Ezekiel 34

Amid all that illusion which momentary visitations of seriousness and of sentiment throw around the character of man, let us never lose sight of the test, that “by their fruits ye shall know them.” That you hear and are delighted is not coming up to this test. It is that you hear and do. This is the ground upon which the reality of your religion is discriminated now; and on the day of reckoning, this is the ground upon which your religion will be judged then; and that award is to be passed upon you, which will fix and perpetuate your destiny forever. Chalmers.

The Gospel message leaves no man exactly as it found him. The difference may be very imperceptible, but it will be real. One more, almost invisible, film, over the eyeball; one more thin layer of wax on the ear; one more fold of insensibility round heart and conscience—or else some yielding to the love; some finger put out to take the salvation; some lightening of the pressure of the sickness; some removal of the peril and the danger. The same sun blinds diseased eyes and gladdens sound ones. The same fire melts wax and hardens clay. “This Child is set for the rise and fall of many in Israel.” “To the one He is the savor of life unto life; to the other He is the savor of death unto death.” Which is He, for He is one of them, to you? A. M.

34: 1, 2 AND the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say unto them, even to the shepherds, Thus saith the Lord God: Woe unto the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the sheep? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill the fatlings; but ye feed not the sheep. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with rigour have ye ruled over them. And they were scattered, because there was no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, and were scattered. My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, my sheep were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and there was none that did search or seek after them. Therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As I live, saith the Lord God, surely forasmuch as my sheep became a prey, and my sheep became meat to all the beasts of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my sheep, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my sheep; therefore, ye shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my sheep at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the sheep; neither shall the shepherds feed themselves any more; and I will deliver my sheep from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them. For thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I myself, even I, will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered abroad, so will

I seek out my sheep; and I will deliver them out of all places whither they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. And I will bring them out from the peoples, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them upon the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and upon the mountains of the height of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie down in a good fold, and on fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel. I myself will feed my sheep, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God. I will seek that which was lost, and will bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: and the fat and the strong I will destroy; I will feed them in judgement. And as for you, O my flock, thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle, as well the rams as the he-goats. Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have fed upon the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pasture? and to have drunk of the clear waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet? And as for my sheep, they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet, and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet. Therefore thus saith the Lord God unto them: Behold I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and the lean cattle. Because ye thrust with side and with shoulder, and push all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad; therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle. And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I the LORD will be their God, and my servant David prince among them; I the LORD have spoken it. And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell securely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods. And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in its season; there shall be showers of blessing. And the tree of the field shall yield its fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be secure in their land; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bars of their yoke, and have delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them. And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall the beast of the earth devour them; but they shall dwell securely, and none shall make them afraid. And I will raise up unto them a plantation for renown, and they shall be no more consumed with famine in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more. And they shall know that I the LORD their God am with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord God. And ye my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God.

Chap. 34. The prophet, proceeding on his theme of restoration, has yet to pronounce a judgment, but not now upon the whole nation, but upon unfaithful rulers, whose very punishment will but further the good of those whom they have misguided. He shows what the rulers should have been, what they have been, and what in the coming times they shall be when the True King shall reign in the true kingdom. Hence follows a description of Messiah’s reign. B. C.

In this chapter the Lord’s people appear as His “flock.” The figure of the shepherd and his sheep is maintained throughout. The corrupt priests, false prophets, and wicked princes of Israel and Judah stand here as the shepherds who have long had the care of the Lord’s flock. They are denounced; their wicked and ruinous policy is portrayed; and they receive their doom. The Lord Himself assumes the care of

His flock; will raise up His servant David to be their shepherd and their prince; and so the highest prosperity shall ensue. As to date, it must be assumed that this prophecy follows the period named chap. 33: 21—i.e., follows the arrival of the tidings that the city of Jerusalem is smitten. Probably it was brought out immediately after. Remarkably in both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the strain of prophecy is that of warning and denunciation before the fall of the city, but of consolation and promise after that fall. The reason of this is obvious. Before, the people were vainly self-confident; after, they were desponding. Before, they needed stern rebuke; after, the inspirations of promise and of hope. So God is wont to deal with His people.

1-6. Shepherd life was familiar in all the East. Whole tribes and nations subsisted mainly upon their flocks and herds. No wonder therefore that it appears as a figure to illustrate the spiritual care of the Lord’s people. Jer. 23 : 1-4 gives the outlines of this entire chapter of Ezekiel. The reader will readily recall the frequent allusions to the shepherd and his flock in the discourses of our Lord, especially in John 10. Nothing else in human life could furnish illustrations of this thing at once so simple, so beautiful, and so pertinent. Those men of leading influence in the Jewish State—the priests, the false prophets and the princes—(for all these are included here) had fed themselves only and never the flock. Selfish men, they had sought only their own aggrandizement, and not at all the spiritual good of the people, or the honor of the God of Israel. The case of the flock affords many apposite illustrations of this selfishness. A bad shepherd neglects the feeble, the sick, the maimed and the wandering, and appropriates the fat and well-conditioned for his personal use. So had these vile men utterly neglected the spiritual culture of the people and sought only their own personal self-indulgence. H. C.

4. They did not do their duty to those of the flock that were distempered, did not strengthen them, or heal them, or bind them up. When any of the flock were sick or hurt, worried or wounded, it was all one to them whether they lived or died; they never looked after them. The princes and judges took no care to right those that suffered wrong, or to shelter injured innocency. They took no care of the poor to see them provided for. The priests took no care to instruct the ignorant, to rectify the mistakes of those that were in error, to warn the unruly or to comfort the feeble-minded. The ministers of state took no care to check the growing distempers of the kingdom which threatened the vitals of it. Things were amiss and out of course everywhere, and nothing was done to rectify them. H.

7-12. The two great points made here are: (1) That God is against those vile shepherds and will hold them to a strict accountability; and (2) that He will depose them from their place and assume the service Himself. He will do this work faithfully. He will seek out the wandering and the lost. Be His name praised for this promise! H. C.

12. Humiliating as the fact is, it is, with the great majority of us, only when we are pushed on to that sense of impotence that either reason or faith so wakes up in us that we begin to cry, as we ought to have cried in thankful confidence and devout dependence all along, to our Lord. God’s love is too loving to let us alone.

We would not begin right, or come right, in prosperity and health and youth; we set our best parts against the Providence of Life, and are conquered. We would not grow up Christians in the fold, under the Shepherd’s hands, and hence the Shepherd lets us run on the sharp stones, the barren ledges and thorns of the mountains, till we are quite certain we are lost, before He comes after us; but then He is sure to come. F. D. H.

Frequently spiritual clouds are the result of falls from the narrow path to the darker way of sin. Indulgence of known sins and neglect of known duties grieve the Holy Spirit, and His influence is withdrawn. The pilgrim ceases to regret the lost sunshine. Thus he might remain until death sealed his doom; but the Good Shepherd has said, “I will both gather My flock and search them out from all places where they have been scattered in the dark and cloudy day.” Those who have been once folded in His arms by regeneration to everlasting life can never perish. He seeks out the sleeping pilgrim, and arouses him by some salutary chastisement. Then the backslider is left to prove the error of his wanderings, the sinfulness of his slumber; he finds, by painful experience, that his sins have cast a separating cloud between him and his God. He gropes his way in chilling shadows. But by the upholding influence of the Holy Spirit he is enabled to persevere, until at length—perhaps not till after a tedious and painful probation—his reconciled Father addresses to him the joyful invitation, “I have blotted out as a cloud thine iniquities, and as a thick cloud thy sins; return unto Me, for I have redeemed thee.” How gladsome, then, is the return to the sunshine of joy and blessedness! Moore.

13-16. Scattered now in exile, the first promise is restoration to their land. This is natural. And it was true in its literal sense. The Lord did promise to restore them to their mother-land—and fulfilled it. But He promises here more than He fulfilled then and there in the restoration under Zerubbabel. This will appear more fully when we compare other prophecies of Ezekiel parallel with this—e.g., chap. 36 : 24-38 ; 37 : 15-28. H. C.

13. While every other ancient nation on the face of the earth has been scattered, mingled and lost its nationality among the vast masses of the nations of the earth, there stands one nation, in its unbelief and rebellion, blindness and sin, most accurately fulfilling the words of prophecy, in maintaining its distinct nationality! God, in His wonderful dealings with the children of men, has taken the most perverse people on earth and, during the time of their worst perversity, their most terrible blindness and unbelief, and, without their designing it or knowing it, made them bear testimony to the truth of the words of the prophets, in maintaining their distinct nationality, while all the other ancient nations have mingled in the vast sea of humanity till their nationality is lost. How wonderful are thy works, O thou King of saints! Anon.

17-31. The prophet has no more to say to the shepherds, but he has now a message to deliver to the flock. God had ordered him to speak tenderly to them, and to assure them of the mercy He had in store for them. But here he is ordered to make a difference between some and others of them, to separate between the precious and the vile, and then to give them a promise of the Messiah, by whom this distinction should be effectually made, partly at His first coming, since for judgment He came into this world (John 9 : 39), to fill the hungry with good things, and to send the rich empty away (Luke 1 : 53). But this distinction shall be completely made at His second coming, when He shall, as it is here said, judge between cattle and cattle, as a shepherd divides between the sheep and the goats. H.

17. This is a discrimination between the morally good and the morally bad. The radical distinction between sheep and goats in their temper and in their habits suggests the discrimination as to moral character which the Lord will bring to light in His judgment. Is not this passage the foundation of that remarkable language of our Lord in reference to the final judgment (Matt. 25 : 31-33)?

18,19. Here appears yet another illustration of the spirit and ways of the vile shepherds who are now the he-goats, leaders of the flock, or the fat ones, leading the lean. They not only eat up the good pasture themselves, but trample down all they do not eat, reserving nothing good for the feeble; and they drink of the deep, placid and pure waters, and then foul the rest with their feet—so that they leave for the Lord’s flock no grass but what they have trodden down, and no water save what they have made foul. Was this a small thing? Was it not more than merely mean? Was it not supremely wicked? H. C.

20-31. Jehovah having promised to be a Ruler of His people, the administration of the Divine kingdom is now described as carried on by One King, the representative of David, whose dominion should fulfil all the promises originally made to the man after God’s own heart. David fell short of the obedience required as a condition, and so even his kingdom did not reach the promised limits, much less acquire that solid peace which should have been its chief glory. To understand fully the scope of the Divine promises we must refer, first, to the terms in which under the law they were made to Moses, to David, to Solomon, with the conditions of their fulfilment; next, to the passages in the prophets, in which these promises are reasserted in the very same words with additions and enlargements. The constant repetition of the same phrases shows that the subject is the same, and that the promises in the law were not merely such as should fall to the ground in case of a failure of the conditions, but living promises that should take effect, though not for those who might have attained, but by their own fault did not attain to them. (Compare Paul’s reasoning in Rom. 11.) The prophet thus seems not so much to add to as to explain and develop the original promise; and as the complete fulfilment of the spiritual blessings, which the prophets were guided to proclaim, was manifestly never realized in any temporal prosperity of the Jews, and never could and never can be realized in any earthly kingdom, we recognize throughout the Sacred Volume the one subject of all prophecy—the Righteous King, the Anointed Prince, the Son and the Lord of David. B. C.

23. One shepherd over them, even My servant David. Jesus Christ, the true Shepherd, to whom the title of David is given by the prophets, and attributed by Himself in the Gospel, and who has fulfilled all the duties, after having faithfully described all the characters, of the office. The Scriptures call this Shepherd David, because He was born of David after the flesh, and possessed in reality and eminently all those qualities which the Scriptures give to David under the figure of the Messiah. Calmet.

He shall feed them, and He shall be their shepherd. This prophecy was remarkably fulfilled when Christ, by the preaching of the Gospel, “gathered in one the children of God, that were scattered abroad” (John 11 : 52; Eph. 1 : 10); among whom were many “of the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But it will receive a further completion at the general conversion of the Jews, when the time will come that they shall say, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 23 : 39); and this signal event will usher in or complete the fulness of the Gentiles. (See Rom. 11 : 12, 15, 25, 32.) W. Lowth.