Ezekiel 6

6: 1, 2 AND the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy unto them, and say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God: Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. And your altars shall become desolate, and your sun-images shall be broken: and I will cast down your slain men before your idols. And I will lay the carcasses of the children of Israel before their idols; and I will scatter your bones round about your altars. In all your dwelling places the cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols may be broken and cease, and your sun-images may be hewn down, and your works may be abolished. And the slain shall fall in the midst of you, and ye shall know that I am the LORD. Yet will I leave a remnant, in that ye shall have some that escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries. And they that escape of you shall remember me among the nations whither they shall be carried captives, how that I have been broken with their whorish heart, which hath departed from me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols: and they shall loathe themselves in their own sight for the

10 evils which they have committed in all their abominations. And they shall know that I am the LORD: I have not said in vain that I would do this evil unto them.

11. Thus saith the Lord God: Smite with thine hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Alas! because of all the evil abominations of the house of Israel: for they shall fall by the sword,

12 by the famine, and by the pestilence. He that is far off shall die of the pestilence; and he that is near shall fall by the sword; and he that remaineth and is besieged shall die by the

13 famine: thus will I accomplish my fury upon them. And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when their slain men shall be among their idols round about their altars, upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak,

14 the place where they did offer sweet savour to all their idols. And I will stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land desolate and waste, from the wilderness toward Diblah, throughout all their habitations: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

7:1, 2 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, And thou, son of man, thus saith the Lord God unto the land of Israel, An end: the end is come upon the four corners of the land. Now is the end upon thee, and I will send mine anger upon thee, and will judge thee according to thy ways; and I will bring upon thee all thine abominations. And mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity: but I will bring thy ways upon thee, and thine abominations shall be in the midst of thee: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

5,6. Thus saith the Lord God: An evil, an only evil; behold, it cometh. An end is come, the end is come, it awaketh against thee; behold, it cometh. Thy doom is come unto thee, O inhabitant of the land: the time is come, the day is near; a day of tumult, and not of joyful

8 shouting, upon the mountains. Now will I shortly pour out my fury upon thee, and accomplish mine anger against thee, and will judge thee according to thy ways; and I will bring

9 upon thee all thine abominations. And mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: I will bring upon thee according to thy ways, and thine abominations shall be in the midst of

10 thee; and ye shall know that I the LORD do smite. Behold, the day, behold, it cometh: thy doom is gone forth; the rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded. Violence is risen up into a rod of wickedness; none of them shall remain, nor of their multitude, nor of their wealth:

12 neither shall there be eminency among them. The time is come, the day draweth near: let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn: for wrath is upon all the multitude thereof. For the seller shall not return to that which is sold, although they be yet alive: for the vision is touching the whole multitude thereof, none shall return; neither shall any strengthen him-

14 self in the iniquity of his life. They have blown the trumpet, and have made all ready; but none goeth to the battle: for my wrath is upon all the multitude thereof. The sword is without, and the pestilence and the famine within: he that is in the field shall die with the

16 sword; and he that is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him. But they that escape of them shall escape, and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of

17 them mourning, every one in his iniquity. All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water. They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them;

19 and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads. They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be as an unclean thing; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the LORD; they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels: because it hath been the stumbling-block of their in-

20 iquity. As for the beauty of his ornament, he set it in majesty: but they made the images of their abominations and their detestable things therein: therefore have I made it unto them

21 as an unclean thing. And I will give it into the hands of the strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil; and they shall profane it. My face will I turn also from

22 them, and they shall profane my secret place: and robbers shall enter into it, and profane it. Make the chain: for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.

24. Wherefore I will bring the worst of the heathen, and they shall possess their houses: I will also make the pride of the strong to cease; and their holy places shall be profaned. De-

26 struction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none. Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumour shall be upon rumour; and they shall seek a vision of the

27 prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the ancients. The king shall mourn, and the prince shall be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people of the land shall be troubled: I will do unto them after their way, and according to their deserts will I judge them; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

Chap. 6. This chapter is in the same strain with chaps. 4, 5 and 7—predicting fearful judgments on the land and people of Judah—this strain being broken only by a brief reference to a remnant that should survive and repent (verses 8, 9). H. C.

The former prophecies concerned the city of Jerusalem and the inhabitants of Judea. The present is addressed to the whole land and people of Israel, which is to be included in a like judgment. The ground of the judgment is idolatry, and the whole rests on De. 12. There an injunction was given to the people of God to root out and utterly destroy idols and idol worship. This they had not done; nay, they had themselves joined in this false worship. Therefore Jehovah will bring about that destruction, which they had failed to inflict, and will include those who have thus joined themselves to the heathen. Hence the force of I, even I. “I will Myself do what you should have done.” The prophecy is against the mountains of Israel, not so much because the land of Israel was characterized by mountains and deep valleys, as because the mountains and valleys were the seats of idol worship. B. C.

1-7. With a bold personification, the mountains, hills, ravines and valleys, desecrated by the horrid rites of idolatry, are here addressed as if intelligent and conscious of guilt and danger. The Lord threatens to bring the sword upon those desecrated places, and to cut down the guilty idolaters so that their dead bodies shall lie unburied around their altars and before their idols.

8-10. The destruction of the covenant people will not be universal and utter. A small remnant of the captives will be spared and ultimately brought to repentance. This precious truth is interposed here for the comfort of those who still retained some fear of God, and for the encouragement of those who could be moved to serious thought toward repentance. H. C.

9. The product and evidence of their repentance: “They shall loathe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.” Thus God will give them grace to qualify them for pardon and deliverance. His goodness takes occasion from their badness to appear the more illustrious. Those that truly loathe sin cannot but loathe themselves because of sin; self-loathing is evermore the companion of true repentance. Penitents quarrel with themselves, and can never be reconciled to themselves till they have some ground to hope that God is reconciled to them; nay, then they shall lie down in their shame when He is pacified toward them. H.

Since Ezekiel is addressing the Church of God through Israel, we are to note here that the general principle of the Divine administration is laid down. Sin leads to judgment, judgment to repentance, repentance to forgiveness, forgiveness to reconciliation, reconciliation to a knowledge of communion with God. B. C.

11-14. The same threatenings which we had before in the foregoing chapter, and in the former part of this, are here repeated, with a direction to the prophet to lament them, that those he prophesied to might be the more affected with the foresight of them. H.—The people would have convincing proof that God had spoken these words of doom when they should see the idol worshippers lying dead among their idols and around their altars in every place where they had made offerings to idol gods.

Chap. 7. This chapter continues and closes this particular message, and announces the fearful doom of the guilty Jews and of their city. The points made specially prominent are: that this day of judgment is very near, and that the ruin it shall bring upon the city, the land, and the people shall be extreme and utter. H. C.

This chapter is a dirge rather than a prophecy. The prophet laments over the near approach of the day wherein the final blow shall be struck, and the city be made the prey of the Chaldean invader. Supposing the date of the prophecy to be the same as that of the preceding, there were now but four, or perhaps three, years to the final overthrow of the kingdom of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar. B. C.

1-4. A terrible emphasis is laid upon the oft-repeated words, “the end is come.” The land is to be made utterly desolate. Its beauty and glory will go down in the darkness of night. God will pour out His wrath upon them and requite them for all their abominable idolatries. “Thine abominations shall be in the midst of thee,” implies that they will be there, not as sins being committed and enjoyed, but as sins calling loudly for retribution and bringing it down terribly upon the long-sinning people.

6. The end is the predestined, long-predicted and deserved end. In the next clause read, it awaketh and riseth up against thee—as if it had been a slumbering giant, but now starts from its slumbers and puts itself on the alert to do its work. H. C.

The end cometh of that “now” in which “God commandeth all men everywhere to re-

pent.” But with the end of time comes not the end of duration or being. With the end of these employments comes not the end of the soul’s activity. With the end of these possessions, these enjoyments and these struggles and afflictions comes not the end of all possessions, of all pleasure and of all pain. All the plans, the experiences, the achievements, the hopes of this earthly life, are but the beginnings of endless lines and endless issues. And with this ceaseless continuance of being, the formed character abides unchanged. He that is holy shall be holy still. He that is unholy shall be unholy still. The soul forgiven, renewed, transformed, made pure by Divine power through grace, shall be forever maintained in its possession of holiness, in its perfected likeness to and oneness with God, and abide forever with the Lord. The soul unforgiven, unrenewed, and unsanctified shall be forever abandoned to its chosen heritage of fellowship with lost angels in the dark realm of guilty despair. Nor in these differing states and spheres shall there be an end of action. Every energy of mind, heart, will, judgment, memory, feeling, all shall find ceaseless employ. Upon the past, without oblivion of aught, upon the experiences of the present, upon the prospects of the future, the holy and unholy soul alike shall be forever actively employed, with every energy absorbed in its appointed work, its work of grateful memory, of praise and holy service in the presence of God, or its work of self-accusation, of ever-prolonged, unhallowed thought, of ungratified, sinful desire and unrestrained evil purpose. B.