Ezekiel 19

Ezekiel 19:1-14

Section 6 (Ezekiel 19:1-14).The victories of the Gentiles over the line of David, so that under them Israel never obtains her hope. In this chapter we return to the lessons furnished by the history of the people. The prevailing of Gentile power over the line of David, spite of the promises of God given to it, is here pointed out. The hope which these promises awakened, Israel seemed not to obtain. We have not this fact merely, however, but the plain reason for it, which its very brevity makes all the more vivid. Two pictures of Israel are set side by side before us, Jerusalem and her king being the representatives of Israel; and these pictures are intended to cast light upon one another. There is a certain incongruity between them which at first sight makes the connection difficult, but which is the very point intended to be pressed. Jerusalem as the lioness among lions is the very secret of Jerusalem’s present broken-down condition as God’s vine. The lamentation is over the princes of Israel; it is the kingdom that is before us, and the question is asked, “What was thy mother?” The answer is, “A lioness; she lay down among lions; she nourished her whelps in the midst of the young lions.” She is a kingdom among the kingdoms of the earth, in a relation to them which makes her offspring as their offspring, and reproduces in them the Gentile characters. There is, truly, a Lion of the tribe of Judah; it is a title of Christ Himself, and He will arise in this character to put down all enemies at last by one decisive stroke. The book of Revelation shows us Christ after this manner, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. When the seer looks to see this Lion, however, he sees the Lamb. These things are not incongruous or contradictory in Him. The Lamb is His true and inner character; and all the way through it is the Lamb that is upon the throne, and it is the Lamb whose wrath is dreaded.

The rod of iron, to use another figure, is in His hand; but it is the Shepherd’s rod none the less. Judgment is not only in behalf of righteousness, but it is the fruit of love itself. He must manifest Himself against the enemies of His people; He must destroy those that destroy the earth. But the lion which is spoken of here is a very different one. Indeed, Israel was nothing now but a Gentile power, with the lawlessness and selfish spirit that belongs to man in nature. Her offspring manifest this: “She brought up one of her whelps. It became a young lion, and he learned to catch prey; he devoured men.” The statement is as decisive as it is short. This is not God’s picture of the “Ruler amongst men,” surely. It is not David’s picture in his final song; and we see how truly he realized it when he owned that his house was “not so with God.” Indeed, it was not, as the disorders already manifested plainly showed; but this being so, the rule of the line of David could not justify its existence; for even God’s promise would not do this apart from its possessing the characters of true rule, which it had not.

Thus it directly follows that when “the nations heard of him, he was taken in their pit, and they brought him with hooks into the land of Egypt.” It is the fate of Jehoahaz that is referred to; it is his history generalized for our consideration. What would people do with a man-eating lion? The pit and the hooks were the only right treatment for such. But Jehoahaz is only one example out of many: “And when she saw that she had waited and her hope was lost, she took another of her whelps and made him a young lion; and he went up and down among the lions; he became a young lion, and learned to catch prey: he devoured men.” We scarcely know whether it is Jehoachin who is spoken of here, or Zedekiah who replaced him. It is really of no consequence. In any case, it is but another lion’s whelp, like the former; and as the character is like, so also must be the result. There is some further description to bring out fully the moral of the whole. The first expression is difficult, and there is some question with regard to the text. “He knew their palaces:” more strictly perhaps, “He knew their widows;” but it may mean, rather, their solitary or widowed places or palaces. Some would read it: “He broke down their palaces,” which would seem to connect better with what follows. But we have to be careful in Scripture how we take what seems simplest to be the best. The general thought, however, is plain: “He laid waste their cities, and the land was desolate and its fulness” (i.e., all that was in it), “because of the noise of his roaring.” His voice was evidently more pretentious than his power, but his power was enough, such as it was, to make a desolation, whereas there should have been prosperity. This repeats, therefore, only more emphatically, what was the character of these lion whelps.

The consequence is that the same destruction comes upon him, only now from another side. “Then the nations set themselves against him on every side from the provinces, and spread their net over him. He was taken in their pit, and they put him into a cage with hooks, and brought him” (this time) “to the king of Babylon. They brought him into strongholds, that his voice should no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel.” This would make it look more like Zedekiah, the last king; but in any case it is the justification of the Gentile overthrow of David’s house, and it is a complete one. It may be said, of course, that these Gentiles were none of them any better. The answer is plain, that Israel, with all her privileges and her knowledge of God, should have been better; and that the profession of this knowledge could not possibly be permitted to dishonor God, accompanied, as it was, with the full heathen character. This ends the first picture. Now, in opposition to this, we have what Israel should have been, what it was in the mind of God according to the place in which He had set it for Himself upon the earth. Here the address is, one would say, to Zedekiah: “Thy mother like thee is as a vine planted by the waters.” That seems the most probable rendering of another difficult expression. Naturally, the mother was like her offspring in character; but that is not the point here: it is place, not character; and the place of the king in Israel was to exhibit rightly the character corresponding to the place which God had given to the nation, the mass of which had departed from Him. Ezekiel, as Isaiah also, had already used the same figure, reminding us of fruitfulness as the only purpose of a vine, of its weakness and dependence. It was in this weakness that Israel would find her strength; it was in drawing from the one Source of all blessing that all her fruitfulness was to be found; and God had in Israel’s case done all that could be done in this respect.

For a short time, intermittently, it was fruitful; but, by reason of many waters with which God had encompassed it, it grew strong rods for sceptres of them that bare rule, and its stature was exalted among the thick boughs, and it became conspicuous by its height with the multitude of its branches. That is all that is said as to its condition; but we have had abundance heretofore to show that, whilst in weakness she was to find strength, she turned her very blessings, alas, into instruments for her weakness. These strong rods for sceptres were indeed conspicuous in such times as those of David and Solomon, when the kingdom stretched from the Edomite Gulf to the Euphrates; but it was at this very time that the seed was being sown of the disasters which were soon to follow. The idolatry under Solomon blasted it at once; and though God indeed bore with them in long patience, so that the history of the divided kingdom was prolonged for centuries, yet it forebode the end as a sure thing, and it came at last: “It was plucked up in fury, it was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up its fruit; its strong rods were broken and withered; the fire consumed them.” So much wood, useful for nothing else when the fruit was gone, as already shown -was proper fuel for the fire. Israel still remained, but in how different a condition! “And now it is planted in the wilderness in a dry and thirsty land, and the fire is gone out of a rod of its branches” (Zedekiah seems clearly intimated here), “it hath devoured its fruit, so that there is in it no strong rod to be a sceptre for ruling.” The kingdom had passed -passed with every hope that could be grounded upon man as man. It had passed in the righteous judgment of God upon it; and yet who can forbear to mourn for the blighting? “This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.” We have thus reached already the close of this sad history. The last section here, extended beyond what is usual, gives us the summary of it all before the final judgment, which we reach in the last chapter of this division, where the siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar is announced as having begun, and closes therefore the first division of the prophecy.