
THE VISION OF JEHOVAH AND HIS CHARIOT. APPENDIX ON THE MEANING OF SYMBOLISM USED EZEKIEL RECEIVES HIS COMMISSION FROM JEHOVAH Ezekiel 2:1-8
IN SYMBOL AND BY DIRECT INSTRUCTION THE PREACHER IS TAUGHT THAT HE MUST NOT SPEAK HIS OWN WORDS Ezekiel 2:9-3:11 THE PREACHER’S BITTERNESS OF SPIRIT, AND HIS UTTER DISCOMFITURE IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS FIRST CONGREGATION 12-15
EZEKIEL IS RECOMMISSIONED WITH INCREASED SOLEMNITY 16-21 THE SECOND VISION OF THE “GLORY OF THE LORD” 22-27
Book I. — Symbols and Oracles Concerning the Wickedness and Doom of the Chosen People and the Holy City. Chaps. 4-14. SIEGE OF JERUSALEM SYMBOLIZED BY THE PICTURED TILE Ezekiel 4:1-8 THE PROPHET’S FOOD SYMBOLIZING THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE IN EXILE 9-17
SCATTERING AND DESTRUCTION OF THE NATION SYMBOLIZED BY THE TREATMENT OF THE PROPHET’S HAIR Ezekiel 5
PROPHECY OF ISRAEL’S CAPTIVITY AND THE LAND’S UTTER DESOLATION BECAUSE OF IDOLATRY 6, 7
THE THIRD “VISION OF GOD” (IN JERUSALEM) Ezekiel 8:1-4 EZEKIEL SEES IN VISION THE WICKEDNESS OF THE CITY, AND HEARS THE SENTENCE OF JEHOVAH UPON IT 5-18
THE PROPHET SEES IN VISION THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM WHO HAVE NOT THE SAVING T UPON THEIR FOREHEADS Ezekiel 9
THE FOURTH “VISION OF GOD” Ezekiel 10
THE POLITICAL LEADERS OF THE PEOPLE GIVE WICKED COUNSEL, AND ARE INVOLVED IN THE CITY’S RUIN Ezekiel 11:1-21
JEHOVAH LEAVES JERUSALEM 22, 23
COMING OUT OF HIS TRANCE, EZEKIEL DESCRIBES HIS VISION TO HIS FELLOW-CAPTIVES 24, 25
SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CAPTIVITY WHICH IS TO COME SPEEDILY UPON THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM Ezekiel 12
REPROOF OF THE LYING PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES IN JERUSALEM WHO DECEIVE THE PEOPLE WITH DELUSIVE HOPES Ezekiel 13
THE ELDERS OF ISRAEL (IN BABYLONIA), WHO ARE IN THEIR HEARTS IDOL WORSHIPERS, INQUIRE IN VAIN OF JEHOVAH CONCERNING THE FUTURE Ezekiel 14:1-5
STATEMENT OF THE DIVINE LAW WHICH CONTROLS EVEN FALSE PROPHECY 6-11
THE CERTAINTY OF PUNISHMENT PROPHESIED AND A STATEMENT OF THE DIVINE LAW GOVERNING IT 12-21
THE JUSTICE AND BENEFICENCE OF THE PUNISHMENT PROVED BY ITS EFFECTS 22, 23
UNFAVORABLE COMPARISON OF THE “VINE TREE” (JERUSALEM) WITH OTHER TREES Ezekiel 15
JERUSALEM’S UNFAITHFULNESS AND PUNISHMENT SET FORTH UNDER THE FIGURE OF THE ADOPTED CHILD-WIFE Ezekiel 16:1-43 THE LOATHSOMENESS OF JERUSALEM, THE SPIRITUAL SISTER OF SODOM AND SAMARIA, DESCRIBED 44-59
NEVERTHELESS, THE “EVERLASTING COVENANT” OF JEHOVAH STANDETH SURE 60-63
THE RIDDLE OF THE GREAT EAGLE Ezekiel 17
THE LAW OF DIVINE RETRIBUTION AND MORAL FREEDOM Ezekiel 18 DIRGE OVER THE THREE PRINCES OF JUDAH (JEHOAHAZ, JEHOIACHIN, AND ZEDEKIAH) Ezekiel 19
THE ELDERS OF ISRAEL AGAIN INQUIRE IN VAIN OF JEHOVAH. (COMPARE Ezekiel 14:1-5) 20:1-4
THE PROPHET RECITES BEFORE THE ELDERS THE IDOLATROUS HISTORY OF THEIR FATHERS 5-29
THE SONS HAVE FOLLOWED THE EXAMPLE OF THEIR FATHERS; YET JEHOVAH STILL RULES, AND THE FUTURE, AS THE PAST, SHALL DISPLAY HIS POWER AND GOODNESS 30-44
BY VIVID SYMBOL AND WITH STRONG CRIES EZEKIEL PROPHESIES THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM WITH FIRE AND SWORD. (ODE OF THE GLITTERING SWORD) Ezekiel 20:45-49; 21:1-27
THE AMMONITES, REJOICING IN JERUSALEM’S CALAMITY, SHALL
THEMSELVES SUFFER EVEN MORE BITTERLY 28-32
DESCRIPTION OF THE GROSS SINS OF THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM, INCLUDING EVEN THE PROPHETS AND PRIESTS OF JEHOVAH Ezekiel 22 STORY OF THE LEWD SISTERS, AHOLAH AND AHOLIBAH Ezekiel 23 PARABLE OF THE RUSTED POT Ezekiel 24:1-14
THE DEATH OF EZEKIEL’S WIFE AND ITS PROPHETIC LESSONS 15-27 Book II. — Threatenings Concerning the Enemies of God’s People. Chaps. 25-32.
AGAINST AMMON, MOAB, EDOM, AND PHILISTIA Ezekiel 25
AGAINST TYRE AND SIDON Ezekiel 26-28
AGAINST EGYPT Ezekiel 29-32
APPENDIX TO CHAP. 32, “THE BABYLONIAN AND HEBREW UNDERWORLD.” Book III. — The Book of Consolations. Chaps. 33-39.
DUTIES OF A PROPHET TO WARN MEN AND NATIONS OF THEIR SINS Ezekiel 33:1-6
A CHANGE OF HEART CAN AVERT JEHOVAH’S WRATH. THE PRINCIPLES OF GOD’S MORAL GOVERNMENT WHICH ENABLES HIM TO BE JUST AND YET TO SAVE THE PENITENT 7-20
JERUSALEM IS TAKEN, AND THE BABYLONIAN EXILES LISTEN WITH REPENTANT HEARTS TO THE WORDS OF HIM WHOM THEY HAD SCORNED, BUT WHOSE PROPHECIES HAD NOW COME TRUE 21-33
REPROOF OF THE SELFISH SHEPHERDS, WHO FOR GAIN HAVE PROPHESIED SMOOTH THINGS, AND BROUGHT RUIN UPON THE PEOPLE Ezekiel 34:1-19
JEHOVAH IS THE “GOOD SHEPHERD,” AND WILL NOT FORGET HIS SMITTEN AND SCATTERED FLOCK, BUT WILL MAKE WITH REPENTANT ISRAEL A “COVENANT OF PEACE” 20-31
FATE OF EDOM, AND EXALTATION OF ISRAEL OVER THE HEATHEN BECAUSE OF THE NAME OF JEHOVAH Ezekiel 35:1-15; 36:1-23 GOD’S PROMISE TO RESURRECT THE DEAD NATION, AND TO PUT WITHIN IT A NEW SPIRIT, AND GIVE BACK ITS BEAUTIFUL LAND Ezekiel 36:24-38; 37
OVERTHROW OF GOG AND MAGOG, THE DREADFUL HEATHEN POWERS OF THE NORTH Ezekiel 38, 39
Book IV. — The Prophetic Vision of the New Sanctuary, and its Orders in Messianic Time. Chaps. 40-48.
THE TEMPLE DESCRIBED Ezekiel 40-42
RETURN OF JEHOVAH TO HIS NEW TEMPLE, AND ITS CONSECRATION TO HIS SERVICE Ezekiel 43
SERVANTS OF THE SANCTUARY Ezekiel 44; 45:1-8
THE SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS Ezekiel 45:9-25; 46 THE HOLY LAND (THE TEMPLE, SPRING, BOUNDARIES OF THE LAND). PORTIONS OF THE TWELVE TRIBES, CITY AND SUBURBS, DIMENSIONS AND ENTRANCES OF THE CITY. THE CITY’S NEW NAME Ezekiel 47, 48